VOICE ACTING IN GAMES

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The games that I've played that had voice acting were horrible. It was even worse than English dubs in anime. The feelings were there alright, but the voice just didn't seem to fit with the characters. Like, the protagonist, who's supposed to be manly and a gentleman had a voice that seemed like he had a cold or something. :/ Not cool. But I don't particularly dislike voice acting. It's just when I see those 2 words in a game, it just gives me the shudders. O_O

Also, voice acting seems to destroy your imagination as to how the characters would sound like. Like Three the Hard Way, many in the game has commented about Vance's Somerset accent, so I did a lil research.
"Ere, theart nu ere arh’un?"
"Hey, you’re new here aren’t you”?
Some good Anglo Saxon here with 'Theeart' (Thee as in you and Art as in are).
Totally kills the point of Vance insulting random people when they can't even understand his accent!


So what are your thoughts of voice acting in games? Do you like/hate them? Would you rather not have them in the game?
I've found that I rather like voice acting these days. Sure it's often not great acting but with today's awesome graphics not having voice acting actually detracts from the experience. I see these highly detailed characters approaching me and... then they don't speak. A bunch of text appears instead.

Now this rarely happens. In fact more often than not there's voice acting instead and...

Well it's not as bad as it used to be. I recently played Deus Ex Human Revolution and compared to the original Deus Ex... Well you know. I mean I've played a couple of games where the voice acting was properly bad, but even then it was sometimes passable (Silent Storm and Men of War... Men of War especially has some hilariously bad voice acting).

Of course it all depends on the game in the end. Often I would rather not have my RTS squads say "here sir" every time I clicked on them. And I don't mind getting briefings in text format. And the Mass Effect codex was voiced but sound is so much slower than reading that it felt like a chore reading those entries because you heard one thing and read another. So it would have been nice to turn it off.



But basically what I'm trying to say that this topic might have been relevant ten years ago when voice acting was shit and only happened occasionally. Today it's the norm. And it's not always positive. (voice acting costs more than writing text, so there's less dialogue in games these days)
Of course videogames have better voice acting, I'm talking about indie RPGmaker ones. What do you think of those? I've tried the demo of Aveyond III and the voice acting were terrible. The vampire which was supposed to look mature and badass sounded squeaky (no disrespect to Amanda and her team). It would have been better if it's hilarious like Men of War (like you mentioned) but it's not. :(
I took what I said and added a bit from another thread in which had a similar situation.

Ha. Voice acting. Good luck with the 3-8+mb recordings per file, let alone several files for each of your characters. Voice acting is in chunks. Chunks mean files. Files mean space, space means size. Size means how long it'll take to download your game. If its over 220 MB, people would be driven away from your game, instead of toward.

I do like a bit of voice acting but,

1. You have to have a specific mic. A "normal one" won't just magically work. If you can deal with an annoying fuzzy sound, or white sound for that matter, so be it. Just remember that people are sensitive about voice acting. They may not appreciate it.

2. To make voices really effective, you need proper voice editing software. Sure you can get cracks and trails. It's the internet after all, but spending 5 minutes to edit just a single voice file is just a bit of a time waste.

3. More than likely, people will charge for voice acting. I've heard of people charging up to £14 (Probably something like $17) just to read a single batch of text which is no more than 200 words. Money which I wouldn't be bothered to waste. Especially if my game isn't even going to be commercial anyway.

Instead I would just rather use snippets of voices. Like in battles, or the occasional "Huh?" "No way!" in Cutscenes. Full voice acting in indie games is a bit over the top.

Again, size is always a problem with voice acting, and often to substitute for its massive size, you usually avoid using MP3s and have to stick with MIDIs. Which isn't a very wise, nor productive game development method.

TLDR; Voice acting is a dangerous option for indie game makers. Because of space, and quality. You often have to sacrifice other files which take up a lot of space (MP3s) in order to at least "balance" out the size superiority. Use at risk.
Size isn't the problem, but charging for the voice acting is ridiculous especially if they aren't done by professionals.

I agree using snippets of voices sounds more realistic. TWEWY has done a good job of it.


Just an example of if your going to use voice acting, either get semi-professional people or don't include it at all.
Sounds okay, concept wise. There is a bit of lacking punctuation and emphasis on some words, but that actually sounds okay.
Chaos Wars: The voice acting does suck. Guys have nasal voices and girls just can't get the tones and emotions right.
It would work for a Let's Play and whatnot but definitely not for acting.
Dudesoft
always a dudesoft, never a soft dude.
6309
author=Antilurker77
Just an example of if your going to use voice acting, either get semi-professional people or don't include it at all.


That's a bad example, because that writing is terrible.

Rockstar Games tend to have really amazing voice work.
Yellow Magic
Could I BE any more Chandler Bing from Friends (TM)?
3154
author=Dudesoft
That's a bad example, because that writing is terrible.

That's actually a good point. If you're going to include voice acting, at least make sure your writing's up to scratch.
Yeah dialogue and voice acting are very much connected and is a huge skill on its own. If the dialogue doesn't sound right when you say it out loud it will probably sound and read bad. I do not trust a teenager obsessed with anime with a handful of friends with zero voice acting training (probably the case with most RPG Makerers) to deliver a performance good on the ears. Nor do I see the point. RPG message box cutscenes never seem to demand such a thing anyway.

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.ca/2008/03/big-thank-you-to-march-contributors-and.html

This article (by Ren and Stimpy creator) is more for cartoon writing but I think it applies because he brings up a very good point that the power of dialogue comes from uhh an acute social awareness? It's just hard to teach due to many factors.
I'm thinking of going the snippet approach for my current game with sounds for combat only. You know, stuff like "Ouch!" and "Eat this!" But I dunno if it would be worth the effort.
iddalai
RPG Maker 2k/2k3 for life, baby!!
1194
Voice in battles tends to get annoying after a while.

I think the best approach to voice acting in maker games should be something like Zelda, little grunts or words that play only when the first text box of a character is shown (3 or 5 of these per character should be enough). They set the tone and take little space.

(These can also get annoying after a while :p )
well i been thinking making a technology + compatible rpg maker scripts that use voice manipulation... just say a word and the program will make the word from your voice...
but it will take years to master this kind of system(but worth it too if i do say so myself)
author=jomarcenter
well i been thinking making a technology + compatible rpg maker scripts that use voice manipulation... just say a word and the program will make the word from your voice...
but it will take years to master this kind of system(but worth it too if i do say so myself)


Stop dreaming. You will never be able to accomplish that.
author=jomarcenter
well i been thinking making a technology + compatible rpg maker scripts that use voice manipulation... just say a word and the program will make the word from your voice...
but it will take years to master this kind of system(but worth it too if i do say so myself)


This doesn't even have anything to do with the topic.
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