Voice acting in English/American versions

Yeah the English Xardas in G1 & G2 was awesome. He had a deep, commanding baritone voice. They used him too much in G2 though -- diluted the effect somewhat. The new guy is not bad, but I miss the old Xardas -- in more ways than just the voice too…

Some of the Mages (like Myxir) and other "eccentric" characters have a truly annoying voice-over though. I think it is done by Dwight Schultz who is a reasonable well known actor over here and even bigger in voice work. But man, does he sound grating when doing these particular voices…

You guys may remember Shultz as playing the zany "Murdock" character on the 80s action show The A-Team.

As far as the quality of the voice acting, I think the game is excellent. No back room mail clerks and programmer wifes here. Real Pros. And generally well directed. While it is disappointing they changed some of the voice actors, what there is, in the game, is fine. I simply can not see how anyone can call the voice acting here bad unless they have some kind of agenda. You want bad, see Spellforce, Beyond Divine Divinity, Lost Island, Gods land of Infinity, Neverend, Mage Kngiht, and a ton of others I have thankfully forgotten.

Typically voice acting falls into two categories. The quality of the voice and the speaking the line in context of the story. The former is a product of the actor and the later is a product of the director. I am level 28 so far in Gothic 3 and I have yet to hear a misstep in the voice acting.

BTW, Dwight Schultz also played Barkley (the engineer addicted to the Holo deck) in Star Trek, TNG.

Personally, the only voice that seemed close to those of the previous games was the one for the main character.

Overall, I can't say that the voice acting was bad in any way. But it was a big disappointment that all of the voices and the derived personalities from G1 & G2 were missing from G3.