I think Shamus is right. I'm so incredibly fed up with voice acting that doesn't make sense and quest-lines that get truncated into "either-or" scenarios.
Take Fallout 3, for instance, in "The Replicated Man" quest (assuming you can get past the idea that the whole idea of this quest doesn't make sense and has nothing to do with the fallout setting to being with), the cyborg AA-23 was voice acted by a competent, but overused voice actor. I only actually listened to his lines on the first playthrough and, even then, you've got to struggle through the immersion because the SAME actor is used for a bunch of other guards and random townsfolk throughout the game. After that first playthrough, I didn't even give a crap anymore and was just skipping his dialog wholesale.
And what about Three-Dog? I can't NOT accept his quest to go get the new radio dish? WTF is that about!? No matter how much you insult or try to bribe him, nothing works. It all comes back to the same one or two dialog choices that will actually move the quest forward. Again, whoever did Three-Dog is a pretty good voice actor. He was given some poorly written lines and maybe some bad coaching, but he does alright as far as faces with names go in video games.
What happened here? I liked Fallout 1 and 2's "talking heads" idea. Most of the mooks just spout one-liner floats over their heads. You can read these quickly and get a feel for the atmosphere of the game. They're not worth full dialog interaction. So, there's no need to voice them and, thus, no need to hear the same actor do 20 different characters. But for a few of the really interesting characters, we get fully-animated faces and some really good voice acting like Michael Dorn. Yeah, Michael Dorn! Who doesn't love his characters? And even the lesser known actors like Jeffrey Jones did very well. I will forever associate him with President Richardson. Having that one actor do just that one character really puts the cherry on it, you know.
Take Fallout 3, for instance, in "The Replicated Man" quest (assuming you can get past the idea that the whole idea of this quest doesn't make sense and has nothing to do with the fallout setting to being with), the cyborg AA-23 was voice acted by a competent, but overused voice actor. I only actually listened to his lines on the first playthrough and, even then, you've got to struggle through the immersion because the SAME actor is used for a bunch of other guards and random townsfolk throughout the game. After that first playthrough, I didn't even give a crap anymore and was just skipping his dialog wholesale.
And what about Three-Dog? I can't NOT accept his quest to go get the new radio dish? WTF is that about!? No matter how much you insult or try to bribe him, nothing works. It all comes back to the same one or two dialog choices that will actually move the quest forward. Again, whoever did Three-Dog is a pretty good voice actor. He was given some poorly written lines and maybe some bad coaching, but he does alright as far as faces with names go in video games.
What happened here? I liked Fallout 1 and 2's "talking heads" idea. Most of the mooks just spout one-liner floats over their heads. You can read these quickly and get a feel for the atmosphere of the game. They're not worth full dialog interaction. So, there's no need to voice them and, thus, no need to hear the same actor do 20 different characters. But for a few of the really interesting characters, we get fully-animated faces and some really good voice acting like Michael Dorn. Yeah, Michael Dorn! Who doesn't love his characters? And even the lesser known actors like Jeffrey Jones did very well. I will forever associate him with President Richardson. Having that one actor do just that one character really puts the cherry on it, you know.
