What constitutes "good" or "bad" voice acting?

[Interdimensional Observer]

To be fair to Tellius, it was one of Nintendo's first attempts at VAs, and it only happened in a few short scenes in PoR, and not much more in RD, they weren't pervasively throughout the entire game. Outside of Mr. Narrator and his La-GOOOOZZZ!

 

7 minutes ago, Johann said:

I thought about posting or at least mentioning it, but then I figured there are plenty of examples of far worse, and at least that one is kinda charmingly silly.

Fair enough, they did fill it with passion. And the "miserable pile of secrets" line was actually taken from a French author, if still out of place.

 

6 minutes ago, Johann said:

Kid Icarus's voice acting was phenomenal, they got some serious talent for that and it shows. Everyone gives a strong read and it's timed extremely well. I do think it helped that the script was revised by comedy writers and that there wasn't much/any dubbing for them to do.

 

Oh the script was beautiful, the banter delightful, I don't quite get why I muted KI:U from the get go, I just always have.

[Armagon]

3 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Or Baten Kaitos having been voice acted during a scuba trip?

Oooooh yeah, Baten Kaitos' voice acting is.....not very good. I mean, when it comes to the main characters, it's alright but whenever it comes to NPCs, every time they speak, i'm instantly reminded of those times in school when the teacher would call on a student to read out loud. That's how bad the voice acting in Baten Kaitos can get. 

I don't know if Origins got better at it or if the VA quality remains the same.

[NinjaMonkey]

10 hours ago, Slumber said:

There are some times where just picking people out of the office to do voices works out well(Deadly Premonition comes to mind. The voice acting has a lot of charm and it's pretty solid as a whole). But there are also times where it doesn't. Tellius is more of a case where it doesn't, and the voice acting is stiff. 

I can't agree with you on that one. I found the voice acting in the Tellius games to be far better than the voice acting in Awakening.

[Interdimensional Observer]

10 hours ago, Armagon said:

I don't know if Origins got better at it or if the VA quality remains the same.

Fortunately I can say it got much better, no sarcasm here. Yuri Lowenthal might have voiced one of the returning characters now that I think about it. And I recall in the day hearing, as good news, the new heroine is voiced by the same person who did one of Kingdom Hearts' Organization XIII members. The odd voice is Guillo's, but as a strange automata, him having separate male and female voices that say every line simultaneously is a part of his character.

[TheGoodHoms]

As some who has preformed in stage productions in the past I can definitely say that having a good understanding of the context of any given line can make all the difference when delivering dialogue. Though I must admit that I've never been cast for a significant speaking role in anything other than comedies where the whole point of my characters was to be as exaggerated as possible, but even those characters went through some emotional beats that could have easily fallen flat if I didn't understand them.

[Rapier]

Picking up people from your own office to do VA work is usually bad, despite there being cases where it works well (Blizzard did this for Warcraft 3 and WoW, iirc Diablo 3 too but I'm not sure). You're running a risk because they're not professionals and are mostly improvising on their work.

Also, I found Awakening's voice acting to be good, it's just their New Super Mario Bros worthy grunts and one liners that feel off.

Edited August 4, 2018 by Rapier

[Retyl]

.

Edited September 6, 2018 by Retyl

[Rapier]

31 minutes ago, Retyl said:

Arc Rise Fantasia is a case where the game was dubbed into English in Japan by using local English speakers. The voice acting in that game being garbage isn't such a surprise knowing this. This is the case for Mega Man X7 too, if I recall correctly.

It's probably Megaman ZX Advent's case too, then, since the VAs there worked on X7 (Grey is X, Master Mikhail (or one of the other members of the Sage Trinity, idk) is Sigma). Explains a lot.

Also, Alison Court, who worked on Megaman X5's localization (and is infamously responsible for joke names such as Duff Mcwhalen), dubbed Claire Redfield from Resident Evil 2. Seems it was popular to have people from the office to take up these works.

Edited August 4, 2018 by Rapier

[Tryhard]

19 hours ago, Armagon said:

And this brings up a point i want to to talk about and it regards my thing about the voice acting fitting the characters. Whenever accents are involved, it gets blurry, especially if it's one that people aren't really used to hearing, like Welsh. I've seen some people say that Nia's voice doesn't fit her but i think it's just because they are so not used to hearing a Welsh person (because what other game besides Xenoblade 2 has a Welsh actress that actually uses her accent) and i can perfectly understand why some people are caught off guard. 

It's fine to not like accents but in general, whenever you hear an accent in a video game (or anything), it's important to not outright rule it as bad voice acting, because chances are that you're just not used to hearing that particular accent and once you do get used to it, you could be like "hey, this is actually pretty good".

(Note: this wasn't directed against you, i was just making a general statement as part of my views on voice acting.)

I was trying to remember which was which, because Morag is Scottish (even the name Morag is) while Nia is Welsh.

I've probably heard more Welsh or British people in general compared to the majority who played the game but even I have to question the casting choice.

I have to wonder how much of that is more due to the writing/script, though.

[Armagon]

1 hour ago, Edgelord said:

I was trying to remember which was which, because Morag is Scottish (even the name Morag is) while Nia is Welsh.

I've probably heard more Welsh or British people in general compared to the majority who played the game but even I have to question the casting choice.

I have to wonder how much of that is more due to the writing/script, though.

The casting makes a lot of sense imo. The various differences accents helps establish a bit of realism to the world as every nation has it's own accent. The Gormotti are Welsh, the Ardainians are Scottish, the Tantalese are northern English while Lefhterians are southern English (i haven't been able to fully identify which accents those two use but that's what i commonly hear people say they are) and Urayans are Australian. If every nation had the same accent, it would've broken the immersion a bit, at least for me.

I will agree that perhaps some of the casting could've been done better. Rex probably should've had a better voice actor, even if his current one nails the casual stuff. The voice acting among the various Rare Blades vary (you have some good ones like Finch's while others like Theory's are basically reading off the script, though it's worth noting that most Blades in general are voiced by or have American accents, which makes sense since they don't belong to any nationality in-game). But in terms of the overall voice cast, i think they did a good job, doing better than their Japanese counterparts. The Japanese dub is exactly what you would expect it to be whereas the English dub manages to fit most of the cast while also making everyone sound unique. It's something i hope the Xenoblade series keeps doing. 

 

Edited August 4, 2018 by Armagon

[Dragoncat]

34 minutes ago, Armagon said:

The casting makes a lot of sense imo. The various differences accents helps establish a bit of realism to the world as every nation has it's own accent. The Gormotti are Welsh, the Ardainians are Scottish, the Tantalese are northern English while Lefhterians are southern English (i haven't been able to fully identify which accents those two use but that's what i commonly hear people say they are) and Urayans are Australian. If every nation had the same accent, it would've broken the immersion a bit, at least for me.

Interesting! Now I wish Xenoblade 1 had nations like that with their own accents. I guess the closest they could've done is give each race a different accent. The Alcamoth peeps should sound different from the homs colony citizens. Sharla says Melia has "a silver spoon accent" but really she doesn't sound much different from anyone else imo.

And this is a joke, but picture Egil with a cheesy Italian accent acting like a mafia don saying he's going to make everyone on the Bionis "sleep with the fishes". Hilarious xD

Spoiler

He did make Mumkhar an offer he couldn't refuse. Give him his ravioli with a side of sprigatoni.

 

[Armagon]

4 hours ago, Dragoncat said:

Interesting! Now I wish Xenoblade 1 had nations like that with their own accents. I guess the closest they could've done is give each race a different accent. The Alcamoth peeps should sound different from the homs colony citizens. Sharla says Melia has "a silver spoon accent" but really she doesn't sound much different from anyone else imo.

It would've been interesting but i don't think Xenoblade 1 needed the different accents for the different nations. It didn't have the focus on different nations like Xenoblade 2 did.

[Dragoncat]

41 minutes ago, Armagon said:

It would've been interesting but i don't think Xenoblade 1 needed the different accents for the different nations. It didn't have the focus on different nations like Xenoblade 2 did.

They could've at least given the machina a different accent though, to make it clear that they were from their own world basically and rarely interacted with the other races. But yeah.

Edited August 5, 2018 by Dragoncat

[omegaxis1]

You know what bothered me the most about the voice acting in XC2? 

It's that at times, the voice acting is either unable to be heard or undertoned because of the music being played. The music or the lyrics being sung is so loud that I cannot hear the actual dialogue. 

[Dragoncat]

2 hours ago, omegaxis1 said:

You know what bothered me the most about the voice acting in XC2? 

It's that at times, the voice acting is either unable to be heard or undertoned because of the music being played. The music or the lyrics being sung is so loud that I cannot hear the actual dialogue. 

I guess that's why subtitles exist.

[omegaxis1]

1 minute ago, Dragoncat said:

I guess that's why subtitles exist.

They do for XC1 too, but I could hear it perfectly regardless. It's only XC2 that it messes it up.

Music can help add to the scene, but in XC2, I felt the music had done plenty of harm.

[Interdimensional Observer]

2 hours ago, omegaxis1 said:

You know what bothered me the most about the voice acting in XC2? 

It's that at times, the voice acting is either unable to be heard or undertoned because of the music being played. The music or the lyrics being sung is so loud that I cannot hear the actual dialogue. 

Is there no adjuster in the menus for something like this? (Once Prince Maxmillian has been impregnated with several machine gun clips, I will finally after 7-8 months be getting to this game at last, so in a couple days.)

XC1 had the opposite issue for me, well in the gameplay that is. Too many shouts overwhelming the good music. Adjusters of the three volumes: voices, sound effects, music, should be standard in any game nowadays.

 

As for the English accents thing, I'm perfectly fine with bringing in the entire English-speaking world for VAs, it'll make it less dull that way and open one's ears to diversity. So go ahead and bring in some Nigerians, South Africans, Belizeans, Indians, New Zealanders, and any other non-US/Canada native English speakers.

[Armagon]

On 8/5/2018 at 2:23 PM, omegaxis1 said:

It's that at times, the voice acting is either unable to be heard or undertoned because of the music being played. The music or the lyrics being sung is so loud that I cannot hear the actual dialogue. 

On 8/5/2018 at 5:12 PM, Interdimensional Observer said:

is there no adjuster in the menus for something like this?

There is. It was likely added in after people complained about the audio mixing in X. But yeah, if you think the music is too loud in XC2, you could always tone it down.

 

Edited August 6, 2018 by Armagon

[Johann]

On 8/4/2018 at 4:59 PM, Dragoncat said:

Interesting! Now I wish Xenoblade 1 had nations like that with their own accents. I guess the closest they could've done is give each race a different accent. The Alcamoth peeps should sound different from the homs colony citizens. Sharla says Melia has "a silver spoon accent" but really she doesn't sound much different from anyone else imo.

I'm think most of them are just using their native accents. Reyn's got a distinct London accent that the other characters don't have, and I bet you anything that if you did some sleuth work, you'd find he's a Londoner and that his Reyn voice is his normal speaking voice. The High Entia, especially Melia, do speak more slowly, clearly, and in a more proper manner, though that's almost certainly the direction they were given.

[Dragoncat]

10 minutes ago, Johann said:

I'm think most of them are just using their native accents. Reyn's got a distinct London accent that the other characters don't have, and I bet you anything that if you did some sleuth work, you'd find he's a Londoner and that his Reyn voice is his normal speaking voice. The High Entia, especially Melia, do speak more slowly, clearly, and in a more proper manner, though that's almost certainly the direction they were given.

Reyn's VA is named Jay Taylor and I thought that sounded like a surfer dude lol. Totally Reyn. He needs flame print swim trunks and shades. There's already fanart of him in shades but yeah. Meanwhile Dunban's VA? Rufus Jones. And Kallian is Rufus Wright. I think "Rufus" and think...neither of those dudes. It's kinda funny lol. I can't explain why I think the name Rufus doesn't fit, but I guess...I'd expect more of a posh high society Brit sounding name for both of them.

I guess Melia does have kind of a different sound, but it's still a British accent and not too different from the others. I guess it works and can still be called a "silver spoon accent".

I love how Alvis' voice has that pompous mystery to it, just like him in general.

[Scoot]

I don't know if good or bad voice acting is really something that can be put into words, it's more of a feeling. Just like it's tough to describe what good or bad music sounds like. Obviously a person can tell when something sounds like hot garbage, but actually describing it is harder.

I'm going to say that good voice acting is when the voice and the character blend seamlessly; where you actually hear the character speaking and not some actor reading lines. A good VA has to be able to realistically convey emotions, attitude, etc using only their voice. (One of the reasons why I don't care too much for Hollywood actors being put in more voice-over roles is because they don't go through the same sort of training. Sure, they might get some vocal coaching but it's not a much as someone who's made a career out of it. But that's getting a bit off topic.)