A thread for discussing voice acting in videogames, especially those examples that have impressed you most, for better or worse...

It may be banal, but for starters I found the acting in Half Life 2 to be of exceptional quality.
No One Lives Forever is another game I consider excellent in respect to voice acting - pride of place obviously goes to Cate Archer who really has one of the most alluring female voices I've ever heard.
Baldur's Gate is oustanding as well - I really dig those accents :) ("Ay, get outta me way ya crummy lager-head!" "No time for chit-chat!")
Then Starcraft of course, with many unforgettable quotes.
Gruntz is a little game that I will always remember with a smile on my face because of the awesomely funny utterances of its small characters, especially those celebration routines at the end of a level...
Splinter Cell and Amnesia TDD are fairly good as well.

Now for the "bad" side: I know that Deus Ex, for all its virtues, takes some beating in the voice department. While certainly not on a par with the abovementioned examples, I for myself don't find it THAT bad... although maybe not speaking English as my first language has to do with it.
I tried the Italian demo for The Ball some years ago, and I remember I found it really dreadful. Granted, you only hear just a few words at the beginning, but the acting was so abysmal I immediately thought they had taken some casual guy from some Italian office and told him: "please read this!"
I was put off by the Italian version of Half Life 2 as well, I had to switch immediately to the English one - as I would have liked from the start anyway. I played the first chapter in Italian, instead, and I really liked it, thanks to the contribution of some good Italian voice actors among which compatriot GOGers might have recognised the great Giorgio Melazzi.
Incubation? So and so. Some voices are better than others and some phrases seem to have been recorded differently. Corporal Bratt often sounds like a parody of your typical "tough guy" in those briefings... which maybe was intended.

As for Portal, I'm undecided... Ellen McLain's performance has been much praised, and indeed it's very effective, yet her voice is heavily processed of course, so I'm not sure how to judge her.

PS honorable mention to Dragon's Lair and breathy Princess Daphne :))

I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to bad and TBH I usually don;t even notice it, but I just started playing Evil Island.

WTF IS THAT!?!?! XD

It's so bad it just reaches out of the monitor and slaps you! :P

Noooo. Evil Island voice acting is super..bad that it is super good.

metal gear solid back in 1998 was one of the first games that showed games could have outstanding voice acting

resident evil's voice acting is still infamously bad

Bad voice acting has been the norm and majority for so long in gaming, that it's easier to notice the good ones. The VO in Dreamfall Chapters is pretty remarkable.

and in its predecessors ?

The voice acting in Dawn of War is completely and utterly badass!

Gabriel Angelos
Librarian
Grey Knights

Octodad features the best child voice actor I've heard in a video game. On the other hand, I've just finished Alone in the Dark 3, and voice acting ranges from passable to downright hammy. Every text you pick up is voiced, and there's one notice about some flammable materials read by such an agitated, overexcited voice actor who sounds like the sky is falling outside.

I'd argue that the quality of the VO has improved dramatically with each iteration. The original Longest Journey's VO varied from great to "who wrote that?". The second one felt like I was watching a movie at times. Dreamfall: Chapter's VO is...it's pretty emotionally resonant.

I believe Baldur's Gate (and its sequel) and Planescape: Torment have voice acted lines that really shouldn't have been.

In Baldur's Gate and its sequel, there's the line "You must gather your party before venturing forth", which you hear if you try to leave an area when someone in the party isn't nearby; it's not uncommon for this message to come up repeatedly when waiting for the rest of the party to catch up. (The fact that the game forces you to rely on pathfinding for movement instead of just letting you move with the arrow keys doesn't help, as well as the lack of a "move in formation" feature.)

Planescape: Tormant's line isn't as annoying, but it's still there: "Updated my journal.".

Really, why did they choose to voice act these system messages? It's not like there's a person in-game saying these lines.

I believe there is actually a mod for the Baldur's Gate series that actually gets rid of the voice acting for that specific line.

(Icewind Dale does have the "gather party" line, but it isn't voice acted.)

Surprisingly it is indie games that are in my recent memory for having good voice acting. Two that come to mind are
The Journey Down- Really adds to the atmosphere of the game.
Bedlam (no, not that one)

Voice acting that was bad:
Two Worlds 2- But I'd put it in the "so bad its good category :D

I agree...Baldur's Gate had some very good voice acting, e.g. Korgan from the 2nd one.
I also think Deus Ex has hilariously bad voice acting at times...those silly French accents in Paris or the Chinese soldiers speaking broad American English...pretty silly.

Can't think of that much else. The German version of Starfleet academy was notoriously bad. On the other hand, some German versions are fairly good (e.g. Outcast had the voice of the actor who dubs Bruce Willis for German movie versions, and that fit the persona of Cutter Slade perfectly).

Romancing Saga: Minstrel Song is fully voice-acted.

There is one playable character, Herman, whose voice acting (in the English version, haven't tried the Japanese one) is *really* bad, to the point where I don't like to use him in the party, even though he is a good character.

i guess ill find out then

considering i posted a discworld thread and posted in another dw thread
the voice acting in discworld is pretty good too

if a bit disjointed at times