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Breath of the Wild Did anyone else hate the voice acting?

Dio

~ It's me, Dio!~
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Aounuma said in an interview that a Hollywood calibre cast would have to be hired if he was going to consider using full voice. Just like when he said TP's art style would be used for SS and when he said that game would answer a lot of questions about OOT, this was not really true. None of the voice actors from BoTW were particularly Hollywood calibre.

I liked the sound of the voice used for Rhoam, it just didn't really suit the character it was for. Rhoams voice sounded like a Russell Crowe impersonator, and Russell Crowe of course is not an actor that would tend to play an elderly king. He is middle aged and fit so it sounds wierd coming from Rhoam who looks like a 70 year old santa type.

Zelda's voice acting was AWFUL. I don't know why they went for the English accent and then hired someone who clearly can't perform an English accent. There are plenty of you know...English people who can do it, and also plenty of other voice actors who can do it convincingly. Zelda isn't what anyone from my country actually sounds like, I assure you.

Impa sounds like a young person doing an impression of an old person. It is far worse than in the case of Rhoam as Impa appears even older than he does. For all the complaints of whitewashing in Hollywood and roles for Asian characters (like in Ghost in The Shell) being taken up by white actors what about the youngwashing and all the roles perfect for older actors in this game being performed by people too young to sound convincingly old. There are so many older actors out there that could have performed these roles to a better quality.

Mipha just sounds awful

Yunobo is meant to be the way he is and although I find the character annoying his irritating voice suits the irritating personality. Trivia: he is voiced by a woman in the Japanese.

Revalis voice is ok

Daruk's voice suited him rather well

Urbosa was also well cast, possibly one of the best castings.

The Deku Tree's voice suited him also
 
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Azure Sage

March onward forever...
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I didn’t hate any of it. Zelda was fine, Mipha was good, Revali and Urbosa were great. I didn’t find any of it particularly bad. It’s not the *best* I’ve heard, sure, but I’ve certainly heard much, much worse. This didn’t even come close to the bad things I’ve heard.
 

VikzeLink

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It was decent... But the volume of it was incredibly low compared to the rest of the sounds and music in the game. I could barely hear what they said, good thing they had it subtitled
 
I'm very much with Deus that the people cast were wrong for the roles.

The idea of Zelda being british is a very cliche one, but they didn't even hire a british VA to play her. Instead they hired an American who can't do the british accent at all.
It may fly for other areas of the world, but as a brit myself I have the right to cringe at lines such as; storrp forrllowing me!

Careful, love. You may drop the marbles you're trying to keep between your teeth if you open your mouth too wide.

I liked Rhoam's voice and The Great Deku Tree's voice but they didn't fit either.

Daruk and Impa suffer the same problem as Zelda in that they're trying to force accents they just can't do.

Yunobo was just flat out atrocious in every regard.

Revali and Urbosa came off okay...

But I've set the language to Japanese and I'll do the same wholesale for the sequel if the same actors are coming back.
 
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DarkestLink

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Oct 28, 2012
Welcome to the party, late comer. And yes, it was bad, but I can't say I'm disapointed. This is Nintendo, after all, and their track record for VA has never been favorable, so I can't fathom why people thought they were going to step it up with a series like Zelda that has never had much story focus. I've heard some people praise the Japanese VA, but honestly I thought it sounded even worse...which is a shame, because I think voice acting is a pretty big deal over there, no?
 

el :BeoWolf:

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I loved the voice acting, aside from Zelda's phoney baloney accent it was really a welcome change
 
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For the most part, I thought the voice acting wasn't that bad. I originally had skepticism about the whole idea, but the way it was done I thought it was pretty serviceable.

The only voice acting I didn't like was Zelda's, it sounded too whiney and there wasn't a hint of emotion in her performance. The rest of the cast I thought did a pretty good job and captured the personality of their respectful character.
 

Jimmu

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Overall the voice acting wasn't the worst out there. I really disliked Zelda's voice and would rather they had picked a different voice for her but aside from her's the rest were fine.
 

Pen

The game is on!
I was so disappointed in the English voice acting as a whole that I rushed to change it to Japanese as soon as I was able to, and I've had no quarrel whatsoever with the Japanese voice performances.

The sad part is that the English voice cast overall didn't just have one issue, but several undeniably cringy ones. From the fake accents and unconvincing old people voices to the straight up bad acting and the fact that all of these bad things each occurred in more than just one character. It's embarrassing honestly, and a damn shame because I generally adore BotW as a game.
 

Mellow Ezlo

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The entire script sounds like it was read by actors who had no idea what the story was or who their characters were, or rather who they were supposed to be interacting with, and as a result the voice acting is really inconsistent and in some cases just bad. Zelda's voice in particular was a mistake, the actress evidently did not know what kind of emotion she was supposed to invoke as there was none at all in the performance, but I also found myself really disliking Mipha's voice. It was just too "I love you Link but I'm depressed and what is life" for my liking, although her character was the exact same way (fite me, Mipha's character sucks and I stand firm with that opinion) so it fits I guess.

That being said though, I really liked Revali and Urbosa's voices. While there were still some moments that give the thought of "do they actually know who they're supposed to be interacting with?", these two characters definitely had the strongest voice acting in the game.

Overall, not a big fan, but I appreciate Nintendo for at least trying. And, to their credit, they've never really had a lot of success with voice acting in their games (Super Mario Sunshine, I'm looking your direction) so they at least had the guts to try with one of their most ambitious games yet.
 

mαrkαsscoρ

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I hated mipha's and really didn't care for zelda's, the rest of the champions weren't bad though
for the series' foray into voice acting for a main game, I really wish they did better, either way they still went w/ the whole use a voice clip for a text box dialogue thing anyway so the voice acting really just felt like something they did b/c they felt they had to
 
Joined
May 7, 2018
Voice acting and cut scenes in general almost always detract from the game, constant interruptions breaking immersion, BotW no exception compounded by the fact that the voice acting is abysmal (Zelda's voice in particular HOLY CRAP ON A CRACKER). Sure you can skip them but I'd rather in game settings to mute that garbage and ignore cut scenes completely. Not interested in your dumb story Nintendo. Put more resources into making the actual game than wasting time on superfluous rubbish no one will remember or care about in 10 years time when they think of BotW.
 

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