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StaceyPowers

How much does bad voice acting detract from a game?

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LOLOL I have to laugh because I try to ignore bad voice actors. But it's there and it's annoying. I love Watch Dogs Legion, but damn they really took a crap on voice acting whenever you recruit someone. Still a top game though. Another of my favorite games has bad voice acting in Dying Light 1. And another pretty good game I'd say the male protagonist in Cyberpunk 2077. The female is better. Days Gone, I've grown to love the game and the protagonist has grown on me, but man...at times when he gives a speech, it's like he's whispering or mumbling to himself. It's strange. These are all great games, and they neglected solid voice acting. Why? I haven't got a clue. 

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You mean like Oblivion NPCs? 😄

Strangely it never really bothered me in Bethesda games, it is just comical, rather than detrimental. I mean their whole games has a certain clunkiness to them, if the vocie acting was any better it would feel out of place 🙂

I'd rather say that good voice acting adds to games, but if everything else is fine with the game, the voice acting won't dissuade me from playing it.

Where I do have a problem with it is when the main character's male and female voices are wildly different quality. For me this was in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, I first played the game as Kassandra, and the voice actor really nailed the character. I tried starting a new game with Alexiios and it just wasn't working. The contrast was just too big.

In Cyberpunk 2077 I did not have this problem. While the female voice acting of V was absolutely brilliant, the male was also very good, so there wasn't such a big contrast.

 

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Bad voice acting doesen't really bother me as it's always good for a laugh. 

On 4/15/2022 at 10:17 PM, m76 said:

 

Where I do have a problem with it is when the main character's male and female voices are wildly different quality. For me this was in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, I first played the game as Kassandra, and the voice actor really nailed the character. I tried starting a new game with Alexiios and it just wasn't working. The contrast was just too big.

 

I was going to bring this up but you beat me to it, pretty much all ubisoft games have mediocre voice acting especially npc characters, yes i'm looking at you watch dogs legion.

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As Empire rightly says, not as much as a bad script or director. These two aspects are vastly overlooked when blaming poor performances.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is one such example: the actors aren't great (their voices, on the other hand, are distinct and well defined) but they're made terrible due to the circumstances they're in, which is having only a handful of people doing thousands of lines of dialogue each (and each named NPC has unique dialogue). When you're paid by the hour, breaks are going to be minimal and only recently have there been advancements in making working conditions easier for actors so they can save their voices and continue to perform.

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On 4/26/2022 at 12:12 PM, Empire said:

Voice acting goes hand in hand with the script. Good delivery can't salvage a poor script and vice-versa.

But games that have memorable dialogue and strong delivery - I'm thinking Psychonauts here - leave a HUGE lasting impression on me.

I do agree with you here. Although some games are really terrible at its voice actors. Deathloop and Watch Dogs Legion are typical examples. 

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