Characters Ruined by Their Voice-Acting

[Raine_sage]

ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE IN ARC RISE FANTASIA DEAR LORD

Apparently the VAs were given absolutely zero direction and sweet christ on a cracker it shows. I couldn't make it past the first level. And it's even worse because there's no option to just use the japanese dialogue.

 

[Godhead]

Take just about anyone from DoW, but Diomedes will always be the winner in my heart.

Spoiler: BRUVVAH I AM PINNED

 

[newfoundsky]

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.

Play the game, I think it will change your mind and the story and game play are wonderful and you are never really sure what is going to happen next, as the Darkness is an ally and a villain all at once.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

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!

Gods, I hated Fuuka. Ugh.

OT: Anyway, I've got two.

First off, Hikaru in the dub of Magic Knight Rayearth. Her Japanese voice actress is really good, and her dub for the (very rare and obscure) Sega Saturn Rayearth game was superb. And then they dubbed the anime and it was just... awful. She sounded like she was a cartoon chipmunk rather than a fiery badass. So much fail.

Secondly, I was recently playing SpellForce Platinum and one of the villains had this... just awful voice. Like, bad "gay lisp" except the character wasn't supposed to be gay (I don't think?). Worst of all, he clones himself (via illusion) and ALL OF THE CLONES TALK. Icepick. Ears.

 

[Erttheking]

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.

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.

Oh Christ. I didn't think Adam was that bad, but I was just reminded of Geralt from the Witcher. I didn't think it was possible to keep a boring gravely tone when you were staring down a lynch mob and assusing specific members of being rapists and murders, but he sure proved me wrong!

To an extent yes. To the point where my friend was (pleasantly) surprised that Ryuko from Kill La Kill actually sounded rather masculine.

 

[Erttheking]

Gods, I hated Fuuka. Ugh.

OT: Anyway, I've got two.

She's not the worst character ever, heck there's even some interesting potential in how her parents pressured her to achieve at all costs, but every time the voice actress opens her mouth, I can FEEL my interest dripping away.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

Gods, I hated Fuuka. Ugh.

OT: Anyway, I've got two.

She's not the worst character ever, heck there's even some interesting potential in how her parents pressured her to achieve at all costs, but every time the voice actress opens her mouth, I can FEEL my interest dripping away.

Oh, she's well written. I just couldn't stand listening to her. Fortunately, I seem to recall her arcana was fairly uninteresting, so I never felt that bad ignoring the crap out of her.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Scott McNeil is one of the best and most prolific voice actors in the business. The problem is.... he keeps taking roles that his voice just does not fit AT ALL. So you can go from his incredibly badass VA work for the Imperial Guard, to Captain Boreale.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

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've always thought Silent Hill 2 sported a pretty good voice cast. I love Monica Hogan as Mary/Maria, and Guy Cihi as James was pretty good. He speaks in that incredibly groggy monotone but there's just something right about it.

 

[Zontar]

Male Shepard. His voice is so irritating I went with Fem-Shep just so I wouldn't have to deal with it.

What's astounding to me is that he was just a stand in when they made the first game, with the intent of having an actual voice actor do the actual lines. But they somehow thought he was good enough to use for it and two sequels.

 

[AuronFtw]

Mass Effect's Male Shepard. Holy dong, how did they end up picking this guy? FemShep and almost everyone else in ME gives great performance, but the titular male is just terrible.

I felt it was the opposite. ME1 had a bit of a stale performance from MaleShep, but in 2 and 3 he knocked it out of the park. But femshep? Never... really... changed. She was thoroughly boring and tedious to listen to in the first game, and kept that up for the whole series. Her attempts at snarky comments or witty replies fall completely flat, and her angry voice sounds like someone who heard about anger in a five-hour conference with guest speakers and a powerpoint presentation, but never experienced the emotion first-hand. It was very jarring.

After playing through all 3 games as male shep when they came out, I went back a year later to replay them as female shep to do all the DLC content I'd missed, and I had to stop playing midway through 2 - just couldn't stand her voice. Tried to pick her up again with 3, and couldn't do it there either. She just did not sound remotely interested in what was going on, let alone leading every living race in a resistance against killer space robots. Even aside from specific lines that MaleShep just excels at (you big... stupid... jellyfish! etc) the "overall" feel of Shepard was just way better with him. And when he was angry, he was angry; or at least mildly heated. Femshep might as well have been voiced by keanu reaves for all the emotion she displays.

 

[Longing]

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.

gosh i know this is fanmade and i should be a little forgiving, but this was excruciating. you can hear the mouth breathing coming in through the dialogue. uhghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. i uninstalled that shit as soon as i finished my playthrough. they should've just used the stock droid sounds the game already had, i would take an eternity of beeepps and boops over a single more minute of this.


ahem. anyway on a slightly less ragey note, female hawke. smug vaguely posh british accent that makes me want to twack her in the head. bioware please hire jennifer hale for every single voiced pc (male and female) or just go back to silent protagonists please.

 

[JimB]

Sister Rosette Christopher from Chrono Crusade. Good manga, awful anime translation. The voice chosen for her would be a great match for Mr. Mxylzptlk, or for someone with emphysema who huffs helium for comedic effect, but ugh for that role.

 

[Laser Priest]

But Farengar. Oh god, Farengar.

"Come to Dragonsreach to discush the ongoing hoshtilities like the resht of the great warriorsh?"

But I'm going to have to echo another poster's sentiments here and say the Persona 4 Golden version of Chie. The original voice struck me as a bit odd before, but I still liked it, and Chie was one of my favourite characters of the game. Hearing the voice they gave her for Golden just upset me. Her voice is just actively annoying to me and it's not easy to like a character when hearing them speak is bothersome.

 

[Spider RedNight]

ERNEST BALDWIN FROM SILENT HILL 2. Seriously, I swear. I played through both SH2 and 3 using old and new voice actors (though I had to whip out my PS2 for 3) and I almost died laughing at the sound of Ernest's original voice from the Born from a Wish sub-scenario. I mean... I'm one of those few people that like the voice acting of the HD version, ESPECIALLY Travis Willingham but like... what went wrong? That character is so tragic, so lonely and yet his original voice actor sounds like he can't give fewer shits about the isolation his character's gone through.

While we're on the subject of HD collection... Christ, I can't stand Heather's "new" voice actor. She's SO whiny and just all around pathetic sounding which, again, ripped the character into pieces and totally went against pretty much everything that made the character more masculine than almost all the other SH protagonists (with a few exceptions). Just. Ugh.

I like Jess Harnell; I don't like whoever decided that he should play Spyro in Hero's Tail. After being so used to Tom Kenny who sounded young and kind of brash but also earnest and brave, Jess' considerably higher, scratchier voice was just a bit jarring - and the fourth wall breaking didn't really help. WHILE we're on the subject of Spyro, okay guys. You can EITHER pick one voice actor for a character or even pick three... but between David Spade, Billy West and Wayne Brady, one of those things just is not like the other. As in... Wayne Brady doesn't sound remotely like the other two. Don't get me wrong, I liked David Spade's Sparx more than Billy West's (which is a rarity, I can't believe I just said that) but it was ESPECIALLY hard to take anything the character said seriously after getting yet ANOTHER voice actor for Sparx.

Also the entire cast of Xiaolin Chronicles because THAT'S what I wanted. Another Xiaolin show WITHOUT Tom Kenny, Grey DeLisle, Jeff Bennett and Danny Cooksey in it. (saidnooneever)

ONE MORE one more then I'm done. Sorry, voice actors are like my jam. Anyway, I can't STAND Dave Franco as the Riddler in Young Justice. I totally get it, the guy is supposed to sound like a nerd and a smart ass and stuff like that but where Wally Wingert succeeded, Dave Franco did the opposite. I hated not liking a rendition of the Riddler but he was just TERRIBLE in that show because of his voice actor.

 

[DirgeNovak]

Martin from Oblivion. Sean Bean is very clearly bored out of his skull while reading his lines, and Martin comes off as completely uninterested in what's going on around him, even though his dialogue is supposed to be passionate.

I'll second Fuuka. She's... just... so... bor...*falls asleep*.
And Tidus, obviously. But I don't blame James Taylor for Tidus. It was clearly a direction and writing issue, more than acting. There's only so much you can do with dialogue this pathetic. I think FFX has the best story in the entire series in theory, but the dialogue is horribly written.

I don't know what some of you are going on about, P4G Chie is awesome.

 

[ajr209]

Benny from Fallout New Vegas. His VA, Chandler from friends (can't for the life of me remember his name), Clearly had no fucking clue what the hell the context of what he was saying was. He puts emphasis on the wrong words or says them with the wrong inflection and I guess since he was still a fairly big star at the time nobody had the guts to tell him he was doing it wrong. Having seen brief footage of a recording session it seems like he thought the script he had was a log of someone's bad acid trip. You spend about half the game tracking him down and throughout this time he's built up as this (attempted)homicidal, greasy, ill mannered, power mad, frequently back stabbing, snake in the grass who's trying to upset the balance of power in the mojave and when you meet him... he speaks like he's the one who suffered brain damage. It sapped quite a bit of the energy from the game and was one of the reasons I usually stay away from the main story quests.

Male shep in ME2 was pretty stiff and on the bland/generic side but at least his VA seemed to have some some fucking idea what the hell was supposed to be going on.

 

[Danny Dowling]

The English dub for all Beyblade TV series after G=-Revolution. They pronounce the name of Hagane Gingko wrong ffs.

 

[Kroxile]

Mario. Hands down. I have never been quicker to nerd rage than having to listen to him squeal and howl every time I just barely miss a jump or something moves out of reach suddenly and I fall into a pit.

This is not to say that I don't get pissed with repeated failures at other games, but his voice is like a catalyst that just accelerates the process. I liked him much better in Mario 3