Good games with bad voice acting

wolfing

Dalek SasqWatch
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What games (RPG) do you think would be much better if not for their voice acting? I'm coming with this because I could care less about it, I just read the text and skip the voice, but yet I wonder what games I might have not played because of bad reviews that gave too much importance to voice acting.
 
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Beyond Divinity has some of the most godawful voice-acting ever heard by man and I'm pretty sure none of the voice actors accredited was a professional one. But then, BD is not a good game in any sense of the word either, so... pass.
 
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Beyond Divinity does indeed stand out--probably the only game I actually stopped playing because I couldn't stand the voice acting. The Chosen, on the other hand had some pretty cheesy voiceovers but was actually more amusing than offending and was also a pretty good action rpg. Most of the time, unless it's really egregious, I enjoy the mangled translations and ultra-melodramatic theater of bad voice-acting/scripting.
 
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Keepsake... Mustavio...

From Adventure Gamers review:
Keepsake still has its problems, with Mustavio having the most exaggerated Italian accent you'll ever hear.

That one is unbelievably bad... make a google search for "Keepsake Mustavio" and you are likely to find several forums (similar threads to this one) and reviews, specifically pointing that one out... It's too bad there's no youtube video.
 
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This might almost be an oxymoron; can you name a game with GOOD voice acting? :) Most people find something to object to with how characters are voiced, many simply turn the sound OFF. Problem with that is that frequently sound cues help you with things like combat.
 
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This might almost be an oxymoron; can you name a game with GOOD voice acting? :) Most people find something to object to with how characters are voiced, many simply turn the sound OFF. Problem with that is that frequently sound cues help you with things like combat.

Grim Fandango. :)
 
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Seal of Evil has a lot of elements of a fun game but the voice acting for the lead character is attrocious. Had the woman used her normal voice or the other woman who did the voice acting for the supporting female done it instead, it would have been a lot more tolerable.

Seal of Evil is far from perfect though with its railroad like linearity, jrpg feel, and at times awful translations.

However, it makes up for those defects with a great questing system, and the best, most sophisticating crafting system I've ever seen.
 
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Oblivion, because often NPC's (like the beggars) change voices during the encounter. The voice acting in itself wasn't too bad, but the change of voices seemed amateurish. They didn't have that many actors.

To me, voice acting is one of the least important feature of a game. I read the text, and since I read faster than the actors speak, they seldom get to finish what they they started.
 
Morrowind.

Uh, yeah, I know it doesn't really count because it didn't HAVE any voice acting, but the reason I put it here is because it was only the second RPG I played, and the one before that was Gothic. - After playing Gothic and getting used to all the characters being voiced, it was shocking when I installed Morrowind and everything was so... quiet! At first I really thought that something was wrong with the software, but later learned that Gothic was just exceptional for its time.
 
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Morrowind.

Uh, yeah, I know it doesn't really count because it didn't HAVE any voice acting, but the reason I put it here is because it was only the second RPG I played, and the one before that was Gothic. - After playing Gothic and getting used to all the characters being voiced, it was shocking when I installed Morrowind and everything was so... quiet! At first I really thought that something was wrong with the software, but later learned that Gothic was just exceptional for its time.


I agree that Gothic was exceptional, but it was also only a fraction of the size that Morrowind was. Back in 2002 it was unheard of to have full voice acting in a game that size. I don't think it would have added much to Morrowind anyways, the BGM and sound FX in that game were outstanding, and I doubt voice acting would have been on the same level.
 
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Oblivion would have been better if it was possibly to turn off the voice acting. The amount of repetition and the awkward change of voices make for a horrendous experience. All the lizard/catwomen sounding like Whoopi Goldberg make my skin crawl. Having a few exceptional unique voices doesnt save the experience.
 
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the atrocious infuence game didnt help either. Within all of 20 seconds youll get a ranting bipolar, cheesy-sounding litany of "oh i like that!" "i dont talk such rot!" "that's a good one!" "get the hell out of here!" "yeah that's great!" "go to hell!" w/ the npc facial expression following along the entire time.

Drove me nuts, i did it a few times then dropped that little minigame for fear of raging tiger clawing his screen
 
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The worst sound and voiceovers I experienced in a game was a Prince of Persia game (the first that was in 3D, I think). In the german version the speech volume was so low, and strangely distorted that I could simply not make out a single word.
 
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Wow. That was horrible.
 
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I've read that an Sierra game called "Inca" included a voice actor who had to complain (in his role) over the loss of his son, but did this (in the German-language version of the game) in a "highly funny" voice, if if the actor was very, very happy over something (that's how I remember it).

Because of that, I've never bought the game.
 
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This might almost be an oxymoron; can you name a game with GOOD voice acting? :)
That's easy: Bloodlines. Coming up with more would be difficult though.

The most famously bad voice acting ever in a videogame has to be the original Resident Evil.
Really? I thought it wasn't so much the voice acting as the script that was horrendous, the best voice acting in the world wouldn't be able to save that dialog.
 
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That's easy: Bloodlines. Coming up with more would be difficult though.


Really? I thought it wasn't so much the voice acting as the script that was horrendous, the best voice acting in the world wouldn't be able to save that dialog.

It was ALL bad!

I know I'm going way too far back for anyone to remember or even have played the game, but the space combat sim "Independance War" had some fantastic voice acting, as did its follow-ups.
 
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This might almost be an oxymoron; can you name a game with GOOD voice acting? :)

Several. Most if not all classic LucasArts adventures (Day of the Tentacle, Indy and the Fate of Atlantis, Full Throttle etc.). Vampire: Bloodlines. Fallout 1 and 2 (what little there is of it). Even Jade Empire and KOTOR weren't half bad.
 
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