Best and Worst: voice acting

[WhyNotZoidberg | 586]

Inspired by the subs vs. dubs topic, let’s discuss best and worst candidates in categories, starting with voice acting.

Best: Lunar Silverstar Story on PS1. Voice acting wasn’t as common in the mid-90s so I would expect the quality of earlier titles to be shit, but Lunar defies expectations by having the voices and dialogues all stick really well to the characters’ personalities, effectively conveying all their respective quirks and the more subtle tones required to understand some of the more mature relationships depicted in the game.
Speeches never feel phoned in or monotone.

PLUS the game does put emphasis on a character’s singing and they completely knocked it out of the park there. The tunes remain with me until this day. I urge everyone, even non-rpg fans, to give this game a try.

 

Worst: My main offender here is another PS1 jrpg: Legend of Dragoon.

Rose, falling to her death: « aaaaah ». If you know, you know.

Edited October 4, 2022 by WhyNotZoidberg

[Sumez | 2,992]

For as dumb as the story is, I gotta give The Last of Us credit for nailing the voice acting. Ellie mostly just steals the show, she is absolutely perfect - probably the best I have heard in any game. Troy Baker seems to forget his dialect most of the time, but does a good job as well.

Worst? I mean it's kinda the best too, but...

 

[TDIRunner | 2,771]

Off the top of my head, Horizon Zero Dawn had fantastic voice work along with an amazing story.  

As far as worst voice acting, I hate to pick the obvious, but this conversation can't exist without mentioning the original Resident Evil, so I'll just get it out of the way. 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,580]

I just played through Until Dawn which has a pretty great cast of professional actors

But looking an older eras where that wasn't the norm, I guess maybe... Metal Gear Solid?

[RH | 4,966]

"Slippy's hit!" might be a pretty dumb line and in the running for top 10 most annoying lines in a video game, but other than that, I actually feel like Star Fox 64 was one of the first games to do an excellent job.  It was the first time I didn't really cringe at the voice overs in a game and prefer just text dialog.

[Lynda Monica | 350]

I'd say Trauma Center New Blood has some really good voice acting, especially for a Wii game.

I wouldn't say it's the worst since it's entertaining, but there's the game "Last Alert", made famous by Retsupurae back in the day.

[RH | 4,966]

What was the point of the LEDs?

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

The voice acting in the original Resident Evil is so bad that it became a meme. 

 

Edited October 4, 2022 by Bearcat-Doug

[RH | 4,966]

46 minutes ago, Lynda Monica said:

I'd say Trauma Center New Blood has some really good voice acting, especially for a Wii game.

I wouldn't say it's the worst since it's entertaining, but there's the game "Last Alert", made famous by Retsupurae back in the day.

Sorry, you posted right when I did.  I was responding to the conversation above about IREM Famicom carts with LEDs.  I was asking, what was the point of putting an LED light on a game cart?  Just aesthetics or did they have an actual function as a way of interacting with the games?

[DefaultGen | 5,429]

Mega Man 8 is a treasure

Edited October 4, 2022 by DefaultGen

[Link | 2,726]

1 hour ago, RH said:

Sorry, you posted right when I did.  I was responding to the conversation above about IREM Famicom carts with LEDs.  I was asking, what was the point of putting an LED light on a game cart?  Just aesthetics or did they have an actual function as a way of interacting with the games?

This is not helping

[WhyNotZoidberg | 586]

2 hours ago, Lynda Monica said:

I'd say Trauma Center New Blood has some really good voice acting, especially for a Wii game.

I wouldn't say it's the worst since it's entertaining, but there's the game "Last Alert", made famous by Retsupurae back in the day.

I see you doing that Wii thang! It’s true that New Blood does it well. Now I want to play the others to compare

[Andy_Bogomil | 815]

RE1 is hilariously bad. 

While not really acting, I always dug a lot of the over the top announcers in a lot of 90s games; Killer Instinct, NBA Jam, RnR Racing. 

[RH | 4,966]

I'm not going to argue that the acting in that RE1 clip was good (no, it wasn't) but one of the big issues that old games use to have is that each line sounds like it was recorded individually because they had to load each one, one at a time, from disc or something, so there's always a 1-3 second pause between lines.  I don't care how good the acting is, when you have to do that, it's never going to sound good or right.

I can't recall what other games, but I know I've heard other games have this problem with each line having a pause after.  If that's how you have to integrate spoken dialog into your game, you probably shouldn't do it at all.

[Brickman | 4,013]

I think Mark Hamill as the Joker in the Arkham games wins it for me. He’s always been one of my favourite jokers.

I’d probably go with RE1 as well for one of the worst.

[Lynda Monica | 350]

I might catch some trouble for saying this, but I'd say the Xenoblade games have pretty horrible voice acting. The phony accents and endlessly repeating lines become incredibly irritating after a while. The original Resident Evil is at least endearing and pleasant to listen to in a hokey sort of way. I'm much more attached to Resident Evil's hammy characters than any of the Wacko Warner sounding dorks in Xenoblade.

[DarkTone | 988]

Hotel mario and mortal kombat 4. 

[DarkTone | 988]

1 minute ago, Lynda Monica said:

I might catch some trouble for saying this, but I'd say the Xenoblade games have pretty horrible voice acting. The phony accents and endlessly repeating lines become incredibly irritating after a while. The original Resident Evil is at least endearing and pleasant to listen to in a hokey sort of way. I'm much more attached to Resident Evil's hammy characters than any of the Wacko Warner sounding dorks in Xenoblade.

Thank you! 100%

[Reed Rothchild | 9,580]

36 minutes ago, Lynda Monica said:

I might catch some trouble for saying this, but I'd say the Xenoblade games have pretty horrible voice acting. The phony accents and endlessly repeating lines become incredibly irritating after a while. The original Resident Evil is at least endearing and pleasant to listen to in a hokey sort of way. I'm much more attached to Resident Evil's hammy characters than any of the Wacko Warner sounding dorks in Xenoblade.

I'm fairly sure the Xenoblade voice actors are all from the UK

[Lynda Monica | 350]

16 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

I'm fairly sure the Xenoblade voice actors are all from the UK

They are, but English actors are often told to ham up their accents. The way you hear English people speak in movies and games is often so exaggerated that it comes off as phony even if they are actually English. It always takes me out of it when they're hamming it up too much, and the Xenoblade series is really guilty of it.

Edited October 4, 2022 by Lynda Monica

[MagusSmurf | 577]

Umineko is best.

Worst is...maybe Chaos Wars if this is representative:

 

[Brickman | 4,013]

1 hour ago, Lynda Monica said:

I might catch some trouble for saying this, but I'd say the Xenoblade games have pretty horrible voice acting. The phony accents and endlessly repeating lines become incredibly irritating after a while. The original Resident Evil is at least endearing and pleasant to listen to in a hokey sort of way. I'm much more attached to Resident Evil's hammy characters than any of the Wacko Warner sounding dorks in Xenoblade.

Yeah I was thinking of putting that down as the worst too. Xenoblade 2 is really bad. I played it with Japanese audio but I did put on the English audio for a little bit and it was so bad and annoying. So you aren't the only one

[Link | 2,726]

2 hours ago, Brickman said:

I think Mark Hamill as the Joker in the Arkham games wins it for me. He’s always been one of my favourite jokers.

And Kevin Conroy is the best Batman. TAS really knocked it out of the park with casting.

[Sumez | 2,992]

Pretty sure all the accents in the Xenoblade games are pretty genuine. Every English person I know has a much stronger accent than that.

[WhyNotZoidberg | 586]

4 hours ago, Andy_Bogomil said:

RE1 is hilariously bad. 

While not really acting, I always dug a lot of the over the top announcers in a lot of 90s games; Killer Instinct, NBA Jam, RnR Racing. 

I figured we’d segue into voice samples at some point. I’m really fond of the voices in Wave Race 64. Both the in-race announcer and the narrative lady.