Western voice actors for translated foreign games tend to be absolutely terrible at what they're hired to do. It could be due to the localization and all, but aside from that... there is a very obvious, definite lack of effort put in by the English voice actors for most of these translated foreign games [but to be fair, there are exceptions]. However, I believe that this has more to do with the English divisions of these companies and how they choose to handle it. I'm pretty sure that for the most part, a lot less effort is put into the English version of these games than the original. They may not roll with the bare minimum effort, but they won't put as much effort into it as they would for their own version, so they generally aren't going to put in much time and effort to rehearse and re-voice the English version anymore than they have to. This isn't always the case, but I notice that this tends to be the occurrence often.
I also agree with Roogle on his earlier comment. From everything I have seen, games that are made in English first tend to have high quality voice acting if I do say so myself. To take games like the Halo series, the Fable series, Dragon age, etc... these games on average tend to have pretty good voice acting [I'm saying in general to make a quick point - I don't want to open up a debate for nit-picking].
So people who complain about "English voice actors" are only referring to the very general and apparent side of it - which is to be expected from the average person, since most people aren't going to dig up info on the voice actors. They're simply going to hear the voice acting in the game and judge "good", "okay", or "bad". However, the primary issue at hand here is a lot more specific than just "English voice actors". In my opinion, it's mostly due to the English divisions of these foreign companies and how much time, cash, and effort they are willing to put into it. Since they primarily care about the gamers in their own country, we are secondary and therefore less important to them. It's also good business sense [technically] since voice acting usually isn't enough to deter someone from the game on its own. Even if people are complaining about the voice acting here, they still purchased the game and played it, which is all these companies need to accomplish. Therefore, there is no need to spend extra cash and time on better voice acting. Your dollar is just as green either way.
Star Ocean 4 is one such game that comes to mind for me. The two voice actors for the main characters were fine, but the voice actors for the rest of the cast were just absolutely atrocious. But to be fair, I usually don't see it get that bad. Most games that I can think of with bad voice acting left me with an impression of "the voice acting in it was kind of annoying" rather than "Ugh... the voice acting in it was smurfing terrible".Originally Posted by Bolivar
Sometimes this is true. It isn't a video game, but the anime series Tenchi Muyo is one such case where I actually loved the English dub quite a lot.
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