Voice Acting in games, is it always good?

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ThePurpleStuff

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Apr 30, 2010
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I am the kind of gamer who enjoys silent protagonists. I grew up on games like Zelda. Ocarina of Time at eight years old and branching out from there to be a serious gamer. But enough about my history.

I love games with no voice acting, and I love games with voice acting. It's not even about if the voice acting is done well because thats subjective, most of the games I play with voices, if I can't turn them off or pay attention to subtitles then I get a little annoyed, but if the games good I let it slide.

Dark Cloud, a ps2 classic game, it has no major voice acting, mostly voice clips like Zelda does during combat, in cutscenes or talking to npcs no voice clips at all, and its a fun game.

Now its sequel, Dark Cloud 2, everyone is voiced, even sometimes talking to insignificant npcs, they'll have a voice too. I still like the game and just recently replayed it, hence me making this topic.

My problem with it is who you choose to voice act. The main character Max is voiced by Scott Menville, whom if you don't know also voiced Robin on Teen Titans. Every time I play the game.. thats all I see, Robin, not Max, not the character himself. It's just, obnoxious and I can't take the story as serious as I should with a voice like that, since hes narrating the whole thing at times. He doesn't change the voice up either, its exactly Robin's voice. Not that hes bad, its just distracting. ((I'd also post video proof of this, but this game is very old, over 12 years old, and theres no quality footage I can find.))

Also the main bad guy, but is really the true bad guy's puppet is named Sirus, hes voiced by Kath Soucie, whose a long time cartoon voice actor from my childhood. But her voice is exactly like that of Phil from rugrats and it drives me crazy. She voices other characters and I wouldn't even know they were her if I didn't do this research. But god, I just can't not see Phil from rugrats whenever he talks, it just ruins all the tension and everything hes done in the game prior.

I could go on and on, but I think I made a good point, who you choose as your actor and how commonly used they are in other mediums can have an effect. Do you feel the same way and have your personal experiences you want to share, or did I just seem whiny?
 

Anachronism

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Shamus said it pretty well in an old Experienced Points [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/experienced-points/7588-Voice-vs-Choice].

Voice acting is nice and can add a lot to a game's atmosphere, but it's expensive to hire the actors and can actually significantly reduce the number of options available to the player, especially in dialogue-heavy RPGs. Something like Planescape: Torment would be inarguably worse for being fully voice acted - there was enough to give each character more personality, but the huge amount of text in that game would've been damn near impossible to voice act completely.
 

Darth Rosenberg

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I think the 'I can't think of them as anything but [insert previously played/seen character]' angle is a bit silly. No one has a problem with screen actors essentially sounding and looking exactly the same from role to role, so... yeah.

...however, I'll confess I had a bit of an issue with Mass Effect, in the past. Mark Meer felt more like Shepard, because when I heard FemShep all I could hear was Bastila. Meer was completely new, an unknown quantity, so initially he felt very much like a unique character. Ultimately, I became more aware of Jen Hale's body of work, and that gave me more context/perspective. Now I just hear an actress voicing different roles.

Oh, and whilst Anachronism makes a fairly decent point, I personally still prefer voiced characters in RPG's, even down to the lead. I think Dragon Age 2's Hawke made for a far more engaging central experience than the Warden in Origins.

And I think expecting commonly used actors to mix up their voice a bit is-- well, I refer you to my first paragraph. It's daft. Also, the onus is on the people doing the hiring, and usually that means they want a recognisable voice and name attached to their work.

In gaming, it stands out more because of how few high profile voice actors there are. I mean, even Hale and North have seriously slummed it in their careers - every voice actor has, because they have to. If the market was there for them to cherry pick, I'm sure they would - because other actors would fill in 'lesser' roles. And so, we get a lot of certain actors who reliably do a quality job. Blame the market and the producers - not the actors.
 

Bad Jim

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You're just being silly. I've never heard bad voice acting in any game I've played.


Nope, never. All voice acting is good.
 

StormDragonZ

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Voice acting can never be bad, but sometimes who you choose to portray someone can be very, very, VERY wrong.
 

Sheo_Dagana

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I love voice work in some video games and despise it in others, especially when executive decisions are made to replace a familiar voice actor with a celebrity just for the sake of selling a few extra copies based on that celebrity's name. I know we all get tired of Nolan North (Troy Baker has enough range for me to not be unhappy about his constant presence) and other voice actors we've heard a dozen times, but they come infinitely cheaper than Hollywood talent and often have far more experience with voice work to begin with. I'd rather see a studio save some money on a VA and put the budget into the game.

That said, I also hate games where it sounds like the crew just passed the mic around the office. Don't get me wrong, I know James Sunderland's VA was just some guy they pulled off the streets, but it rarely works out that way for other games. I'm convinced the cast of the first Resident Evil was also pulled off the streets. Yikes to that stuff.
 

pilouuuu

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Bad Jim said:
You're just being silly. I've never heard bad voice acting in any game I've played.


Nope, never. All voice acting is good.
Oh, my! I can't even notice the voice acting with those hideous graphics!
 

Jon Watson

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Jul 31, 2013
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delta4062 said:
Nolan North works so damn well as Nathan Drake it's hard to imagine him as anyone else despite who he's voicing.
Nolan North has a surprising amount of range you wouldn't know from his numerous Nathan-likes.

Space Core from Portal 2, Deadpool in almost every incarnation of Deadpool in almost all Marvel videogames and the Penguin in the Arkham Games, for instance.

But yeah, the hundred or so characters he's played where they've wanted his own distinctive voice? It is indeed rather grating.
 

crazygameguy4ever

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While there is plenty of good voice acting in games, there's also way too many examples of bad voice acting in games to count. Here's a few examples



 

Ninmecu

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I find voice acting in Video games to be along the lines of the first few episodes of any dubbed anime, or power rangers. You know, the ridiculously over the top silly "WHY WOULD I BE SAYING THIS DEAR GOD I NEED A NEW AGENT" cringeworthy dialog that some of those shows have. If you find the right actors who are able to not only portray the character vocally but also take the dialog with the right amount(or lack thereof) of seriousness, then it works. But for the love of all things holy stop giving the same voice actors work for similar roles. It drives me crazy when I'm playing a game and I can't connect with character X because he voiced Kyonne in Haruhi, or she voiced Haruhi in Haruhi, god damn. But that's a personal gripe, I had the same issue with the Governor, his assistant and Charles Emerson Winchester the Third being the same person(Pocahontas and MASH)
 

Vault101

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Sep 26, 2010
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Unless a silent protag is female I generally don't gel with that crap

I'm a fan of voice acting, nothing worse than having to read while I'm in "game" mode

It think it reached a pretty good standard this gen just gone
 

ThePurpleStuff

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All good points, but I'm not going on the celebrity will sell more copies bandwagon for Dark Cloud 2, there are noteworthy actors in it, including Mark Hamill of all people as Emperor Griffon, another form of Sirus as the main bad guy. I had no idea he did his voice. But they weren't at all credited for their work.

It's just odd when you're playing a whole totally new game after just playing another one you finished or watched a movie/tv show/anime. Then you hear the same voice from a major character. Yes it does annoy me when the actor doesn't change their voice up so much that I know who they are just by listening and all the roles I know they've done. Tom Kenny, voice of spongebob, also Yuri Lowenthal, one of the most overused/popular voice actors for anime dubs and games as well. Are two big key examples.

Just switch your voice up a bit and it won't bother me, but if you sound the same in every role, then I don't know if you're not talented or just lazy.