Guild Wars 2

Another compleatly different thing about voices…

It would be nice to have some choosable (either make the kitten choosable or make like 3 different voices to choose from) different voices for u’ characters. I roll 3 female charrs – they all sound identical.

This is such a thoroughly discussed thread that I’m afraid I didn’t read through all the posts made so far, so hopefully I ’m not just repeating what others have said. But anyway…

I find SOME of the voice acting disappointing, but I don’t think of it as bad most of the time. Trahearne is… a rather special example of cringe-worthiness. I respect a lot of what Anet has done (or at least tried to do), but letting the leader of the Pact have such consistently unpleasant delivery is quite a shame. I don’t know what it is with a lot of these games, but it seems like lots of devs go out of their way to make your story allies as unlikeable as possible. Mystifying.

As for Nolan North being more plain than his usual witty self for this game, I believe Anet wanted to avoid casting every single human male player as the same archetype he usually voices. Since the game does urge you to think of your character as having some personality that you decide on, they probably thought it best to have the voicing be more general so more character types could fit into it with some imagination. Which might raise the question of why they got a voice actor with such an established style, but eh, I’m just glad another voice actor I like is in the game. :P

Having come from SWTOR (maybe I’ve been spoiled in terms of VO, but oh well) I can say that the voice acting is pretty much the only thing GW2 does worse than TOR. Brian Bloom’s job as the male trooper in TOR absolutely blew me away, with just the right combination of kitteniness, confidence, and determination. Nolan North’s job as my male human warrior (closest counterpart, since my trooper was also a human) is just pathetic in comparison. He just doesn’t deliver emotion very well here (except maybe the “Help me! Please!” line when downed) and ends up often sounding rather monotonous. Also his tone often sounds like that of a 12-13 year old.

In fact, that seems to me the main problem with voice acting here: The VAs don’t seem to give much thought to the context of the conversations, and often end up using the same kind of voice throughout the whole game. Thus the characters end up lacking a lot of personality. The only voice acting here that has really impressed me so far (at least player character wise) is the male norn (that “KILL EM!!!!” shout), and maybe the male charr. They do a pretty decent job on conveying the “RWARR! I’m a tough guy!!” personality, much more than any of the other player characters can do with their respective personalities. Though the fact that all the convos take place using the same generic 2-3 backgrounds (also lacking context) doesn’t help very much here.

The voice acting here isn’t “awful” per se, more just like…. well, meh. I find myself just reading the dialogue and skipping through the convos rather than sit and listen to the characters speak. While it’s true that voice acting was never a big focus of GW2 (and wasn’t hyped through the roof like with TOR), and there are more than enough strong points here to make up for it, but it’s still a dark blemish on an otherwise great game. Maybe hire Brian Bloom and give him a few lines in his Trooper voice? I dunno.

On a side note, I dunno what it is with Nolan North and MMOs…his job in TOR (male Jedi Consular) is often thought to be one of the weakest there too.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

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.

Not necessarily. Depends on if the voice actors are hired on a contract (eg. why Jennifer Hale keeps appearing in Bioware games).

One Prarie Outpost.4860:

There are no accents, no oddities in speech, no… nothing. It amazes me that all races and species in Tyria have perfect English language skills.

The quaggan and skrit say hi.

Deputy Monotone (Mira) is the only one that stands out like a sore thumb to me. Just play the first Claw Island PS and you’ll see what I mean. Extremely monotonous and absolutely emotionless when Talon was dying. That is single-handedly the worst voice acting in the game. Other then that, nothing else really bothered me.

I would like to add my 2 cents about GW’s 2 voice acting.
I have played many RPGs btw. (one could say too many).

I was OK with Trahearne’s voice. (

The only thing that Trahearne wanted in my opinion was a way to better introduce his character.

Example: Trahearne pops up in Claw island, you are being told that he is the know-it-all.

IMO Trahearne wanted some extra lore/dialogue integrated to him (didnt have to be voice, it could be written dialogue)

Next if you can bring bavk Paul Eiding.
That man is a beast for voice-acting grizzled veterans.

Just wanted to say I actually love GW2’s voice acting overall. Yes, there are a few characters who could’ve used some work (really just Mira), but the overall quality is pretty high. I see that a lot of people complaining are comparing it to TOR, which does have pretty good VOs, but those are not the norm for the genre. Those of us who played GW1 are very, very grateful for the work ANet has put in.

Where GW2 shines is in the sheer AMOUNT of VOs present in the game. Most other games I have played do not have anywhere near the volume of voiced content that GW2 has. STO, my other MMO of choice, has at time laughably poor VOs, and the player character has NO voice AT ALL. So, appreciate what you have, people, it could be so much worse.

Blazing Liger.1236:

Where GW2 shines is in the sheer AMOUNT of VOs present in the game. Most other games I have played do not have anywhere near the volume of voiced content that GW2 has.

Must not have played very many games by Bioware/Obsidian, Bethesda, WW/EALA (C&C series), Riot (LoL), Blizzard (SC/WC), Square Enix, and many others that I can’t think of off the top of my head then.

Blazing Liger.1236:

STO, my other MMO of choice, has at time laughably poor VOs, and the player character has NO voice AT ALL. So, appreciate what you have, people, it could be so much worse.

Meh, that could be said about any game that isn’t like Big Rigs or whatever. “No problem with <Issue> in <game>, you could have gotten the next Big Rigs/SUuperman 64/E.T. whatever instead”

Not to say that your points don’t have merit, but the whole “appreciate what you have people, because it could have been so much worse” and using the worst of the genre as an example doesn’t really cut it.

BobbyStein.2315:

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

If you asked me, I’d say the problems are:

1. Ignoring of context. I and many others have already talked about this many times here, mostly the VAs all using the same tone throughout everything. Definitely kills the immersion when you have characters sounding nonchalant during an emotional scene, emotionless during a battle scene, “RWARRRR!!!” during a quiet scene, and so on.

2. Cutscenes dropping to a generic backdrop with just face-to-face dialog. Also been commented on here, mostly since it drops all context from convos and forces the dialog delivery, whether good or bad, to provide everything…which brings us back to point #1. Also the face-to-face convos can make to confusing as to who’s talking to whom with more that 2 characters.

3. Having sound effects for every action in battle can be a great way to make characters more alive…if the voice acting is good. The male norn and male charr work very well, having great “battle cry” voices. On the other hand, hearing Nolan North’s whiny, high-pitched squeals in battle after battle = not fun. And don’t get me started on the asura “crippled” sound…

4. Brian Bloom, anyone?

As much as everyone complains about Detha’s lines in AC, I think that Sonya Eddy, the voice actress who does her and other female charr, should get a medal for being the most enthusiastic voice actor in the game, and the one who is the most appropriate for her roles. Her voice pretty much defines the female charr for me, like that one guy with a slightly British accent (Maverick’s voice actor) and the really gravelly guy (Clawspur’s voice actor) define the male charr.

I like the voice acting! It’s a million times better than in GW1. I still remember at some points when my character spoke he had emotion then BAM halfway through factions he went from “Let’s go and save people from Shiro’s corrupted!” to “OH NO. THERE ARE CORRUPTED. INITIATING BATTLE SEQUENCE.” Sound bug or what I don’t know but I muted the game after that becuase he sounded so monotone!

I do agree with the people saying there should be some variety especially in the PC’s since a human noble sounds the way he should but a thief on the street still sounds slightly sophisticated.

As for the rest of them, Charr are amazing both genders, Asura have the best lines and they have Felicia Day so they win no matter what. Humans I mentioned above. Sylvari are amazing plus I believe the fem pc is Sheena from ToS (didnt know that until i listened closer) and Norn I like but they seem a bit forced at times.