Why Voice Acting Sucks

[bhlaab]

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.

Actually that wouldn't fix anything but thanks

 

[1eyedking]

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

I raise you a Company of Heroes.

 

[circ]

Excellent VO. Too bad about the recycled monotone Soule soundtrack.

 

[DraQ]

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.

Fuck, yes.

In fact, I only played PST in Polish, with different (very professional and no less awesome, TBH) VOs, so I only associate him with LoK.

 

[FeelTheRads]

I only played PST in Polish

Epic fail.

 

[DraQ]

Epic fail.

No, not "Modron".

 

[FeelTheRads]

Butthurt pollack is butthurt.

 

[DraQ]

Butthurt pollack is butthurt.

You don't even know what you don't know.
(about PS:T PL)

 

[yaster]

In fact, I only played PST in Polish, with different (very professional and no less awesome, TBH) VOs

Overrated, it's rather great for polish gaming vo standards, but not really in the original English vo league.

Here's a dose of polish and here's english + dak'kon for comparison. Polish alteregos of morte and dak'kon are rather cringe worthy imho. And mordom, jesus, what a crap - it's straightly taken from one of teens-targeting cheap polish tv series from late 90's.

 

[Black]

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.

Fuck, yes.

In fact, I only played PST in Polish, with different (very professional and no less awesome, TBH) VOs, so I only associate him with LoK.

Pfft. Played ENG and PL Torment.
PL, while being the best voiced game in the pollack industry, is still inferior to the original. Polish VAs don't have shit on Tony and the rest.
That is all.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Trolling DraQ aside, how's the translation done since you say you played both?

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

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.

Fuck, yes.

In fact, I only played PST in Polish, with different (very professional and no less awesome, TBH) VOs, so I only associate him with LoK.

Pfft. Played ENG and PL Torment.
PL, while being the best voiced game in the pollack industry, is still inferior to the original. Polish VAs don't have shit on Tony and the rest.
That is all.

It's probably because they hire known cinema/theatre actors for names instead of hiring voice actors.

 

[Murk]

So Black is Polska? PMing wyrmlord

 

[JarlFrank]

Well, in Bloodlines voice-acting was awesome and added to the atmosphere.

But that was because it was professionally done, had awesome voice actors and good facial animations/body language to go with it.

Arcanum and PST also had awesome voice-acting, for the few characters they had it.

Ergo: only do voice-acting if you have good actors and know how to do it. Don't fully voice every single character if you can avoid it/it's not necessary. Having a few memorable voiced characters is a lot better than having everyone voiced but the actors suck and it just ends up being plain mediocre and everyone clicks through the dialogue anyways.

 

[deuxhero]

Oh The Nameless Mod did voice acting pretty well along with reacting to everything the player does well... which explains why it took 7 years...

 

[Jaime Lannister]

In Oblivion and Fallout 3 I just skipped most of the dialog, save for the smooth, buttery words of Patrick Stewart and Liam Neeson.

 

[SuicideBunny]

voice acting limits your ability as a dev to further develop your game.
that alone should be enough reason for any dev to abstain from it, unless it is absolutely essential to the artistic vision.

 

[DraQ]

voice acting limits your ability as a dev to further develop your game.
that alone should be enough reason for any dev to abstain from it, unless it is absolutely essential to the artistic vision.

You can just do the kind of trick where you introduce a viable amount of VOs at later stage, after writing the dialogue, but possibly before designing actual dialogue windows and such.

 

[ShavenApe]

voice acting limits your ability as a dev to further develop your game.
that alone should be enough reason for any dev to abstain from it, unless it is absolutely essential to the artistic vision.

You can just do the kind of trick where you introduce a viable amount of VOs at later stage, after writing the dialogue, but possibly before designing actual dialogue windows and such.

Yeah, IMHO VO can be good for projects with budgets large enough to pay for quality (quality writing makes this much more effective), but it is best done very late in the project after extensive testing has firmed-up the dialog options required. I also think it is perfectly reasonable (for teams with smaller cash/data budgets) to fully voice only "important" dialogs and just sprinkle the rest of the dialog with a bit to establish character personality.

 

[SuicideBunny]

You can just do the kind of trick where you introduce a viable amount of VOs at later stage, after writing the dialogue, but possibly before designing actual dialogue windows and such.

maybe i should clarify. i meant after gold master, whether you want to introduce new stuff via patch, add-on, or dlc.

 

[Xor]

Oh The Nameless Mod did voice acting pretty well along with reacting to everything the player does well... which explains why it took 7 years...

That reminds me. I need to download that.

 

[visions]

I liked how Arcanum and Fallouts handled dialogs, having voice-acting for the more important characters, imo it's the most suitable approach for rpgs.

All text is also fine but I like it more when some of the characters are voiced.

I don't like it when only the first few lines are voiced or when npcs make random inane voiced comments.

 

[Phelot]

Oh yeah and Morte had an awesome voice actor. Forgot what shows he also did, but he was the voice of Toyota for awhile lol. I kept thinking of Morte during those commercials. Great fucking voice that fit Morte's personality perfectly.

Again, having an intro voice over isn't bad if done right. I can imagine the voice speaking the rest that isn't acted.

Also, Tony Jay was so fucking awesome. I MISS U TONY JAY!

Anyone remember Jay in Reboot? I loved that show

 

[Sceptic]

In fact, I only played PST in Polish, with different (very professional and no less awesome, TBH) VOs, so I only associate him with LoK.

Just had a listen to the Polish PST (thank you Youtube). You owe it to yourself to hear/play the game in its full English gory. That said, even though it's hard to judge a language that I don't know, the voices seem to hit the right tone. Deionnara sounded especially close to the original's tone.

 

[DraQ]

That said, even though it's hard to judge a language that I don't know, the voices seem to hit the right tone. Deionnara sounded especially close to the original's tone.

True. The translation was quite outstanding in this case - they even managed to convey specific dialect quirks so important in PS:T. Also, I wouldn't cite Polish PS:T as an example of why a professional voice actor is better than normal actor.