What are you thoughts on Voice Acting?

[Faytless]

You definitely want to have an option to turn VA off.  Im the same with others here that it has to be truly amazing.  I played a project one with someone using a muffled mic.  It was inherently obvious that each actor recorded their own lines with different equipment.  It was extremely distracting.

 

[HexMozart88]

Yeah, like the others said, it needs to add to the game. As long as it isn't like Link: The Faces of Evil. But, if possible, do make an option to turn it off. 

 

[Silenity]

I personally reeeeally dislike most American voice acting in games. Some is ok but most of the time I either turn it off or switch to Japanese ones if that's available.


When done right it's pretty good but I don't see the appeal personally.

 

[F117Landers]

It looks like most everone has hit the high points on for/against, so I just want to point out this:


Some of your gamerbase may be hard of hearing. If you do voice acting, either incorporate subtitles (on by default) or accompany it with speech boxes.

 

[HexMozart88]

It looks like most everone has hit the high points on for/against, so I just want to point out this:


Some of your gamerbase may be hard of hearing. If you do voice acting, either incorporate subtitles (on by default) or accompany it with speech boxes.

I find it actually really annoying when there are both speech bubbles and voice acting because it's kind of distracting. Subtitles, sure. But, I think voice acting is the best in animated cut scenes or higher quality games. 

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

Voice acting on cutscenes without message boxes or subtitles or those where the player has no control over the speed of the subtitles is good for me, but if you put voice acting + control-able subtitles or the normal message boxes of RM, uhm no. People would most probably just skip skip your message boxes or read them a lot faster than your voice actors can speak making the voice acting either weird or useless.

 

[Clangeddin]

9 times out of 10, it's cringeworthy and makes you want to turn off the volume.


There, I said it.

 

[Oddball]

Gulpy gulpy had voice acting and its an rpg maker game. it worked. yet only because it was a joke game and the voice acting was hilariously terrible

 

[Aurelius]

I am going to incorporate voice acting for main cutscenes and main characters and conversations.

All other conversation with NPC's will be done like Shining Force 1 and 2. So when you talk to an unimportant NPC the text will write across the text box and there will be blips in high or lower tones depending on gender/age/type of character.

Like this.
 










If you go through any of those videos you'll notice each has a unique tone for when the text is written to the screen. Females have higher pitched tones, men have lower. etc.

Voice acting will cost you money though.

 

[SinSilver]

I usually don't matter. I can handle even the worst voice acting. The only game that really turned me off in the  voice acting department was Star Ocean: The Last Hope. 

 

[AestheticGamer]

Here's my take as someone who actually has an RPG Maker game with voice acting in it (Close Your Eyes).


Do it if you want to, but keep in mind what you're wanting people to experience in your game. In Close Your Eyes' case, I knew I wanted voice acting and to give it a weird mood to set people into a certain minds cape along with using original music and the like to strike an odd atmosphere. I also knew I wanted a sort of patronizing host figure for the game, and the role worked a lot better when I voiced it. Another key thing is the voicing gets progressively more sinister as the project goes on... this Steam review reflected what I was hoping the voice acting would achieve perfectly:


"And while I was on the fence for the game show host's voice at the beginning, his voice got darker and darker, until it sounded like a demon's low purr whispering in my ears. It was dreadful to listen to, so good on him. That man has some true talent at sounding horrfying."


It did pay off as the voice acting was heavily praised by a lot of people who played it, in fact it was one of the consistabtly praised elements. But I knew exactly why I wanted voice acting, what it should accomplish and tone, why it would add and not take away, and knew I and a friend (who voiced a female character) could deliver on it as we both have done voicing things in the past.


If you just want it and don't know how it fits with the overall vision of your project, I think it'll suffer for it.

 

[RavenBlueIndigo]

In my opinion, it all comes down to the quality of the voice acting. If you're going to do voice acting, try to find people with talent, or at least a naturally nice sounding voice. I voice acted my own game once, but I of course have the vocals of an angel, and anyone who says otherwise is DEFFOS a detractor/supervillain.

 

[HexMozart88]

I'm going to do my own voice acting too for my game (Normally I wouldn't but because I'm no good at spriting I have to make animated cutscenes, which are really emotional and need voice acting for the full impact). What bugs me though, is when people try to do voice acting and have such bad equipment, you can hardly hear what they're saying over the music. Sure you can have subtitles, but the poor quality just ruins the whole game. Everyone's telling me not to bother, but hey, I have good equipment, a creative mind, and a wide vocal range. I'm going to go for it. 

 

[TheRiotInside]

If you can do it well, go for it. I like the idea of quick little voiced bits in battle, like one of the party members say a thing at the start, they each make a few grunts when dealing/taking damage, and maybe a little victory quip from whoever dealt the final blow in the fight. Even without having any voice acting in the entire rest of the game, battle stuff wouldn't hurt (again, if it's done well!).

 

[HexMozart88]

@TheRiotInside Moghunter has a couple of scripts that can do that. Sometimes the sound quality is not so nice, but other times it fits quite nicely. 

 

[SLEEP]

Go for it!   It seems on the on-line a lot more amateur and hobbist voice actors are showing up with decent skill, you get what you pay for but the talent pool feels larger lately. Just, you gotta have subtitles and options like most people itt have already pointed out! You gotta!

 

[HexMozart88]

@SLEEP I will have subtitles, don't worry about it. 

 

[Hyacin]

I think it depends on what kind of game it is. VA fits nicely in visual novel styled games. I think a creepy voice in a horror game can be quite atmospheric, too.


In a RPG with many textbox dialogs most people will just want to skip these voices, me included. Actually during battle, some voice acted special-skill-line will be cool or when leveled up. Otherwise I would like to hear voice acting maybe only in video cutscenes/ non in-game graphic cutscenes. (assuming we are talking about good voice acting)