Voice acting in Video Games

[Mordry]

An interesting topic at least.

What do you think of it? What do you prefer?

I prefer in RPGs silence (like in Zelda) but I hate a mix of silence and voice acting (Dragon Age: Origins as best example). And it if have a good voice acting, then I want that the person I play with have a voice and a good one too. I don't want to identify myself with the person, I want, that the person I play with have his own character. Then I don't care if the NPCs aren't talking who are giving the quest. So long as the cutscenes and important characters have a voice. Best example for a good mix like I imagine is Xenoblade Chronicles.
In Ego-Shooter games I prefer a silent hero like Gordon Freeman or a person with personality like "Ford" of "The Conduit". Heroes like in Crysis 1 are just... I mean they are saying two to five sentences and you have the feeling, that you could put them in the garbage can and give another one the role, you can sort them out any time. In Half-Life it's kinda funny that you don't say anything, but Half-Life 2 is for me the perfect Shooter.

Then there are games, where the english or german voice acting is ABSOLUTLY terrible, only way to solve this->another language and subtitles. Just a small example: In The Witcher 2 I played it in english first, because the german voice acting of Witcher 1 was terrible, every speaker there wanted to be so cool and sh*t. In Witcher 2 I was playing english and I thought "not again, not another >>I want to be cool<< voice acting" and then I switched to german. The speakers were absolutly great and much better than in Witcher 1. It's for me like in the case of Risen/Gothic, english voice actors are good but for me in german better. Another example would be Left 4 Dead, I prefer english voice actors because they just sound more realistic. 4 perfectly german speaking persons in Amerika hunted by zombies and good voice acting doesn't fit for me the setting. I liked the 4 english speaking people with emotions in voice (these are great speakers and I'm talking about Zoey, Bill, Francis and Louis) and where you can really imagine "that could actually happen!".

Anyway I wrote a lot now, what do you think of it?

[Exentenzed]

It's extremely important with talented voice actors doing voices in games. It adds so much to the feeling.

For example, Ron Perlman's voice as a narrator in fallout. -War, war never changes.- Then followed by him narrating previous events that resulted in the creation of the wastelands and the different tribes. VERY important. Fallout is one of my top games when it comes to voice acting.

[paecmaker]

Voice acting is very importent, look at stalker, mostly the conversations are in text only but most people like to greet me with a voice, and that voice(in english) suck. How realistic is it when you are going alone in a dark forest with monster everywhere and sees a guy that greets you with a happy HOWDY, or hey dude.


Mass effect on the over hand got very good voice acting and that does soo much for the feeling in the game.

I also hate the thing with dragon age origin, all guys talk without you, thats just so annoying.

[Bertrum]

Officer Tenpenny in San Andreas was great, can't beat Samuel L Jackson.

I hated Nikos voice in GTA IV though

[Flow]

I remember when I was just a young little noob, I played Resident Evil (I think it was Code Veronica) on the PS2, and there was a questionably homosexual guy that had a high-pitched voice. and I remember I used to copy the way he laughed, it was quite hilarious. when I get home from school, I'll try to find a video of it. Because laughter will indeed follow.


Officer Tenpenny in San Andreas was great, can't beat Samuel L Jackson.

I hated Nikos voice in GTA IV though

Also, Niko is a tool, I'm currently playing that game now. The Rasta guy is funny. Oh, and Brucie is hilarious. "ICE COLD MAN!"

[mutilations]

In my genre of gaming, voice acting if very important but sometimes rarely done properly. But, thanks to a lot of anime becoming popular, voice acting is on the rise and is getting a lot better. With acts like Crispin Freeman and Luci Christian starting to come into voice acting for video games, I think we will see this area improving quite a bit. Sadly, this part of voice acting is localized to mainly jRPGs and the like but it would be nice to see how these actors play their roles in games for more of a Western audience.

I'm currently playing God Eaters Burst for the PSP is it has tons of voice acting and some of them are highly recognizable if you watch anime. The main character is silent though and just nods or shakes his/her head to whatever is being said to them (like Zelda), an interesting combination.

[Fr0stByte]

:shocked:
Officer Tenpenny in San Andreas was great, can't beat Samuel L Jackson.

I hated Nikos voice in GTA IV though

You got something against the russians?....lol seriously though his accent sounded like an american trying to do a russian accent....Ryders in GTA SA was awesome...real authenticness

[NumberedEyes]

My views on voice acting in games is pretty simple as long as the person doing the voice acting fits my idea of the role and can emote then im fine. and as a general rule the more voice acting they can throw into a game the happier i am. dragon age 2 is pretty perfect every option is voiced both by the player and whoever you are currently talking to.

the only downside is the more voice acting they throw in the less customising you seem to get dragon age being my example again, limited class selection no race customisation and limited options when in a discussion not to mention very linier gameplay. so there are issues with having fully voiced games however i do enjoy not having to read everything.

[irpie]

STOP CRIMINAL SCUM!, voice actors are not hard to find, but a lot of them these days are bought out by companies and the rights to their voices for games are only used by that company...good voice acting can really help immersion though.

[Fr0stByte]

My views on voice acting in games is pretty simple as long as the person doing the voice acting fits my idea of the role and can emote then im fine. and as a general rule the more voice acting they can throw into a game the happier i am. dragon age 2 is pretty perfect every option is voiced both by the player and whoever you are currently talking to.

the only downside is the more voice acting they throw in the less customising you seem to get dragon age being my example again, limited class selection no race customisation and limited options when in a discussion not to mention very linier gameplay. so there are issues with having fully voiced games however i do enjoy not having to read everything.


My opinion exactly.......

[Triton]

I prefer the silent or very little voice in games, but ifthey are there I like them sound as if they are the characters and not someone doing a bad voice over. As I like racing sims I'd rather not have voices on the game at all, just the sfx of the enigines etc.