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The Problems With Video Game Voice Acting
The Guardian's Games blog explores the tendency of modern video games to suffer from poor voice acting, a flaw made all the more glaring by increasingly precise and impressive graphics. Quoting:
"Due to the interactive nature of games, actors can't be given a standard film script from which they're able to gauge the throughline of their character and a feel for the dramatic development of the narrative. Instead, lines of dialogue need to be isolated into chunks so they can be accessed and triggered within the game in line with the actions of each individual player. Consequently, the performer will usually be presented with a spreadsheet jammed with hundreds of single lines of dialogue, with little sense of context or interaction. ... But according to David Sobolov, one of the most experienced videogame voice actors in the world (just check out his website), the significant time pressures mean that close, in-depth direction is not always possible. 'Often, there's a need to record a great number of lines, so to keep the session moving, once we've established the tone of the character we're performing, the director will silently direct us using the spreadsheet on the screen by simply moving the cursor down the page to indicate if he/she liked what we did. Or they'll make up a code, like typing an 'x' to ask us to give them another take.' It sounds, in effect, like a sort of acting battery farm, a grinding, dehumanizing production line of disembodied phrases, delivered for hours on end. Hardly conducive to Oscar-winning performances."
Who would have thought it?
Rush jobs typically exhibit signs of low quality and lack of attention to detail.
As the legendary tape of Orson Welles walking out of the 'All Your Base' recording proves.
solves that problem. Left click...left click...left click.....ooh, I can play the game now - cool!
Note to developers: I play games to avoid having to watch tv (along with all the hackneyed plots, poor acting, terrible dialogue etc), not so I can experience more of it.
Wing Commander II was the first game I recall that had some sort of voice acting. Now that I think about it, the voice acting was crap... but back in those days where most PC users were probably still using PC Speaker and do not have Sound Blasters, having voice acting in the first place was consider OMGWTFBBQ awesome.
How times have changed.
Decent writing might help as well. In my experience, dialogue is written by game designers. Writing dialogue is not always their main talent.
Mass Effect 2 has outstanding voice acting, performed by quite a few well-known SciFi actors. That game doesn't cost $100.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Likely because cartoons have a defined narrative flow(even the ones where coherence between episodes is considered minimally important).
Unless the game is totally on rails, a fair bit of the voice acting will basically consist of delivering lines used to fill out obscure corners of some dialog tree, or to be shouted pseudo-randomly by NPCs of various flavors. Cartoon voice acting may well, particularly in lower budget stuff, be done on the cheap; but it is much more likely that the voice actor(s) will have access to something resembling a script, which will allow them to inject some degree of plausibility into what they are doing.
Not at all, you get used to it pretty quickly. What you can do is replace the voice with some gibberish noises. For example, Zelda games tend to use vocal "calls" (think "hey!", a laugh, or some other attention-calling noise) but then the actual dialogue is text. Quite a few RPGs just make some sort of semi-random gibberish noise as the dialogue text is being scrolled onto the screen. It all works pretty well. You don't have to hear actual voices to convince yourself that the characters are speaking.
For a game that was out in Japan 3 months previously, I am astounded at the quality of the dubbing and voice acting of FFXIII. Even previous titles in the franchise had acting that made me wince (FFX most of all, the first in the franchise to attempt it). There's a heavy cost for this sort of quality, however, and if anyone has the money to throw at this kind of thing, it's Square-Enix on their flagship franchise.
Then why do the Japanese manage to get it right in every single hentai game?
Getting voice over artists who understand the accents they're meant to be using would also be nice.
Having CoD4 ruined by the "British" voices pronouncing "depot" and "missile" in the USAian way (DEE-pot and MISS-le; rather than DEP-ot and miss-ILE) and using "cellphone" instead of "mobile". Five minutes work with a British person would have highlight this and minimised that ranting that I shouted at the computer screen.
What is the problem with reading the sub-titles on the screen? I remember silent film characters "sounding" a lot better in my head before voice acting started. This is especially relevant for the teletubbies. I guess I don't mind in an action movie if the characters are voice acted so that it doesn't tear you away from the action but for the teletubbies and slower programs I'd much prefer to just read the script.
Time zone converter
Of course this works under the premise that acting is a profession, which some disagree with.
"Powers. I have them."
I see Mass Effect 2 has been listed as a game with good VA, which is cool; how about The Legacy of Kain series? Without a doubt, that's the bar for voice acting-- possibly even storytelling for the interactive medium.
I'd be interested to hear Cam Clarke's take on this issue (primarily known as the voice of Leonardo).
I think morrowind went the correct route and just used text versus stilted dialog. I think bethesda though that with the greater budget for oblivion they could do the same thing with speech and it sounds awful and disjointed. Freelancer had the same problem with terrible pauses between the segments of speech.
zosxavius photography
XIII is a great example of why TFA is wrong - it contains hours of dialogue where your characters are completely on rails, they know exactly what level you will be, what choices you will have made, who is in your party, what interaction you've previously had with the NPC, etc and yet it still sucks. Considering how much effort they put into the visuals it just shows up the voice acting even more, what they need is good actors (not necessarily expensive actors) a solid casting process and most of all a director who knows the format and how to get the best from it.
Clearly further evidence then that the issue isn't the format, nor is it the money that's thrown at it, but rather the way it's carried out. If one company can manage to do this consistently well without charging a premium then others should be able to do the same.
I was pleased to hear Keith David's voice as Sgt. Foley in MW2. He is iconic for that role, since most of his best roles are just this; an angry big black guy screaming orders at soldiers. This persona was only slightly ruined by the fact that MW2, despite being an 18 and controversial for its adult content, has no swearing at all. Which makes the soldiers' discourse seem less than credible.
... Unless the game is totally on rails, a fair bit of the voice acting will basically consist of delivering lines used to fill out obscure corners of some dialog tree, or to be shouted pseudo-randomly by NPCs of various flavors. Cartoon voice acting may well, particularly in lower budget stuff, be done on the cheap; but it is much more likely that the voice actor(s) will have access to something resembling a script, which will allow them to inject some degree of plausibility into what they are doing.
That's why Final Fantasy X had decent voice acting. It was, perhaps, the most linear of all the modern Final Fantasy games.
I have a bad feeling about this...
Games have improved tremendously in this respect over the last few years. Using the narrative context more so it's not just a collection of spoken phrases cut-and-paste together would help a lot. But you know, there's some even more basic problems remain:
1) Use the same actor for the same character. Always. If you need to re-record or add more dialogue, and your original actor isn't available, then live without or re-record everything.
2) Record the sound in the same place, or use a standard background sound. It is disconcerting when the recording quality and background noise changes between sentences.
3) Tell your voice actors not to replicate the errors in the text. Convince them they are voice actors, not just fleshy text-to-speech translators.
4) If your voice actors attempt to mimic strong accents of any form, beat them.
Daggerfall also had great voice acting. Too bad Bethesda dropped the ball while creating Oblivion ...
No, not catching what a character said because of their stupid, highly affected accent and not being able to ask them to repeat it kills immersion. Not being able to interrupt the cliched wised old man character and tell him to cut the exposition and just get to the fucking point kills immersion. Just turn the subtitles on and let me read it instead, or skip it altogether, especially if this isn't the first time I've play through this part.
Which of course is why basically linear games can have excellent voice acting. And by this of course I mean Blood Omen, Soul Reaver, and their sequels, which to this day have the best voice acting in any game ever made. I mean, just watch the intro to Soul Reaver, and play the first 10 minutes of the game, and compare that to more recent rot like Final Fantasy 10 and up, the Metal Gear Solid series, and even Modern Warfare 2 (which is good, but not the equal of, say, SR2).
That's why Final Fantasy X had decent voice acting.
You're joking, right? The VA on that game was so embarrassing I hesitated to initiatie a cutscene whenever someone else was around.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
The wife keeps checking in on me playing FFXIII because Vanilla ;) sounds like she's constantly having sex... Worst acting ever.... or best depending on the mood...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-