Voice Acting

Quality voice acting in Videogames needs only two things in order to work. The first is a fantastic narrative and the second is believable characters, especially at least one you can emotionally connect with. The rest is simply down to decent voice actors.

The three games that I think have the best voice acting has to be... I would say, Uncharted Drakes Fortune, Metal Gear Solid 2 and.... Half -Life. Definitely those three.

Uncharted Drakes Fortune (and I presume Uncharted 2) has literally blockbuster quality dialogue and voice acting. Everything about it is just completely incredible, from the way that every syllable just completely conveys all of the emotion, all of the empathy all of the sadness all of the joy that each character feels... and of course the Banter! From Drake and Sully firing witty quips regarding a "Tasty Little Barmaid" to the way Drake anxiously chants "No, No No!" when a grenade gets just that little bit too close to his person. Genius. It's just fantastic, and really raises the bar for videogame voice acting, proving that famous celebrities do not a good voice actor make.

Metal Gear Solid 2 may not seem like a good choice, but do you seriously think YOU could say half of the dialogue without just wetting yourself laughing, or killing yourself? Personally I honour the voice actors in Metal Gear Solid because they just ARE the characters. Their voices just match their appearances perfectly.

Half Life 2. It's the same as Uncharted. A bit stale at points, I would certainly agree, but apart from that slight niggle... well come on. Think about it. It's certainly as cinematic as the game around it!

Ingame Blabbering

I was playing Mirrors Edge today and I realised that Merc was just asking Faith loads of random questions and she just wasn't answering. And... I liked it. I think it was certainly more realistic than most games where you're character's getting shot at from every possible angle and he's reciting the entire works of Shakespeare (It's even worse on things like Gears of War where the persons not even there). It was just a welcome touch, a more realistic touch at that, to think that she's not responding all the time because she's concentrating and in a way it's almost as if Merc's asking himself the questions.

I do like the Voice acting on Mirrors Edge. It's not great, but it's certainly not bad either. Really reflects the stylistic features of the whole game, this sort of laid back attitude to everything but also this... I dunno almost obsessive desperation to uncover the truth. Brilliant stuff.

You know, I think I'll do a long blog tomorrow on Voice acting.