Voice acting killed Final Fantasy

[Booze Zombie]

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.

I dunno about that, Fran is pretty "compelling".
*Wink-wink* *Nudge-nudge*

But seriously, I liked Fran in FF12, I thought "hey, bunnygirl amazons... fresh take on some old ideas and a great as... aspect of her personality is her tough attitude", shame Fran was one of the few, but oh well.

 

[PopeJewish]

How do we know that the original Japanese VAs are any better? Since (a lot of us) can't understand Japanese, they could be terrible for all we know.

They are.
The Japanese drama in the game suits the Japanese language and culture far better than it does English, which is also why the script seems incredibly weird sometimes in English.
It just doesn't translate well.

No it doesn't. THe Japanese voices are much better than the English voices by all accounts, but most Japanese people I talk to who've played it have no idea what was going on in the story the entire time they played it. It was just a weird, poorly directed game (blame Motomu Toriyama for that).

 

[squid5580]

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.

You are way off in my case. I loved 1 & 3 on the nes (or snes whatever they were on). Loved 7 & 9 (still despise 8 with a passion) and X and X-2. I didn't care for 12 a whole lot (maybe give it a 6.5) but I despise 13. I never once felt like I was playing. I felt like the controller should have been a remote control for a tv program. The graphics and the VA were the only things I liked about it.

 

[MortyMnemonic]

Oh my god OP, you are the first person to say exactly what I say about the series.

Now please tell me that X-2 is just worthless and IV, V, VI are genius as well.

 

[Thallis]

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.

What game did you play? FFXIII's plot revolved entirely around the characters. There are a lot of valid criticisms of XIII, but lack of character development, certainly isn't one of them.

 

[Miew]

I think voice acting and elaborate graphics take some of the "fantasy" out of Final Fantasy.
In the older games, the story plays out mainly in the player's head. The sprites and text boxes describe what's happening, but it only really comes alive in your head, a bit like when you're reading a book.
So with the sprites you get a rough idea of what the character looks like, but the details are left to you imagination, just like the tone in which the dialog is being spoken and so on. You'll automatically interpret it the way you think it should be, which is what seems the right way for you, I guess.

But in the newer games, you're not allowed such freedom of imagination. Because the graphics are detailed down to the characters facial animations, and you hear the voices as well, there's no room left to interpret how a line is delivered.
While in FF6 everyone has, to a certain degree, their own idea about how Terra talks, moves and behaves, in FF13 everyone sees Lightning in exactly the same way.

Also, take for example Yuffie from FF7. She's meant to be the "annoying brat", a type of character you'll have in most FFs in one way or another. But since she's not voice acted, even people who hate the annoying brat archetype might be able to accept Yuffie, because they can imagine the voice as being more calm, and they won't have to hear all the stupid giggling and other noises those characters make in the later games.

You know how people will often say "The book was better" if they see a movie that's based on a book. It's pretty much the same thing here.

 

[Sonofadiddly]

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.

If I didn't hate FFVIII, I would agree with you. But you're right about the characters being all sickeningly cheery since 10. "We can do anything if we believe in ourselves!" Cue vomit. I don't know if that's the fault of voice acting, but the voice actors in 10 and 13 were pretty terrible. 12 was not so annoying, but boring. Can't they have interesting characters without making them annoying? Maybe it is crappy voice actors who can't come across as dynamic without making me hate every character. Square Enix, hire better voice actors, damnit! What, are they grabbing hobos off the street and paying them in sandwiches and cheap booze? Or is voice acting a lot harder than it seems? But it has to be partly the writing. So much good writing in earlier games, so bad after 9 (and in 8). Did all their good writers leave to work for Bioware?

 

[Pegghead]

Y'know, the other day I tried a final fantasy game for the first time, it was number 13 at an EB games. I found myself enjoying it despite hating what I've seen of other titles in the series, you wanna know why, of course you do! The sound was off on the telly and i was playing from the beginning, with no narration or voice acting to hear I constructed my own universe...In the grim city of space, hooker girl and Shaft were takinga ride on the train to get to the shops when all of a sudden they got attacked by robosaurus, through a combination of *****-slaps and gun fire the beast was lulled. Being as determined as they were to buy their space groceries they set out on a magical quest across the freeway to re-enact assasins creed, along their way they were troubled by the combine and their space wolves for fear that they were going to steal their star-gates but the foul jerks were defeated. Mostly because they wanted to join in the videogame re-enactment fun but partly in defense of their star-gates the combine decided to re-enact red faction: guerilla and blew up the bridge, sure it caused millions of dollars worth of damage for the space council to fix up (These are the ones who have a green fetish) but the star-gates were safe once again. Luckily hooker-girl using one of her many powers of prostitution managed to drive an intergalactic steam boat which was conveniently located near-by to the other side rather than just drive it all the way to the space green-grocers. Luckily Shaft in all his brilliance smacked the silly girl when she forced him to get off for fear of *****-slap, but unfortunately the slap-fest would have to wait as Count-Dooku and his evil storm-trooper minions were there to greet their non-bothersomme but still threatening to their star-gates pals.

It was at this point that I was told to leave by the EB games staff because they were closing down. I am the guy that has avoided JRPGs his entire life yet I was so connected to the worst superhero duo in history on their quest to get space-groceries that I didn't realize I could be declared legally dead if I'd played any longer. Just goes to show I suppose.

 

[selce]

I think its more like BAD voice actors killed final fantasy think its more of the games have just gotten steadily worse overall.

Concurro.
But to tell you the truth, I only liked 1 to 7 and 9. You can see why I like 10. [/sarcasm]

that had to be the most uncomfortable part of that game, i actually turned the TV off during that scene

 

[Terramax]

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

That's the one thing I did dislike about FFXII. Ashe would do that gasping thing A LOT!

I agree voice acting plays a major part. I especially didn't like how all the enemies in FFXII were English and all the goodies were American.

However, I'm also going to go with graphics like someone stated earlier. They should've stayed with pre-rendered graphics and updated like the did with the Resident Evil Remake.

 

[Cody211282]

I started the series with 9, then played 7, 4, 6, 10, and finally 12, and that was it 12 killed it for me(10 almost did but a few things in the combat and level systems and one or two good characters gave me hope). And I have to say you are probably right, though I think it also has to do with them ether reusing the same lame ideas over and over and just being out of good material at this point. The three best games they had were 4, 6, and 9(never played 8 so i wouldn't know) the rest usually follow the same formula with some deviations and basically have horrible voice acting.

 

[Cody211282]

I think the style change hurt it like a half brick to the skull then it woke up a nymphomaniac after a coma and started sucking any cock it could. The original art style was, well, original, interesting and cool. Then the new guy came along and turned it into generic anime shit where everyone wears too much leather strung together by belts and zippers.

It's not the fact that its to much its the fact that guys wear almost less then the girls, and it hard to tell the genders apart in the new ones.

 

[Always_Remain]

*smears cream cheese on my face in anger* Why does the word EMO have to come up in EVERY discussion about Final Fantasy? That has got to be the worst word to describe anything ever. Granted I've only seen Advent Children and to me he just seems like a complainer to the Nth degree. Can't you just say his character is too angsty for me or boy, that Cloud sure whines a fuckload. At least they were able to make him definable as a character.

Cloud: That dude with the huge sword who won't shut the fuck up about his ANGST.

/rant

 

[sketch_zeppelin]

No, voice acting doesn't single handly kill a game. Resident Evil has some of the worst voice acting in game history but it was still (for the time) a hell of a lot of fun to play. I can deal with bad voice acting and/or bad graphics as long as the game is fun as hell. FF13's problem isn't the voice acting (though i agree it's bad) or even the story. It's that FF's new way of making games is to take as much control away from the player because their afriad that we'll get in the way of all their shiny graphics. In FF 12 you spend hours trying to get ahold of gambits which all they really do is play the game for you. SquareEnix is trying so hard to make things cinematic that they're willing to remove almost all user imput so things look cool.

Japaness games will always have bad voice acting. It's not just because it's a different lanuage but because they communicate ideas in different ways, so even when translated to english things are going to sound off.

I'm a big fan of Atlus games and they have some bad voice acting too but the games themselves are really fun to play and thats whats most important to me. A game can have the best voice talent, a great story, and amazing graphics but if the acutal gameplay is terrible i'm not likely to stick it out.

 

[likalaruku]

I would prefur FF the way I like my anime; in Japanese with English subtitles.

 

[ObsessiveSketch]

I think its more like BAD voice actors killed final fantasy think its more of the games have just gotten steadily worse overall.

Concurro.
But to tell you the truth, I only liked 1 to 7 and 9. You can see why I like 10. [/sarcasm]

I had to play that game alone, because if anybody was around, they'd start laughing half-way through any of the cutscenes -.- If I got sucked into it enough, even the totally cheesy dialogue would resonate with me...kinda. Does anybody know whether the Japanese edition is more tolerable?

EDIT: Jesus Christ, I just found <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBHIgh3MEJU>the Japanese version. Common comments were along the lines of:JESUS CHRIST KILL IT WITH FIRE
I THOUGHT IT COULDN'T BE ANY WORSE