Can* English Voice Acting ruins Characters in RPGs?

[Morwan]

ENGLISH: Gay dialogue.  AKA Kingdom Hearts rambling about how "friendship is our strength and keeps us together" is no better than some children's program preaching the same thing.  Its kinda embarassing. =)

English voice acting can be excellent, and has been excellent for years, it's just that it doesn't seem to work that well with the typical themes you find in Japanese RPGs. Japanese RPGs tend to have a lot of elements I don't like: 14-year old heroes, frolicsome character designs (I'm looking at you Squeenix), whiny pedolicious love interests, and happy-go-lucky characters that love to rant about the power of friendship in otherwise serious settings. It's much easier for me to ignore these things if I only have to read them, but having to listen to them talk about it drives me over the edge.

Take Final Fantasy IX and XII for example. IX has all of the annoying elements I talked about, while XII is a bit more mature, but still incorporates the same elements to a lesser extent. I managed to beat and enjoy FFIX quite a bit, but I put down XII twenty minutes in because the VA made the characters even more obnoxious to me. I don't play video games because I want to spend time listening to annoying kids.

[Prime Mover]

Take Final Fantasy IX and XII for example. IX has all of the annoying elements I talked about, while XII is a bit more mature, but still incorporates the same elements to a lesser extent. I managed to beat and enjoy FFIX quite a bit, but I put down XII twenty minutes in because the VA made the characters even more obnoxious to me. I don't play video games because I want to spend time listening to annoying kids.

Excellent point. Voice acting is a double-edged sword. It's here to stay, so there's nothing much that we can do about it... but I'm sad to see the days of simple text boxes disappear. I think text boxes have their place, and voice acting has its place, depending upon the game.

This is why I was so pissed off at all the people who were complaining about how Twilight Princess didn't have voice acting. Some dialog is abstracted enough from reality, that it really doesn't work when spoken out loud. This doesn't make it bad, or lesser dialog, it's just different. Many well-written books sound much worse when read aloud.

Having characters that don't speak, but present text boxes makes them purely "emotional bodies" than palatable plot-based characters. You can have a character who you can empathise with, without ever hearing them jabber about how their life actually sucks. If they do it in text-box, form, however, their rant becomes more abstract and almost more like narrative than dialog. Zelda: TP was an incredible game, I felt so much for the characters, so much more than previous games in the series, and not a single one spoke a word. Had even the best voice actors tackled the job, and the characters gained speech, i probably would have been distracted by their voices enough to not be able to really empethise with them in the same way.

Some games are right on the money when it comes to voice-acting. I'm loving Tales of the Abyss right now, and the voice-acting fits the game perfectly, and enhances it, IMO. But Zelda, or FF VIII-IX, could have been ruined by even the best voice-acting, hell... I thought FFX was.

It just pisses me off that people expect voiceacting all the time, as if it was something missing all along, and now that we have it, every game should use it. It's not better, it's just different. People are too afraid of abstraction, and always demand the concrete... voice-acting is less an abstraction than text boxes. I, personally, like a certain amount of abstraction in my entertainment, so it pisses me off when people demand that there be less.

[Eusis]

A bit pretentious sounding, but I agree. Some games just wouldn't be the same if voice acted, and it's kinda irritating that if a game isn't voice acted in Japan, it has to be dubbed over here. DQVIII admittedly was fantastic with it added, and it wasn't like you couldn't just turn it off, but I really don't think TP would be the same with constant VA. With that said, it DID annoy me in the ending.

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Midna speaking without Link/Zelda speaking is just kinda WTF. It's like Midna's in a world of mimes or some crap, and I suppose her assuming a normal human form made it clash more than when she was an imp. Probably should've just gotten rid of her voice acting for the ending, you didn't see Zant talking like that... Though they probably should've if Midna did.

[Lucid]

That's somewhere around 80 points!

[Prime Mover]

Yeah, I'm a pretentious, elitist, pompous, Ivory Tower, accademic bullshit writin' grabass...

whatchya gonna do about it? ;P

[Sagacious-T]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1111801270607157785&hl=en

Here's a video I uploaded quite a while ago, It's the trailer for the Japanese version of FFXII with English subtitles.

The Dubbing in English isnt that bad actually, but the few noteworthy "downgrades" are:

Parts with alot of anger and passion are usually dumbed down in the English versions. Watch for when Ashe and Vaan both do their little yelling bits, it was so poor in English. Also, Vossler sounds so much more serious in Japanese.

Of course the small line with Fran only expresses why I loathe her English voice so much.

Ah, if I could only play it subtitled..  I'm 20 hours in and cant find motivation to keep going.

[Bernhardt]

I think it's just a difference of professionalism. Japanese VAs have a higher celebrity status, a lot more training, and get a lot more experience. Video-games obviously rate pretty highly in Japan, so they can afford to employ such talent.

Video-games are still pretty niche in the U.S., at least, beyond First-Person Shooters and other games like that, and for the most part, English VA talent for video-games is taken right off the street, or from whoever answers a classifieds ad. I, personally, would like to get into the English VA field, since I think I'd do a better job, and it would definitely help me pick up some money on the side.

Other than that, I don't think English VAs would sound campier than Japanese VAs if they had a higher level of expertise. A good VA can make any stupid-sounding line be seriously taken.

...

Unfortunately, I don't see Harrison Ford or Tom Cruise VA.'ing for any video-games, other than those based on their movies, any time soon...unless their careers hit a hard patch.

[ZE GRAND MASTER]

That's somewhere around 80 points!

WTF was Claude going on about when he said that?

Anyway, as I said earlier, all VA seems rubbish to me after playing DDS 1 + 2. I didn't find any of the characters annoying (well except maybe Fred), and the bits where everyone yells at each other weren't way over-the-top. All the characters in FF XII except for Ashe, Fran, Balthier and Basch should be muted because they are almost as annoying as FF X's characters. And WTF is up with

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Gabranth being Australian when his brother is quite clearly British? How could anyone have got him confused with Basch when he sounds nothing like him!

One more thing: never get children to voice kids in games... Despite the fact that Fred in DDS 2 is the most irritating kid ever, his VA is nowhere near as bad as that annoying kid in Baten Kaitos.

One even more thing: like Bernhardt said, VAs in Japan have a lot more training so Japanese voice acting in games is for the most part better than in English. I think DDS's English VA is somewhat better than most rpgs because it has VAs that have been in other videogames/anime. It's also probably why MGS games have a lot better voice acting than in pretty much every other game.

[Eusis]

Video-games are still pretty niche in the U.S., at least, beyond First-Person Shooters and other games like that, and for the most part, English VA talent for video-games is taken right off the street, or from whoever answers a classifieds ad.

Knock this shit off guys. Most of the RPGs we play anymore (and quite a few non-RPGs like Ace Combat 5) have VA handled by the same VA studios most anime use. Whether they're better or not you can argue about over and over, but they're not lacking experience, and I think most of them do a pretty good job. And don't disregard the Voice Director's role in this: Farleen's voice is an abomination, but the voice work for the Tachikomas in GitS:SAC isn't. Both are handled by the same actress.

Admittedly, the anime VA studio thing I mentioned brings along a new problem: You hear the same people in practically every game. I'm convinced that in half the PS2 games I own, Crispin Freeman voiced a character or two in them.

[Sagacious-T]

Video-games are still pretty niche in the U.S., at least, beyond First-Person Shooters and other games like that, and for the most part, English VA talent for video-games is taken right off the street, or from whoever answers a classifieds ad.

Knock this shit off guys. Most of the RPGs we play anymore (and quite a few non-RPGs like Ace Combat 5) have VA handled by the same VA studios most anime use. Whether they're better or not you can argue about over and over, but they're not lacking experience, and I think most of them do a pretty good job. And don't disregard the Voice Director's role in this: Farleen's voice is an abomination, but the voice work for the Tachikomas in GitS:SAC isn't. Both are handled by the same actress.

Admittedly, the anime VA studio thing I mentioned brings along a new problem: You hear the same people in practically every game. I'm convinced that in half the PS2 games I own, Crispin Freeman voiced a character or two in them.

Aha, but I find most of the English Dubbing in anime quite poor, at least when compared to their Japanese counterparts. Late last-gen it has caught up to anime standards with games like FF12, but they still have a long way to go. Just look at games like Metal Gear Solid, that sounds fantastic in English. I would like Japanese RPGs to reach this kind of caliber instead of being done by the "Anime Dubbing studios". They should be done by the "Video game Voice-acting studios" instead.

[Bernhardt]

Video-games are still pretty niche in the U.S., at least, beyond First-Person Shooters and other games like that, and for the most part, English VA talent for video-games is taken right off the street, or from whoever answers a classifieds ad.

Knock this shit off guys. Most of the RPGs we play anymore (and quite a few non-RPGs like Ace Combat 5) have VA handled by the same VA studios most anime use. Whether they're better or not you can argue about over and over, but they're not lacking experience, and I think most of them do a pretty good job. And don't disregard the Voice Director's role in this: Farleen's voice is an abomination, but the voice work for the Tachikomas in GitS:SAC isn't. Both are handled by the same actress.

Admittedly, the anime VA studio thing I mentioned brings along a new problem: You hear the same people in practically every game. I'm convinced that in half the PS2 games I own, Crispin Freeman voiced a character or two in them.

On that subject, I NEVER listen to English dubbed anime. NEVER. WELL, not as a habit, anyway. I HAVE had to listen to it to figure out that it's mostly bad.

I would like Japanese RPGs to reach this kind of caliber instead of being done by the "Anime Dubbing studios". They should be done by the "Video game Voice-acting studios" instead.

They should be done by "The Good Dubbing Studios." Doesn't matter who they are, where they're from, or what they're called, so long as they're good at it.

[Eusis]

I think Anime dub quality also rose within the last decade, and it's always possible that what you're more familiar with influences your opinion.

I am, by the way, basing my opinion off of what I've watched on Adult Swim.

[Alisha]

isnt part of the problem having to sync lips and such? ever notice how eastern rpgs and rpgs where dialauge is handled via text boxes is almost always decent?
 im kinda scared what OGS will sound like if it comes out here because of some of the silly lines that would have to be uttered for attacks.

[Eusis]

Those attack names and such are damn near impossible to say without being corny. In fact, abundant voice acting in RPG battles tends to piss me off: about as big a reason to me to have kept AI in japanese as avoiding the bugs. :P

[Prime Mover]

Agreed, 90% of battle voice acting is just BAD. Even some of the best voice-acted games have shitty victory cheers, taunts, and cries. It's as if some designers just feel obligated to throw shit in there without any real creative purpose behind it.

One thing that I've noticed is that victory cheers and introductory taunts are almost always one liners that attempt to define the character as a whole. Victory cheers for the big meatheaded brawler always say, "I'm a big meatheaded brawlers! RAWR!", and meak magic-using females always have things like, "I'm sorry I had to hurt you." Lame... just lame. You can't define an entire character's personality with one line, and no reasonable amount of variation is going to do them justice (even though it might help). I'd just like battle voice-acting to be cut down to a minimum.

Tales games do have some fun victory chears, especially the group dialog chears: "Woah, the battle's barely even over and Anise's already got the money!" or "Dwarven vow number 7: peace, love, and joy will always be victorious... God I hate that one!", are fun, but besides those, I wish designers would just shut the fuck up.