Voice acting in rpgs.

Xluna

The ps2 and the current gen consoles has lead to a new talking point in JRPGs,voice acting. What examples of good and atrocious voice acting can you think of and do you prefer the Japanese originals?

I think the best piece of voice acting was Jansen.Lost Odyssey had pretty good voice acting overall. I hated Vaneille's voice in FFXIII but its growing on me. Her accent seems to be a mix of English,Australian and something I can't put my finger on. I still can't get over Fangs accent in FFXIII.

landsleaving

I haven't got to Pulse yet in FFXIII, but I'm expecting the game to turn into an episode of Home and Away when I get there.

Tidus' voice in FFX made my blood boil. I really really hated him.

Gummy Panda

Xlunie, there is nothing wrong with JRPG voice acting 'kay.

Star Ocean 4 voice acting is fail

Xyo

I always laughed at the Tidus voice when he was doing flashbacks, sounded like an old detective movie to me.

noodler

I got used to Tidus pretty quickly, also the rest of the cast was pretty good for me so it made no odds.

Retr0gamer

There's a lot of hate for Wakka as well. I thought the voice actor did a really good job of him especially with the accent he had to do and he was a brillaint character, especailly the with how he changed over the course of the game. If anything Yuna had the weakest voice actor.

It's a shame so many japanese companies still skimp on VA talent in the localisation process. I'd usually take the english VA's unless they were horrendous. Sometimes the japanese voice acting can be terrible as well it shrill teenager characters.

Atlus seem to be very good at localising and Persona 3 and especailly 4 had the best english voice acting of any JRPG I've played. The best japanese voice acting was in panzer dragoon saga which had phenomenal acting and it's even more impressive considering ever piece of dialogue is voice acted and there's so many characters.

The worst example I can think of is Grandia Xtreme. That game even had good VA talent including the always good Mark Hamill but they butchered it by having loading pauses in between each setting and recording everything completely out of context.

Lemegeton

Eternal Sonata had a great voice cast. Some really well known names from the Voice acting and anime world in there such as the legend that is johnny yoong bosch.
just about to start into Star Ocean the last hope but i have heard the english cast has some real stinkers

super_furry

I don't think there has been or will ever be voice acting that's more annoying than Magna Carta 2's. I honestly have to mute the voices and turn on the subtitles. Tidus and Yuna annoyed the piss out of me too.

Vanille's accent is bizarre but it's the random grunts, moans and squeels she makes every 10 seconds that really annoy me.

carbonkid

super_furry wrote: »

Vanille's accent is bizarre but it's the random grunts, moans and squeels she makes every 10 seconds that really annoy me.

Thats kinda funny. My flatemate who is one wall away from me has got his xbox version. This game is the first game/movie hes every had on that i cant seem to sleep though...i think its those grunts and moans during fighting. It must be more sharper and frequent then other games.

GothPunk

Here's a link to an interview with the actor who played Vanille, I thought it was interesting so maybe you guys will enjoy it as well. I think that they've done a really good job overall with the voice acting in FFXIII, and from that article it seems they must have spent enough money to make sure it came out well - 6 months of recording!

That's the thing that has always plagued JRPGs in particular, they're a niche interest and thus have a smaller budget, so voice actors would have very little time in which to record everything, let alone re-record some dialogue or do multiple takes. Which is a shame as bad voice acting can ruin some very emotive or terse dialogue for me which is why I play a lot of games in the Japanese voices. For Valkyria Chronicles I played with the Japanese voices but for FFXIII or Persona 4 if the Japanese voices were available I don't think I would use them as the English acting is much better.

Sometimes I feel like a voice actor isn't necessarily bad, just that they're not the right fit vocally for a character. I think that in general Japanese games put the right voice to a character, but I guess that comes from the fact that there are many more voice actors in Japan than there are in the US or Britain. I feel like this generation of hardware there must be a larger group of voice acting talent as we're seeing much more diversity there. I'm glad to see with FFXIII that they're picked voice talent from different parts of the world, so they lend their accent to make the characters that much more distinct from each other.

I must admit I love British voice acting, I'll take that over an American dub any day. Part of why I love the Fable games, particularly Fable II as it has Stephen Fry. Nothing like some dry British witty acting to cleanse your mind of the many crappy shrill anime voices and Californian accents you've had to endure whilst playing.

Retr0gamer

Actaully the english voice acting in Valkyria Chronicles was really good as well.

Also you just reminded me of the best JRPG voice acting which has to go to Dragon quest 8. Getting a load of english people to do it was genius.

Generic_name01

Memorable voice acting for me in a game would be Lost Odyssey (though this is mostly due to the awesome Jansen) Persona 4 and Valkyria Chronicles. What I love about VC is that though none of the background guys like Vyse etc ever feature in the cutsenes, the voice actors and character designs all help give the team members their own identity so taht even though few lancers or shocktroopers etc are different from each other stats wise, you always find anyone who played that game had their own little team of preferred squad members and rarely changed it.

Bad voice acting for me is FF10 and 12.

The cutsene when tidus and yuna are laughing together sums that whole game up for me whereas 12 is a game I love but I wish I could have a jap dub.

Retr0gamer

I actually thought that the voice acting in FF12 was really excellent?

GothPunk

I agree, are you for serious Generic_name? Balthier is just sexy with the British voice, the Japanese voice is just... wrong. I have a soft spot for him mostly due to the excellent dub. Here's what 5 seconds of googling got me, a YouTube video of FFXII voice comparisons. The English VA is clearly superior to me, the Japanese voices just don't fit the characters very well. I put it down, yet again, to British voice acting greatness. Both dubs suffer from poor quality due to the compression of the audio, which is a shame.

I'm still very surprised to hear people say they think the English VA for Valkyria Chronicles and Lost Odyssey is good. Do people mean good in comparison to other games (which I would agree with, they are better) or good in comparison to the Japanese dub? Because for these two games the Japanese dub is the one that stands out for me. When given the option I will usually try out a game with each dub to see which one I think fits best. Boy has English VA come a long way.

Generic_name01

In FF12 I could only recall liking Baltier and one or two of the judges. Maybe I'm remembering worse then it is but all I think of is that spanish fella you meet before you face one of the judges in golden armour. Cant remember the name but he was like a tesco value antonio banderas.

With VC I enjoy both dubs but I usually select the dub based on the setting of the world. Like its meant to be europe so I'd give the english voice actors a listen and if I tot they were pretty delightful tbh.

Oh and there aint much plot to this game but I really like the voice acting in Demon Souls. Mostly because they have accents you dont get too much in jrpgs like scottish folk etc.

Xluna

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Also you just reminded me of the best JRPG voice acting which has to go to Dragon quest 8. Getting a load of english people to do it was genius.

Yes. British and Irish accents definitely suit RPGS,especially period RPGS. I don't know what it is about American accents but they seem odd in RPGS. Maybe it's the same reason that a neutral English accent tends to used in movie period epics,maybe it's the fact that America has no real history or culture.:pac: When you think of mythology and medieval worlds you think of Norman knights, Celtic witches and warriors,Merlin, Fianna ect.

You sure don't think of a Californian accent.

Oh yeah,is'nt it about time that Nina and Anna Williams got Irish accents?
I noticed in the latest Tekken they tried to make their accents a bit more neutral and less American sounding at least.

funky penguin

Thought the SA accents in XII were a nice change from the norm.

Interesting point made by Vanille's actor....she was purposely made to sound more traditionally Japanese, especially when recodring Vanille's reactions.

I know that the directors were trying to steer away from the stereotypical anime for most of the English characters, but they specifically stayed true to it for Vanille. But by the time we were near the end I didn’t listen to ’shocked reaction’, ‘happy reaction’, ’scared reaction’ — we already knew what they were after. I was very glad to have that version to work off, though, because the style is very different to anything I would do naturally, so it was a big help.

The most enjoyable lines were always the reactions — her sound effects were so fun and stylized. I now have a number of friends who get me to just make those sounds for them at random occasions. Watching them trying to imitate them is almost just as fun!