Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Yes, both of them.

Yes, Planescape: Torment. (Planescape did have voice acting, just not full voice acting.)

Yes, Baldur's Gate.

Unsure.

No, neither of them would've been considerably better games.

I have not played either of them.

Don't care. / View poll.

[Josephus]

Actually they had fourteen but four of them only played a single character.  Still, even excluding those four the claim of there being only five voices is off by 100%

The "only five voices" claim is a standard one, and I suspect that whoever makes it hasn't actually played the game, and instead read the TvTropes page about TES.

[Dakk]

Does it really make a difference if there are 5 or 10 voice actor for +100 NPCs? Considering said voice actors seem completely unable to do any other voice?

I mean, there are a few amazing voice actors out there that can do like, 5 completely different voices. The Simpsons has one of those. The ones used in the elder scrolls seem completely unable to do anything apart from their default voice. The only redeeming aspect about TES IV's voice acting are the 4 unique ones, one of them being the emperor's voice, which belong to no other then Sir Patrick Steward, which has one of the most awesome voices among english men, and is protagonist of the only star trek series I'll ever love.

[Josephus]

Yes. The claim shouldn't be that "There were only five voice actors", but that "the voice actors they had were sub-par."

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Yes, everyone who knows anything about the game knows they had Patrick Stewart as a character who dies in the first (half depending on how long you take)hour of gameplay.  It was practically the first solid information they released about the game as if they expected it to distract from the actual game itself or something...  It was somehow one of the major selling factors.  "We have Patrick Stewart in the first hour of the game!  Holy shit this game is great pay us money!!!"

[Toady Two]

Deus Ex had full voice acting and yet choices weren't limited artificially. If you meet the Smuggler before you meet a character that would normally tell you about him JC will remark about that. All that in the deliciously over-the-top VA the game had to offer. Its true that some main plot characters are immortal(only at times I think - you can kill them later), and that the game treats unconscious people as dead. The whole plot goes wonky if you for example:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Stun prod Lebedev and take him with you to safety. Everyone treats you as if you've killed him in cold blood.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Of course Deus Ex is also a classic.

[Shurhaian]

Quibbling about the exact number of voice actors for the myriad NPCs in Oblivion is silly. Instead of saying "off by 100%" you can instead say "off by 5", and 5 is a TINY number compared to the number of NPCs in it - which is the more significant metric.

I haven't heard much of Mankar Camoran's dialog(never got into his Paradise for all the time I've had the game - just never gave up an artifact), but even Martin's dialog is... not exactly all that memorable. And though Patrick Stewart sets good atmosphere in the early phases of the game(the escape from the prison is overall decently done), as soon as you're outside and free to roam, you can meet voice actors that are utterly abysmal, and it's questionable they even read the lines through before speaking them.

Want a horrible example of jarring shifts in voice acting? Do the Thieves' Guild quests and talk to the beggars. Or talk to the beggars at all - they completely drop the wheedling voices when they discuss rumors.

So yeah. 5 actors, 10 actors(+4 unique ones), Oblivion is still both under-voiced and HORRIBLY voiced. Contrast even Morrowind, where you can tell the men apart, mostly, by their voice; the women are a bit more difficult but still have some distinction; and at least they sound like they actually mean what they're saying. Deus Ex is indeed better. Half-life 2 is top-notch(the original is hit and miss, though still better than Oblivion; it mostly suffers if you have multiple people following you, and their chatter doesn't flow smoothly, but that's not actually the fault of the VA so much as the engine).

In more cinematic games, say JRPGs with fixed characters, voice acting might be more of a help. But trying to keep the game too open means that the VA will necessarily be stretched thinner.

[olemars]

Baldur's gate had great voice acting, even though they sounded like cosplayers or LARPers. Somehow it fitted the game perfectly.

Oblivion's voice acting was half the reason I soured on the game. Not just the "Voice A(1) telling Voice A(2) how Voice A(3) has better merchandise in his store than Voice A(4)" bit, but they were so uninspired and grating that I just couldn't take it anymore. Especially Imperial Male or Breton Male (not sure which) sounded like he had just woken up and decided to read out loud some random lines from a piece of paper. Which could be true.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying Oblivion wasn't the game that single handedly turned me into a jaded bitter gamer with no faith in game companies, but if you're going to complain about it at least complain about the dozens upon dozens of real problems.

[Grendus]

I think the reason Deus Ex did it's voice acting so well was because they consciously planned it to be that complex. There were still things you couldn't do, like kill Gunther after the meeting with your brother (I tried, LAM's didn't hurt him and if you opened fire with a regular gun you had 20 or so Unatco troops shooting at you) or heck, even staying with Unatco instead of working with the Illuminati. But there were a lot of little choices that would effect the gameplay, which made it legendary. Wish more games would copy that.

On the flipside, I was surprised when playing through L4D2 at how many lines each character had. For example, when playing through the mall they see posters for Jimmy Gibbs Jr's stock car. On my first playthrough, Rochelle asked who he was and Ellis answered. The next time, Coach asked and Rochelle answered. That really added a lot, in my opinion, since it made multiple playthroughs have less of a "heard it already, let's shoot some zombies" feel to it.



If you want to see a game with bad voice acting, try playing Musashi Samurai Legend, or the second Ape Escape. On second thought, don't, nobody should have to play those. The kid in Musashi hammed it up (which was a shame, as it was a spirit sequel to Brave Fencer Musashi, which had 90% good voice acting and was very fun to play), and most of the other characters were only passable. Ape Escape 2 used the voice actors for Pokemon in their english translation, which almost worked until the original Spike showed up... voiced by the same guy who did Yugi. Between the worse gameplay, the ridiculous plot (time travel made more sense than 100 or so little chimps taking over the world), and the horrible voice acting, I seriously wish they had never even attempted a sequel.

[Pandarsenic]

Not gonna lie, in a lot of games with full voice-acting (Mass Effects 1 & 2, for instance) I just turn on subs and skip past them (unless, for example, listening Wrex. Because, fuckin', he's Wrex).

L4D and L4D2 are examples of games where the voice-acting adds a lot.

Except when a Jockey gets on Nick.

"Shoot this thing off my back! Shoot this thing on my back! Shoot this thing on my back! Shoot this thing off my back! Shoot this thing off my back! Shoot..."

[Pathos]

I think the reason Deus Ex did it's voice acting so well was because they consciously planned it to be that complex. There were still things you couldn't do, like kill Gunther after the meeting with your brother (I tried, LAM's didn't hurt him and if you opened fire with a regular gun you had 20 or so Unatco troops shooting at you) or heck, even staying with Unatco instead of working with the Illuminati. But there were a lot of little choices that would effect the gameplay, which made it legendary. Wish more games would copy that.

I've heard Alpha Protocol is a hell of a lot like that. Never played it, though.

[Muz]

IMO, voice acting made games worse. Seriously, worse gameplay. Compare Fallout 3 dialogues to Fallout 2. There's a heck lot less of them. There's even a little less dialogue in Fallout 2 where it was fully voice acted, and even then, they didn't make the game better. Text doesn't feel as repetitive as voice the 7th time it repeats.

Yeah, but L4D shows that it works great for shooters. Shooters involve a lot of communication, and voice works a lot easier than text there.

It's just not practical. If they somehow made hundreds of voices in a game without taking up like an extra 10% of the hard drive AND without reducing the quantity/quality of dialogue in the game, then I'd support extra voice acting. But realistically, I don't think it'll ever happen.

But hey, my professional research so far has been on finding out how to get emotional content into speech signals. With a lot more research, I think we could cut out voice acting from games and replace it with quality synthetic voice within 10-20 years.

[Pathos]

Quality synthetic voice would have a LOT of nice applications, actually. Good stuff.

[Zangi]

I like how they did voice in Monster Hunter.  Everyone made their own unique grunt/greeting.  I can skip through it or whatever without a worry.  Don't need more then that.  Its a bonus if there is good/skipable VA though...  Negative with bad/unskipable VA.

I would say, VA is superbly implemented in L4D and L4D2 in my opinion. 

Something like MGS doesn't need it...  but... it added a hell of a lot to it in my opinion.  Yea, its a story driven game on rails, but the gameplay alone makes up for it.