Characters Ruined by Their Voice-Acting

[Jolly Co-operator]

Ruined might be too dramatic a word here; perhaps "undermined" would work better.

Anyway, my pick is the titular Darkness from The Darkness 2

An ancient, primal power from before the time of creation itself that constantly tries to tempt its host into violence and evil? Sounds interesting to me, can't wait! . . . except for the fact that its voice is ridiculous. It just sounds so feral and silly. A 12 year old trying to sound evil would produce a similar voice. I would have preferred a smooth, suave voice. After all, one of the main plot elements is that it constantly tries to seduce the protagonist into giving in to its will.

 

[Elfgore]

I actually just finished that game and I must say I disagree. The Darkness is maddening, it's meant to sound insane and feral, because it is. Maybe the voice wasn't the best choice, but I still prefer it.

Anyway, onto mine.

First we got Nunnally Britannia from Code Geass. She's the younger brother of our protagonist. She was blinded and crippled in an attempt on her and her brother's life when they were children. So, she should be a tragic character, too bad her English voice actor is fucking awful. I honestly think nails on a chalkboard would sound better as a voice actor. She ruined the final scene, which I re-watched it in Japanese and felt so much more emotion.

Next, anything and almost everything with Greg Ayres. His voice is permanently locked in a state of a thirteen year old boy in the worst stages of puberty. You'd need a God damn list to keep track of every voice crack he makes. He almost always plays a perv too. The only show I enjoyed him in was Baka and Test, where he actually toned down the crackly voice and sounded great. He pretty much ruined Heaven's Lost Property for me, since whenever I read the manga I heard his voice, kinda ruined the dramatic final chapters.

 

[Erttheking]

Fuuka from Persona 3. I actually find myself getting semi-invested in her social link, then the voice acting kicks in again and I'm reminded that Fuuka's emotional range seems to be nothing and mildly surprised. Seriously, AIGIS emotes more than she does, and Aigis is SUPPOSED to not have emotions!

 

[NeutralDrow]

Most of the characters from Devil May Cry 2, especially Dante. I actually appreciated what they were trying to do with all the characters involved, but it seemed like none of the voice actors besides Lucia's grandmother had the chops to pull it off.

Next, anything and almost everything with Greg Ayres. His voice is permanently locked in a state of a thirteen year old boy in the worst stages of puberty.

I thought he made a pretty good fit for Negi Springfield because of that. Then again, that was him playing a ten year old boy in the worst stages of puberty in a faux Welsh accent, so there were still problems...

 

[Casual Shinji]

Linguini from Ratatouille.

The guy's a good voice actor, but very miscast for the role. He's the same guy who did the teacher in The Incredibles, for which he was a perfect fit. But for someone we're supposed to like, it's not a great idea to make him sound all nasally and annoying. He's not all bad, but whenever emotions ran high he just sounded terrible.

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

Harry Mason in Silent Hill (or let's call a spade a spade - almost EVERY character in Silent Hill, and not just the first game of the series).

"I'm looking for a little girl..." Grrrr! The only good instance of that line was in SH's UFO ending.

----------------------

*Nervous laughter*

"Sorry... Ah..."

*Unintelligible alien speech*

"Let me ask you, have you seen a little girl around here? Short, black hair..."

*In pain, pierced by the sound of a ray gun.* "AAAAAAAH!!!"

*thump*

 

[SoranMBane]

A lot of characters in Skyrim would probably be a lot more compelling if their voice actors sounded like they gave a shit. Take, for example, Sapphire in the Thieves Guild, who sounds awfully blase about the whole thing when she tells you the story of how she was

Spoiler

gang-raped by bandits after watching them slaughter her whole family.

Or Lokir from the game's opening (you might know him better as "You're not going to kill me! *Dead*"), who, considering the fact that he's one of the first goddamn characters you hear speak in the whole game, probably could have stood to have some better direction on his voice acting. I mean, here you have a guy scared out of his mind, about to be wrongly executed for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, praying to his gods for deliverance that will never come, and ultimately dying in one final mad dash for freedom. That could have been interesting and set the tone for the whole scene if Bethesda had put in any effort, but instead it's just stilted and silly (which, I suppose, at least sets the tone for the rest of the game).

 

[Kolby Jack]

A lot of characters in Skyrim would probably be a lot more compelling if their voice actors sounded like they gave a shit. Take, for example, Sapphire in the Thieves Guild, who sounds awfully blase about the whole thing when she tells you the story of how she was

Spoiler

gang-raped by bandits after watching them slaughter her whole family.

Or Lokir from the game's opening (you might know him better as "You're not going to kill me! *Dead*"), who, considering the fact that he's one of the first goddamn characters you hear speak in the whole game, probably could have stood to have some better direction on his voice acting. I mean, here you have a guy scared out of his mind, about to be wrongly executed for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, praying to his gods for deliverance that will never come, and ultimately dying in one final mad dash for freedom. That could have been interesting and set the tone for the whole scene if Bethesda had put in any effort, but instead it's just stilted and silly (which, I suppose, at least sets the tone for the rest of the game).

Agreed. A LOT of the voice acting in Skyrim is mediocre. Not really god awful, but it's hard to feel for the characters much when their voice actors clearly don't. Some talent shined through, like Paarthurnax or Odahviing. Really, most of the talking dragons had good voices, which was at least one key point they got more or less right.

It also didn't help that they had only a handful of voice actors speaking for the hundreds of NPCs that weren't ABSOLUTELY plot critical. Bethesda has a bad habit of blowing a lot of money on big names to voice one character. Skyrim was such a big success though that maybe they'll actually be able to hire more, better people for their future projects.

This is somewhat obscure, but if anyone has had the... *ahem* pleasure of playing a restored content KotOR 2... wow. It's just... baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. I know why said content was cut. The cut droid planet of M4-78 especially. Virtually NO combat until the very end of the questline, LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG stretches of running often in a straight line, and the WORST part of it is that Obsidian didn't record any dialogue for it. So... the fans had to. I have never appreciated professional voice acting more than sitting through two hours (TWO. HOURS.) of FAN voice acting. I'm not even taking into account the music BLARING over the dialogue in the first place or the shitty scripting the fans did to fill in the gaps. Jesus.


The HK Factory sucked too, but at least it had company-made dialogue. There is no greater proof that some things should just be left on the cutting room floor than KotOR 2's restored garbagecontent.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Good thread.

Very old school adventure/puzzle game called "Sanitarium". Great and really unique game, but the main character's voice was just awful. They tried to make him sound confused and scared, but it just came across like they phoned the whole thing in.

Adam Jensen from "Deus Ex: Human Revolution". Loved the game, but Jensen sounded like a guy trying way too hard to sound tough and bad-ass.

That stupid Jester guy from "Devil May Cry 3". Though actually I guess it sort of makes sense that he's annoying.

Basically every anime ever. Ok, that's exaggerating, but I've lost count of the number of animes I've watched in which the female characters seemed to all be voiced by the same "insanely whiny shrieking Japanese schoolgirl" voice.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

No ones mentioned Megaman 8? Megaman sounds like a ten year old girl, and Dr. Light stutters, slurs, and flubs lines like he's had too many brewskies. Not what you expect for a super fighting robot and the brilliant scientist that made said robot, especially after hearing the voices from the Ruby-Spears show. Worse yet is Megaman X has the same voice as Rock in X4, and Zero's delivery of a certain line is infamous.

 

[Michael Tabbut]

I thought the voice acting throughout Warhammer 40k Space Marine could have been better if the characters actually emoted more! Seriously the only character that seemed to get emotions right was the Ork Warboss and even then that's pretty much a given.

 

[chocolate pickles]

Ruined might be too dramatic a word here; perhaps "undermined" would work better.

Anyway, my pick is the titular Darkness from The Darkness 2

An ancient, primal power from before the time of creation itself that constantly tries to tempt its host into violence and evil? Sounds interesting to me, can't wait! . . . except for the fact that its voice is ridiculous. It just sounds so feral and silly. A 12 year old trying to sound evil would produce a similar voice. I would have preferred a smooth, suave voice. After all, one of the main plot elements is that it constantly tries to seduce the protagonist into giving in to its will.

I haven't actually played the game, but from what i've watched in LP's, Jackie's voice acting is shit: Deadpan doesn't even begin to describe it. He sounds tired, depressed and drunk at the same time.

One of my own: Jason Brody from Far Cry 3. The voice was fine at the start when he was supposed to be a scared rich kid, but it eventually it made him sound naive and inexperienced even when he was supposed to be some badass rambo-like character.

 

[Shdwrnr]

Johnny Yong Bosch voiced both the main character and Adachi in the english dub of Persona 4. In the video game, this is barely noticed since the main character doesn't actually speak. In the anime, it is very VERY distracting considering certain spoilerific things.

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

Good thread.

Very old school adventure/puzzle game called "Sanitarium". Great and really unique game, but the main character's voice was just awful. They tried to make him sound confused and scared, but it just came across like they phoned the whole thing in.

Adam Jensen from "Deus Ex: Human Revolution". Loved the game, but Jensen sounded like a guy trying way too hard to sound tough and bad-ass.

That stupid Jester guy from "Devil May Cry 3". Though actually I guess it sort of makes sense that he's annoying.

Basically every anime ever. Ok, that's exaggerating, but I've lost count of the number of animes I've watched in which the female characters seemed to all be voiced by the same "insanely whiny shrieking Japanese schoolgirl" voice.

I would like to say I take offense to that last comment as an anime fan but given how many roles Kana Hanazawa, Rina Hideka, and Yoko Hikasa are given combined with how it can be difficult to tell different seiyuus apart, I kind of have to agree. The sad thing is that these are the good voice actors but I will elaborate more

OT: Well, I've already stated it before in different threads but RWBY kills me over and over again with the horrible voice acting

The horrible script and twists would have been blunted in their stupidity if the delivary was better

To use an example: lets compare Weiss to Rachel Alucard's English voice (yes, another quarter for the blazblue jar)

I say the delivery of a "royal, refined woman that puts people down" is much better in the later

There are others like how Blake and Cinder are flat, Mercury sounds too douchy and so on but I don't want to take up to much space

 

[Fox12]

Persona is a weird series. It varies from mind glowingly awesome voice acting to outright terrible. The difference can be jarring.

The biggest one for me is Chie from golden. I loved the original voice actress, since she gave the character both maturity and spunk. The new girl was atrocious, however, and completely killed one of my favorite characters, to the point where she ruins any scene she's in. In fact all the voice changes were awful. Normally I don't mind a change in voice actors, and sometimes I rather like them, but this was a serious trade down.

Obviously fuuka gets on here. She could be interesting, but her voice is... Horrible. As is her social link about cooking.

Aigis could have been interesting if her actress had been allowed to portray emotion. I know she doesn't have any, but the emotionless robot thing is basically a cliche at this point. However, when she WAS allowed to convey emotion, she became one of my favorite characters. The thing is, Michel ruff, who voices yukari, also voiced an emotionless character in another show, but actually pulled it off. Her performance as yuki nagato have the character subtle emotions, and really added a layer of depth to a very quiet character. She was also pretty funny. This cemented her as one of my all time favorite voice actresses for her amazing range. I was stunned that both characters were voiced by the same person. The point being, a quiet character can be given intense emotions through voice acting, it's just very difficult.

 

[She-Pudding]

Tidus from FF10.

Granted, voice acting was still pretty young then, but... wow. Ouch. The HD remake made me realize just how much my memory had sugar-coated his... performance. That actor must have been given zero direction, or perhaps the mood of the scenes were changed by the time the other characters recorded their lines... or perhaps I'm fishing for an excuse for him. ;p But it's like he was told to channel a ten year old boy at all times. Ignore the context, just shout impassionately, then mope immediately, then shout like what you just said never even happened. Well, not in every scene, but certainly enough to make me turn on the Japanese Dub.

I am not the type of person who turns in the Japanese dub.

 

[She-Pudding]

I say this with love. FF10 is wonderful.

 

[Queen Michael]

Beyblade, the Swedish dub. You can tell that the voices were done by a very small number of people, and they sound like a bunch of grade schoolers in a school play.

 

[Kieve]

Agreed. A LOT of the voice acting in Skyrim is mediocre. Not really god awful, but it's hard to feel for the characters much when their voice actors clearly don't. Some talent shined through, like Paarthurnax or Odahviing. Really, most of the talking dragons had good voices, which was at least one key point they got more or less right.

I don't have a problem with most of Skyrim's dialogue. Of course, I also use "Interesting NPCs" and the VA work there puts things in a different perspective maybe.

But Farengar. Oh god, Farengar.

He sounds like he's reading a dictionary. Bethesda ought to have slapped him, sent him back to the audio booth, and said "This time, GIVE A SHIT."

 

[thanatos388]

Raiden in MGS2. The acting was terrible all throughout the game, to the point where it seems like the actors can't even read correctly. He makes statements out of what are supposed to be questions, he sounds angry when hes not supposed to. And what's worse is that in an interview he said that he does not care about character motivation or the intent of the writer when reading, he just goes and does whatever until the director says ok. Also Fortune who is bad in ways probably not intended, like making multiple sentences out of one short phrase making everything sound awkward. And of course Hayter beginning his descent into over gruffness to the point of ridiculous.

But mostly Quinton Flynn, I blame him the most for people not liking or even giving Raiden a chance.