Was the voice acting really this bad?

Forgive me if you loved all the voice acting, but to me, replaying through the msq I’m like “did you really sound like that?”

I know the characters at various points and in new expansions have different voice actors. This is obvious if you watch the credits at the end of each expansion and the end of patch cycle you see the obvious.

But in ARR, was the voice acting this bad? Minfilias voice now annoys me more then it use to. I remember playing and being amazed. I still get caught up every now and then when they switch from voice to text, I keep waiting for the voice hahahaha.

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Originally Posted by SavishSalacious

But in ARR, was the voice acting this bad?

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They didn't change the voices in AAR, so course the answer is yes.

Yeah, ARR got pretty painful. There was a whole lot of dull surprise going on. It gets better in the later patches, but then they went to a new studio from Heavensward on, so.....

There were probably some exceptions in there but I feel like maybe the (lack of?) voice directing was worse than the voice acting itself, they often sounded like they had no context for the things they were saying so it came off really robotic and flat.

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Originally Posted by Yencat

There were probably some exceptions in there but I feel like maybe the (lack of?) voice directing was worse than the voice acting itself, they often sounded like they had no context for the things they were saying so it came off really robotic and flat.

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I think this plus the dialog writing/translating seemed to get better too (not perfect, mind you, just better).

Yes, voice acting in ARR was that bad. I believe it was bad overall, from directing to voice actors.

Minfilia deserved an honorable mention on how terrible it was. Everytime the VA's shouted a "Nooooo!" was painful to hear.

Some were redeemable to some extent, like Papalymo or Gaius (though it could've be masked by the effect it had).

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Originally Posted by BokoToloko

Minfilia deserved an honorable mention on how terrible it was. Everytime the VA's shouted a "Nooooo!" was painful to hear.

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I still crack up every time I think about "Thancred, nooooo....."

I felt like a few of the ARR voices were getting better towards the end of the ARR patch cycle, but overall it was mediocre. The new voice cast was good from the start, with a few voices being really great by Shadowbringers.

Don't hate on the voice actors of ARR, though. As I understand it, 90% of the time the quality of the voices comes down to the directions given, and the amount of time they have in the booth. The FFXII English dub was amazing because the actors were given their lines ahead of time, and the English dubs for the first two Cold Steel games were fantastic because the actors had their characters and the story thoroughly explained to them in detailed notes.

ARR voice acting was so bad I left the game on Japanese audio for quite a while. Finally tried English again for ShB and I was pleasantly surprised at how good it had become. Not sure how HW and SB were because I was too scared to try English audio for a long time.

Listen to Cid the next time you do Praetorium.
There's a reason he's never been voiced since.

ARR has some amazingly talented voice actors if you actually look them up. Almost all of them with the exception of Minfillia were VA veterans who have been praised in a multitude of other roles. I think it's less of an issue of the VA's being bad and more the direction they were given was HORRENDOUS. If you can make Taliesin Jaffe sound like a fifth grade drama student right out of the annual Christmas play then something is clearly wrong.

Maybe for the english voices it was. People worship the JP voices a lot.

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Originally Posted by Jennah

Listen to Cid the next time you do Praetorium.
There's a reason he's never been voiced since.

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He was voiced a few times in Heavensward, notably in 3.5 when Nero proposes awakening Omega. He's voiced less often because he hasn't been majorly involved in the main story since then, and the side stories never get voice acting.

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Originally Posted by Jennah

Listen to Cid the next time you do Praetorium.
There's a reason he's never been voiced since.

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"Oh.... And don't.. even think about... dying. *hair flip*"

Voices never changed in Japanese audio.