Why You NEED Voice Actors in Your Video Games…



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Timeline:
Intro – 0:00
Voice Acting Examples (Spoilers!) – 0:40
Main Argument – 7:07

Source

Categories N4G

24 thoughts on “Why You NEED Voice Actors in Your Video Games…”

  1. Speaking of, I wanted to try my hand at voice acting. I think I can show emotion in my voice but idk about visually. I don't know where to start looking though. I'd rather try and get told I'm bad so I know not to pursue than just not try it.

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  2. I se your point, but sometimes dialogue hits better when you actually have to read it. For example, I don’t believe the dialogue would have the same impact in This War Of Mine if it was voiced because the lack of voiced dialogue helps you immerse yourself better. Other good examples are The Elder Scrolls 2 Daggerfall, and Mount And Blade:Warband. And sometimes it doesn’t make sense to have voiced dialogue, such as the deciphered Nomai text. To be fair, there are a couple games that I’ve played that would not work without voice acting. Those being Return Of The Obra Dinn, and Her Story.

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  3. As much as I agree with your point, I'm going to try and play devils advocate here and assume it's going to cause more problems than we'd anticipate. For instance, consider how much of your game design has to be set in stone before you can even start voice acting? If you want to change a characters line of dialogue you've got to get the voice actor back in.

    But lets have a modest amount of voice actors and assume you can get all the voices done with 4 actors. That's 4 schedules you've got to coordinate with to get the lines read early enough that they can be put into the final version of the game. Or are there voice actors with their own recording booths that can produce the high quality audio in their own time without you having to provide that equipment for them? I genuinely don't know on this, but I suspect that as your cast increases it becomes a bigger problem.

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  4. Im so happy right now, seeing a vid of yours be thing long brings me joy, and all your points and arguments are pretty solid, and I can feel how much passion u have with this. I would love if destiny had constant voice acting for our guardian, more consistently, at least everyone else is doing a great performance. I am glad that you made this video because I love your content and because of dense and insightful this video feels. thx for the great content and see you in the next one 0w0

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  5. While I have no idea why a AAA studio wouldn't add voice acting
    They have the budget and the personnel.
    Oh wait, they want to put as little games into money as possible, and suck as much out of them as possible angry ranting grumbling follows

    However, when it comes to indie and AA titles with small dev teams, you might just not have the budget for a team of voice actors to fully voice act a game
    I think Biomutant handled this issue in a rather clever way…one that, sadly, won't work for every game
    As such, while I agree that all games would benefit from good voice acting, sometimes, full voice acting just isn't an option for a dev team, and their story won't work when told visually
    Sometimes, you HAVE to go with dialog boxes

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  6. Don't think I don't hear the Outer Wilds music in your intro, Ryan. I'll be editing this comment when I'm done if I've a counter argument, but know that it's been noticed.

    edit 1: okay, the game got a direct mention, that explains why the music even popped up. to anyone reading this: GO PLAY THAT GAME!

    and now, edit 2: a counter argument. (in fact, with Outer Wilds as a case example!)

    So, first off: I, for the most part, do agree with your points. Voice acting can greatly enhance many games and the experiences of many players, especially if it's done consistently (looking at you, ni no kuni 2). BUT. in certain cases, voice acting can actually take away from an experience too. one example of this I can think of is if you only know a person through written notes. if these notes get voice acted by anyone other than the person reading them, AKA internal monologue (or being read aloud to a group) but the notes never mention, say, the gender of the writer, then the voice acting could give away info about the writer. Now, this isn't always a bad thing, and as I've mentioned there's ways around this such as having the reader's voice be used to read the notes instead.
    The other possible problem is why I mention Outer Wilds as case example. In Outer Wilds, it was a deliberate choice NOT to have any voice acting, as made by the developers. They've even gone into (part of) their reasoning for this in a documentary with NoClip. Part of this stems from how most of the game's story is told through written notes, translated from an alien language; having voices for these characters wouldn't really fit the theme of the game.
    On top of that comes the problem of "characterization" in this game. One thing we've had confirmed by the devs, and which shines through in the game if you pay attention, is that the race of the main character is genderless. there is no "male" or "female", "man" or "woman". But, if you start giving these characters voices? suddenly, every character has an 'implicit' genderization. We would, somewhat instinctively, mark characters voiced by men as male, and those by women as female. This makes voice acting actually go against the world that is being built and the people who live in it. Even the option of voicing all characters with just men or women would still have this problem, and might even raise questions like "how do these people procreate with only (wo)men?" when without voice acting this is a non-issue.

    So, to sum it up, although many games could/do benefit from voice acting, if done consistently and with the correctly chosen voices for the right characters, there is also cases where a voice could give the wrong impression or could create problems for storytelling.

    Of course, this is also coming from someone who doesn't mind a bit of reading in their video games, but that's entirely a problem of tastes (or in certain cases, a different bias? 😉 )

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  7. While I agree i lot of games would be improved with voice acting. There are some games where voice acting doesn't fit. To use one of your examples; I can't image Undertale with voice acting. Part of the charm and some of the jokes in that game come from the fact the game uses typing noises for when the characters talk. Similar with Hollow Knight, i feel voice acting wouldn't fit that game either.

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  8. Some games do need voice acting I will admit but some games don't need voice acting like games that require you to see yourself as the protagonist like the older fallout games

    Or maybe I didn't understand where you were going with this video

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  9. Upon seeing the title of this video, my mind immediately went to Final Fantasy 14
    I have such a hard time playing that game when compared to other Final Fantasy games that are mostly voice acted. I mean, could it have killed them to add at least a greeting when talking to an NPC like World of Warcraft did? Feels like I'm playing a silent movie and I just can't do it.

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