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Voice acting in video games

Joined
Jul 19, 2015
Gender
cat
What's your take on voice acting in video games? A must-have, don't really care, language preference?

For a lot of RPGs, it's nice (but not necessary) to have because it can help flesh out characters and give them more characterization. There are some characters I've liked mainly because of their voices (Tales of Symphonia's Yuan, P3's Akihiko). I'm generally not very picky with voice acting, so I don't really worry about the voice acting ruining the characters much. At the same time, I don't have any problem playing silent RPGs.

On the other hand, there are some games that simply don't need it. I've heard more than a few people complain that Zelda still doesn't have voice acting, but the game would benefit absolutely nothing from this, imo. The focus of the game is on gameplay, not the characters. Same goes for Pokemon. I don't care about the characters. It's not why I'm playing the game.

Generally, though, I don't really care. Voice acting is a nice perk for some games, but I don't think its absence detracts from games any.
 
Joined
Aug 9, 2015
Voice acting can be a nice touch sometimes, as long as it's done right. If the voices don't match the character how I imagined, it can really put me off the game. I'd rather there was no voice acting at all in this case. For Zelda though, I'm happy as it is with no voices. I don't mind reading :) As you said, it wouldn't affect the gameplay in anyway.
 

Dio

~ It's me, Dio!~
Joined
Jul 6, 2011
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England
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Absolute unit
Voice acting is a modern staple in videogames. It is acceptable for it to be absent in indie or 2D games yet in big 3D story driven adventures such as Zelda. It is completely unacceptable even back in 2011 for them to have not included it.
Its absence detracted from the experience and drew attention to the fact that with the lips of the characters moving, a voice was meant to be coming out.
Hyrule warriors with its impressive cutscenes highlighted the issue even further.
 

Dan

Joined
Sep 19, 2011
Gender
V2 White Male
In terms of must have then no not all video games need voice acting. We need to look at when voice acting comes in good use. Voice acting has its advantages in high speed and tense sequences, you wouldn't want to pause the action to read a text box as it may detract the impact of the tense sequence.
Any sort of action game would better suit voice acting. Games that are much slower like an rpg may better off go with voice acting especially since the player can attached their own voice to what a character may sound like.
 

2MooglesGaming

More fun than a bag of Kupo Nuts!
Joined
Jan 27, 2015
No, not every games needs it. There should be voice acting in the grandiose AAA games, as those really benefit from a talented actor putting additional emotion into a scene. As for Zelda games, it would probably feel very weird to have a bunch of voice acting in it, but it probably wouldn't be such a bad thing. Now, if Link starts talking? That's a whole other story.
 

SpiteChaotic

The lazy Chaos Bringer
Joined
Mar 25, 2015
It depends on the genre and how much voice acting. I mean for Rpgs Yeah I like voice acting. Either for cutscenes or for important details. Though if they make it so every single character has tohave a voice actor that usually makes it so you have less people to talk to. I like my in game dialogues. Some Npcs can say the most hilarious stuff even without a voice actor.

For old school platformers, beat em ups or anything really old school like not so much. It might be neat but not anywhere needed.

For newer games with cutscenes I'll say ok. Depending on if it is dialogue to the plot. Now if you just have a basic cutscene that can show and not tell. I love those. I love watching things that can express through movement and pictures.

So voice acting can help but you need the right dosage.
 

SinkingBadges

The Quiet Man
Both the inclusion and non-inclusion of VA can be perfectly valid aesthetic choices. I can think of games where some of its feel comes from having to imagine what a character would sound like based on how you perceive them to be, along with other games where not having voice acting would just feel incomplete.

On a more personal note, I refuse to accept the idea that it HAS to be in because of some unwritten presentation standard. Even if it has to be, I think the focus some games put on presentation (not just voice acting) these days could be much better spent elsewhere.
 

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