Poll: Celebrity voice actors, Yay or Nay?

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Interesting that Troy Baker seems to have become the new Nolan North for some people

shit have you seen his imdb as of late? He has explodedddddd in VA, which is great because I enjoy his voicework, but he is definitely giving nolan north a run for his money in "how many games can you be in?!?"

But part of why everyone here knows Nolan North is that, talented as he is, he has a very distinctive voice which allows people to recognise him from game to game, whereas I imagine many people wouldn't recognise that Booker, Joel, Kanji and New Joker are the same person.

ehh nolan north is deeper than that, he just gets HIRED to do that role because he plays it so damn well, hell most people get paid as well as they do because they can consistently do a certain thing very well, he really doesn't want to do that anymore, but if you look past his most famous roles he actually does do different voices well.

david in the last of us
deadpool (well..it's fucking deadpool for christ sake) has tons of different voices of his
penguin arkham city

is an example.

 

[mrdude2010]

Unless it's someone who occasionally does voice acting work on their own, I feel like they phone it in a bit too often. Ron Perlman was in Turok.

 

[putowtin]

It depends, most of the time I'd say no.

As most voice actors are used to portraying all the characters emotions through their voices, the character you play/ engage with in the game are better for it.
Some film actors/TV actors who have provided voices have been shockingly bad (David Duchovny I'm looking at you)

 

[Amaror]

I'm not entirely sure what the inspiration for this thread was, but it is a rather simple one.

What are peoples' opinions on celebrity voice acting in games?

Obviously, it ranges from game to game, but as a whole do you think it's an improvement or a detriment to games? Could developers be using that money better, or is it justified if the celebrity's performance is great?

And finally, what is/are you favourite and least favourite uses of celebrity voice acting?

Depends really.
For example i really disliked the celebrity voice acting in broken age.
Not because it was bad, it was fantastic, but their parts were so minor, with so few lines, that they would have fared better just hiring an actual voice actor, that would have been much much cheaper. Maybe that way they would have had enough money to make the game last more than 2 hours and contain some actual puzzles.

 

[Bat Vader]

It would annoy me if the company cast them just for the specific reason that they are a celebrity and not for their acting talent.

Luckily though that is very rarely if ever the case. Most celebrities that are cast seem to be cast because their voice fits the character. Michael Madsen plays an excellent Daud to me.

 

[Something Amyss]

As long as they can act, I get a kick out of them showing up. So yay.

 

[Evonisia]

I remember playing some Gears of War game a few years ago, probably #3, that had some rapper in it. His character was even more shit than those around him. He was not important to the story line or the universe. He was shit, a 6foot something pile of shit. And I know if he hadn't contacted Epic and asked to be in the game, then that character would not exist and there would have probably been a much more interesting part of the game. But he pushed his way in where he HAD NO FUCKING RIGHT TO BE, and they crowbar-ed him in like the giant turd he is. I absolutely hate when 'celebrities' who gamers don't like/care about/want to see get forced into games where they stick out like a sore fucking thumb.

Also I'm adding all the fucking AD based Capecha things to a list of products to NEVER FUCKING BUY. FUCK YOU ESCAPIST.

I think you're talking about Griffin from Gears of War 3. Yeah he was pretty worthless, though I did feel sorry for him.

"You just called all my people ************, you knew it would happen" says Griffin.

"Fuck you my friend died yesterday" says Marcus.

I facepalm.