Is voice acting a must in story driven games?

[Kelbear]

Give me good voice acting or no voice acting at all. Either is acceptable, so long as the writing doesn't suck.

 

[pat4luigi15]

yes. if a game is gonna have a good story line, it should have good voice actors. or it could do the Zelda-way by having text, which is not a bad thing as long as the game has good game play.

 

[Bunnymarn]

I always liked Zelda's text approach, it fitted in with the games nicely. It depends on the game and if it fits in with the game.

 

[Narroludd]

As many people have said before me; good voice acting can add a lot to the experience of a game, bad voice acting can ruin it.

Someone mentioned Jon Irenicus above. Imho BG2 is an example of a game with good voice acting. It's also a display of how voice acting can be integrated into an open world rpg with huge amounts of dialogue. That is, not everything has to be voiced. As long as you are careful with what you give voice and make sure it is of quality the game should be fine.

 

[Sion_Barzahd]

Final Fantasy VII, VIII and IX are three popular examples of great RPGs with no voice acting.

I think one of the greater bonuses from not using a voice actor is firstly it give you more time to spend on the dialogue itself anyway and it means the player can imagine what the voices sounds like to themselves.
When Advent Children came out, i was slightly disappointed as some of the voices sounded nothing like i'd envisioned.

 

[TheTygerfire]

Voice Acting is nice to have and really inexcusable not to have these days, but if the story itself sucks, no amount of voice acting can save it.
*looks at Baten Kaitos*
I don't care how much better the actors sound in the Japanese version you still made no fucking sense...

 

[cptbeaver]

The only thing better than the old lucas arts adventure games are the new(relative term)LucasArts Adventure games. Monkey Island 3&4, Grim Fandango, and of course the original example of great voice acting, Full Throttle.

I miss LucasArts adventure games. The New Sam & Max's have some of that charm but its not quite all there.

Nah, I prefer the older games. The original LA adventures had more flair, more originality, look at Day Of The Tentacle, minimal voice acting, one of the most flawless games ever, such superb logic and it made sense for once.