Is voice acting a must in story driven games?

[dcheppy]

Here's my dilemma: I have an unreasonable love for adventure games, and I'm a fan of Penny Arcade, so when I saw that the Penny Arcade guys had an adventure/rpg for download on PSN I thought it was going to be an automatic buy for me. After doing some research though, I found out that the game had no voice acting. I understand that the guys were hesitant to give their iconic comic characters a voice,(The same reason the world never saw a calvin and hobbes cartoon)but for me this is a deal breaker.

Ever since secret of monkey island, I need voice acting in my dialogue heavy adventure games.(shadow of the colossus gets a pass because essentially no one speaks) And I need it to be quality acting. Games without it feel incredibly antiquated almost to the point of being unplayable. Monkey Island 1 and 2 are well written but feel eerily silent. I don't think I can bring myself to spend money on a game in 2008 that doesn't have voice acting. Am I crazy? Is the Penny Arcade game hurt for it? Do dialogue dependent games need voice acting? Does anybody else think mediocre voice acting pushed FFX from classic to just good and excellent voice acting pushed Uncharted from good to excellent?

Just some food for thought. It'll be interesting seeing what other people say on the subject.

 

[tijuanatim]

In my opinion no voiceacting is better than terrible voiceacting.
Of course truly great voice acting can make a good game great.

 

[The Irrelevant Gamer]

The lack of voice never bothered me in Rain Slick Precipice because I was so used to seeing those characters speaking through word balloons. Now if Mass Effect, or Fallout 3 had no voice acting that would have been a deal breaker.

 

[The Wooster]

No voice acting is better than fucking noises. Okami and Killer 7 were both nigh on unbearable thanks to the horrendous fucking voice noises. The gimp guy in Killer7 was profoundly irritating. As was the nature woman in Okami.

 

[Veylon]

No! Ask around: what is the best RPG? What is the story-based game? You'll got a lot of flame wars, but they'll almost inevitably boil down to a list of games without voice acting.

There are many issues with it:

1) It costs, in money, in time, in eventual game size. What else could you be spending that money and man-hours on? This was an issue when 3D was the big thing. Gameplay was often sacrificed to add it.

2) It (if done poorly) is limited. How much dialogue is in your game? Do you even have the time and space (see above) to render every line of dialogue into speech? Remember that in Chrono Trigger, many lines of dialogue had variations depending on who was in your party. How would you choose to handle that? Alternatively, how much dialogue do you cut? In addition, each character has to have their own voice (maybe voice actor), or be a bland, voiceless NPC.

3) Quality is an issue. You can either pony up and have decent voice acting, or fail to do so and have it be terrible. Many games opt for the latter.

I'm an old-schooler on these things, so maybe I'm biased. I feel that voice acting can add to a game, but it most often is bloat that gets in the way of the plot.

 

[Sewblon]

well appropiate and well done voice acting is usually a plus but I prefer text to bad voice acting. For me evan the best voice acting can be distracting if you are trying to play a game with actuall depth. But text has to fill up half the screen or be poorly written for it to distract me.

 

[NeoAC]

I think great voice acting can make a game come alive, it can make a story that much more believable, and just draw you in. Take GTA: SA. If it had been mostly silent, and I was just reading a bunch of text off the screen, I probably wouldn't have thought it was as good, cause reading text in a game is something that definitely turns me off a game right there. But when I heard Chris Ballard's world-weary sighs as Carl came back to Grove Street, when I heard Samuel L. Jackson's conniving, cock-sure boasting as Officer Tenpenny strutted around as he thought he had the entire hood wrapped around his finger, that drew me into the game right there. Sure I bought the game for the balls-to-the-wall, 5 state bulletin action, but I played it through to the end to see CJ move on up, and to see Tenpenny get his just desserts. That's what great voice acting can do.

 

[Nazulu]

No, this is all opinion. It is interesting to have acting in games but I wouldn't expect much of it. Adventure games just need a good story line and script but also not too much dialogue otherwise alot of people will just find annoying like me.

However all together I prefer no acting in games because most people need to learn how to read these days anyway!

 

[dcheppy]

No! Ask around: what is the best RPG? What is the story-based game? You'll got a lot of flame wars, but they'll almost inevitably boil down to a list of games without voice acting.

There are many issues with it:

1) It costs, in money, in time, in eventual game size. What else could you be spending that money and man-hours on? This was an issue when 3D was the big thing. Gameplay was often sacrificed to add it.

2) It (if done poorly) is limited. How much dialogue is in your game? Do you even have the time and space (see above) to render every line of dialogue into speech? Remember that in Chrono Trigger, many lines of dialogue had variations depending on who was in your party. How would you choose to handle that? Alternatively, how much dialogue do you cut? In addition, each character has to have their own voice (maybe voice actor), or be a bland, voiceless NPC.

3) Quality is an issue. You can either pony up and have decent voice acting, or fail to do so and have it be terrible. Many games opt for the latter.

I'm an old-schooler on these things, so maybe I'm biased. I feel that voice acting can add to a game, but it most often is bloat that gets in the way of the plot.

1)On the top 10 games for escapist users. Half Life 2(1), Portal(2), and Psychonauts(4) are all story driven games in the top 5 that stand out for their excellent voice acting.

2)I loved chrono trigger when I was younger, but replaying it feels outdated to me and I think its largely because of the no voice acting.

3)This is a big issue with a lot of today's RPGS, especially JRPGS. They just don't seem to want to invest in high quality voice acting and the product suffers for it. A lot. Xenosaga series=mediocre voice acting. Final Fantasy never got great english dubs. Mass effect(haven't played it all the way through so correct me if I'm wrong) is hit and miss with a lot of miss. Same with fallout 3 and Oblivion. I could go on but I'm tired.

 

[Good morning blues]

Not at all. Having voice acting is often a good way to reduce immersion, as in games like Oblivion where the hundreds of characters all had one of the same ten or so voices and all of them said the exact same horrendously limited number of lines.

Furthermore, bloated dialogue is a much smaller problem with games that don't have voice acting. I don't really like walls of text, but I certainly prefer them to a game that just has me watching talking heads for hours and hours. Games with voice acting often have me reading the subtitles and clicking to skip through all of the voice work.

Basically, voice acting can really add to more linear games with less dialogue, such as your examples of Half-Life 2 and Portal. In an open-world/RPG setting, we just don't have the storage capacity for the amount of recorded dialogue that would be needed, and the last thing that we need to do is increase game budgets even more by doing more voiceovers.

 

[Samurai Goomba]

Nope. Better to have nothing that something awful, two good examples being Xenogears and Rogue Galaxy.

'Gears has no VAs, but a really good story.

Galaxy has tons of voice acting, but an atrocious story.

It is all in the writing. Sometimes good voice actors can up the quality of the presentation, or make the whole experience more immersive, but it is in no way required. Personally, I'd rather have voice acting fall completely out of style if it meant that game devs would start hiring some decent writers. All they have to do is look at the Silent Hill 2, Chrono Trigger, Xenogears and FFT models (FFT, despite having a horrible translation, actually had quite deep writing and explored concepts that were really ahead of its time, particularly for a Square production.)

 

[ev219674]

For dialogue heavy-games, I think it depends. The best thing, I think, is to have a mix of voice-acting and text. Voice-acting for those things where a great line delivery is necessary, and then for the boring drivel read, press a button and go. For me it's always faster to read text than listen to characters speak it. But doing both at once constantly is tremendous overkill. Romancing SaGa, anyone?

Ultimately it depends on the quality of the voice acting, and not to knock American/Canadian voice actors but they somehow don't manage to do it quite right enough of the time. And then there are times where they're amazing. It boggles the mind.

 

[thiosk]

no voiceacting is better than terrible voiceacting.

nuf said

needs more emphasis here though :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5FTJxfV3pc

Want to laugh out loud?
HA. HA HA HA. HA. HA HA HA. HA.



ugh

 

[sms_117b]

Does anybody else think mediocre voice acting pushed FFX from classic to just good and excellent voice acting pushed Uncharted from good to excellent?

Have to disagree there, the voice acting coupled with the line "y'know" pushed FFX from classic to down right annoying.

Voice acting has very little impact on a game to me, if it has it i go with it, if not I just read everything

 

[dead_beat_slacker]

Not really just Look at the 3d versions legend of Zelda they dont even talk its mostly mumbles and grunts and sighs. Voice acting isnt really a must but if its pulled off really well it can help a game stand out even more.

 

[scnj]

I think it should be either/or, not in between. The KOTOR games really annoyed me when I selected a dialogue option and my character didn't say anything.

 

[Cahlee]

I've heard the Penny Aracade guys voices, believe me, it's better without it.

 

[Podunk]

Voice acting, when done apropriately, can add a lot to a game, and give the characters some much needed depth. In terms of immersion, voice acting is incredibly important. Games like the Silent Hill series, Eternal Darkness, or God of War would be much poorer without actual dialogue. It isn't essential- games have been without for decades, after all, but when you're trying to make the player care and sympathize with the characters, it is a powerful aid indeed.

What I would like to see is more voice acting for handheld games. Every time real words come out of my DS when I'm playing a game it surprises the hell out of me, because I'd nearly forgotten that they can do that... It seems like less gameplay intensive titles could do with full voicework to make the game more interesting.