It's as neglected and forgotten as the M&M that gets caught in the fold of the packet, or Pol Pot's love of flowering acacias. Despite the frankly barbaric PR releases, screamingly high production values and offensively amazing graphics, voice acting is something that is considered to hold a modern game together, providing the world with a characterful structure, a personification of the inhabitants in the world you've just spent three years and fourteen interns creating. I did not realise this until recently, when on installing some (rather professional) Oblivion quest mods, I found the characters to gaze at me blankly, or smiling like something out of Spaz Chariot, while their dialogue ran in subtitle, or either to glare at me while the screen flashed 'I HAVE NO GREETING', as if my level 40 Mage was a little too common for that sort of thing.

Many, many games wouldn't work without the voices that the characters scream orders, reveal shocking secrets or gargle incoherently with. The star of my previous blog, Captain Price, would be much less effective without his South London argot spilling into young Soap McTavish's impressionable ears. Slightly older games such as System Shock 2, or the early Tomb Raiders, prided themselves on well-sourced, suitable talent to voice their characters; as I have said, they spent a shit-load of time building these worlds. They better sound luscious as well. Some voice-acting stars have even gained cult status for their nuanced, powerful portrayals of some of gamings best-loved avatars; I, of course, refer to the Hayter-nator, snarling bark of Solid Snake.



Having said all this, however, perhaps voice-acting (providing jobs aside) is just a little restrictive. Modding scenes would certainly have an easier time of it if they could write the beautiful (occasionally) dialogue directly into the game, without the need to worry about expensive and lengthy recording techniques to maintain immersion. Many games do almost entirely any voices throughout the course of the story; an similar example to the ones given above would be Morrowind; apart from a few throaty greetings from Dark Elves who sounded like they had been raped by La Brea and all its plastic animals, all the dialogue (and there was a LOT) was written. The script was fantastic. Along comes Oblivion, Patrick Stewart reclining in a bath of condensed milk fanned by a gagged Helen Mirren, asking to be paid by the hour. Fuck. Well, they say, we better kill him quickly, hadn't we? The dialogue feels rushed and shoddy in many places, as if the voice actors had somewhere to be. Of course costs come into this, but the cost of the story is too high. Fallout 3 has a similar, if not as severe, problem.

Some games even benefit from their lack of voice - a desolate, wind-blown, and ultimately lonely aural landscape provides special emphasis for music, beat and effect, the environment and the mood becoming the most important thing to the gamer. Two amazing examples are Shadow Of The Colossus and the Zelda series. Though most of the Zelda characters look as if they would be fucking annoying if they ever opened their traps, the sparse vocalizations (limited to grunts of delight and screams of pain from the cast) give this little fairytale its magical air. We see the world, we hear the clangs of swords and the puff of smoke, but the characters just dance, run and jump around, the text of their speeches the only interruption. Lovely. The same is true for Shadow; the protean, steppe-like landscape and the sound of the wind make this the most beautifully lonely game I have ever touched; filling it with celebrity voices would cheapen it.

What do you guys think?
-Agonofinis

Opinionate my nutsack off, Destructoid.