Voice acting so bad

[Preypacer]

I'm spoiled by the voice acting in this game here.

The voice acting in that game ranges from very good to excellent, and every character with dialog - literally every character - is voice acted; from important characters down to incidental side NPCs chatting with each other, etc. And it's all well done.

What gets me is that they have some of the same people doing VA work for FFXIV, and yet it doesn't even come close. I know, for example, that Kirsten Geary (the woman in the first cut-scene in that link) is voice acted by someone who's done work in XIV. Couldn't tell you who it is, as it isn't a main character, and most everything I've heard in this game is largely forgettable.

So, it's not a lack of talent that XIV's VA work suffers from. I think it's lack of direction, and that they seem to want to make everything so "base" in this game, kind of a "least common denominator" thing. They do it with dialog as well, it's like they're feeding us what they consider to be their idea of the most generic fantasy game story/voice acting they can get.

Characters in TSW (again, linked above) have personality, identity, quirks, etc. I can't wait to hear what many of them are going to say (or do) next. They're interesting, and relate-able. In XIV, otoh, characters are uninspired speakers for underwhelming dialog; they're only there to serve as bland text-to-speech avatars, and little else.

This kind of underwhelming approach extends beyond the voice-acting, too. I don't know what happened, but the end of ARR, and into the beginning of HW, there was some really great stuff, some very heavy stuff going on. Yoshida mentioned that he wanted to go darker and more mature with the story and such. And they did that, at first. But now it seems like they're resorting back to the "generic fantasy 101" approach, and it's annoying. It's as though SE doesn't trust its players enough to "get" what is happening, or to understand the context "between the lines" of what a character is saying. We were moving into Weeknight Prime-Time Drama territory with things, but now it's slipping back into Saturday Morning Cartoon land.

Almost inevitably, a character says something that's really clever, insightful, or makes the player (heaven forbid) actually think... and soon after, another character, or some other means, basically spells it out for you.

To illustrate what I mean, I'll use a made up example.

Character A is talking to Character B... Character A says, "I fear our informant has forgotten where their loyalties lie, and it might be time to "retire" them".
Character B, understanding exactly what Character A is actually saying, responds with a kind of mild surprise.

It's quite clear to anyone paying attention, as well, exactly what Character A is saying.

But then comes Character C, who is unimportant to the overall scene, and only there for this one purpose. They gasp, and say "The undercover informant we've been using to gather critical details has been passing info to the wrong people, and now you mean to kill them!". And out the window goes any sense of nuance, or chance for the player to put it together them self, in their own mind.

I can't tell you how many times I've /facepalmed in this game because of stuff like that, and SE's insistence on treating its players like we're all idiots who need every little thing spelled out for us or we "might not get it on our own". Is this another area where Yoshida is "concerned about stressing us out"?

Another thing that happens in 3.2 (and I'll wrap this in spoiler tags)...

When you're in that room with Alphinaud, after the whole ordeal with Estinien/Niddhog interrupting the speech, etc. It's the room you're in before heading to Ishgard, after being exiled, where Haurchefant brings you and Alphinaud something to drink, etc..

In walks Alphinaud with two hot mugs. It's immediately apparent what scene that is a call-back to, and your character's reaction to it confirms it. But do they leave it at that? Do they let it play out in the player's mind, to remember that scene as they would, so the reaction is their own?

Nope... They have to, yet again, spell it out, by showing a couple flashback images from that moment. Yet again, not trusting the players to "get it", and believing we need to be spoon-fed every little detail.

I felt like they were beginning to take off the kid gloves by the end of ARR, and was really excited to see how they would handle things to come later. Sadly, it appears they decided to abandon that direction, rather quickly, and return to the spoon-feeding and Saturday Morning Cartoons.

Sad.

[Noxifer]

Another thing that happens in 3.2

Actually, that scene kinda brought to mind an entirely different scenario, though partly because I'd watched some FC mates run around in that particular part of it...

Mainly, the drugged drink we were served in Falcon's Nest. I pretty much looked at those mugs Alphi brought in and said, "Whoa whoa! Last time I had a warm drink in a cutscene, I ended up unconscious on the floor. No way am I drinking that." xD

[Preypacer]

Actually, that scene kinda brought to mind an entirely different scenario, though partly because I'd watched some FC mates run around in that particular part of it...

Mainly, the drugged drink we were served in Falcon's Nest. I pretty much looked at those mugs Alphi brought in and said, "Whoa whoa! Last time I had a warm drink in a cutscene, I ended up unconscious on the floor. No way am I drinking that." xD

Because it's all basically spoiler still.. lol...

That could have been, too, yeah. Though, at least for me, that wouldn't have occurred to me with Alphinaud, because he's a known friend and ally. And because it was in that same room, etc... Now, had some other person, a stranger, brought the drinks in for both you and Alphinaud... yeah, my brain would have gone there again.

[KeluBehemoth]

You guys have to stop comparing this to anime.

This is a AAA, world renowned title that's probably more popular in the west than in Japan.

Expecting anything less than the absolute best of everything from a FF title is absurd.

Every other modern game in the series has had amazing graphics, dialog, story, and voice casting.

You can NOT compare this game to Japanese dubbed cartoons. This is a billion dollar franchise.

If anything, I'm actually fairly certain that in the precious games, the Japanese was the dubbed version and the English versions received world class treatment.

[Dualgunner]

You guys have to stop comparing this to anime.

This is a AAA, world renowned title that's probably more popular in the west than in Japan.

Expecting anything less than the absolute best of everything from a FF title is absurd.

Every other modern game in the series has had amazing graphics, dialog, story, and voice casting.

You can NOT compare this game to Japanese dubbed cartoons. This is a billion dollar franchise.

If anything, I'm actually fairly certain that in the precious games, the Japanese was the dubbed version and the English versions received world class treatment.

Citations needed.

[The_Last_Dragoon]

snip

Before I delve in, I noticed that you posted twice initially. Did you know you can circumvent the character limit by editing your post? It de-clutters the thread and keeps your points concise. Also, I'm not sure why you seperate every sentence with a line break, it makes it look like you can't contain your thoughts into a paragraph, which is fine for twitter, but is jarring when people actually read it.

Now that that's out of the way, you do know that the pool of English voice actors is pretty shallow, right? I mean, not only do you have to deal with the fact that they actually want to do the job you're offering, but god forbid something happen to them like with what happened to Yugiri's voice actor. You should already know that 2.0 was made with a hope and a prayer, and that the voice actors they originally contracted for it were not signed up for very long contracts. ARR was a beautiful surprise to SE when it released and it's sudden rise in popularity is the only reason why the game has the budget it does now. Unfortunately, even an increased budget does not guarantee they will get the old voices back. I know the real reason you hate the English voices is because you have something to compare to, and it's a shame, but they just weren't able to get the old voice actors in time. In terms of others comparing your love of Japanese voices, it's easy to compare it to Anime since it's a common complaint of those who watch it. The Anime market is nothing to sneeze at either, and I'm pretty sure that both industries have to pull from the same pool of candidates under similar time constraints. Honestly, I've come to realize that the reasoning behind it normally is not because they are better actors, but because you can't tell whether or not they're bad (Unless you actually know Japanese).

It's unrealistic to expect the things you're expecting from the team since they really only have so many resources that they can allocate. I find it weird that you try to compare this to "every other modern game in the series," since the only one it can be compared to is the FF XIII trilogy, which many fans believe to be a failure. Keep in mind, this game is massive compared to the linear game worlds of FF XIII, and that the game still has to be somewhat supportable for the PS3. There are limitations to what they can do in the world right now until they drop support for that system. To think that you can make an MMO with 4k resolution graphics with no errors or massive hits to frame rate is a pipe dream.

What's funny is that you're somewhat right about the English voice actors being better than the Japanese ones in ARR (unless you meant previous Final Fantasy games, which I have to say that you're definitely wrong on). The game was definitely not given "world class" treatment in Americas and the EU, and in fact, they massively underestimated the number of English players they'd get on release. Hell, I made my character on a Japanese server initially because all of the NA & EU ones were full.

[Auxilio]

I have gripes with the voice acting too. Not that I think their terribad or what.

I actually liked all of them in ARR, but when I went into HW content, suddenly all the voices changed and correct me if i'm wrong but they all sound.. British? I don't have an issue with British accents, it's more of the continuity (or none thereof) when transitioning from ARR into HW. I understand that from the company's POV there may be issues getting the original casting back, or perhaps there were an issue with availability at the point of recording HW script.. but having them have the heavy accent out of nowhere just sounds weird for some reason, it's like the characters I knew... sort of gone.

Up til now, I think the Ishgard voices are nice.. just everyone else is.... meh I guess. I'm no expert on voice acting so this is just my opinion =p

[Chasely]

They changed VAs because British VAs were cheaper. the original VAs had already done a bunch of cutscenes, but all that work was scrapped.

[Joe_Schmoe]

Voice acting so bad

I'm thinking it's more bad casting than acting. I got the same issue with WoW and Diablo 2 as well, they sound like they were all done by one guy and one girl even though many voice actors were used. I think next time they should loosen the purse strings a bit and hire actors that don't sound like one another. Otherwise it's like I'm listening to either high, low, or mid. >:\

EDIT: Actually, listening to helium/sulfur hexaflouride voices in this game would be awesome! They need to add that to the sound options menu lol

[ElHeggunte]

"Youwillnotdefeatmeagain!" - Lahabrea, Aetherochemical Research Facility, 2015

I honestly don't have that much of an issue with most of FFXIV's voice acting, both ARR's and HW's. It can sometimes be lackluster and some of the VAs have been changed for the worse, but there are very few cases where I would outright call it "bad". Bad would be games like Blade & Soul and Black Desert where the voice acting makes you want to find religion.