Why do Men fail at acting?

[RatRace123]

I like Mark Meer as male Shep.
And I've heard good and bad voice acting from both genders.

 

[Levitas1234]

Thats just mass effect......but I have proof of a good actor in gaming! Ben Flippin Carmine's actor!

Oh skullkid, you and your irony never ceases to amuse me.

I agree with OP
case in point, half life 2.
Imagine the voice actor of Freeman without the lead role of alyx vance. There would be no emotion, chemistry or literally anything in the form of dialogue.

Anything with both women and men in a game, the women just make the game badass. Even in games without voice acting like final fantasy 7, fuck cloud and vincent, yufi and tifa are the only ones with character, which brings me to another point, it's really just a matter of character and not voice acting at all.

Example
Carmine- character is bro of the party, he dies in the bro cliche.
Aries from ff7- the love interest of cloud and the entire back bone of the game, her death is like omfg this is horribly sad to watch poor cloud then cloud becomes bad ass and fucks shit up, thanks to Aries. If one of cloud's bros had been the one to die, he would have uttered a short prayer and gone into a sword swinging montage followed by a long screaming "Why god why?" then being calmed down by tifa

 

[Berserker119]

I don't really see why people say that male-Shepard has a bad voice actor.

Maybe it's because the fem-Shepard voice acting is better and on the Internet being even slightly worse than something related automatically makes you a terrible abomination that reduces faith in humanity.

Agreed. I actually kind of liked Male Shepard better.

 

[badgersprite]

Actually a thought that there were a fair few lines that the Male Shepard did better than Female Shepard (at least in Mass Effect 2). I always seemed to find that the voice acting for Male Shepard was far better suited to Paragon options, whereas the Female voice actor sounded better for Renegade options.

Funny. That's the exact opposite of what I thought. I always felt FemShep was a better Paragon, pulling off a sense of suaveness, charm and empathy, whereas MaleShep was much better suited to playing Renegade, coming off as an unemotive, abraisive hardass.

Maybe it's just that I thought Meer wasn't as good at getting across subtleties in his voice with the generally 'blander' Paragon options, while Hale's delivery was more convnicing to me. I could buy her as persuasive, witty and guileful, which is what a Paragon is supposed to be (Yeah, they're basically Jedi), whereas I could buy Meer as an intimidating, ruthless, brawn over brains type. Maybe that's just the influence of how I played the game.

I just like comparing the "I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favourite store on the Citadel" line. MaleShep says that line completely straight, whereas FemShep sounds so smooth when she says it that I found it made that joke even funnier. But, then, maybe I'm just biased because I think her voice is sexy.

Anyway, yeah, I could talk about this all day, but I won't ramble on any longer. Both voices have their strengths and weaknesses, but I prefer Hale's delivery.

 

[crudus]

Male Shepard just sucks. I never play him. It is just the actor that is bad.

Um, I'll just leave this here.

You're letting one game influence your thought.

I was wondering if someone would post this. Post 17. Not bad

 

[mega48man]

whoa, dude, get out more often, okay? don't judge the acting skill of an entire sex because of mass effect before you go see leonardo dicaprio in Inception, or Hugh jackman in X-men origins, or Heath Ledger in Dark knight, or every pixar movie, or the movie pirate radio. all of these have a 2 things in common; male leads and phenomenal acting.

 

[BakaSmurf]

I like ManShep's voice acting...

Anyways, Solid Snake, Sander Cohen, Alistair, John Marston, and the Arbiter would all like to have a word with you...

 

[Bon_Clay]

If you had at least a second example maybe I could see a reason why you would make this thread OP. But that's one example, one that many people have pointed out before. There are tons of good male voice actors, in fact I know of far more men than women who are famous for being good at voice acting.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

I don't really see why people say that male-Shepard has a bad voice actor.

Maybe it's because the fem-Shepard voice acting is better and on the Internet being even slightly worse than something related automatically makes you a terrible abomination that reduces faith in humanity.

yeah male shepherd is fine, he is WAY better than tons of other voice actors from other games, but when put up to other cast members he might not be as good, but he is still solid i think.

there are TONS of male actors that are just as good at voice acting as women are.

 

[Double A]

I know many good male actors. You're talking about voice acting. Big difference.

And furthermore, you're only talking about Mass Effect. One thing doesn't make a stereotype.

 

[Vigormortis]

Thats just mass effect......but I have proof of a good actor in gaming! Ben Flippin Carmine's actor!

Do I detect a hint of sarcasm?

I hope so, seeing as using anything Gears of War related to substantiate a claim that games have good voice acting is kind of ironic.

Anyway, to counter the OP's point. There are a plethora of games out there that have splendid, high-quality voice acting. From both male and female actors. It's all dependent on the strength of the dialogue, the skill of the director, and the breadth of talent the actor has.

 

[DustyDrB]

Eh, I think the male Shep did a fantastic job.

I don't really see why people say that male-Shepard has a bad voice actor.

Maybe it's because the fem-Shepard voice acting is better and on the Internet being even slightly worse than something related automatically makes you a terrible abomination that reduces faith in humanity.

I think it's kind of a bandwagon thing. I don't get it either.

 

[kouriichi]

For Sooth! Ye lines... be.... less.... accurate... about male.... role players...

Ok, yeah, we tend to suck a bit.

 

[Del-Toro]

Really? Because I've seen a lot of women fail even harder at acting too. Like, on stage. Maybe the guy they got for Shepherd was picked for being inexpensive.

 

[Something Amyss]

I think it's kind of a bandwagon thing. I don't get it either.

If that's what you need to tell yourself....

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

I could make the same assumption of female voice acting based on the acting of Christie Monteiro of Tekken.

It's not even that the lines are cheesy, it's that the voice acting on her is just horrible.

But the point is, it's not fair to blast an entire genders capabilities due to one example. That's just ignorant.

 

[badgersprite]

Whenever I play Mass Effect there are always certain lines said by Male Shepard that make me roll my eyes and shake my head, and whenever I hear Female Shepard say anything I feel like the game just got more badass, and it's the same in most video games. The men play the part but it's never anything more than that, women bring it on home EVERY TIME.

Being a man, I tend to prefer playing the man. But why can't we have the same degree of acting as the ladies?

Re-reading this, I noticed how it wasn't just about the Sheps. I couldn't help but think that this supposed gender imbalance really isn't true of all the actors playing the party members (since I assumed those are the ones you're thinking of) in Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2.

Personally, I thought Yvonne Strahovsky was shaky as Miranda showing some inexperience in voice acting. I'm Australian, mind you, so it's nothing to do with the accent. I will say that her delivery kind of suited the character, though, so it wasn't too jarring, and I wouldn't call it bad so much as kind of flat. Meanwhile, I think Brandon Keener as Garrus gives a marvellous performance. He can use his voice and tone really well. I also think Seth Green is one of the best actors in the game.

I think it shows that it's not gender but experience that makes the huge difference here. Some voices in these games are done by really experienced professional voice actors, or at least people who have a real talent for using their voice and know how to change it. Trust me when I say that acting on screen with facial expressions and physical reactions is very different from acting in your voice and voice alone. Some of these actors wouldn't have ever voiced a video game before, or done a lot of voice roles before.

I mean, compare the IMDB pages of various actors in the game, and I think you'll see that experience and the amount of work people have done correlates more to the strength of their performances than anything else. Mind you, some people are just really talented and might be a natural at voice work, but there's a reason you'll recognise a lot of voices in the game as, "Hey! That's that chick from that cartoon!" or "Hey! It's that guy from that movie!" or "Hey! It's Morrigan and Sgt Foley!"

 

[LogicNProportion]

I think there's a bunch of crappy male voice actors......yet I think there's a bunch of crappy female voice actors as well.

You can't judge the whole sex because of merely Mass Effect. We all know Male Shep's voice is awful. Now what we need here is some more George Newbern.

The man was Superman AND Sephiroth.

His voice comes in my ear-vaginas.

 

[DJDarque]

I do not think that one game can represent an entire medium...

Just look at Nolan North

He represents the entire medium.

The ENTIRE medium.

Proof.

Seriously though, aside from this, he's a pretty damn good voice actor.

 

[Vanguard_Ex]

Whenever I play Mass Effect there are always certain lines said by Male Shepard that make me roll my eyes and shake my head, and whenever I hear Female Shepard say anything I feel like the game just got more badass, and it's the same in most video games. The men play the part but it's never anything more than that, women bring it on home EVERY TIME.

Being a man, I tend to prefer playing the man. But why can't we have the same degree of acting as the ladies?

Have you seen any of the Metroid: Other M scenes? Good god, Samus' voice acting sucks ass.