Obscure voice acting vs the norm

Scarlett Johansson

Scarlett Johansson

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So i was thinking about old game dubs. I'm talking Beyond Good and Evil, SB Melee, Fire Emblem, etc. None of them used the voice actors you see in almost every game today.

Look at Zelda. They didn't even have full voice acting. Originally they used grunts. Technically Sonic counts too except for the third recast

Mario even got on this trend by casting Kate Higgins as Pauline.

Then there's Shenmue 3 and Street Fighter 4 and 5 using the typical actors you'd see today.

What are your thoughts? Do you prefer when games used obscure actors? Or do you prefer current crop.
 
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If it's a game based on a licensed entertainment property, I generally want as many of the real actors as possible so we don't get "wrong-sounding Hurley" (in Lost: Via Domus, which I think was about 1/3rd real actors from the show and 2/3rds alleged "soundalikes").

If it's a AAA western game, yeah, sure, have a couple of big name actors, why not?

If it's a JRPG, I think I prefer no names although these days I just play with Japanese audio on should I be given the option.

If it's a racing game, I generally prefer "no actors" unless it's a rally game where the navigator's voice is helpful.
 
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I liked Lucasarts' stable of voice actors back in the day. Some were known professionals like Kath Soucie and Mark Hammill but some have passed away (Roy Conrad from Full Throttle), were bit actors (Julie Eccles from Dark Forces was also in the 3rd Indiana Jones movie as Indy's secretary) or just don't do many starring VO roles anymore.

Wasn't Halo's Master Chief a radio disc jockey or something? I know Jon St John was in radio before Duke Nukem (and you can still hear him in radio commercials now and then).
 
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I think getting big name VAs is more of a recent thing as games have become increasingly movie-like. At one point all games were text-based, so no VAs was the standard. The old games you listed are from when voice acting in games became technically possible, but at that time, games being completely text based was still the norm, and that design philosophy was still present even in games that did have voice acting. You could completely remove the voice acting from those games and they wouldn't suffer for it, so there was little incentive hiring professional regular VAs to do it when you could do it all in one afternoon with a rando off the street for a hundred bucks. As long as it was intelligible, the goal of getting voice acting was achieved.

Modern games are a lot more cinematic in nature, so it's harder to eek by without acting. It certainly would subtract from the experience to have a Sony interactive movie of a game that's entirely text-based, so there's more incentive to hire voice actors for those purposes. And I think that the reason why that has lead to regular VAs isn't so much about maintaining some level of quality from established and experienced actors (though that is a factor to consider), but rather that the modern game industry has made it possible to be a regular video game voice actor. You couldn't do it full time 20 years ago because the industry had neither the demand nor the budget for regular voice actors. If they wanted someone particular, they would hire someone from the TV or film industry to do it.

And that arrives me to my conclusion that I think it doesn't matter much. Regular VAs vs one-offs is done for the people making the game, not the people playing it. As long as the voice acting stays out of QUALITY territory, it's not that important who's talking. For what it's worth, I don't play the aforementioned movie games, which might benefit from regular actors in the same way that actual movies do.
 
Unless a VA has a super unique or distinctive voice (or they just plain can't be bothered to use anything but their real voice), I honestly can't really tell most of them apart and have to look them up. So it doesn't really matter to me all that much as long as they sound good.
 
To me it's just working with what you got and picking whoever is best for the job. I'd never heard of the dude and kid who played Kratos and Boy in PS4 GoW but they did damn good jobs so it's fine by me. On the other hand, no, they probably didn't need to throw Troy Baker into Arkham Knight for people to play it.

I'm fine with whichever though as long as whoever you get either does a really good job or such a legendarily bad job that we can mock them for years afterwards. There are so many "famous" voice actors that play all the little grunts and sounds in LEGO games. Nolan North was the PC in Fable 2; no dialogue. Mario is Paarthunax. I can only name one VA that I'm familiar with in Divinity 2 but most of the voice acting is great regardless, and welcome because it adds character to the... characters. And narration.

That being said, I don't really think actors or voice actors should be a selling point for most games anymore unless they're the "cinematic" ones, I guess. "Look guys, play Destiny! It has Peter Dinklage in it and you guys like that one show!" Yeah but... it wasn't good voice direction so you might as well have not included him (or any other famous people in that game save maybe Nathan Fillion).
 
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This is a topic I'm fascinated with.

Rockstar games do a great job of plucking obscure actors to voice their characters, and they generally do a fantastic job. GTA IV and V and both Red Dead Redemptions are good examples of this. All the major characters are played by virtual unknowns, which helps give them more personality. If they have any famous actors, they tend to play as the local populace so you won't recognize them.

Outside of Rockstar though, using unknown actors can either result in great performances or absolute shit. Max Paynes 1 and 2 (3 is Rockstar and doesn't count in this scenario), the original God of War trilogy, the Jak series, and the Sly series all have more obscure actors but they all turn in damn good performances. And on the other side of the coin, you have obvious examples like the early Resident Evils, the early 3D Sonic games, Mega Man X4 and X7, and Mega Man 8, all of which contain mostly unknown actors and are notorious for their awful acting.

To me, using established voice actors is like using an established family recipe for your dinner. It's safe, sometimes it turns out better than usual, and you get an easy baseline for quality. Meanwhile using obscure actors is like experimenting with something new and unproven; it can either result in something remarkable or something awful.
 
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I definitely like weirder, more obscure voice actors.

Like the fact that the game Haunting Ground has "Mo", the referee from the Nickelodeon gameshow GUTS.

I also love it when obscure voice actors go on to bigger things, like the actress who voiced Jennifer in Rule of Rose went on to voice Ciri in the Witcher 3, that's really cool.
 
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Dom Cruise said:
I definitely like weirder, more obscure voice actors.

Like the fact that the game Haunting Ground has "Mo", the referee from the Nickelodeon gameshow GUTS.

I also love it when obscure voice actors go on to bigger things, like the actress who voiced Jennifer in Rule of Rose went on to voice Ciri in the Witcher 3, that's really cool.
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Dude, Haunting Ground had no business having such good voice actors when it's... well, Haunting Ground. I wish that were extended to Fiona's VA, though. . . they kinda dropped the ball on that one.
 
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