Guild Wars 2

Isn’t this a touchy subject.

It’s no news that the voice-acting in GW2 is a… mixed bag. The Guild Wars franchise never had breathtaking voice-acting. How can we forget those incredible lines from Guild Wars 1? And some from GW2.

Nonetheless, the cast in Guild Wars 2 is quite impressive. Jennifer Hale, Steve Blum, Nolan North, Troy Baker, Tara Strong, John DiMaggio, Catherine Taber, Courtenay Taylor, Kari Wahlgren, etc…

But it’s time to face the fact that some of these actors were given poor direction. Jennifer Hale is one of my favorite actresses. She voiced one of my favorite characters, Commander Shepard. But sadly, voicing so many iconic characters mixed out with a poor direction has made her change Queen Jennah’s tone quite often throughout the years. The Queen first had her voice way, but now she’s sounding more and more like Cinderella. Fun fact, Hale did voice Cinderella several times. The female sylvari PC has its share issues: weird accent, pitched voice, offputting lines… Obviously she shines when she’s supposed to be angry. Her shouts are good. I can’t deny the shouts.

Another example, Claudia Christian. Claudia voiced some nord characters in Skyrim. She did a great job capturing that stern and strong female character, but her work here as the female norn… is sometimes quite baffling. “Might makes me right!”… what is this even supposed to be mean? Sometimes she groans as if she was in a porno and some of her line delivery sometimes feels incredibly off.

Deputy Mira is probably one of the worst voice actors in the entire game. Her lack of emotion and variety has made her the laughing stock amongst many players. “My eyes! My eyes! I can’t see… By Kormir, it burns!”… or ""Commander Talon. Hold on. You’ll be alright." She sounds like she should be working some bad tv commercial or share the news about the weather.

Eir’s voice actress, Jocelyn Blue… is not a bad character… but she has done a really poor job in some instances of Eir. Every other character she voiced like some of the White Mantle people are really, really bad…

It just feels like humans, asura and sylvari were the ones who ended up receiving best actors; especially the sylvari. The following PC lines are just… bad:
“I feel six feet tall!”,
“Give me some space!” … no comments.
“Uaaaaahh!” … GG female charr PC.
“Eat my dust!”
“Like fine wine I keep getting better.”
“I feel…Strong!”
“Urge to kill raising!”
“New land… New land!”
“Might makes me right.”… the hell.
“I am greatness getting greater.” … the hell x2.
“This rose has thorns and here they are!” … I hear this constantly to the point it gets sickening.
" I could outrun a Centaur!"

Gotta love “More violets I say, less violence!” to oblivion.

As a plus, take these wonderful examples:
(“Price Rurik!”) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tgx1yVWgV5I
(“Madness!”) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3meKrcjQpYk
(“Driven out!”) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZDPxDNW7zk
""Let the sunlight shine through you, face me in another form".
(Let us not forget Trahearne!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaZOuzf2q-E

What’s your opinion? Your favorite and least favorite actors/lines?

That guy that voiced male asura PC. He is awesome in 99% of the lines he says. Most of asuras are voiced very well (with exclusion of Zojja, some of here personal story lines hurt my ears).

Favorites: Taimi, Phlunt, Canach, Female Sylvari PC, Mad King Thorn, Tassi (“that’s an…interest costume”), Evon Gnashblade, both asura PC

Makes me cringe: Female Norn PC (“new land! NEW LAND!”, Braham (before Season 3), original Trahearne (“this won’t end well” <cries>),

Canach is the best. Trahearne is/was the worst.

I love the human female PC voice. She nails sounding like a strong, calm authority that too often in voice acting comes across as whiny or screechy.

Err, I have no issue with the voice acting on the female Sylvari PC (and I have quite a few of them…), nor specifically with the two examples you quote later. The problem here (imho) being that you hear them too often rather than that the lines are bad, but otoh they provide an audible cue that certain buffs are up (however standing around in LA as a Mesmer. Oh kitten , shut up already!)

Best:

• most of the important ally NPCs (especially Canach and Phluntt)
• Human male PC in general
• Asura male PC in general

Worst:

• Trahearne (lacks any intonation/expression, even when calling the troops to battle)
• Zojja (so annoying… sorry, Felicia, I love you!)
• female Norn PC’s battle cries (sound more like bedroom noises)
• male Charr PC outside of the race’s personal story parts (too tamed/soft)

My WTF-“award” for this year so far goes to the new General Almorra Soulkeeper. She sounds like a befuddled granny instead of a veteran charr warrior and officer. Granted, this may be due to her writing, but geez did I side-eye her in Ep1 every time she opened her mouth. Speaking as an old Vigil player, that’s not my General kitten it. :p

Canach on the other hand is brilliant. It always sounds as if the VA is enjoying himself and given the right instructions and/or freedom to nail the character. Whether he’s mid-combat or being a snarky little cactus, there’s something about his very precise enunciation that I just love. His is a very distinct voice, but not over the top.

For the player characters, I like the sylvari voices for both genders but am less impressed with the norn and charr. The female charr PC lacks … something. It’s not bad per se, just not deep and resonant enough for me. There’s nothing there that you’d really associate with a huge and massive bipedal feline fighting machine who could snarl in annoyance like Rytlock sometimes does, or bellow orders across the cacophony of a battlefield. The female norn PC on the other hand just sounds bored much of the time and could do with some zest for life and making her legend.

Ider.1276:

That guy that voiced male asura PC. He is awesome in 99% of the lines he says. Most of asuras are voiced very well (with exclusion of Zojja, some of here personal story lines hurt my ears).

Ha, look whose talking. When Eir Stegalkin makes a mistake, people die.

Moonyeti.3296:

I love the human female PC voice. She nails sounding like a strong, calm authority that too often in voice acting comes across as whiny or screechy.

My thoughts exactly! I think the only other female PC voice that comes close is the actress who voices Hawke in DA:2. The human PC voice acting is the main reason why I rolled a human instead of any other race.

In no particular order

Males: Steve Blum, Crispin Freeman, Matt Mercer, honorary mention to Liam O’Brien & John DiMaggio
Female: Kari Wahlgren, Colleen O’Shaughnessey, Tara Strong, Jen Taylor & Jocelyn Blue

The German male Asura, I wish I would know his name, is a pure joy to listen to.
In HoT he has a stronger, deeper voice, so he probably talked too much in those few years inbetween the release of GW2 and HoT :-)

I changed to French (and downloaded several GByte of voice files I guess) and English and while they are all okay, I like the German one by far most. The French male Asura sounds too hasty and as if he is not sure what he is doing, especially when deploying turrets. Asura don’t be like this. They would never show any form of insecurity. When I plant a turret, that strong “Geschützturm montiert” sounds really like: Here, look what I’ve done, and that’s how Asura are. The French is like “…I hope it does not fall apart”.

I just wish the voice lines would not be so gentleman-like. Female Asura are pure evil.

The worst of the German voice acting is basically when soft voices are pushed to voice Norns and you can hear them like a kid that tries to imitate his dad. And there are only two old lady voices which are already over-used in German TV, so it’s always “that lady from Malcolm In The Middle” or “that voice in King Of Queens”.

In general, the voice acting is 4/5 and I am glad GW2 has this.

As far as I know and heard and as long as my ears are not betraying me,, Trahearne is voiced by a guy called Heinz Petruo. That guy is not only notorious for his roles as random NPC in Thief or Splinter Cell, Sheldon in Spongebob or Biff Tannen from Back To The Future. His father also voiced movies, so I hope it’s Heinz. But that guy’s voice is probably the most over-used one and when he talks about stuff I just hear Biff talking bout the DeLorean or the sports almanach.

The worst VA for me is:
- Trahearne
- Taimi
- Female Human PC (she literally gasp for air when she’s talking all the time. -.-)
- Every child VA NPCs, specially the kid in Divinity’s Reach and in Rata Sum near the bankers.
- A really old man VA, you can hear him in Hoelbrak and trust me... if you have been here as long as I have, you know which I mean,
- ....
- ....

Overrall I enjoy almost all NPC VAs.
Great thing for GW2, and their funny convo for NPCs sometimes aswell.

of all of them only the quaggans have good dialog, the rest is just plane boring.
all i hear is someone reading it from a text book, there is nothing natural about even one single dialog.

For me Zojja is the worst Voiceover… I wish they contracted someone else

Edit: Or kill the character and bring a real Elementalist to the team.