There’s something bothering me about Guild Wars 2 and it’s a stumbling block many game developers trip over, and one which is undoubtedly a very expensive problem to rectify…
Age of Conan and Rift are two examples of how not to use voice acting. Poor dialogue, even worse actors and a lack of emotion or direct animation from the character you’re talking to shatters any immersion you may have initially had. In contrast and moving away from MMOGs, Team Fortress 2’s ‘shorts’, Portal 2 and Half life 2 are examples of arguably the finest voice acting in any video games (although Bioshock and Uncharted 2 offer stellar performances).
Valve evidently have the resources (unlike ArenaNet) and industry might to be able to source the best voice talent possible and produce dialogue to the highest standard, but while this is undoubtedly a factor, much of the beauty in their voice acting I believe stems from marrying voice to face.
The intimacy of a limited game cast, so meticulously realised by Valve, allows them to craft an individual with personality, complete with fears, tastes and attitudes. The generic nature of an MMOGs ‘cast,’ such as the dozens of irrelevant non player characters you encounter, removes any prospect of this craftsmanship being replicated. Inevitably, as opposed to sourcing actors fitting to the character (often so lovingly created in a single player scenario), MMOG developers seemingly draft in voice actors to record dialogue, before applying said dialogue to an appropriate yet forgettable character. Coupled with poor to non-existent lip synching and animations which lack natural conversational movements and hand gestures, the recipe is one that leaves a truly sour taste.
Whilst it isn’t financially feasible to have all characters within an MMOG delivering dialogue to the standard of single player game, it is acceptable to straddle the use of text and voiced dialogue, reserving the use of recorded speech for prominent characters only. The recent reveal of the norn starting area (see 7:55 onwards) highlighted two things within Guild Wars 2. The first was that the voice acting, while functional, is falling far short of the exceptional standard ArenaNet are expecting. The second is that the lack of lip synching and polished conversational animation is distracting and at times poor.
It would be wrong of me to conclude that this is an example of the final product; post-processing effects on all recorded voices and a final sweep of animations may rectify some of the issues, but the delivery of lines will fundamentally remain unchanged between now and launch, unless ArenaNet return to the sound studio with a group of actors in tow.
The recent blog entry showcasing the vocal talents of the Charr has further highlighted my concerns. Many in the Guild Wars 2 community are obviously excited at hearing the sound of the ruthless feline-like race, and rightly so, yet there still remains a feeling that actor and character are disjointed. Were you to close your eyes during the Charr recordings you may, like me, picture a well spoken actor attempting to sound gruff, as opposed to the ‘Charr’ coming through naturally. That isn’t to say I expect snarling slavering beasts, but the delivery of dialogue and voices used must surely be as ‘normal’ as possible, to the race being portrayed. Half Life 2’s Vortigaunt are a prime example of a vocal-visual pairing matched to perfection, where Valve haven’t attempted to force a vocal we assume would fit the race.
Another matter which highlights the short comings of Guild Wars 2’s dialogue sequences, and something Guild Wars 1 also suffered from, is the lack of cohesion between those holding conversations. It is evident in many games when dialogue has been recorded separately, only to be spliced together at a later time to appear as a functioning conversation. Many developers choose this method as the easiest and most cost effective approach, as it ensures each actor completes their lines, often at the developers convenience.
However and moving away from the MMOG again, in games such as Batman: Arkham Asylum for example, it is apparent that the conversations have been ‘coupled’ as opposed to being recorded in a genuine exchange, creating a sometimes stilted discussion that doesn’t flow as freely as it should (most noticeable within the character biography recordings). Uncharted 2 in contrast has snappy, free flowing banter that’s not only held aloft by a reasonable script (from my experience of it) but results in a genuine exchange between actors.
Whilst I may yet be proved wrong, the dialogue sequences revealed by ArenaNet so far leaves much to be desired in both the direction from ArenaNet, for accepting what is arguably some poor voice acting, whilst simultaneously failing to secure consistent acting talent of a high enough calibre to deliver dialogue that does the game justice. Most importantly though, by ‘coupling’ conversations from pre-recorded dialogue (which I very much suspect they have done) conversations between player and/or NPCs, irrespective of the actors involved, are at times awkward.
That isn’t to say all acting is poor, because it isn’t (see Wild and Natural), but if we are to move the genre forward as much as ArenaNet hopes, then surely placing emphasis on what is evidently a pivotal aspect of the game must be greater than what it currently is.
Thankfully even with this criticism, ArenaNet have already achieved a standard far greater than any MMOG on the market. However, this still doesn’t quite wash away the fear that if Guild Wars 2 were to fall down on anything, money firmly remains on its voice talent.
Email the author of this post at lewisb@tap-repeatedly.com
Great article, Lewis, and you make a key point about conversations being stitched together. This is most often the case.
Uncharted 2, however, used the same actors to voice their characters as to play them on the mocap stage; and they did it all like you would a play or movie scene: the actors were all there at the same time, performing their roles in their pingpong mocap suits. The result is some of the cleanest, smoothest, most natural dialogue you tend to see in games.
Too many developers treat voice acting like they do instruction manuals – necessary but wasteful. Companies like Bethesda hire great actors and don’t bother to direct them, resulting in Hollywood stars who often phone in their performances. Others just pop the janitor into a sound booth and demand that he or she “act.”
Listening to some of those Charr recordings was physically painful. Not just the acting, but the writing as well. Games are multimedia! When will all developers recognize that “multimedia” also means putting your best foot forward across media, whether it be interactivity, video, or audio?
As ArenaNet has stated before, these snippets of conversation are generally what you will overhear wandering around a city. They are not meant to be entire conversations. And, as Lewis mentioned, the post-processing will enhance them so that everyone doesn’t sound human.
Keep in mind that in deciding to not use CGI, ArenaNet has not included animated NPCs. While some may feel this detracts from the immersion, keep in mind that it also ensures that no monthly subscription or ridiculous cash shop offerings will be necessary.
You may someday see an MMO with entirely “real” NPCs, but considering that there is a limit to what a “player” will pay for a game, I don’t think it will be anytime soon.
I agree that Valve and Bioware are leading the industry in the right direction when it comes to voice acting. Regardless of genre, games that include voice acting need to put a full effort into producing a quality product. Given that MMOGs do have more voices to juggle than other games, epic movies have more actors than monologues: the quality of the acting is what is important, not the quantity. Post-processing can’t fix garbage. Developers need to adhere to the “garbage in, garbage out” philosophy rather then expecting post to make the mediocre appear epic.
ArenaNet has a history of bad voice acting, beginning with the original Guild Wars, that has not improved. I think the genre helps them keep their low standard. In the fantasy genre (not necessarily the MMOG space) bad acting is the rule rather than the exception. For every Lord of the Rings Trilogy you get 10 or more Clash of the Titans quality schlock fests. Fans eagerly devour this tripe. Aside from that, the quality of the writing at ArenaNet is great if you’re hoping for a story outline or some lore notes; but it’s dismal if you want a completed story or respectable dialog. Starting with such source material you can’t hope for any actor/director combination that is going to fix the garbage you’ve got going into your work.
What Valve in particular gets right is taking the time to champion story from soup to nuts. That’s why the Vortigaunt acting works so well. There are lots of games that have aliens speaking gibberish, a rare few have emotive, engaging gibberish.
Every time I hear Guild Wars 2 voice acting I’m reminded that they haven’t spent as much time crafting a stable of writers as they have spent assembling a band of concept artists. There is no shortage of writers in the world. I’ve been in writing workshops with better writing than that exhibited in many Guild Wars 2 voice overs. Hopefully, ArenaNet will eventually follow the Bioware/Valve model and join the ranks of developers who are offering balanced, high-quality products.
Uncharted 2 is probably the finest example I can think of, largely for the reasons correctly outlined by Matt. The dialogue is helped by a good story and an excellent script, but the voice acting has an obvious flow to it that you can only achieve when one person talks directly to another. To have Nolan North and Emily Rose, Claudia Black etc actually acting together in unison gives Uncharted 2 a distinct feel, and I think you can spot the difference a mile off.
I’m really hoping that L.A Noire nails the voice acting, because when you place such strong emphasis on characters it shows up even more when they’re not up to task. Heavy Rain just about got away with this by the skin of it’s teeth, but I think Rockstar need to make sure they get this right. Particularly as reading characters – from the dialogue to their facial expressions – is so key to the detective gameplay. I’m trying to enforce myself on a media black out for L.A Noire so I’m not sure how they’re doing so far!
Nice article, but it fails in one aspect…
You keep mentioning the visual/voice aspect that has to fit, and that’s totally true. But most of the obvious voice stuff we got this far is from the blog and are some voice clips cut/pasted together without any visuals of the character talking.
If I listen to the TF2 video without ever seeing the character before I would find it a cheap dialoge of some Russian accent tough but dumb type of guy. Seeing the video with it and knowing the visual characteristics of the guy, it now looks a funny and well fitting voice over.
My point is. You haven’t seen the Charr’s fitting those voice over lines, and yes your imagination might have had another idea. Fact is that if you get the visuals with it the part of your imagination that would have chosen another voice isn’t active anymore cause you see a character (also different probably than your own imagination) with the voice the creators of the game has chosen (and hopefully that will fit).
Also you compare apples with oranges in terms of games. GW2 is an MMO with hundreds of charcters having voice overs and i heard they have soundrecordings equal to 60 full featured movies…
I like quality about quantity but if you do voices you have to do them all. And I take the little dip on quality then… it still sounds outstanding. But indeed, one better than the other.
My biggest concern is the facial animations in the cut-scenes going with some of these voice over lines.
While you have hit spot on on some of the issues with VA in an MMO, I feel that you are demanding more than one can ever hope or expect to get. While you said yourself that “it isn’t financially feasible to have all characters within an MMOG delivering dialogue to the standard of single player game”, I think you underestimate the truthfulness in that sentence. In Portal 2, which has some of the best VA I’ve ever seen, you have only a fraction of the number of characters. You will find as many different characters in one bar in GW2 as in the entire game Portal 2. It’s ridiculous to expect the quality to be anywhere near that of a single player game.
That said. you are correct that the VA isn’t anywhere near perfect. However, if you take a look at the GamesCom footage where the player walks through Dicinity’s Reach the chit-chat in the background doesn’t feel awkward at all. I suspect that if you go and zoom in on the faces of the people holding the conversation the lip sync probably isn’t that good, but then that would be ridiculous to expect.
Lastly, ANet has stated that the post-processing of norn voices (don’t know about charr) isn’t finnished, neither is the lip sync. They said that we should rest assured that it will be improved, but stressed that they do have a limmited budget and can’t spend too much funds on VA.
tl;dr? You can’t expect an MMO to have VA and lip sync anywhere near the level of a single player game such as Portal 2. The game is still in pre-beta, and ANet have pointed out that what you are complaining about is some of what they are currently working on.
As expected, the fanboys lose all objectivity and cry foul.
I love Guild Wars; but, suck is still suck.
I think you muddied the waters quite a bit by including the background conversations. I’d rather have seen you break down the human/norn VO’s we do have.
Anyway, I agree that it is not phenomenal, but I disagree with the grounds.
Comparing it to a Valve game is not reasonable (I am not that familiar with Uncharted). Valve VOs are the ultimate in showing not telling and being part of the story. MMOs with VOs are still telling. It’s similar RPG text, now with voice.
With that alone, I don’t see how that could be phenomenal. A better comparison would be the plethora of BioWare games that have the similar telling (not showing) text that pushes vast amounts of information along in a RPG/quest-like manner. For me, even the high quality BioWare VOs in ME and DA were neat, but I ended up speed reading ahead of the sound and skipping all the hard work. It was good, but at the end of the day it’s still telling.
I’ve a good friend who does voice work. He also writes and produces radio spots (AKA adverts, don’t hate, appreciate). He’s quite good & has won awards.
I’ve seen some of the “scripts” he’s gotten for games…. but I’ll let him tell you in his own words what he deals with:
http://johnbell.yolasite.com/resources/john_bell_interpretations.mp3
I wonder why the 2nd comment from @Brown Fang gets accepted when it does nothing more than flame people who have a partially other opinion than the blog poster.
If comments are allowed, and are posted in a constructive way to contribute to the discussion… then answer me why you (Brown Fang) have to call people “fanboys” only because they have a partial different opinion on the subject. To put it in your words: a weak comment, is still weak.
@Lewis B, If you should decide to clear up your comments to show only ones related to the discussion at hand, feel free to delete this one as well.
Be nice, people.
While I understand that some of what was recorded may represent sideline comments heard while the player is on the street, I’d like to add this…
“I saw a mudcrab the other day.”
“Disgusting creatures. I avoid them myself.”
…yeah.
There are three culprits in the problem Lewis describes – directors (most guilty), writers (second most), and actors (guilty only of being poorly directed and having bad lines to say).
There’s a classic engineering term – “garbage in, garbage out.” If you feed your actors crappy lines, crappy lines will spew from them. Meanwhile, if you lack a director capable of drawing genuinity from your actors, you’ll get what you see in the GW2 lines I heard. To me, who has done voice acting and who has directed the same, that sounds like talented actors who weren’t directed properly, though the bombast of their lines certainly doesn’t help.
Of course, one thing with voice acting: people are much more likely to comment on the bad stuff than compliment the good. Which probably strengthens the view that “great” voice acting is unnecessary, a wrongheaded view that hopefully will change soon.
Thank you for all your comments, it seems to have raised quite a mixed response from the fans, in terms of those who do and don’t love the voice acting.
Many have rightly recognised that single player and massively multiplayer games are different beasts entirely (or apples and oranges!), and whilst true, parallels between the processes for creating scripts, drafting in actors and recording dialogue remain one and the same. The spiralling costs of developing any game, irrespective of genre, places a greater emphasis and importance on the developer to manage their budget to a much higher degree.
What is evident within an MMOG is that creating high calibre scripts and utilising competent voice actors still remains some way off centre stage. Inevitably, I suspect ArenaNet had a budget (broken down into every element of the game) and what has materialised from that and the importance they placed on it is voice acting which is good, at times bad, but not great.
Whilst I also appreciate that much of the dialogue revealed so far is from non player characters you will encounter in bars, markets and side streets, I see no reason as to why we should accept anything less than the highest standard. Although you may only encounter these individuals for moments, as opposed to prolonged periods, they still play an important part in creating the ambience of an environment.
The norn starting area, as I’ve linked in my article, is a prime example of the voice acting being at a much lower standard than I and I would hope ArenaNet expect. Again, I’ve referenced that final animations and post-processing may amend this somewhat, but the animations, delivery of lines and the voices (which absolutely do not suit the characters) is incredibly off-putting.
From a personal standpoint I would much prefer for all primary characters to be fully voiced with a more refined script and better direction from ArenaNet. As for the remaining NPCs within the game world, having them greet the player vocally (with a multitude of pre-recorded greetings) and saying good bye to the player vocally, but having the remainder of the conversation as text based would suit me and no doubt many others. Not only does this significantly reduce the cost of recording dialogue for many of the quests, but would also free up funds to improve voice acting from more prominent members of the games cast and in many instances remove ‘coupling’ of conversations; which I really do dislike.
In terms of animation, I agree that to have all characters lip synced would not only be time consuming but incredibly costly. What I was attempting to convey, though, was that at the moment it appears little effort has even been placed on trying to improving this although I suspect much of this falls at the feet of the game engine ArenaNet are using. I may not be possible.
Finally, I’d just like to add that I am happy with the voice acting in comparison to a) the original Guild Wars and b) every other MMOG on the market. It isn’t perfect and ArenaNet have clearly taken some steps to improve upon their past failings but y in contrast to the great strides ArenaNet have made in other elements of the game and genre, I cannot help but feel scripting and acting has taken a back seat.
Couldn’t agree more Lewis. I’ve spoken about this in the forums and in my First Impressions of The Dream Machine: if you can’t do voice acting properly, for whatever reason, avoid doing it. It’s a risky and resource hungry endeavour, and if it goes wrong then it’s a total waste and one that has a significant impact on the final product/experience.
What I want to know is when exactly did it become okay to have beef with a game because you had to read the dialogue instead of listen to it? When did reading become such a chore? I witness so much negativity towards games which have no voice overs, and more alarmingly from ‘critics’. It’s as if the plebs who can’t stand subtitled films have found their way into critical gaming circles.
While I admit to taking a somewhat gruff tone at times, it is not my intention to troll or flame. After writing a novel for my first post, I figured short and to the point was the way to go, being that I had already articulated my position.
As Steerpike and Lewis have pointed out, the ArenaNet voice over situation can not be laid solely at the feet of the actors because writers and directors must be responsible for their input. As I stated before, I personally think part of the blame must also be placed on fans of the genre who enthusiastically accept poorly executed fantasy productions (films, games, television shows and books). If fantasy fans did not accept dinner theatre quality fantasy and pay good money for it there wouldn’t be quite as much of it available.
I do not accept the argument that the quantity of dialog required for a MMOG forces developers to rely on lower quality merely based on fiscal concerns. Taste can not be bought and ability is rarely indicated by price tag. Hollywood films are shining examples of the fact that paying Robert De Niro or Johnny Depp millions to perform in a poorly written, poorly directed, blockbuster does not make a great film. It also proves that independent films that hire stars and unknowns at scale or less can yield equal or even superior results. Great creatives exist at all levels of the salary spectrum, in all fields, because there is a capitalistic tendency to rely on proven artists more than unknown quantities.
I posit that if developers raised their internal standards for writing, directing and performance (voice and animation) they could find creatives within their budgets that are capable of producing Pixar quality stories, regardless of which genre they operate in. Valve is making strides in that direction (qv. the writing in Portal 2). Bioware, Naughty Dog and Double Fine are also doing good work. ArenaNet is just one of the many companies that are not playing in the same league as those companies and it has nothing to do with how many characters they have in their cast. It’s all about who is crafting the story and what quality standard is accepted in the development process. Of course, as Gregg points out, telling a great story in a game can be done in text and should be done in text when the resources for voice work are not available. As Limbo and Flower prove, story can even be delivered visually without text or voice over.
What Brown Fang really brings up here is a traditional problem with video games – namely, that while gamers will complain about a bad feature such as bugs or voice acting, they rarely follow it up with a refusal to buy such products. That means developers and publishers don’t have any real impetus to do things right.
Even if GW2’s voice acting were completely appalling I can’t imagine anyone would not buy it on those grounds. Of course, that doesn’t mean devs should intentionally produce bad work. Alas, voice talent is often not a priority.
Heck, writing is often not a priority. You wouldn’t believe how many titles are in their final stages of completion before some freelance writer is called in to shove a story up the game. One notable thing about Valve, Bioware, Naughty Dog, Double Fine, and so on is that the story comes first – or, at least, earlier – and the game is crafted around it. This can make a big difference!
I agree that the voice work in Uncharted 2 is great. I bet a lot is missed by the player. Last night we got to the top of a hotel and there was a pool. I jumped into the pool for fun. Drake started playing Marco Polo and then when he climbed out he said “fish out of water”. We had to laugh.
Oh that bit is brilliant Pokey 😉
I am actually wondering where so many people get their objective knowledge of good and bad voice acting from. Until now I found in none of the scenes I saw of Guild Wars 2 that voice acting (in contrast to animations for example) disturbed me a lot. Same for the dialogues themselves, though as a German I might not be the right person to judge English texts. What I want to say is that some people should probably point out the subjectivity of their statements a bit clearer, or at least give some criteria of what makes up good voice work. And please do not answer with “Come on, everyone hears it”, as it is at least everyone minus me.
In addition, I must clearly object the ‘solution’ presented here to cut away most of the voice work for minor characters, thereby enhancing the budget and quality of the major character’s spoken texts (and yes, I do believe that in general there is a positive correlation between budget and quality). This is an absolute no-go for me, as the constant switching between text and words in my opinion destroys any immersion whatsoever way faster than any poor voice work could. Just recently I revisited Drakensang, which I had not played for quite a while, and when I discovered that only a small part of the game was voiced I put it away and was done with it. Therefore, having to choose between little-but-good and all-over-the-place-but-bad voice acting I definitely prefer the latter. Which is only my personal opinion, though.
I think by nature any editorial that criticizes something as subjective as voice acting can be assumed to be only the opinion of the author. Of course, at the same time, the ability to recognize poor acting (versus mediocre acting) is a skill, like acting itself. Not everyone has it, and more relevantly, some are more tolerant of the bad or mediocre stuff than others.
Normally I would agree that there is a correlation between budget and quality, but many games have proven that false. David Duchovny’s appalling performance in XIII is a good example. He clearly phoned in his lines because he didn’t think it was a worthwhile project. He was terrible. Similarly, if Bethesda hadn’t blown 90% of their casting budget on Liam Neeson and Malcolm McDowell in Fallout 3 (or Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean in Oblivion), they might have been able to hire a few more actors to voice the thousands of other lines of dialogue in the games. Instead nearly all that dialogue was spoken by the same four or five actors, and that destroyed immersion (for me) more than cutting to text would have.
Now, Bean did a good job in Oblivion, and so did Patrick Stewart to the degree that he’s in the game for about five minutes. It was money well spent in some ways, but may have not been in the best interests of the project. Massive’s decision to cast Alec Baldwin in World in Conflict, meanwhile, made a huge difference. Baldwin was doubtless expensive but his performance was so good that it really made a great game even better.
In any case, I’d assume it goes without saying that all acts of criticism are subjective things. No one can claim to be the final authority on voice acting, but much like obscenity, I tend to be able to recognize it when I see it.
[…] This week I felt that ArenaNet went a little softer than usual. Whereas the norn community stock was lower before their norn week, the charr have always been a favorite. Especially since Colin wants to play one. The week started with a few interviews, and then Devon Carver wrote a piece on the charr starter area. I really liked the piece which both touched on the iterative process and charr iconics, but I was pretty disappointed we didn’t get a single screenshot of the area. It seems odd to write a whole article on an area but only show concept art. Scott McGough followed up with the race week vignettes (including background audio clips). I really like these articles because they provide nice bite size bits of lore with a media sauce. This sparked heavy criticism on the voice acting end over at Tap Repeatedly. […]
Undoubtedly there have been games that spent a lot of money on voice acting and still failed to deliver good quality (defined as “quality a majority of that part of the community who considers itself to have a particular skill by which voice acting can be judged, or even a majority of the community as a whole, approved”); therefore I wrote that *in general* there is a positive correlation between quality of voice acting and budget.
This belief of mine results from the assumption that better voice work is facilitated by, among other things, better actors (not equal to better known actors) and more time, and that both tend to be more expensive than worse actors and less time. This assumption might not be true in every case — I am sure there are games which have been well voiced with bad actors in a short amount of time — but I believe it to be the rule rather than the exception, and examples are unlikely to threaten that belief on my part.
By the way, I have the feeling that the last part of your last sentence is more or less equal to “I tend to be able to recognize it when I recognize it.”
I’ve just got to follow up to your comment, Steerpike: Baldwin’s voice overs throughout World in Conflict is the most pleasantly surprising (I had no idea he was cast when I began the campaign) narrative I’ve seen in any game.
I haven’t begun Uncharted 2 yet, but if it’s anything like the first game I’ve no doubt it would also be great. Playing the first was such an enjoyable, easily digestible adventure. It was like what I imagine Indy 4 to have been, were it good.
The “know it when I see it” approach is probably the closest we can get to defining such a subjective thing as taste. Still, there is, in most world cultures, a socially acceptable mean that most people follow. For example, most Americans admit that fart jokes are in bad taste, whether or not they find fart jokes funny.
Language localization issues aside, I think most English speakers would agree that Uncharted games sound good. Most should also admit the Duke Nukem games sound closer to fart jokes. The fact that Duke Nukem fans love the way those games sound speaks more of the standards of that audience than it does the quality of the voice acting.
Nuance and enunciation easily get lost in translation with a lot of other social aspects of language. Still, I did not need to know French to know I loved the rhythm of the dialog in Amelie. Pedro Almadovar is not a great cinematographer because the world speaks Spanish. As Milan Kundera’s global fame attests, good writing coupled with masterful translation can be understood and appreciated by everyone on the planet.
If developers find it too expensive to deliver quality stories that work on the same global level as translated fiction then they need to get out of the story business completely and stick to the game business. Let us not forget that the greatest and eldest games (Go, Chess, Risk, Monopoly, Clue) don’t have stories because they are games. You can tell stories about them; but, you can’t play through a story with them.
Video games have a long history of games without stories (Mario Bros, Tetris, Sonic the Hedgehog). Where MMOGs go astray more than shooters is that they are based on source book games like Dungeons and Dragons and military simulations that are built entirely around stories. Then their developers focus more on game mechanics and graphics than story. That is great if you have a shooter with some cut scenes or a fighter with a thin plot thread; but, it doesn’t deliver the story foundation that role playing and engaging adventure worlds demand.
Audiences can be expected to accept bad writing and acting in a shooter or a fighter because story has nothing to do with spending an hour shooting or beating things. As story in those games is like a floor length dress on a stripper: cute and unnecessary. Story and acting become important when a game becomes more complex than whack-a-mole. Psychonauts, Uncharted and Half-Life get that and use it to their advantage.
And with that, I’ve finished novel number 3 on this post. I can’t help it. I’m loquacious.
😉
Well, what you point out is more or less what I wanted to express in my last posts: The quality of voice works is essentially indeterminable — and must therefore be thought of as the average of all opinions on that topic, which might be similar to what you call the “socially acceptable mean”. Ultimately, the issue comes down to voice acting disturbing someone or not, and whereas I see a lot of disturbance on this blog, I can see little to no anger about the voice acting of Guild Wars 2 *in general* in the broader community (although admittedly the recently revealed Charr chatter seems not to be appreciated by many people, maybe even a majority). A bit of relativism is good when discussing especially subjective topics, that is basically all I wanted to say.
It did not become entirely clear to me, though, why exactly MMORPG developers should, in your opinion, either “get out of the story business completely” or “deliver quality stories that work on the same global level as translated fiction”. Why should MMORPGs not reside somewhere in between world class and Duke Nukem? After all, even flawed as they are they seem to make a lot of people happy or at least give people the feeling that they are making them happy, and I can see nothing wrong with that. If they do not “deliver the story foundation that role playing and engaging adventure worlds demand”, then they might deliver other things, maybe not just as transcendental but nonetheless valuable, and for them to deliver these things it might be essential that they have a story which needs not be perfect, but of a certain quality so that it can be appreciated by a certain number of people. That is not to say someone is forbidden to have high expectations, but they should not generalise them too much.
By the way, I did not know Mr Kundera before, but thank you for the hint.
The tenses in my previous comment were quite bizarre.
Just wanted to ask…
> “I saw a mudcrab the other day.”
> “Disgusting creatures. I avoid them myself.”
Is there something particularly bad about those lines? Or was it the voice acting?
Forgive me, for I have no taste 😛
The Charr lines didn’t seem particularly bad to me, except that perhaps it sounded too human (which post processing may fix) and the timing between some lines seemed to be off.
I have very little interest in this game overall other than from a voice acting stand point. I’m a voice actor who splits his time between New York and LA. It’s the sole source of my income. My only comment would be that I see that Steve Blum and Troy Baker are attached. I haven’t heard any samples of their work on this yet but I’ll say that they are two of the most respected artists in my profession.
No idea if they did a good job on this, but the reason they never stop working (a veeery difficult accomplishment in my industry) is because they consistently excel at what they do. I wish them and the game creators the best.
Naum, well put. I totally agree with the idea that developers should be aware of the level of taste they are shooting for and hit it as best as possible. Whether that level of taste is high art or fart jokes is another matter entirely.
If you look up any of Kundera’s writing, I would suggest the books in the middle of his career, after the translation updates. I read them in English when I was in my twenties and thirties. They were originally written in French and Czech. I found Identity and his more recent works less charming and more illusive than Immortality, Slowness or the Book of Laughter and Forgetting.
I was reading a lot of Henry Miller and Anais Nin while blathering poetry at any reading that would let me in the door back then. So, my fond memories may be colored by romantic youth. Also, typical of most Americans, I only know poor English and may have missed much of the original text’s flavor.
If you have a chance to see either of the movies based on Kundera’s books before you read the books, skip them. You will be doing yourself a big favor. The film Wit, comes closer, even while being completely unrelated, with Emma Thompson giving a wonderful performance.
That’s my 2 cents.
@Euphemism: it’s more the way the lines are delivered, and the fact that you hear that exchange then thousand times throughout the game, at completely random moments (I was in a haunted crypt and heard two vampires share that exchange once), than it is bad writing per se.
@Naum: I like your arguments, but I can’t agree. If I understand you correctly you’re saying it’s impossible to judge acting and therefore it shouldn’t be discussed. Wouldn’t that also mean it’s impossible to judge whether I “like” a game? Is it fair for me and the staff here to write reviews of games? So little is based in actual fact that practically every opinion is subjective. To be honest, though, I kind of wish I wasn’t so critical of voice acting, because then I’d be less irritated when I think it sucks. And you’re right – I’ll recognize it when I recognize it is the gist of what I was saying earlier, even though you asked no one to do that. The obscenity part was a reference to a famous US Supreme Court decision from the 1970s – a Justice couldn’t define “obscenity,” but stated he knew it when he saw it.
@Pontinyc: I have a lot of respect for professional voice actors. It’s a much harder job than people realize. Of course, even the best voice talent still benefit from great directors (and suffer from bad ones), as they can benefit or suffer from having good or bad lines to say. That’s why I only blame “actors” in badly acted games from the sense that many developers don’t even bother to hire professional actors. It’s the equivalent of hiring a dude off the street to rewire your house. And yet these “subjective” skills, like the ability to write or act, are often disregarded as stuff anyone can do.
I am not saying it shouldn’t be discussed at all, but in the discussion everyone should be very aware of the subjectivity of their opinion. Additionally, everyone should be extremely careful with the terms ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and — if ever possible — try to give their criteria and the reasons why this and that failed to conform to the criteria.
Discussion about subjective things can be highly interesting and rewarding if everyone keeps these simple things in mind. While exchanging arguments, all partners in a discussion will usually discover new aspects of the thing they discuss and maybe even change their mind when they see that, for example, their criteria of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ on a particular subject should be modified according to more basic principles they believe in.
If reviews of computer games — or anything else — are based on clear argumentation, then they are definitely useful. An argument can probably be seen in most cases as the deduction of a particular opinion from a basic principle such as “this game sucks because the voice acting is horrible” (although usually the opinion comes first and the search for a basic principle to build it upon follows). In this case the reader can make up their mind if, in their subjective opinion, horrible voice acting is a good reason for a game to suck, therefore the review can help readers to form their own opinion on the subject based on their own opinions on ‘good’ and ‘bad’.
Problems arise if someone begins to view their opinion as per se objective or more reasonable than someone else’s. This means that they lose sight of the fundamental difference between mindsets and try to generalise their opinion on ‘good’ and ‘bad’, which is what, from my point of view, some people here might have done. In this discussion we have seen a lot of statements about the ‘quality’ of voice acting in Guild Wars 2, but far less argumentation to back these statements up, which makes it more or less useless in a way. With my first comment stating that not everyone viewed voice acting in Guild Wars 2 as particularly unfitting, I more or less tried to make people back up their opinions with arguments (which obviously failed).
Your Supreme Court example, by the way, illustrates a heavy dilemma for those who come to accept that people view things differently. Sometimes it turns out that a discussion can only analyse things up to a certain point at which the parties get to basic principles that are fundamentally incompatible. In a discussion about computer games, this is not a problem, but in court someone eventually has to decide things, and this is where democracy comes in: people are allowed to have their different opinions, but to generate necessary decisions the opinions are turned into majorities for one principle or the other. At least this is what democracy should achieve.
@Naum: I think you’re asking for the nigh-on impossible; to explain exactly what makes a voice performance good and what makes it bad.
I remember playing Penumbra: Overture and moving on to Penumbra: Black Plague. The first game had such a paltry budget that the developers couldn’t afford professional voice actors. As a result the main character was voiced by Tom Jubert the game’s narrative designer and Red was voiced by Mike Hillard, a budding voice actor who happened to be doing volunteer work and was very enthusiastic to work in games. The second game had a bigger budget and was much more confident so professional voice actors were hired and the main character was voiced by somebody else.
The startling thing is that the voice acting wasn’t up to the standard of the first game’s. Some of the performances sounded voice acted and nowhere near as naturalistic; they felt a little overwrought as if they were trying too hard. It just didn’t gel. What I’m trying to get at here as that if you asked me to say what made Overture’s voice performances better than Black Plague’s I’d be extremely hard pushed to provide you with anything better than the above. As human beings who interact with each other everday we know (or at least should know) what real, natural speech sounds like; it’s almost instinctive. It’s the same with films and theatre and games, we know a good performance when we witness one.
‘A bit of relativism is good when discussing especially subjective topics’
We review to be subjective; to express our own thoughts (which some people may very well trust over others). If we were trying to be relative we’d probably just a post a link to a game’s Metacritic entry.
Fun fact! According to Metacritic the best game of all-time (at least it’s time) across all platforms is GTA IV. Based on that alone, relativism can go and fall on a spike.
Of course no text can ever be free of subjectivism, but there are shades. If you write something about voice acting, you can say it is bad, or you can say it is bad because there are no emotions, the voices do not match the characters, the actors sound like they did not get their coffee this morning. This is the first level of argumentation, and then you can dive deeper into things, probably analysing certain examples or explaining what exactly you mean when saying it sounds like they did not get their coffee etc.
If you say that it is impossible to a high degree to give criteria for voice acting, why are we discussing it then? None among us has any exclusive knowledge about the voice acting in Guild Wars 2, for we all just know the videos. If someone else finds the voice acting bad, then that is totally irrelevant to me as long as I do not find it disturbing. The only reason would be to signal ArenaNet that there is a certain portion of the community which feels disturbed by their voice acting, and that they should change it according to that portion’s opinion.
Beyond that, our discussion would be limited to a dialogue like “I like it”; “I don’t like it”; “O.k., never mind”, which might not be the intention.
I had an art teacher at Otis who insisted that when we critiqued each others’ works we be specific about what we didn’t like rather than say “It’s bad” or “I don’t like it” because the specificity would give the artist a chance to see what the issue really was and improve upon it. So, Naum, since you seem to be arguing that not enough of that has been done here (while also not providing such elucidation for you counter) I will sight a single example from the Guild Wars 2 example referenced in the original post. Again, the page I’m referencing is http://www.arena.net/blog/scott-mcgough-on-writing-the-charr and it contains several audio files. The file I refer you to is the second one entitled Winning Ugly.
Go play that file just so you know exactly what I’m talking about. Got it. Good.
Now, let’s start with the writing: “That was a cheap kill. Those words make a sentence; but, I don’t know what they mean. A kill is a kill. You kill or you die.” There are no overt cliches in it, which is wonderful for prose but atypical in common speech. The problem is the attempt at colloquialism has resulted in a set of one liners that denote a lot of posturing by the characters. Thus, each character seems to have something to prove to the others. In most dialog, characters (people) will tend to use a short-hand that communicates as much information as possible in a brief amount of time with some form of stylistic tinge that adds specific meaning within the social context. Natural dialog contains contractions and rhythms that help improve the messages being conveyed. In this sample there are none of those dialog cues because the words are writing in a prosaic, staccato style that has no transitions. This hobbles the voice actors who have to try to force a more natural rhythm into those words.
If you listen closely you will notice that the charr male who begins speaking at the second sentence has more white noise in the background of his recording. This is jarring to the ear and immediately tells the listener that the two speakers are not in the same place. You will also not that the lines are delivered with a flat, consistent tone. Generally, when speaking, the tone of specific syllables varies to give emphasis to specific sounds in a characteristic way that is common to a specific style, culture or disposition. This not only give the speech a more individual rhythm, it also helps the audience know what the emotional context of the words is. The flatness of the delivery here conveys no emotional register, without which it becomes hard for the audience to invest in the situation at hand.
By contrast, if you close your eyes and listen to one of the recent Portal 2 ads, the timing, pacing and structure of the performance give you an experience in which the characters each have a specific cadence. The timing of the delivery also gives you cues so that you know what the jokes are and what the emotional force behind the words is.
A thoughtful director should have recognized these issues in the Guild Wars 2 sample and massaged the performances until he got more natural dialog out of the writers and more emotive performances from the cast. Apparently, none of that thoughtfulness went into producing what we have. Of course, it could be said that this is a tiny sample and that it is not indicative of the final product. Still, with ArenaNet professing to have a “when it is ready” approach to delivering Guild Wars 2, it must be taken for granted that someone in charge at ArenaNet thought that the sample provided “was ready.” So, it must be taken as indicative of the quality level that will be exhibited in the game. It’s not placeholder that someone cut together for internal use only.
Those are just a few of the reasons I think that particular game has bad voice acting. I realize that many fans using the popular forums disagree with me. I also realize that many of those fans spend more time in the forums than they do playing the nigh 6 year old Guild Wars. As I said before, you can not buy taste. The fantasy genre tends to deliver more “fart joke quality” writing than “high art cinema quality” writing and the fans tend to revel in it.
The question is: do I have to sit through another schlockfest like In the Name of the King (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460780/) or can more of my games deliver performances approaching those in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings series? Is it good enough that ArenaNet is releasing samples that are more on par with a Uwe Boll film than a Martin Scorsese production?
As you know, my answer is and emphatic NO. I want Valve to run ArenaNet (and have the industry) through an intensive writing and vocal coaching workshop so that I can cross my fingers and hope for an improvement.
If you have sound counter to all the above drivel that can be specific about why the performance I referenced is good, even great, I’d love to read it. Arguing over how to argue the point is just useless.
Ding. Novel number 4 complete. 😉
Well, that was one of the most impressive comments I have ever read on a blog, and for having provoked it alone I would argue that mine were at least not useless. Thank you for the time it must have taken to write such a detailed critique.
I have really nothing to counter and will hence confess that voice acting in Guild Wars 2 might indeed not meet the high standards the developers have set up for themselves. My only remarks would be that this is not the main storyline but generic asides by NPCs, and that the attempt to make the Charr as a race more distinct may explain some of the flaws you identified, but these are minor arguments.
Thanks to everyone for the enlightening (though absolutely off-topic) debate. At least I found it highly interesting.
😀 Thanks for that. As a Guild Wars nut, I’ve had weeks now to let my frustration fester (along with simmering up some healthy anticipation). So that last book took about as long to write as it took to read. It was fun tossing thoughts around with you.
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