Greatest Voicework in a Game, EVER!

[Ihrgoth]

I have to say SHODAN definitely gets my vote for creepiness. But more recently I would have to say Pete Reneday as duncan in Dragon age: origins.

 

[Not Lord Atkin]

For me it's Michael Ironside as Sam Fisher in plinter Cell: Chaos Theory.

It was the best-written splinter cell game to date, and Michael Ironside just sold the character right there. I loved every second of listening to his voice.

 

[synobal]

Legacy of kain, all of them /thread. TONY JAY IS YOUR GOD, FEAR HIM MORTALS.

Ya came here to say this, quite pleased to see it was the first submission.

 

[b.w.irenicus]

There are so many. One that comes to mind is Gwendolyn from Odin Sphere, it just really fitted the atmosphere of the game. Thomas Jane as the Punisher was awesome as well, the game wouldn't be half as good without him.
Oh, as much as I didn't like FFXIII-2, I thought Caius was badass.


Honorable mentions go to Kain from Legacy of Kain and Irenicus from Baldur's Gate II, because they even got really, really good voice overs in the German version of the games.

 

[Leemaster777]

Bioshock has, bar none, the best voice acting in any game I have ever played.

And Armin Shimerman as Andrew Ryan? God:


This part gave me a voice-gasm.

 

[AT God]

Max Payne has some great voice work, although there are some bits that are poorly scripted or ones where the voice actors don't match the tone of the situation. Overall the voice actors are really good though, the lines especially near the end of the third one, the ones that are plot twist revealing are REALLY good.

Also, the voice acting from StarCraft has been good at some times. The opening voice acting scenes from Heart of the Swarm are really good. The line Raynor says about "moving heaven and earth" to bring Kerrigan back was really good, although alot of the banter in the game is stupid.

GTA4 had some good lines, especially when Niko finds the person he had been looking for.

While the voice acting wasn't good from a technical standpoint, I really loved the voice work by the protagonist in Saints row 2, since they used the same script for all the different voice actors, meaning the Cockney accented guy had to say things that don't fit the accent. Notably how he has to say mother fucker a lot which means most of the time it comes off as mahtha facker, which makes things even more funny.

Also, already been mentioned but Bioshock, specifically Andrew Ryan, Atlas, and Fontaine all did great voices, Ryan had the best by far but Atlas' voice over for when that submarine explodes was pretty good.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

Legacy of kain, all of them /thread. TONY JAY IS YOUR GOD, FEAR HIM MORTALS.

Ninja'd on the first reply, as it should be.

Simon Templeton's Kain alone would be enough to make this true, but add to that Tony Jay as the Elder God, Michael Bell as Raziel, and so on....yeah it's not even a contest at that point.

Templeton also did the voice of Logaine in Dragon Age Origins, and stole the show voice-work-wise (for those of you who aren't familiar with LoK and could benefit from a reference).

But yeah, Legacy of Kain has the best video game voice-work. Fact.

 

[mikeli4194]

- James McCaffrey as Max Payne. His narration pretty much held all three games together.

- Robert Clotworthy as Jim Raynor

- Whoever voiced Gay Tony in GTA IV: BOGT. Actually, all of the GTA games have fantastic voice actors. Gay Tony was just one of my favorites

 

[Anthony Corrigan]

Did you work out who the Illusive man was? That bugged me for hours before I realized it was Martin Sheen and at that point it really destroyed the character for me actually because I kept seeing him as the president. Sometimes its better to chose an unknown than a well known actor because that can interfere with the character

I don't really keep up with many actors, so I probably wouldn't be able to tell anyone by voice alone. Though when I found out it was Martin Sheen, it honestly made me appreciate the character more.

Personally, I think playing against type is great, at least for villains. Simply because some part of your mind associates the actor with a good human being, that the idea of them being a villain is almost like finding out one of your friends is in the mafia, it makes a villain much more intimidating when you think you know them, and you see such a sharp change from their usual routine.

There seems to be a really limited number of voice actors or they pick celebrities. Sometimes it works for me, Captain Jainway from voyager as Flemish was cool, Claudia Black as Morrigan but Martian Sheen bugged me for some reason, think it was more the visual than the personality, he didn't LOOK anything like Martin Sheen and yet was speaking with his voice.

Actually I kept getting thrown quite a bit with Mass effect because so many of the voice actors are from Dragon Age and I kept thinking of there characters in that when I was playing Mass effect and it was quite distracting.

Could say the same would happen in TV or movies but it doesn't really, just see an actor is the same and go "oh thats cool" and then shrug it off but voices in games, i don't know, it just tends to be more distracting and jarring to me