How important are VAs in vidya?

How important are VAs in vidya?

Entirely pointless and just another way for developers to overspend their budget

Back in my day we didn't have Grade-A voice actors for every line, we had to settle for one or two lines by an over zealous narrator in the opening and we like it!

Its not needed in smaller titles, although its appreciated. Etrian Odyssey doesn't use them (not sure about V) and its fine. Bigger titles on the other hand have to have them.

Depends. Ultimately much like graphics they can only make a good game "great" if executed correctly but your voice acting cannot "make a game" as such.

"I am the best actress ever."
- Jenna Haze

Not a key feature, but overall quality depends on a good VA.

Depends on the actor and game.

I sure as shit don't notice or need a 10/10 voice actor in a game like Dark Souls.

But actors in the first Killing Floor are necessary for the sequel.

If the same actors from KF1 were not in 2, that'd be a let down

Why are so many female pornstars bitches and so many male pornstars bros?

Depends on the game, obviously. Say what you will about Spec Ops the Line but the voice acting in that is perfect.

>Fucking sucking and fake moaning is now considered acting

When did it all go so wrong? These whores actually feel entitled and empowered for fucking on camera

Not remotely as much as they think they are.
Besides, if you cut out the VA, you can have conversation trees that go on for miles.

>Etrian Odyssey doesn't use them
Untold 1 and 2 had voiced stories

is the pic hot? Not gonna type it out manually to check it out

Because most people treat male pornstars like studs because they fuck alot, but treat female pornstars like sluts because they fuck alot.
You'd get kinda defensive too.

It's not totally necessary except in super-"realistic" AAA games (imagine something like GTAV without voice acting) , but when done right it can add a lot to a game.

I think Bastion was made great by the narrator. He was basically what got me to buy the game. Though that game may be an exception, since I can't think of any other example.

Bastion hit a sweet point of literally just having one voice but making it absolutely perfect. Transistor did it fantastic as well with the Transistor and Royce.

The cost of VAs is usually stupidly high and clearly extremely inefficient in terms of improving game quality, I would rather just have them all gone and have that money funneled into something worthwhile

Somewhat, most important in RPGs that feature defined characters like the Witcher 3 or story heavy games with a lot of dialogue like MGS.

>Jenna Haze

Two words: Tapeworm

Why get into porn in the first place if you don't like cocks?

>Whenever she gets a facial and pretends to smile, now you know deep inside she's actually suffering
This makes it much hotter desu

Fugg.

"Oh shit! Fuck my fucking ass!"
-Jenna Haze

>Master of Orion reboot
>they literally blow all their money on the VA
>the game is crap

>pornstars trying to insinuate they deserve an ounce of respect
ahahaha

Eh, Transistor was pretty weak I found. That voice just kinda annoyed me to be honest, and having the protag mute just made all his affectionate shit feel creepy.

I read faster than people talk so it's useless and somewhat annoying in games with subtitles.

This game had no voice acting whatsoever and still had some of the most witty, well-written dialogue of any video game.

Unless they're anything like FFXII's actors, then most VA's are completely worthless.

And NPCs.

I want to play this, but I have no computer good enough to emulate it. None of my friends have it, so it's biting the bullet and buying it for 40 fucking dollars.

I would argue they are the least important aspect of almost any video game. The janitor that keeps the offices clean during development is much more important than a va. There are not very many games that are irrecoverably harmed if voices were removed or replaced with someone worse.

Maybe something like Stanley Parable.

But they ARE sluts

It's worth it.

Everyone in this thread is so full of shit. They either A.) Don't remember what shit sounded like back before games used actual voice actors to deliver dialogue B.) Are just being le cynical badasses.
Seriously, for a board that does so much bitching about games' graphics and animations and "downgrades", can you imagine modern games without voice acting? They'd look ridiculous, characters just standing and gesticulating while text appears on screen. Or worse yet, some intern flatly reading script.

>i'm a po wittle baby and I can't wead!

You have to go back

Agreed. You won't regret it, it's an absolute delight from start to finish.

Depends on the game and voice actor.

For example, Legacy of Kain would never survive without its cast, but something like Call of Duty could.

Arguably even less important than the soundtrack.

In certain titles lack of voice acting would feel really weird and I don't think there's a case in which *good* voice acting is a turn off anywhere but at the same time it's usually superfluous.

Keep in mind that doesn't mean "yeah fuck voice acting remove it" but at the same time it's unimportant enough for it to be reasonable for everyone to tell voice actors to shut the fuck up when they want more money.

I agree.
>(eloquent explanation and edification redacted due to sudden loss of interest)

TLDR; games are fun because you do shit, not because you get to listen to some twat waffle on.
>All video game voice acting boils down to 'go to [place], kill everything there, steal shit and bring back [optional fetch target]

yea looks like B

>someone disagrees with me!
>they fit into the category I made up so I can continue to live in denial away from reality!

Grow up and go back

wow you are so cool

Agreed.

I like my cut scenes to be short and sparse. I don't care how emotionally engaging the fuckhead telling me to go kill mooks sounds.

Fuck Yeah! you told him!

>you told him good

"Don't worry about the worm sticking out of my butthole"
- Jenna Haze

yea man so good you tell those VA your outdated opinion

>most witty, well-written dialogue of any video game.

Maybe if you have never played video games outside of your nintendo bubble.

I wouldn't mind if every game had pitchshifted squeaks for "voices" like Golden Sun.

I didn't play those, I forgot about that actually.

Just buy a wii for a couple more bux and softmod it you mong

Not very. Pretty much anyone can read outloud.

I feel bad for anyone that doesn't exclusively watch amateur porn. Especially those that idolize the actresses

>still think his opinion is valid for everything
some games don't need voice acting, but AAA shit like CoD of the single player battlefield does

you know why ?
because the only they have with decent quality is their cinematics, even gameplay don't match it

now go watch a movie

Even though you made no mention of any other platforms I'm expecting that faggot to drop a sony bomb any second now...

*from start to the beginning of Boggly Woods, then from the end of Boggly Woods to finish.

Huh

I feel bad for anyone who watches any kind of 3DPD.

Typical retarded console warrior who has never played a PC game in their life.

Voice acting is a great way to keep a players attention. Especially in tutorials

Pretending to be something you aren't is acting user.

Not important at all. Some video games will use a famous actor as a gimmick but very rarely do people buy video games for actors. No one says "I can't wait to play the next Yuri Lowenthal game"

Video games are not movies and there aren't really any "bankable" VAs the way there are movie actors.

Bet my rig is better than yours

Not when it's shit. I wish Battalion Wars had goofy cartoon mumbling than full on voice acting

...

You said it`s rare, but I look forward to any and all Simon Templeman performances. But that`s just me.

Bring them here and I will. Their jobs are essentially superfluous.

Nice samefagging. I've played plenty and few surpass Paper Mario 2. Psychonauts, Portal and Monkey Island give it a run for its money.

f
;.;

I feel like this is equivalent to someone tweeting at Robert Downey Jr "Yo you da best Tony Stark" and him replying "Actually I'm not, and I never was. It's called acting".

Like, if you're a well known porn star you'd think they'd own the whole slutty angle and use it to promote their product.

pointless they are mainly rich spoilt brats

Voice actors help make games memorable. They're very important to games with story, such as Silent Hill 2, the Yakuza series, Uncharted, The Walking Dead, GTA, Assassin's Creed, those Arkham games, Portal, The Last of Us. Let's face facts; most major game releases have voice acting, and it's usually pretty stellar.

Are video games that have voice acting automatically good? No. Are there games with good writing that didn't need voice acting? Yes. But don't try to use bullshit reasoning like "W-well I didn't want voice acting in my games anyway!" to just explain away the fact that there are millions of people attached to game characters because of their iconic voices. I mean look at Rockstar with games like RDR and GTA: besides a few celebrity cameos their games have some amazing characters backed by fantastic voice actors who you probably didn't know existed until you saw them in that game.

>all these people shitting on voice acting

Splinter Cell and Thief would not have been nearly as memorable without Ironside and Russell. Search your heart, you know it to be true

>Some video games will use a famous actor as a gimmick
I did some voice/mocap work for kingdom come: deliverance.

Nobody will ever see it though because my work is only used during development, so the devs have something to build their technology around and for testing. The final voice and mocap will be done later on by a 'well known actor' (their words).

Its a common practice, they get a small time local actor or even amateur to provide va for while they develop the game. They can see how their writing turns out irl, tweak it and get me to do it again a thousand times so that when they have their 2 week slot with their big name actor they already know exactly how they want everything and they don't waste any time.

>voice acting is good and makes games memorable
>why?
>because big budget games have voice acting

great reasoning, everything with a big budget is good

Dear Humanity...

Voice acting is very important in many games but do we really need to have these same ~10 people in every fucking game.

...

Those are AWFUL tutorials if they're filled with dense information.

>Why
What the fuck do you mean "why"? Good voice acting makes literally any game better because it puts more emotion into the story and the characters. If Siegward giving a battle cry while running to help you fight that flame demon was the best moment of that whole game, maybe the best moment of my entire time playing games in 2016.

I don't think going back to only text boxes or switching to fucking Nip actors is the best idea.

I think the better question is has a VA ever sold a game for you. Unless you're from Japan that answer is almost universally no, and even if you are from Japan I doubt that percentage is much higher.

>Voice acting has never been a major selling point in the US
>I guess that means we don't need it in any game from now on ever!

Also fuck you, I bought Arkham Asylum because they had The Animated Series VAs come back.

Same goes for written ones that pack a while bunch of text on screen

Voice acting has no tangible effect on the quality of a game. I'm glad you had a moment of enjoyment, good for you but the game would have been the same without the voice.