[Voice Acting] Impressions after a year of playing

[Ceyvel]

I'm going through the Jedi Consular storyline the third time, and have just completed the accident with Laranna Fain. The voice acting for this small mission was so impressive, I thought it was worth sharing. While Jedi Consular's story has, probably, most of dull moments, this particular episode is fantastic. I don't know who was the actress behind Laranna Fain's voice, but she did it so well, I for the first time felt very sorry for an non-player character and for what she had to endure because of the plague, even though there is literally only a few lines describing the background for this whole small episode. She spoke so sincerely it did make me believe she's in pain and suffering from the consequences of her deeds. Very impressive part of the story, in my opinion.

 

What memorable moments you have to share?

 

 

And before all the people trying to give the opposite opinion on Voice Acting, saying that it isn't as good as it should've been sometimes, - yes, I know, and I am sure Bioware knows, this topic isn't about it. It is about Voice Acting good parts, those we all want to see more in the future. So please bring the negativity elsewhere.

Edited March 3, 2013 by Ceyvel

[Alec_Fortescue]

I stopped playing Consular after Taris. Will come back to him later. No memorable stuff so far and I am rather dissatisfied with Nolan North's voice acting there. A lot of sentences sound... Different. like if he's making up one voice and then another one - very similar to Clone Wars announcer. Actually it does sound like someone else is "filing up the holes".

[Mercurial_Harpy]

My first toon was an Imperial Agent and almost all the voice acting in that story was spectacular. From the female IA herself, all of the companions, supporting cast at Imperial Intelligence and even your Chapter enemies.

 

Special call outs:

*Keeper, wow what a job he did; captured the role perfectly. The voice actor is Francis Guinan, who plays the Governor on the Encore series Boss. I was floored to find out he was born in Iowa,. He does an amazing British accent that would fool anyone.

 

*Kaliyo. I know people have "mixed" feelings about her being on the crew, but I think everyone can agree her voice acting was well done.

 

* Dr. Lokin, the most interesting man in the galaxy.

 

*Darth Jadus. The emotionless malevolence the Voice Actor was able to convey was nothing short of awe inspiring.

 

*Koethe and Hunter: Without spoilers, both of these guys were able to make me simultaneously despise them and feel for them.

 

In short, none of the agent story felt "called in" to me. Can't say that about all of the stories. I hate that I'm even considering it, but I enjoyed the story so much I'm contemplating my third agent. D@mn you, Bioware!

[tausser]

Having played thru all 8 calsses (as male toons only), I've found pretty much all the voice acting first class.

 

The one real exception to this, imo, is Tharan; not that's there anything wrong with his voice, per se, but how, with that voice and vocal inflections, we're expected to believe, according to the plot at least, that he's straight. I realize in RL not all straight guys sound like John Wayne or Vin Diesel but c'mon.

 

Then, a minor quibble I have is with the standard practice of having the actors record their parts alone which, in the obvious absence of a pronunciation guide, often leads to characters in a conversation pronouncing someone's name slightly differently.

 

An NPC on Nar Shaada is fresh in my mind - Rieelken, I think it is, variously pronounced as Reel-kin, Ree-el-kin and Rail-kin.

Edited March 3, 2013 by tausser

[AlaricSevGirl]

Bioware always has the best voice acting. They spend money on it and it shows. Each voice actor for the PC male and female for both classes are excellent (I only play female characters but I've heard all the male characters). First off, the female inquisitor, she's snappy. I have a Rattataki (sp) female inquisitor and have had a human one and that voice fits both characters so well. She's so sarcastic it's fun. "Look at me I'm a slave who turned a Sith, whoopie" lol. The male inquisitor is the same way. When I was playing with a friend who played the male inquisitor, I loved his who sarcastic personality. That would be my first two call outs.

 

Jennifer Hale as the trooper female, awesome job as always. She's phenomenal and I don't get the whole Mass Effect feel though I've played those games.

 

Most of the Sith do an excellent job of making you hate them. My Sith warrior so wants to kill Barrus (sp ..not in the mood to look it up) so badly. Every time he speaks to her, I tell my friends that I can't wait to kill him.

 

Keeper is impressive. The imperial agent. I love the female bounty hunter's "Oh yeah, well let me stick my gun in your face and see how you like it" voice. It just fits. Bioware had an idea of what they wanted and it just fits like usual. I mean who can forget Minsc, no one who's ever played Baldur's Gate.

 

Bioware if you're reading this, excellent job as usual. I don't think I've played a Bioware game that I didn't love the voice acting from Alistair to Garrus. The people you hire are excellent and worth the money they were paid.

[AsheraII]

There are some voice actings that raised the hairs on the back of my neck, specifically for one class, but overall, I really enjoyed the voice acting and think it was done very well.

[jankiel]

Male Sith warrior and inq are just perfect.

[SentinelDranoel]

1)I think the female smuggler stole the show for me. I have played through all 8 stories and she nails the voice of a free and idependent scoundrel. It was my main so I cannot isolate one moment in particular. I did enjoy the conversations with Risha and was classic BW to me; great character interaction.

 

2) I think the voice actress for the female Sith Inquistor had a regal tone to it that fits well to the dark side. Unlike the male Jedi Consular voice actor, she does not give a montonous performance. I cannot name one moment, I think she does a good job from begining to end. I do like the ending for the darkside.

 

3)Jedi Knight could have sounded more forceful and masculine for me, I expected more from the guy who does Snake. It fits for lightside choices though, where you have to be compasionate.

 

4)Jennifer Hale, nuff said. As far as I am concerned, she is a legend. I know she can playthe tough female soldier from begining to end. I always role her as a darkside/renegade character. She delivers in every action scene and the Coreila missions were a masterpiece. I really felt like I was in charge of the war there.

 

5)I never liked the Sith Warrior male voice choice because I feel it does not fit. It does not sound like the voice of a commanding Sith and I did not believe many of the performances. I will say the voice acting goes well with making jokes with Vette. I did laugh alot as I made jokes to earn affection for Vette. I may be biased though, Mission and Bastila were my favorite companions from KOTOR.

 

6)For some reason, the chemistry between the male Bounty Hunter and Mako sounded pretty well to me. I liked Mean Girls, so I knew Mako was going to be my companion of choice before the game was released. Lacey Chabert delivered.

 

Special shout outs go to characters that stood out to me i ncertain moments:

Thana Vesh during the Imperial Taris missions.

Darth Lachris in the bonus series of Imperial Balmora.

Darth Malgus in the False Emperor story.

The missions with Nadia in quesh and the one before she joins.

Watcher 2 during the final mission of act 1 for the Imperial Agent.

Edited March 3, 2013 by SentinelDranoel

[AsheraII]

1)2) I think the voice actress for the female Sith Inquistor had a regal tone to it that fits well to the dark side. Unlike the male Jedi Consular voice actor, she does not give a montonous performance. I cannot name one moment, I think she does a good job from begining to end. I do like the ending for the darkside.

I'll try to listen to the FemSinq that way next time I play, since that is precisely the one I hate most. To me, she simply sounds too careful or even reluctant for a slave. With the slave background, I'd either expect something very timid out of habit ("yes master, no master") or something exploring the bounderies of her newfound power ("You're dead by the time you discover you're underestimating me"). But instead, I find every single word carefully chosen and even more carefully pronounced.

 

Fem Agent and SmugFem are both more direct, and faster, with the agent being more matter of fact and clinical and the smuggler having a more temperate tone ("Oh, yes, indeed" vs "Hell, yes!").

 

So, so far, I've found all the voice acting very suitable to the character, except the Fem Inquisitor. But, I'll try the regal interpretation, maybe that'll help.

Edited March 3, 2013 by AsheraII

[chuixupu]

I rolled an Agent 3 times and I just adore all of the voice acting from all the characters in the story. Yeah, I know, I might as well just run around with an IA fanclub T-shirt or something. It seems like more people talk about Jo Wyatt as the fem agent, but I think Bertie Carvel is awesome as the male agent. The guy won an Oliver award, so he's no chump. My only complaint is that Agents don't ever get any particularly emotional moments, I guess that's just part of the character, but the undercover stuff is always funny (haha I can speak in an non-imperial accent).

 

Smuggler male is my second favorite. He's good at being the guy that you could almost see turning to look at the camera and saying "How did I get into all this crazy crap"?

 

The one voice that really grated on me is the female Knight. I don't know if it's the acting, just the voice, the lines, or what, but I found myself both bored and irritated at the same time and I couldn't continue.

 

I guess I'm not a really big fan of Nolan North either (and he plays my character in GW2 as well), he sounds less "real" and more forced to me. I suppose that character type is intended to be "larger than life" and "heroic" and that's perhaps what he was going for. He kind of grew on me, either though his voice just didn't fit the character I created physically.

[paul_preib]

Voice acting really makes a huge dent on my perception of a given storyline. The Bounty Hunter storyline for example (up through Belsavis) is really pretty direct without too much intrigue going on, but will take away a generally fond opinion of the story because I found the Voice Acting rather enjoyable.

 

The Consular (at least male consular) had rather bland voice acting to me and thus a storyline that had a decent amount going on plotwise I have a pretty easy time placing it squarely at the bottom of storylines I've played, making me yearn for my Inquisitor's voice to be coming out of that character's mouth.

[Terin]

Honestly, the only voice that I thought was bad was the Male Bounty Hunter (haven't played any females, though). Something about his voice just seemed over-the-top, like a very cartoonish sort of villain. I think part of the issue was also the dialogue itself; most of his lines just sound "nerdy", like they were overly thought-out to make sense in this fictional universe.

 

Which is a shame, since the Bounty Hunter was originally the class I was most excited about. Yet, something about his voice just felt hard to take seriously. I suppose it's because, while most characters feel pretty true to the Star Wars universe, he felt a little "toned-down". His voice seemed like he was trying too hard to "sound cool", instead of just being grim, hardened. And with his dialogue, it didn't seem particularly witty, and in fact I often felt like he was kind of... stupid.

 

Besides him, though, nearly everyone in this game did a phenomenal job. I definitely think there are a lot of instances where the dialogue could've been better (ie. most lines are really obvious and straight-forward, not enough subtle inflections and playing on words). Still, BioWare has always had a knack for strong voice-acting, and TOR is no exception.

[TheNahash]

My first toon was an Imperial Agent and almost all the voice acting in that story was spectacular. From the female IA herself, all of the companions, supporting cast at Imperial Intelligence and even your Chapter enemies.

 

Yep.

Female agent along with Male Inquisitor are the best voices for me.

The first because it's so damn sexy and the second because it has this..."something" that feels so evil.

 

*Kaliyo. I know people have "mixed" feelings about her being on the crew, but I think everyone can agree her voice acting was well done.

 

Agreed. And also, I never quite understood why people don't like Kaliyo. She can be a pain sometimes, I get that, but she is such a snarky character, she has some very witty lines, she's cool and she has that "no ********" approach to everything that I think makes her unique.

 

I definitely think there are a lot of instances where the dialogue could've been better (ie. most lines are really obvious and straight-forward, not enough subtle inflections and playing on words). Still, BioWare has always had a knack for strong voice-acting, and TOR is no exception.

 

I think that was done deliberately, tbh.

You must remember that this is an MMO, which is supposed to attract and keep a large number of players, a big portion of whom are not fluent in English and with the exception of German and French, English is the only option for the majority of players. So they probably had to tone it down enough to be accessible to them.

Edited March 3, 2013 by TheNahash

[KyaniteD]

Bratty female smuggler and sinister female warrior are my favorite VAs. They both match the created personality perfectly and along with the appearance I chose I ended up with two very authentic characters that are really fun to play and make immersion very easy.

[chuixupu]

Honestly, the only voice that I thought was bad was the Male Bounty Hunter (haven't played any females, though). Something about his voice just seemed over-the-top, like a very cartoonish sort of villain.

 

I felt the same way....kind of similar to my problem with the male Consular, but worse. I really like the female bounty hunter though. She's a lot more subtle and natural sounding. That's what I ended up leveling to 50 and I enjoyed it the whole way.

 

Which reminds me...Gault is awesome. I feel like I know his voice from somewhere else but none of his credits sounded familiar.

[NorseWest]

I felt the same way....kind of similar to my problem with the male Consular, but worse. I really like the female bounty hunter though. She's a lot more subtle and natural sounding. That's what I ended up leveling to 50 and I enjoyed it the whole way.

 

Which reminds me...Gault is awesome. I feel like I know his voice from somewhere else but none of his credits sounded familiar.

Gault was played by Daran Norris. He played GO-TO in KotOR 2.

[Doctoglethorpe]

I'm in the boat of Agent fans. I really think that whole class storyline was so exceptionally written and acted its kind of ridiculous compared to other class storylines.

 

Little in this game is less then mediocre though in terms of voice acting. Most of the time the acting comes across less interesting its due more to the writing then the acting itself. That and hearing voices too familiar can be damaging to immersion. I cant take male consular and female trooper seriously at all cause all I think of when I hear those voices are Drake and Shepard respectively. Thats why it can actually be damaging when a VA gets too popular. Except Steven Blum. For some reason he's immune to that issue, at least to me. Kath Soucie (female smuggler) also seems immune to it for me as shes been in quite a few memorable roles (I grew up watching rug-rats ^_^). I guess it might come down to if the voice is unique enough then its okay to hear it too much. No offense to Nolan North and Jennifer Hale, they are good actors but their voices are.. pretty "normal." If you know what I mean. Thats not to say they aren't good actors, just that their voices sound very average the same way a live-action actor can be good at performing without looking like a chiseled god of human beauty. I'd say voices like Blums are strung from the vocal chords of gods, thus perhaps being the cause of making him immune to the problem of over-saturation in media.

 

Of course not everyone thinks Hale or Nolan have become too over-saturated. Its just an opinion.

Edited March 3, 2013 by Doctoglethorpe

[Terin]

I think that was done deliberately, tbh.

You must remember that this is an MMO, which is supposed to attract and keep a large number of players, a big portion of whom are not fluent in English and with the exception of German and French, English is the only option for the majority of players. So they probably had to tone it down enough to be accessible to them.

 

True, but it still winds up feeling quite weak in many areas. It's hardly a deal-breaker or anything, but more clever dialogue can only stand to improve a game.

 

Also, one aspect I would personally most disappointed in is... the lack of humor. At least as a Jedi Knight, I felt like I was constricted to being *only* a "traditional jedi". That's why I loved Revan so much in KotOR; I was able to play him as a sarcastic, wise-cracking Jedi, and that's something I think would have made the character much more likeable. After all, once you learn HK-47's background and the origins of "meatbag", it actually seems to fit his personality better.

 

Having a few jokes and sarcastic lines would really be welcome, as it's the biggest reason I fell in love with the Inquisitor's voice-acting. The Jedi Knight's every word doesn't need to be dripping in sarcasm, but some light-hearted joking around would make him a lot easier to relate to.

[TheNahash]

Having a few jokes and sarcastic lines would really be welcome, as it's the biggest reason I fell in love with the Inquisitor's voice-acting. The Jedi Knight's every word doesn't need to be dripping in sarcasm, but some light-hearted joking around would make him a lot easier to relate to.

 

Yes, the truth is some of the storylines were a bit too serious, but then again they were supposed to be representations of Jedi and Sith lore, neither of which is really rich in humor

 

The smuggler storyline had some funny dialogues though.

And I always love the "Something wrong with the hologram? Or is your face supposed to look like that?" line on Black Talon

[Selek]

I'm surprised Baras hasn't had a mentioning yet. Definately the best voice actor in the game for me. I know he's hard to take seriously with his appearance, but he sounds sinister and scheming, and when he lets his emotions show you definately feel it.

[TheNahash]

I'm surprised Baras hasn't had a mentioning yet. Definately the best voice actor in the game for me. I know he's hard to take seriously with his appearance, but he sounds sinister and scheming, and when he lets his emotions show you definately feel it.

 

Personally, I couldn't take him seriously not because he's fat (which is what I've heard most people joking about) but because he was wearing that ugly headpiece and that ridiculous Sorcerer-looking armor.

Edited March 3, 2013 by TheNahash

[chuixupu]

Gault was played by Daran Norris. He played GO-TO in KotOR 2.

 

I know, I looked up his credits, and like I said, none of them seemed familiar to me. I haven't played KOTOR 2.

 

As think as far as random NPCs go, the guy that does Yudrass on Hoth always stood out. He appears as a couple of Republic side NPCs as well. Of course, Darth Malgus is has a very memorable voice.

 

My personal favorite voice might be Vector Hyllus (Ifan Meredith). Such an interesting accent.

Edited March 4, 2013 by chuixupu