sudo-EatPant

Kran'ts Ton

@sudo-EatPant

I'm using tilt controls!

am 27 | furry & retro tech | very bi | operator of @UCVRCG

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wavebeem
@wavebeem
ponett
@ponett

my very strongly held game design belief is that if your game doesn't have proper animated cutscenes then having voice acting that's just okay is significantly worse than having no voice acting at all

if the story is just conveyed via text boxes with a portrait or some word balloons pointing towards some small sprites or whatever, and if the voice acting is even slightly mid, then waiting for the actors to read out every line of every text box is pure agony. the voice acting has to be SO good for that format to be enjoyable for me. i would rather just read the dialogue at my own reading speed. a middling performance can really drag down a character i would otherwise like if i was just hearing their dialogue in whatever voice my brain defaults to giving them. slow voice acting can really kill the pace of a scene and make it feel a lot more tedious if nothing else is happening on the screen while each line is being read. if a game is more enjoyable with the voice acting turned off then it wasn't a wise use of your budget in the first place

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in reply to @ponett's post:

taffywabbit
@taffywabbit

the only thing worse than this is when characters have a bunch of grunts and short canned lines they say when the text box changes and the lines don't even match any of what they're saying. like some fire emblem guy's text box says "well then, i suppose we have the makings of a plan then!" but his voice is like "ha ha ha! very interesting!" while you're trying to start reading it. it's one of the few things that will get me to outright disable the voice volume in a game

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ponett
@ponett

oh yeah, short little grunts or one-word exclamations are one thing, but it's so distracting when the voice line is a whole sentence that doesn't match the actual line of dialogue. just make them match!

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miscu
@miscu

for some reason, I don't have the nerve to just skip through the lines because that feels like compromising the experience in some way. it's such a drag though to have every other gameplay and visual element of the game come to a complete halt to listen through something that I can read in a fraction of the time

the ideal is if they have a little intro where you hear their voice for a few seconds so you can mentally lock in what it's supposed to be for unvoiced dialogue. I think the danganronpa games actually strike a good balance by doing that and then only having full voice acting during the courtroom sequences

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foggles
@foggles

yeah i think that's a good wording of my opinion as well
i'm fond of the fake words + subtitles combo - stuff like hollow knight, undertale (kind of), animal crossing (though the words aren't really fake), etc.
though that might stem from playing games voiced in japanese before i knew japanese existed

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aliengeo
@aliengeo

Tbh I think prosody and tone are the most important factors sound can add if you're expecting the player to read anyway, so therefore I have to judge character audio based on that. You can convey some degree of stress and timing with beeps (or a significant degree if you are Celeste) and some degree of emotional tenor with canned grunts or sound effects, but poor VA likely degrades the player's ability to perceive the intended rhythm and intonation.

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