Bad Voice Acting?

[$howBiz]

Am i the only one who thinks the voice acting is quite crappy? :| i liked Balthier's, voice over, but i thought the others were emotionless and boring :O i liked the game and as in all the final fantasy's found myself attached to the characters but i just think the voice's could of been much better. Also i was wondering if anyone noticed the disturbing heavy breathing :| It might just be me, but i noticed in a few scenes such as in Rex's death there is a lot of rather heavy breathing :| i know he's ment to be dying but the breathing just sounds weird :|

Anyway topic what do you think of the voice acting in this game? :cool:

[Setzer Gabianni]

I thought the voices were fantastic, most anyway, a much better improvement then X and X-2. Pennelos did sound a bit muffled, and Balthiers did irritate me, but Frans was mysterious, Basch very..well, manly..8D? Reddas sounded really good, the judges, they were the best. Ghis sounded sly, Bergan like a true villainous sob. More characters had great voices.

[Nifleheim7]

It's kinda hard to answer that...
I think the voice actors were very proffesional and i understand why many people liked them,but personally i found them a bit cold and very "theatrical"...I got a feeling that most of the time the actors were trying too much and they were a bit over the top.
I really liked Fran's voice though.

[LunarWeaver]

I thought they were all wonderful. Mmm, boring stock answer, yummy.

[PuPu]

The only voice acting I found to be horrible was Vayne/The Undying in the final battle. The Japanese voice acting for it was much better than the English.

[Goldenboko]

The only voice acting I found to be horrible was Vayne/The Undying in the final battle. The Japanese voice acting for it was much better than the English.

Yeah I agree with PuPu 1 billion percent, the voices where all done really well except for The Undying which had a FANTASTIC Japanese voice over that put the English one to shame.

[Brennan]

The voice acting is quiet good

[Lawr]

The heavy breathing also disturbed me, especially at the end of the Pharos with the Sun Cryst. All extraneous and unecessary, but I did like The Judges and Fran. And I have to agree, The Undying was better in Japanese.

[Hyperion4444]

Nah, the problem doesn't lies in the voice acting, it fits well with the the medieval theme of it.
They used a proper british accent, but I still don't know why they spoke the Airships in French.

Ashes: Very well, I will stop this Baahaamoot.

Anyway, the real problem is the Espers of this game.

[$howBiz]

I thought the voices were fantastic, most anyway, a much better improvement then X and X-2. Pennelos did sound a bit muffled, and Balthiers did irritate me, but Frans was mysterious, Basch very..well, manly..8D? Reddas sounded really good, the judges, they were the best. Ghis sounded sly, Bergan like a true villainous sob. More characters had great voices.

I thought the voices in X were much better :O i didn't have a problem with any of the voices they suited the characters really well i especially liked Matt Mckenzie's (Auron's Voice Over)

[Setzer Gabianni]

Not saying they were godawful in X, just a hell of a lot more likeable. I found some voices in X to be...rather irritating? Yuna, Tidus and Rikku to name but a few.

[Heath]

It was certainly an improvement over FFX. I don't consider voice acting to be essential even now that technology has moved on, though I'd be lying if I didn't say that FFXII surprised me by how good the acting was.

[Bolivar]

Am i the only one who thinks the voice acting is quite crappy?

Yeah, probably. There was a huge amount of effort put into the English translation and it really paid off.

One of the biggest flaws with video game voice acting is that there's an overwhelming tendency to talk really slow, i guess so the player can read all the text (i finish reading before it ends). FFX unfortunately fell into this trap, although I felt it was still pretty good in that game.

XII is an example of being about as good as it gets. Even the "talking-through-the-helmet" effect for the judges is an example of the little things that were put in that make it that much better. Especially at the top of Pharos, the graphical emotions and the characters voices just express something so dramatically I can't even put it into words. It was great.

I'm not sure what the complaint on the Undying is though...

[Formalhaut]

I liked balthiers one, he was smexy with that one, Fran's was good, Penelo's.. Ashe.. basicly everyone in team BAP and Fran was good.

[Vivisteiner]

The voice acting was phenomenal.

[Elpizo]

The only voice acting I found to be horrible was Vayne/The Undying in the final battle. The Japanese voice acting for it was much better than the English.
I have to disagree. The Undying's Voice-Acting in the Japanese version was horrid, judging from what I've seen on Youtube. Over-the top and way too loud and well... stupid. =/

At least the english Undying sounded... well, Final Battle-ish. His cries had a bit of an 'echo' effect to them, which improved the atmosphere incredibly much. The voice blended well into the background with the music, while the Japanese voice-acting was disturbing during the battle, distracting from the overal feeling that battles gives one. I found that the english Undying really made it clear that Vayne was desperate during that fight, in a way, and in the other way making it clear that he had lost his humanity. The Japanese, dunno. Seemed like the transformation hadn't effected Vayne at all. Which, with more than a few pounds of scrap strapped on his body, seemed quite unlikely. ^^"

Sorry to disagree, but I have to disagree. Just my opinion, though. I always found Japanese hard to listen to, but the Undying in Japanese topped everything for me. =/

[Nifleheim7]

I hope that one day we'll be able to play a FF title with a Japanese/English option...

[rubah]

too many foreign accents, which I guess is the point of the game, but it just got old after a while :|

[$howBiz]

The heavy breathing also disturbed me, especially at the end of the Pharos with the Sun Cryst. All extraneous and unecessary, but I did like The Judges and Fran. And I have to agree, The Undying was better in Japanese.

So is it only me and Sagensyq who noticed the strange breathing then? lol

[Slothy]

One of the biggest flaws with video game voice acting is that there's an overwhelming tendency to talk really slow, i guess so the player can read all the text (i finish reading before it ends). FFX unfortunately fell into this trap, although I felt it was still pretty good in that game.

I think the more likely culprit for this is, actually, that many times these days developers put no effort into changing the lip syncing, leaving the voice actors to try and match what they say as best they can to the existing lip syncing so it looks a little more natural. I can't remember for the life of me if the lip syncing was changed to match the English script or not, but I would say this likely wasn't an issue this time around, whether because the lip syncing was changed, or because the localized version fit well with the original lip syncing. Not that your explanation of letting people read the text isn't valid or anything, just I've seen a lot of games that don't give you much time to read some of the text, while other parts drag on.

[Gennosuke]

I thought it was seriously poor, tbh i prefered Final Fantasy X voice actors, and thats saying something!!

[Nifleheim7]

The heavy breathing also disturbed me, especially at the end of the Pharos with the Sun Cryst. All extraneous and unecessary, but I did like The Judges and Fran. And I have to agree, The Undying was better in Japanese.

So is it only me and Sagensyq who noticed the strange breathing then? lol

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a235/polonoid/stuff/ibreathheavy.jpg

[Bolivar]

The only voice acting I found to be horrible was Vayne/The Undying in the final battle. The Japanese voice acting for it was much better than the English.
I have to disagree. The Undying's Voice-Acting in the Japanese version was horrid, judging from what I've seen on Youtube. Over-the top and way too loud and well... stupid. =/

At least the english Undying sounded... well, Final Battle-ish. His cries had a bit of an 'echo' effect to them, which improved the atmosphere incredibly much. The voice blended well into the background with the music, while the Japanese voice-acting was disturbing during the battle, distracting from the overal feeling that battles gives one. I found that the english Undying really made it clear that Vayne was desperate during that fight, in a way, and in the other way making it clear that he had lost his humanity. The Japanese, dunno. Seemed like the transformation hadn't effected Vayne at all. Which, with more than a few pounds of scrap strapped on his body, seemed quite unlikely. ^^"

Sorry to disagree, but I have to disagree. Just my opinion, though. I always found Japanese hard to listen to, but the Undying in Japanese topped everything for me. =/

i haven't seen the japanese scene, but those are my thoughts exactly on the english one.

I don't know, you hear some weird things on FF Forums.

[$howBiz]

The heavy breathing also disturbed me, especially at the end of the Pharos with the Sun Cryst. All extraneous and unecessary, but I did like The Judges and Fran. And I have to agree, The Undying was better in Japanese.

So is it only me and Sagensyq who noticed the strange breathing then? lol

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a235/polonoid/stuff/ibreathheavy.jpg

aaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahaha

[Setzer Gabianni]

Hahaha, all those heavy breathing haters owned <3

[Skyblade]

Personally, I found nothing wrong with the voice acting. Perhaps some of the dialogue could have been improved upon, but that is the writer's fault, not the voice actors.

[Renmiri]

I thought the voices were fantastic, most anyway, a much better improvement then X and X-2. Pennelos did sound a bit muffled, and Balthiers did irritate me, but Frans was mysterious, Basch very..well, manly..8D? Reddas sounded really good, the judges, they were the best. Ghis sounded sly, Bergan like a true villainous sob. More characters had great voices.

QFT!!!

[Wolf Kanno]

I personally loved the voice acting in XII and must say it's easily their best effort so far. Of course this is coming from somebody who suffered through the horrible English voice acting of Xenogears (Bart sounds like a girly man trying to play act a biker... while Emereldas sounds like the retarded Rei Clone that escaped from the cloning tank.) It left scars I tell you!

I even liked FFX voice acting for the most part except for Yuna's voice who makes the mistake of playing too close to her Japanese counterpart without relaizing the subtle nuances that allow the Japanese version to work.

As Bolivar said, it's the little details that make XII's voice acting excel. The use of different dialects for different regions and so forth really added alot of depth to the game. I heard the Japanese version is similair to this which is another thing that amazes me to see that the localization team put the extra effort into making the game just as good as the original. Only the MGS team puts in that kind of effort.

[$howBiz]

Personally, I found nothing wrong with the voice acting. Perhaps some of the dialogue could have been improved upon, but that is the writer's fault, not the voice actors.

you know what i never thought about that :O! your right maybe if the dialogue was better i wouldn't be criticizing the actual voices :O maybe i'm criticizing the wrong people :| lol well now thats opened my eyes, i think that the script writers could of done a better job as well :) lol

[Vivisteiner]

I liked the style of the script. Far superior to the usual IMO.


Unfortunately it lacked some substance, in terms of length.

[Skyblade]

I liked the style of the script. Far superior to the usual IMO.


Unfortunately it lacked some substance, in terms of length.

Extremely nice, stylistically, I agree. However, there were some rather disjointed points that split from the rest of the game's style. Specifically, the points where the characters explain their motivations and actions as plainly as possible. Those segments were written on a far lower level than the rest of the script, and they dragged the rest down.

The only other problem I had with the dialogue was there was not enough of it. I would have enjoyed a little more character development.

[Renmiri]

I liked the style of the script. Far superior to the usual IMO.


Unfortunately it lacked some substance, in terms of length.

Extremely nice, stylistically, I agree. However, there were some rather disjointed points that split from the rest of the game's style. Specifically, the points where the characters explain their motivations and actions as plainly as possible. Those segments were written on a far lower level than the rest of the script, and they dragged the rest down.

The only other problem I had with the dialogue was there was not enough of it. I would have enjoyed a little more character development.

Absolutely. I found out recently that the main game writer had to leave before the end of the project for health reasons. All I can say is that I could tell it during the game. I saw many a plot thread left lose and a character motivation left barely sketched. You can definitely see someone left things in the middle of it and no one ever completed it.

[Skyblade]

I found out recently that the main game writer had to leave before the end of the project for health reasons. All I can say is that I could tell it during the game. I saw many a plot thread left lose and a character motivation left barely sketched. You can definitely see someone left things in the middle of it and no one ever completed it.

Which is a shame, because the stuff that was done well was done really well.