Why Voice Acting Sucks

denizsi · May 22, 2010

I just recalled the combat cries of NPCs in Mass Effect. A big, terribly embarassing "III WILL DIS-TROOY YOOUUU!!!1". It was so embarassing, I turned the volume down everytime.

IIRC, something similarly embarassing was in DAO, Oblivion and FO3.

Who the fuck goes into combat with such retarded cries FFS. And then we get people thinking this is cool and put this into their games. Fucking pieces of shit, filthy pigs.

Cimmerian Nights · May 22, 2010

I don't think Bethesda's lack of choice and depth is due to VO though.
They're just shallow developers.

They aren't an RPG company (anymore) making RPGs for RPG fans. They make RPG-lite action adventure games for the LCD. That's their goal.

Bethesda's not trying to make the next PS:T and failing due to VO. They're trying to make the next Oblivion and they are succeeding wildly at lowering the bar and serving up profitable rubbish to the masses.

Azrael the cat · May 22, 2010

I agree that Beth aren't trying to make PS:T or Arcanum. But they ARE trying to make Ultima 7 - it's Todd's favourite game, and it really isn't a big stretch to see Oblivion as a badly failured attempt to do a 3D Ultima 7.

Thing is, they USED to do passable 3D versions of Ultima 7; Daggerfall obviously, but many folks would include Morrowind.

There's a lot of stuff that went downhill between Morrowind and Oblivion, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if fully voiced NPCs contributed by leaching resources that could be used for other purposes, and encouragind developers to narrow the number of possible approaches that NPCs would react to.

Azrael the cat · May 22, 2010

denizsi said:
I just recalled the combat cries of NPCs in Mass Effect. A big, terribly embarassing "III WILL DIS-TROOY YOOUUU!!!1". It was so embarassing, I turned the volume down everytime.

IIRC, something similarly embarassing was in DAO, Oblivion and FO3.

Who the fuck goes into combat with such retarded cries FFS. And then we get people thinking this is cool and put this into their games. Fucking pieces of shit, filthy pigs.

I agree completely - ESPECIALLY in ME. What kind of trained military troops yell out that shit. They should have taken tips from FEAR (the first one) - lots of 'watch the flanks', 'you take the point', 'flush him out' (before lobbing a grenade and sending in the shotgunners), 'contact!' etc. I even liked the 'he's too fast!' and the slowmo 'sshhhiiiiiiiiittttttt' when you've hit slowmo and dropped a grenade into their APC while they're still in it.

That stuff was at least plausible.

Lesifoere · May 22, 2010

denizsi said:
I just recalled the combat cries of NPCs in Mass Effect. A big, terribly embarassing "III WILL DIS-TROOY YOOUUU!!!1". It was so embarassing, I turned the volume down everytime.

MIND OVER MATTER!!1!!

DEPLOYING WARP FIELD!1!!!!!

Wyrmlord · May 22, 2010

Overweight Manatee said:
Shamus Young is an OK guy. The Escapist doesn't deserve him.

There are articles by Young with which the Codex has heavily disagreed.

Azrael the cat · May 22, 2010

Wyrmlord said:
Overweight Manatee said:

Shamus Young is an OK guy. The Escapist doesn't deserve him.

Click to expand...

There are articles by Young with which the Codex has heavily disagreed.

Shouldn't there be if the guy has any ability to think for himself? It''s pretty sad when someone's views line up entirely with any particular group's, whether that's a political party's or something like the Codex's.

Anyway, provided they're reasoned articles, we get a lot more value out of having articles we disagree with and can debate, then we do out of having someone come along and publish something we all like, so we can all pat ourselves on the back for thinking the same way as each other and say what a great guy the writer is for thinking like us.

Having said that, I still give the guy Kudos for calling out full voice-overs because of the site where he is doing it. Posting that here would be Captain Obvious. Posting it there is likely to raise some eyebrows among the readership.

Lothers · May 22, 2010

DoW anyone? One of the best done VO in games.

denizsi · May 22, 2010

Lesifoere said:
denizsi said:

I just recalled the combat cries of NPCs in Mass Effect. A big, terribly embarassing "III WILL DIS-TROOY YOOUUU!!!1". It was so embarassing, I turned the volume down everytime.

Click to expand...

MIND OVER MATTER!!1!!

DEPLOYING WARP FIELD!1!!!!!

Ever tried to talk to your teammates during combat?

NOT NOW!!! I'M A LITTLE BUSY RIGHT NOW!!

A user named cat · May 22, 2010

Without voice acting, we wouldn't have gems like this.

Fat Dragon · May 22, 2010

Lothers said:
Apparently they never played Thief, but they certainly played Oblivion.

The article was about voice acting in RPGs wasn't it, why would they mention vo from a game in a completely different genre?

Hory · May 22, 2010

Phantasmal said:
Without voice acting, we wouldn't have gems like this.

Fat Dragon · May 22, 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU8-e-C4Uy0

Better brace yourselves for that classic, it's pretty painful.

Gerrard · May 22, 2010

Phantasmal said:
Without voice acting, we wouldn't have gems like this.

You see, the suck in dubs is multiplied, on top of the voice acting suck you get the localization suck and the lack of director supervising the actors suck.

Overweight Manatee · May 22, 2010

Cimmerian Nights said:
I don't think Bethesda's lack of choice and depth is due to VO though.
They're just shallow developers.

They aren't an RPG company (anymore) making RPGs for RPG fans. They make RPG-lite action adventure games for the LCD. That's their goal.

Bethesda's not trying to make the next PS:T and failing due to VO. They're trying to make the next Oblivion and they are succeeding wildly at lowering the bar and serving up profitable rubbish to the masses.

We can probably attribute a lot of the decline from morrowind and daggerfall to oblivion and fallout 3 to VO's, though. Just imagine how much VO work would be required for the pages of background lore and location info any NPC can dispense. Instead we have a bunch of generic responses that need to be no more then a sentence and has to be VO'ed 10 times for each race.

Clockwork Knight · May 22, 2010

denizsi said:
I just recalled the combat cries of NPCs in Mass Effect. A big, terribly embarassing "III WILL DIS-TROOY YOOUUU!!!1". It was so embarassing, I turned the volume down everytime.

IIRC, something similarly embarassing was in DAO, Oblivion and FO3.

Who the fuck goes into combat with such retarded cries FFS. And then we get people thinking this is cool and put this into their games. Fucking pieces of shit, filthy pigs.

These are so amusing and corny they became a little famous.

Sceptic · May 22, 2010

Erebus said:
Tony Jay had such a great voice...

He did

But yeah the Fortress is the reason why I wanted more voices in PST. They only voied *some* of the dialog in there, and the dialog was so awesome and the voice actors involved were so amazingly good I wanted more. I wanted to hear every single TTO line voiced. I cannot stress enough that this is the only game (across all genres) where I felt this. Other games got voices well by doing partial voicing (and yeah, BG2 did quite well there. So did Arcanum) but in no other did I want MORE VOICES.

Murk · May 23, 2010

Tony Jay was the elder god in the LoK games - and those games also had amazing voice over work. Not RPGs, obviously, but definitely worth a play.

I also echo who ever said DoW had great voice-overs, Chaos units were awesome.

Clockwork Knight · May 23, 2010

Depends on your definition of "great"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO3MttgvHUY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbRGg3e1b68

I'll admit that, to me, this is pure genius

deuxhero · May 23, 2010

But...

OK every counter-example is from a small poll of actors, mostly from translated games, plus half of them are Atlus titles.

Hory said:
snip

San Andreas does that for some side stuff (read:dates). It comes off mostly as very odd.

Twinkle · May 23, 2010

Stop the Failstorm, Sir Knight.

We are talking about stuff like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMc5dCC41Ss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae6Fao42aHE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOwu8j_KeeA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCQ84Ci1Bjs&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPeNOEdVmbc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHXR3E-nM4M&feature=related

Sadly, the uploader was a cretin and derailed it with shitty anime music.

Eliphas said:
Brotherhood is not lessened when one brother is foolish.

Classy.

Clockwork Knight · May 23, 2010

Twinkle said:
Stop the Failstorm, Sir Knight.

We are talking about stuff like this:

Sorry, I will try to not post anymore examples that undermine your opinions

random_encounter · May 23, 2010

Phantasmal said:
Without ~~voice acting~~ nepotism, we wouldn't have gems like this.

Fixed.

I remember this one. There was some speculation wondering if the CEO of the company that localized the game employed family to fill in for professional actors.

Mikayel said:
Tony Jay was the elder god in the LoK games - and those games also had amazing voice over work. Not RPGs, obviously, but definitely worth a play.

I love Tony Jay's work. Was great as a villain in the CG series, ReBoot. More recently, loved his snarky narration in the inXile parody of RPGs with the Bard's Tale (favorite part at 2:31).

Kaanyrvhok · May 23, 2010

The solution is shorter games. Give me a 20 hour game with Planescape's dialog. Save your voice acting money and make me yearn for DLC. Its a win win win.

Awor Szurkrarz · May 23, 2010

Give me a hour long game with Planescape's dialog, crazily branching story, C64 graphics, great realistic combat and no voice acting. It's a win win win.