Well that was terrible. Either Dan is a hopeless VA or they needed to get more takes from him. Really, though, Dan's voice does not fit that character design at all. Maybe Drew or Austin would be better for that role (if we're sticking to bombers).
To be fair, expository dialog is very hard to make sound interesting and Read Only Memories was certainly not originally written with voice acting in mind, so it can be pretty long-winded.
Both Dan and Austin Creed's VO sounded very "I'm reading this off a piece of paper". Sometimes you hear VO and realize what a talent it is for the VO pros that sound like they are speaking naturally rather than just reading lines on a script - this is one of those times.
Not the end of the world, but I wish it had sounded more natural.
I'll be honest. There was about 2 or 3 good reads in that entire video and the rest really just sounded out of place and unsure/undirected. Surprising, Austin Creeds was probably one of the worst.
I mean, the hope is that the audio is from some kind of quick audition tape they each provided, and that they'll actually briefly get those people in a recording studio with an actual voice director?
Perhaps that's a wildly unrealistic expectation given the budget of that game.
Weird thing about this is that the original game lets effectively free-form the player's gender identity by allowing you to input your own pronouns ("He/She/etc."). I wonder how they're going to approach this from a VO perspective. Have Melissa Hutchinson read a tonne of pronouns and inject them as necessary like a Madden game?
Wowzers... That, uh, wasn't so hot. Though, to be fair, he wasn't the only one who stood out for.. You know what, to the wall with diplomacy, an effort that should have stood out enough for the voice "actor" to realize it was bad enough that they ought to give it another take or 50.
This is a cool game, and while I get that this might sell, it'll reduce the quality of the over-all experience. Seems ill-considered to ask someone who doesn't even have a decent microphone to act as a character for your game.
This game's great. A re-release with voice acting? Sure, why not? Hopefully thee will be an option to turn it off though: part of the cool aesthetic of this game comes from it being text-based.
Just going by what I thought these characters would sound like I feel like they did a good job overall. Sure some of the bit parts like the one Dan was reading may be iffy but I expect he did it for free remotely. If they really brought everyone in to do VO sessions in a booth I would be impressed.
Jokes on you, all voices are actually done by Nolan North and Troy Baker. Troy certainly did a great Dan here.
From that post on the jeffzone it sounds like Jeff is okay with this, but kinda hates how they try to sell the game by pointing at all those 'internetcelebs you might know'.
I mean, it sounds like Dan haha. The biggest issue I have with it is his voice does not match that character at all. Maybe if they chose someone else for him to be, but I haven't made it very var in ROM so I don't know all the characters. Xavier Woods sounds a bit like the dude who voiced Prince Alexander in King's Quest VI when I hear his VO.
That wasn't the greatest but I've heard much worse, I remember playing a bunch of games on the N64/Playstation in the 90's that had some terrible voice acting and this doesn't even approach that.
I remember hearing about this game last year and always wanting to try it out, if that Xbox One version is still going to materialize then I'll definitely check it out for sure. I could go for some cyberpunk adventure.
Still not as weird as hearing Chloe from Life is Strange as the lead in Horizon: ZD.
She also does a voice for Fallout 4 as a charcter in Vault 81. The sister of the kid that does drugs. As soon as I heard it I was like, "Chloe, is that you!?"
As for Dan's voice acting, I think we all already knew Dan doesn't have the skills for a career outside of playing video games.
@planetfunksquad: It does, but there is also a bunch of fucking yahoos who frequent the Playstation Blog for whatever reason and I imagine from the context a decent amount of people came from there.
It's the same people who you see bash all the free games that come to PS Plus and want AAA titles, then when they get AAA titles they still aren't happy.
Also it's sort of amusing to watch the top comment back and forth about this being a "PS4 Exclusive" when it will also be a free upgrade to the current Steam game.
Well thats a way to get me to not play your game, not Dan in specific, but getting "personalities" to do voice acting is just always shitty. I prefer people that are professional at it.
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