Voice acting killed Final Fantasy

[Eyelicker]

I know a lot of people feel the same way I do about the quality of recent FF releases. 7-9 are 3 of my favorite games ever, with awesome charactors, story and everything else, with enough variation between them to make each one uniquely special.

Then 10 came, which was ok, although everything seemed slighty worse, the charactors wern't as good, story was worse, and the plot and gameplay were annoyingly linear.

12 had the most boring one dimentional charactors ever, with an equily dull story to boot. They added some nice extra bits, and it wasn't as linear as 10, but I just didn't care. Without a compelling story or charactors it felt so empty.

And now 13, which I think Yahtzee nailed in his review. Exept Sazh, all the charactors were annoyingly smug and whiney, and everything just so damn linear.

Anyway, I'm gonna go ahead and blame voice actors above all, for filling everything with annoying phrases like "Heros don't back down!", and generally making everyone annoyingly optomistic and stereotypical. At least I could charactorise them myself without, but now they just take on the ultra bland persona projected by the voice actors, reciting optimistic phrases, and exactly filling the stereotypes I'm trying to imagine they arn't.

 

[Aura Guardian]

I thought graphics killed it. FF6 is the best.

 

[Composer]

they gasped ALOT! they wherent even runnning that much too!!! why are they so tired?

 

[Deleted]

I thought FF2 killed it.

 

[Eyelicker]

I thought FF2 killed it.

I only liked the demo

 

[senorcromas]

Y'know, I liked X-XIII.

I think it has more to do with when you were introduced to the series. Many people who liked VI the best thought the series went downhill from VII on, and now people who liked VII-IX are thinking the same thing about X.

So, I guess the "generations" of FF can be split up thus: I-VI, VII-IX, and X- whenever.

Yeah, I'm just kind of making assumptions here, but I don't think it's too far off.

 

[crimsonshrouds]

I think its more like BAD voice actors killed final fantasy is what you should mean, but I don't think thats really final fantasy's issue anymore. I think its more of the games have just gotten steadily worse overall.

 

[Kanodin0]

I think you definitely have a point. Consider how many people cite the laughing scene in FFX as where it fell apart and this becomes fairly obvious. However, I also think that arguing this one factor is the entire reason for the drop in quality is quite a simplification.

 

[mad825]

I would have to say the worse thing about the voice acting is that the very strong American accent and it just burns just to listen the females with the very strong American accent

 

[Eyelicker]

I think you definitely have a point. Consider how many people cite the laughing scene in FFX as where it fell apart and this becomes fairly obvious. However, I also think that arguing this one factor is the entire reason for the drop in quality is quite a simplification.

Yeah, there are obviously more, but that's the one that annoyed me the most. It's like reading a book with someone standing next to you saying all the spoken words.

 

[Aura Guardian]

I thought FF2 killed it.

That one sucked.

 

[himemiya1650]

I'm pretty sure voice acting didn't kill final fantasy, it was dead long, long, long before that. I'd say around the time there was more than one FFVII or FFX.

 

[Nevyrmoore]

I thought FF2 killed it.

Which one, the actual FF2 or the US FF4?

 

[old account]

Voice acting killed FF? No, you've got it wrong. All those anime fanboys/fangirls, who argued that 'Sephiroth' is the hottest fictional character, and drew half naked pictures of him on deviant art, are the reason for why no one takes Final Fantasy seriously. I'm going to stop here before I go on my giant 'Final Fantasy was better before FF7' rant.

 

[Adzma]

I have to admit, Vanille and Fang's Australian accents really make me cringe while playing FF XIII, and I am Australian. Fang's is by far worse though since it's an American actress trying to do an Aussie accent and failing at it miserably. I would however be interesting in playing FF VII again with full voice acting.

 

[SwimmingRock]

The inability to hear the characters the way you want does seem to be a rather large downside. Don't know about others, but I always had a particular voice in mind for each character and voice acting has phased that out. This is unfortunate, since I never picked voices in my head that I disliked, but plenty of actual voices in games annoy me. Point in case: during FF13, I activated subtitles and muted my tv every time Vanille, Hope, Lightning or most of the minor characters started talking. Actually, I only put up with listening to Snow, Sazh, Fang and Cid.

However, I wouldn't say that's Final Fantasys biggest problem and I also wouldn't say the series is dead. Personally, I rather liked 13 as did many others. I just really think gaming as a whole can do without the annoyingly cheerful, high-pitched little girl archetype. Then again, FF is Japanese and they love those characters there. God, I wish I liked WRPGs as much as JRPGs.

 

[RadicalDreamer90]

Lol Voice acting didn't kill it for me. Final Fantasy X had marvelous characters, and the actors were spot on for there roles. I agree that 12's story was about as compelling as reading a dictionary, and alot of the characters in 13 were annoying, but I can argue the rest of your thoughts. For one, ALL FINAL FANTASY GAMES ARE LINEAR. JRPG's generally scrap the idea of what a typical ROLE PLAYING GAME has which is alot of choices that help you determine the character and the adventure. They also let you go places you want to go, and not so much of what the story says. Western RPGS do that part, and the only game in FF that can claim non linearity was FF12 because the world was huge, and almost every time more of it was exposed, you could explore other parts and do lots of side missions from the get go. Final Fantasy 12 was similar to an mmo with the story being what unlocked more parts of the world to explore. I may not have liked 12's story, but its world and the gameplay were enjoyable and innovative. What killed Final Fantasy is the company itself. Square Soft, who created every final fantasy I love died a long time ago, and Square Enix keeps trying to put together a broken legacy. The creators of final fantasy have almost all left the company, and hardly play a part in it anymore. The visionaries that made 1-10 enjoyable jumped ship a long time ago, so of course FF will lose more and more every entry. It's been on a decline almost 5 years now.

 

[Naal]

No.

What killed it was when they decided to focus more on how awesome the graphics were and spent less time on a story line and character development/depth.