No, they are just making weird noises. That's not Japanese.

I like a little bit of sound for atmosphere, but I'm not a fan of voices for everything and everyone. Aside from taking forever, it makes games cost more and have less dialogue.

I rather like the Planescape and MW system of speaking the first line or so and then being silent. I usually finish reading at about that time anyway, so for me there's not much difference between that and full voice acting. Yes, I am an impatient person, how did you guess? :D

Deadly premonition has good voice acting.

Worst? well I must think about that.. I haven't really played a game where people are so worse that I would have noticed. (and I play lot not so great games) Mostly some adventure game has worst voice ever. Indie adventure.

Femshep is great. Jennifer Hale if I remember correctly.

An excellent answer.

Having said that, I wouldn't mind some cheesy voice acting here and there. Unintentional humour is still humour after all!

Now I remember it.. Eric Idle was great as Rincewind in Discworld. Tim curry as Gabriel.. Plenty that I remember but those which were bad.. That's a a tough nut. =)

I've just started playing Blades of Time: Limited Edition and I noticed something cool about this game (or maybe it's a standard feature nowadays and I'm just out of the loop) is that you can choose your language audio in the main menu of the game, all the languages are already present and you don't have to restart the entire game and/or download a language pack.

So I've gone through all the language options and the best voice actresses for the lead character seems to be the German and French voice actresses. The lead character sounds decent enough in most of the other languages as well...except in English. The lead character in the English version...sounds a bit like a female English Ric Flair. Yeah. My German is more than a little rusty but it shouldn't take me too long to get reacquainted with it.

I tend to play with the sound off, and only using subtitles. So.... as long as the game has subtitles I am fine.

Downloaded the demo for Memoria last night, managed 10 minutes before uninstalling, Christ the voice acting was bad.

Speaking of Baldur's Gate voice acting... I always liked the voice cast of the BG games, but to be honest most of it sounds rather comical. I don't mind that, though.

L'actualité est ironique. La version française de Harvester (vendue par Gog!) est im-monde, malgré la présence de plusieurs voix bien connues... dont celle de Philippe Peythieu (alias Homer Simpson), qui double plusieurs personnages !

Bonus: L'original de Prisoner Of Ice, un jeu français! 3min 14: lorsqu'Oncle Ben a des rêves de grandeur, ça fait mal...


On the other hand, I wish Gog had the french (=original) version of Arx Fatalis. I miss the goblins' voices...

Baldur's Gate's french version is a mixed bag. Imoen is infamous, and Nalia is, well, all about nails screeching on a blackboard. Minsc, on the other hand, is less annoying.

VA adds a lot for me. Especially in games like thief 1-2-3, hitman series, diablo 1-2, the witcher series, duke nukem series are some that rise from the depths of my mind. The voice actors simply add something unique and beautiful to the experience. Makes the characters "authoritative" and the game feel "alive" in some way and draw you even more into it. In a way makes you care even more about em.

A great example is the new thief - the new VA just doesn't cut it for me. He tries too hard to sound like Stephen Russell but it's painfully obvious it's not working. Witch is distracting and cringeworthy. This doesn't add to the experience - quite the contrary - it takes away.

Guess this is a highly subjective topic but whatever, that's my take on it... many variables that need to click together, in order for it to be a general consensus.

Confidential Mission for the Dreamcast was just atrocious. The voice actors sounded like they weren't even trying and it just killed the entire experience for me.

I usually like voice acting but it gets to the point where they end up using the same people all the time like Steven Blum, Jennifer Hale, Nolan North etc.. Granted, I like the voices but sometimes I yearn for other good voice actors to get the roles so different characters from different games don't end up sounding the same..

The narrator in "Trine" is superb.

Bastion's narrator was very good.

It's...interesting that this has been downvoted. I rather agree with you, although to judge by your phrasing "EVEN if I need to know..." we play completely different styles of game. I love playing RPGs, where the information being conveyed is very important. Voice-acted lines generally ruin that: they slow down how fast you can get the information, as you alluded to (unless you skip them, defeating their purpose), and they prevent you from looking back up a bit to see what they just said if you weren't paying attention IRL. Even if you get past those issues, a game where everything is voice acted will normally have much, much less actual dialogue, for memory and budget reasons. Compare, say, the breadth and depth of Morrowind's and Oblivion's dialogues.

There is the odd situation where voice acting does add to the game, generally when it's done over gameplay like in Bastion. Then it's not stopping you playing/reducing how fast you can get the information, but it's occupying another one of your senses at the same time as you play the game. Provided it's not speaking over sounds which are important for gameplay, that can work well. Would you agree?