That's a shame, that would have been a fun party trick at the sleepover.


Yay! Sleepover with Hyper!

* gets out box of makeup and glitter *

Let's make you look all pretty for the pillow fight :-).

Nobody ever stood a chance against my cat-like reflexes in a pillow fight *challenges everyone*.

How exactly do you mean this? And I don't ask in regards to gaming.


Umm... no, I don't know... can't imagine... like at all... please clarify. ;-P


I often think that the introduction of voice acting in games led to a bot of ruining the experience and immersion - before them you let your imagination free, you know, just like with books. If I find the voices annoying or the voice acting bad, and there's an option, I rather shut them up completely and have them speak in the voices of my imagination.

For instance, I'm playing through Indiana Jones. *thanks ddickinson for not stealing my piggy bank money after all*
I never had the talkie version and I've always imagined Indy speak in H. Ford's voice. So when I first started the GOG version, the actual voice of D. Lee felt awkward and out of character to me. I catch myself wanting to turn voices off, but I'm resisting and will play through at least once before doing it to relive my original experience.

Ha! You don't stand a chance, challenge excepted!

I found a picture that shows how it will end. I'm the one in green, I do tend to get a little carried away with pillow fights ;-).

In a pillow fight I'd just defend myself with my hand/arm. I'm such a pacifist.

I think that the problem with voice acting is that if it goes wrong, it can ruin the experience and immersion of the game. As you said, before the use of voice actors you made your own up, which never spoiled the game. But if the game uses an annoying voice (especially wimpy, whiny male voices), then it can spoil the game. Often I don't mind the voice acting, it's usually not perfect, but it does it's job. Very few games would be so badly voiced that I would feel the urge to mute the voice actors (Daedalic seems to be one of the worst for English voice actors, IMO).

Here's a special Star Wars themed pillow fight treat, just for you boys :-):

http://rs1img.memecdn.com/Pillow-Fight_o_138527.jpg

You mean Tidus of FF X? I liked his voice actor.

Two Worlds anyone?

I agree that voice acting can make or break immersion - a well crafted and well voiced character can add a lot to a game, while bad voice acting (like often it sound they just got some people from the street or from a first-year drama group) can spoil a lot - reminding you that you are playing a game made by imperfect people instead of exploring some fantastic world...

Another thing is that with the advent of fully voiced games text volume has been curtailed considerably - understandable since most people read a lot faster than the average person speaks, and if you have "slow" characters talking and all the little pauses for drama...
Even I wouldn't want to play a game like PS:T with full voice-over, no matter how great the actors delivered their lines.
While I certainly love a good and well-told story I tend to get impatient if there is half an hour of exposition (dialogue after dialogue after dialogue...) before the action finally starts.

Man, you aren't kidding. I get that games don't often have access to stellar voice actors because of reasons, but it baffles me just how many of them think its ok to cast someone who sounds like they've just recently started recovering from some kind of head trauma or something.

Also, PILLOW FIGHT! *dives behind couch, tosses pillow*

I was referring more to characters like the main guy from The Whispered World. I was not too keen on Tidus. I never hated the voice exactly, but I wasn't that keen on it. The character fitted into the whole effeminate Japanese man thing they seem to keep doing, which is something I have never been a fan off - always whining and bitching. I preferred Auron's character and voice actor a lot more. Even Rikku was more manly than Tidus.

I didn't stop me enjoying the game though. It was the last FF game I played, I lost interest after seeing the eye candy FFX-2 game and all the cash grab spin off games.

You are free to try the trick tonight. :-DD

And if you think for a moment that I'm intimidated by that glitter stuff and your intentions, think again. ;-P


A little? Understatement of the month. ;-D


Obligatory question - which one is you? ;-P


I tend to play games from German studios in German, and have yet to play any again in English.

I don't mind as much if it's a small company, one that maybe can't afford decent voice actors. But when it's big companies with lots of money, then it gets more annoying. But with regard to Tidus, I think they picked a voice that matched the character, an annoying, wimpy, whining, bitching, and somewhat nasty guy. Why nasty? Well he blamed his dad for the fact that his mum completely ignored him, when in fact it was his mother's choice. When watching the cutscenes you see her more than happy ignoring Tidus, it's only the dad's intervention that made her go to him. All his dad wanted was for his son to be strong, not some wimpy man (which he ironically became), whereas his mother was just a neglectful parent. There is an actual name for this, but I can't remember what it is, where we turn our anger away from the person who deserves it and on to another.

I read somewhere (can't find the link right now) that when Eidos Montreal received the first recordings for Adam Jensen (Deus ex Human revolution) the volume was too low and it didn't sound right. But when they increased the volume and listened to it again they immediatelly knew that was the voice they wanted.
What I want to point out is that it takes both acting and a good sound engineer to make a good voice-over.

Plus this guy originally comes from Greece and I'm proud of it. Here's an interview of Elias Toufexis

Ooooooh, we're talking about bad voice acting!
Look at THIS! (Warning: contains MASSIVE spoilers about Mega Man X4.)