Guild Wars 2

I mean, am I? Particularly with personal story quests. The lines always feel so artificial, as if they characters aren’t necessarily addressing each other, just talking at one another. This was always especially apparently with Trahearne and battle sequences. His voice isn’t urgent enough, his tone inappropriate.

Maybe I’m just being nit-picky, but I was just expecting something… more.

No, I am too, it does sound very stiff…like listening to it I literally cannot imagine the moment through the dialogue other than the voice actors standing in front of a microphone.

Star Wars: The Old Republic has the best voice acting imo so far.

No, you’re not alone. I’ve never heard such a dull performance from Nolan North.
To add insult to injury, I hate that all males/females of a particular race have the same voice actor, with no variation to indicate their background. A noble human mesmer sounds identical to a human thief born and raised on the streets.

It’s atrocious.

You hire talented voice actors that have proven they have wide and varied repertoires, then you fail to capitalise on their abilities with shoddy direction and obvious budget constraints.

Completely agree. Some in game reactions are very cool, but especially the cutscenes are meh. Conversation cutscenes are astonishingly very bad in every way, especially for a game like GW2. Better remove them already.

Generally I agree that voices also need more variety.

they need to rework on them,really really emotionless everytime

In regard to voices and scripts, yeah lots of issues

I honestly wish we had options for voice selection in general.

The jokes on the Mad King Thorn outfit from the gem shop are simply the worst voice acting in the game, period.

He sounds like a bored office worker.

Shouldn’t the Mad King sound threatening, supernatural, imposing, crazy?

Or are we not using his voice, and instead using our character’s? Because the voice sounded exactly the same on my norn and sylvari, and neither sounded a whole lot like my character.

This game has some of the best voice acting one can hope for, in a game with such a massive amount of it. It’s seriously amazing, compared to most games out there.

It’s not perfect, sure, but it’s still astoundingly good compared to many other games. I feel lucky.

Equally the dialogue itself is written better than most games. Again, it’s not perfect, but there’s tons and tons of it, and most of it is far more interesting than the swill you’ll see in other games.

Voice acting has hurt storytelling in gaming as a whole, as it creates a massive cost, and effort in what is normally as simple as writing in text.

Also, letting players fill in the voices with their minds is infinitely better than giving the characters poor voice acting.

It varies, sometimes its great and sometimes its crap. As for the mad king outfit, I dont think that voice is ment to be very good. I belive its actually ment to be slightly annoying.

Yeah, I do voice acting and I was quite disappointed with the majority of the voice overs. The good ones I found were from charrs; however, a lot of the sylvari such as the mother tree or Trahearne really plain.

The Asura have really good voice acting. Trahearne… well, let’s just say that all the things they did right in all the other aspects of the game was not done right with this character.

A lot of the voice acting and dialogue (and subsequently the Personal Story) is truly awful. I can’t understand how they got it so bad, it’s like they didn’t listen to it before adding it to the game. Certainly one of the worst qualities of the game.
I really do hope they take in all of this negative feedback on the matter.

pyronix.4081:

The Asura have really good voice acting. Trahearne… well, let’s just say that all the things they did right in all the other aspects of the game was not done right with this character.

Can I second this? Maybe third it and fourth it too?

Basically, I never got the feeling that Trahearne was able to inspire and command a class of toddlers to eat their dinner, let alone a multi-cultural army fighting against a living abomination of nature.

@BobbyStein

For me personally it’s the in-game cut scenes. They DO sound dull and flat like the others before me have stated. Also, as some have previously stated, the same generic voice for a noble human warrior and a commoner doesn’t make sense. And you really don’t need to hire more voice actors/actresses for it, they should have versatility since it is their craft and all, but also there are certain programs that can slightly alter voices and maybe add a bit of raspiness, etc.

P.S.

Personally when I heard about all the voice acting in the game, I actually thought we get to pick at character creation the voice of our character, much like other story-oriented RPGs out there.

Considering the amount of lines I am not sure if having each line voice acted according to profession eight times, or even more if you think of a potential background (commoner vs noble etc.) would be justified – not that I’m against it.

But there is definitely often a sense of urgency missing in the cut-scenes specifically.

The incidental voice acting is often excellent. That is, the banter that goes on around the world, especially with the Asura males. It’s definitely also worth noting that some of the storyline voice acting, again especially when there’s an Asura involved, is really rather good. However, as with pretty much any other game I’ve ever played, there always seems to be somewhat of a disconnect between the writer and the voice actor and even more so between the actors involved.

When I used to act on stage, one could quite often determine which actors had the innate chops by observing how they listened to the other characters in a scene. Some people walk in “to become actors”, think it’s all about delivering lines, and completely destroy their scenes by not paying attention to what the other people are saying, even if they already know their lines. It’s my impression that much voice acting is done solo, which would emulate this disregard and make it difficult to create a real rapport between two actors. You can sometimes see this in television and film as well, when a scene is notably cut from takes where the two actors deliver their lines independent of one another. It’s often very easy to pick out. Some directors opt to have the other actor there if possible, even if they’re not on camera, just to limit the disconnect that otherwise takes place.

Another thing that may contribute is the way scenes are set up in the game. Only two characters can be there at a time, so you’ll sometimes have a notable pause in dialogue when there’s a swap. This doesn’t work well for dramatic scenes or quick exchanges between multiple characters. In addition, the animation variety is limited, so “things happening” that aren’t reflected in the characters also do nothing but emphasize a disconnect. If two actors are in the same room and do a scene together, you probably wont see unnatural pauses, but if the lines have to be recorded separately and spliced together, then even decent dialogue can suffer. I have to admit I’d take the risk and record things as a real scene, and then find a way to fit the game around the acting. This makes it near impossible to change individual lines later, but if it’s good, it’s good.

The writing is, as I’ve also seen in most other games, wildly variable. Some of it admittedly makes me think “really…?”, while other parts are quite excellent. The plots in video game stories often have a child-like simplicity to them, a trend that permeates film and television these days as well. It can be difficult to deliver lines that are “off” or completely unreal, especially if they’re meant to be for a quite serious plot or situation. The Asura banter is often very well written, and it is easy to see that the voice actor had good material to work with in many cases. Occasionally the lines being spoken do not match the text in the game, so I presume that some lines were changed quickly during the process.

Anyway, just my two cents. I could point to specific things that really irk me and specific things that I really like, but I try to go in with the intent of enjoying myself, while also keeping the limitations of the medium in mind. I suppose my plea to the person who directs the voice actors (if they’re indeed recording alone or don’t always have proper context), is to guide them more clearly in the direction of the other dialogue their lines will be used with.

My criticism is mainly with the voice actors of the personal story. They very rarely, if EVER, show ANY EMOTION. Most of the NPCs outside of my personal story show more emotion in their voice than these voice actors! I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to say some of the lines of the story without emotion – I can only assume that the voice actors of the personal story were told by their employers specifically to not show emotion. Why are they all almost always monotone?! It’s odd, it’s upsetting, it’s atrocious and it’s very much so immersion breaking. I believe I could have personally done a better job than many of them with my own voice (and a free audio editing program to alter the pitch and what-not). And I’m no actor/voice actor. That’s how bad it is.

I unfortunately agree. GW2 is such a great game, so I look passed the cheesy script, but the lack of emotions prevent me from really carrying about the characters. Much of the Personal Sorry dialogue sounds like it’s all from a recording of a dull cold reading. The ambient and city dialogue is great (although it could use greater variety), but I do not believe the stakes during the Personal Story and it doesn’t sound like the characters do either.

The voices I liked the most were the charr and the Mad King(had more personality). Rest i’m not too sure about pretty much generic and forgettable.

I agree. The voice acting, writing, and character animations during conversations are disappointing. The dialog doesn’t feel natural and even if it were well written, the voice acting is universally bad; which is surprising given that many of the voice actors are excellent and have given great performances elsewhere. I can only imagine then that there is a directorial issue, someone not giving the actors enough to work with or enough background on their character.

As a side issue, the writing in general is very disappointing. Everything is so generically ‘fantasy’ that nothing is surprising or unexpected. Issues are solved by deus ex most of the time (we found an artifact or some such), characters all seem to have one and only one salient personality trait… It may have been naive to expect more sophisticated writing, but modern western RPGs have been raising the bar for story telling and the closer video games come to having true literary value, the happier I am.

I will note a few exceptions to my criticism. Tybalt of the Order of Whispers was a charming character that felt believable. I wanted to know more about him and work more with him. Forgal’s (from the Vigil) acting was varied and felt authentic. He had a variety of tones and moods, you could tell when he was being sarcastic and his delivery gave you a good indicator of his mood without being overt – for comparison, he didn’t just shout when angry, where as Logan seemed to just raise his voice t show anger.

I’m not going to write all the stuff about Trahearne’s flat and unemotional voice acting down all over again, there are more than enough Threads just for this one voice.
However I have to agree that in general voice acting is sadly not one of GW2 strong points. While I think the voice acting for most of the Asura NPCs is pretty good, the Norn are on the other end of the spectrum. The norn voices feel very “artificial”, either because the voice actors tried to lower their voices’ pitch or the pitch was fiddled with in post-production. Too often I hear the same 2 or 3 Norn voices over and over again, and too often it seems like the rule of thumb was “Norn are big, so try to talk with a deep voice”.
There are some NPCs with reallice nice voice acting. Tybalt and Rytlock are quite good and the other member of Destiny’s Edge are not too bad either, imho.
Some NPCs suffer from severe “over-acting” – Magister Sieran would be very high on my list. I know that she is supposed to be lighthearted, have a cheery spirit, etc., but when every single scentence is intonated as if it was the bet thing that has ever happened to this character, all the important room for nuances is lost. And a character that seems to be delighted about pretty much everything she seems becomes less believable and “shallow”.
A lot more common however is “under-acting”, especially when it comes to topics like fighting, injury and death (or loss in general). Trahearne is the king of under-acting, but a lot of other NPCs suffer from it. In general a lot of the battle/fighting related shouts, commands, etc. feel as if they were read, not as if they were shouted. Some of them lack the “flow” that spoken languages has (and that differs from “read aloud” ductus), most of them lack loudness. It’s almost as if the voice actors were afraid that the neighbors would come knocking if they actually shouted, so they just raised their voice a little bit. This way the sense of urgency is lost! Scenes where a NPC is injured or might even be dead are another very good example. Here the other character does not sound worried in a lot of cases. You would expect the voice to be louder, more compressed and a bit faster in such situations. Yet we get the “normal” ductus, as if he/she was just casually asking if everything was fine. We have “We need a medic here!” lines that are said in a “slightly worried” tone, but not shouted… in the middle of a large battle.
As I said before there are some quite nice voice-acted NPCs in this game, but in general the Norn as a whole feel sub-par and too many lines sound “read, not acted”.

It isn’t horrible, but it isn’t great either. My biggest gripe is less with the voice acting and more with the simplicity of the story. None of it is bad, mind you, just a bit generic and not terribly engaging. Your character is a bit too paragonish and rises too quickly as a champion. I actually think having more, longer personal story quests would help remedy that.

BobbyStein.2315:

Are your criticisms mostly being leveled at the personal story and cinematic conversations, or also with the ambient scenes and events?

The audio is just like the writing, really. The background conversations and banter tends to be fairly consistant with it’s quality. I can’t say i’ve ever stopped and thought ‘man that was an unconvincing read of that town banter’.

The quality of the audio and writing for the stories, on the other hand, is all over the place. We know the story writing was handed off to different teams, which is likely what resulted in the quality difference. Sometimes it worked out really well.. sometimes not so much.

I am wondering if perhaps those seperate teams were involved in the recording process as well, or perhaps the recording environment is just done better for the banter? Because some of the story audio does sound very read-off-the-paper. Do they have any awareness of what sort of scene they are attempting to voice at all emotion wise? Sometimes it certainly doesn’t sound it.

This pretty much sums up my complaints about the voice acting in the game. I don’t think it’s a universal thing for me. It’s pretty much only Trahearne’s bland intraspection that makes my skin crawl. A lot of that is the writing too.

I also didn’t have high expectations for the personal story either as MMO’s in general have a hard time putting that kind of thing into the context of the rest of the game (some would say TOR is the pinnacle of storytelling in MMOs and I’d say their bar is too low…excpet the Imp Agent…that one starts getting interesting right before the end). I’m pleased with a lot of the Asuran voices (Metrica Province as a whole is pretty hilarious.

Back in my days as a non-prolific post-modern composer of minimal skill, I experienced the difficulty of bringing in voice actors (singers/actors in my case) and attempting to record the dialogue for each person independently. It’s pretty hard when the actors have a series of disjointed lines that they need to perform out-of-the-context of the line before and after.

That being said, I have been trained to hit escape at the first sign of Trahearne’s voice. Not to be down on Matthew Brenher…I’ve listened to some of his other stuff and it doesn’t make me want to punch him at all. Just Trahearne.

Check this out. This isn’t really a list of lightweights (and I’m now forever going to associate Stan’s mom from South Park with my ele…)

BobbyStein.2315:

Are your criticisms mostly being leveled at the personal story and cinematic conversations, or also with the ambient scenes and events?

The Voice acting in the personal story events is pretty uncomfortable, but when combined with the relatively generic backdrops that take you away from the scene, that’s when it’s at its worst; there is nothing to focus on other than the delivery. It’s not terrible, but it’s pretty jarring, particularly when the NPCs are talking about the slow death of their race, the world, and everything you, as the player, are supposed to hold dear; they’re delivering lines like they’re reading a shopping list.

The voice acting would’ve felt a little more natural if it was taking place in the world, with NPCs milling around, or the serious stuff in a war room, or while the Vigil fort is being sieged; the setup dialog could be taking place overlooking the oncoming armies, dodging catapult fire and shouting to be heard over the noise. Everything that makes for great conversations in popular drama, classic war films and great fantasy was missing from the personal story.

I also can’t escape the feeling that the VO was recorded separately, at different times, like each actor was handed a sheet of paper that was “say this in a sad voice:”, so the emotional context was lost. It felt like the nature of the conversation was different to all of the NPCs taking part. It just didn’t gel well.

Finally my real problem with the personal story is two fold; I wasn’t the hero, I was a lap-dog… and secondly at no point did any of the story moments make me feel like this did back in the day; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQc7o2rm7po (SPOILER: the closest was the death of “apples”, but it was nowhere near the emotional impact of Aeris).

GW2, for me is a fantastic MMO and an average RPG. TOR was a very good RPG and a woeful MMO. I’d just like to get a little more “world” into the RPG part, and a little more emotion into the journey.

BobbyStein.2315:

The voices on the Mad King costumes were purposely different. They’re supposed to sound like novelty masks voiced by people other than the Mad King himself, hence the tinny processing…

That was a bullseye. Those were reminiscent of the old laughing boxes and maybe something that most people younger than me may not have ever seen or heard.

Parthis.2091:

…The Voice acting…when combined with the relatively generic backdrops that take you away from the scene…GW2, for me is a fantastic MMO and an average RPG. TOR was a very good RPG and a woeful MMO. I’d just like to get a little more “world” into the RPG part, and a little more emotion into the journey.

That’s a pretty good point. Both companies had to prioritize some aspects and put less effort into others. Bioware emphasized a cinematic cutscene and phoned in the gameplay by throwing a lightsaber skin on WoW. GW2 emphasized the gameplay and activities; making the choice to do that weird fidgity Noh thing with most of the cutscenes. If I thought it was that important I’d be doing something about my Sith Sorcerer’s goofy Rakata gear right now and not listening to Jennifer Hale yelling, “This rose has Thorns! Come at me, Bro!” or whataver that line is.

BobbyStein.2315:

Are your criticisms mostly being leveled at the personal story and cinematic conversations, or also with the ambient scenes and events?

Coming from SWTOR, the voices in the story and quest cut scenes in GW2 were disappointing. It feels less like top grade voice artists and more like random people just reading off a script.

Some scenes/actors are better than others, but most don’t reach anything like the authenticity of even the lowliest of SWTOR’s side-quests. On the other hand, I guess the difference in budget has to show somewhere right?

I love the rest of this game, this was just the first thing that stuck out at me when I first played GW2.

Personal story/cinematics: HORRIBLE
Ambient scenes and events: AWESOME

I still can’t believe the difference. Possibly two different teams?

I actually find both charr and asura voice acting quite awesome… the rest, on the other hand, seems like done by a bunch of teenagers doing some crappy school play.

The asura male PC voice acting is quite good even in the cutscenes, he pulls off a dignified tone quite well and I love his battle shouts like ‘Such synergy!’ or ‘Compounding our powers!’.

The voice acting is just so dreadfully dull and boring, I’m pretty sure that is the general consensus on this topic.

Only recently, have I played on another character and came across an NPC that actually felt like they had personality.

Tybalt. He actually sounds good and you can feel that the voice actor is putting in the personality behind it. And this is me only finding out about him after 400hours played and only because I choose the Order of Whispers on an alt.

Feels like the voice actors have no soul or are simply bad at their jobs.

The only good voice actors are the obvious ones people will instantly recognize due to their experience e.g. Rytlock – Steve Blum many anime roles and what not, The vigil Warmaster – the colonel from Metal Gear Solid.

The random NPC during cutscenes and dialogue are just to painful to even listen to. I’m simply left with turnign down the volume on GW2 so I can listen to other things instead.

Sometimes I wonder, how did these things not get noticed in QA. Did you guys not have regular players test it out and give you input? Or were you simply just pushed for time and money and just went with random joes for your voice actors.

Wraithforge.8710:

This game has some of the best voice acting one can hope for, in a game with such a massive amount of it. It’s seriously amazing, compared to most games out there.

It’s not perfect, sure, but it’s still astoundingly good compared to many other games. I feel lucky.

Equally the dialogue itself is written better than most games. Again, it’s not perfect, but there’s tons and tons of it, and most of it is far more interesting than the swill you’ll see in other games.

This thread is for discussing Guild Wars 2 and the voice acting in it.

Voltar.8574:

This pretty much sums up my complaints about the voice acting in the game.

THIS has made my day

In relation to the thread; the VA in the personal story actually hurts to listen to sometimes. I am the type of player who plays those long Japanese RPGs like the FF franchise so I tend to lick up all that extended story and deep voice acting. Did I mention the replay value on those and I don’t mean the gameplay, I mean I could sit through the 150 hours of dialogue or whatever it might be again and again and again because it is good! It sounds great, it is done well, it is believable.

While the background conversations are done better, not by far nor by marginally but yes better, they are in the background, I hear them only so often and players tend to miss an incredible amount of this. Maybe the lack of the pause between each line helps here or maybe the voice actors were not bored reading the lines of the background stuff, I don’t know. What I do know is that the personal story is skipped every time round, it actually makes me sad to play the game when I know I have to do the personal story. I would be much happier if they either re-did the whole thing or removed the content of it because it is really “that” bad.

BobbyStein.2315:

Are your criticisms mostly being leveled at the personal story and cinematic conversations, or also with the ambient scenes and events?

I’m baffled by how good the ambient banter is to this day, and how the personal story dialogue pales completely in direct comparison.

There never is a sense of urgency (I’m looking at you Trahearne), it is, with the exception of Asura dialogue, completely flat most of the time and never feels like there is emotion involved. It gets the job done, it’s not super terrible either (except for our beloved Mary Suehearne, but that is on a completely different level), but the ambient dialogue is still so much better that I can’t wrap my mind around it.

I really agree with you guys. The voice acting in the whole game feels a bit lacklustre.

The tonality, expressions, vocal range and even emotions within the voice acting sounds so artificial and unbelievable. It doesn’t even feel as if the characters mean what they say…. and that they’re just reading from a script. This is maintained through out the whole game and not limited only to the cut scenes.

I honestly feel as if I could do a better job and I’m not a voice actor lol

It’s the dialogues and cutscenes that have some issues. The voice acting for world NPCs is not too bad in my opinion.

It’s partly just the writing, though. After joining one of the three factions I had too many “what kind of charr are you?” moments with my characters.

The battle lines need some work, too. As a human Mesmer female, my low-on-health lines are both spoken very flatly. “… Hope I pull through” and “This is getting serious.” I hear them a lot and I find them jarring every time. Who says that? It’s more like I’m hearing her thoughts than anything that would be spoken aloud. A more emotional outcry, like “GODS HELP ME!” would probably be more suitable.

Voice acting is a hit n miss, all over the place. Sometimes it’s amazingly good, while other times it’s atrociously bad.

For me, I think the timing is off, especially when you hear background NPCs converse with each other. It’s like they are not really talking to each other – it’s just an audio file that plays with bad timing.

For example, if NPC1 says something and NPC2 replies with a witty comment, NPC2 replies so quickly almost before NPC1 finishes what they are saying. It sounds rushed and rehearsed and just doesn’t sound natural.

Also, what’s with NPCs talking 20 feet apart from each other? (example: when you choose which order you want to be with). Get closer, don’t be scared.

I haven’t met every character in the game, but the ones I really liked that I’ve met are Tybalt and Sieran. Their personalities and voice acting were excellent.

If it´s just a budget problem do something like they do in ROTT, use the programers voice.

But I agree, everytime I see my honored charr talking and my barbarous warrior it just listen like the same thing. and with my charming azura it don´t look real charming, just like he is bossing around everybody. If you have a “personality” meter why not put more personality on our chars?

worst voice acting ever period.

was worried during beta when i heard the voices in shemore, but i thought to my self its just the beta cant be this bad through out the ENTIRE game, but alas the game launches and even more horrid voice acting through out the entire game.

It was so bad i stopped playing pve all together [still have not finished my personal story traherne’s voice is so bad it’s just…cant do it man], they used too much resources on the graphical side of the game, but none on the story or voices.

And dont even get me started on the human female voices they just make me cringe, im a tpvper my self and started playing this game on mute.

+1 for the soundtrack though its pretty awsome!

For me the voices are good, the problem is the lip sync and facial/body expressions, the characters seem to be much relaxed, they must be more firms and expressives. I know it has improved compared to beta, but could improve more.

Small races (Hylek, Skritt, Kodan, etc) and monsters (Risen, Dredge, etc) also deserve a better animation and lip sync, this game is rich in detail, but Arenanet forgot that part, I’m sad to see how small races and monsters speak.

Charrs and Asuras are better than other races in this aspect.

Please. The voice acting isn´t the reason to someone stop playing a game. If you want they to change and put more effort on voice acting (like us) just say it, stop using the brazilian method, say that a only thing in a game is so horrible that they will prefer to take a kitten in the ear than play the game (or something like this).

Yes, im brazilian and know what i´m talking about.

I honestly don’t really mind some of the story voice overs. But I can’t stand having the same voice as the Asura next to me. While the other NPC’s have different vices I would like a bit of a switch up at least when it comes to classes. Hearing the same voice in a group of the same race/gender makes it sound old and…overused.

In summary:
- ambient mostly good, cutscenes mostly bad
- Asuras overall are awesome, Charr overall are pretty good, Sylvari overall are mixed but Trahearne’s underperformance overshadows them all, Norn and Humans overall are pretty bad
- the biggest problem is a lack of emotion, and it appears to come from a lack of understanding the context. A few VAs are able to do well despite not knowing any details about their characters or the scene (Steve Blum, for example), but many are’t
- the above is heightened and emphasized by poor timing of dialogue triggers, sluggish cutscenes, and lack of interesting visuals throughout dialogue cutscenes

Redoing the voices is of course impossible. However, working on the last point could greatly improve the overall experience. I mean, for Kitten’s sake, the characters aren’t even looking at each other while they talk half of the time.

I wonder if they can add a slider at the beginning of the game to change your pitch level when you create your character. I believe Soul Calibur had that in their character creation.

Maybe in Guild Wars 3.