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    Middle-earth: Shadow of War

    Game » consists of 6 releases. Released Oct 10, 2017

    Talion returns to confront the Ringwraiths and the dark lord Sauron himself.

    Conan O'Brien makes fun of Kumail Nanjiani's voice in Shadow of War

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    DrBroel

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    When Conan hears Kumail's voice, he points out the exact same stuff Jeff was mentioning in the Quick Look. It's pretty great.

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    Redhotchilimist

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    Hahha oh my god, he didn't change much. That's like the worst voice to face/lip sync match I've seen in a while.

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    ATastySlurpee

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    oh...thats awful

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    Nodima

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    I'll be honest, when I watched this clip the other day I thought it was a gag put on by Conan and Kumail to point out how silly it would be if his regular voice were mixed in with all these cockney orcs. Felt weird to find out that isn't the case. Love Kumail but what a weird decision from the vocal producers.

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    sparky_buzzsaw

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    Dinklebot, eat your heart out.

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    TheHT

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    #7  Edited By TheHT

    @nodima said:

    I'll be honest, when I watched this clip the other day I thought it was a gag put on by Conan and Kumail to point out how silly it would be if his regular voice were mixed in with all these cockney orcs. Felt weird to find out that isn't the case. Love Kumail but what a weird decision from the vocal producers.

    Yup. When Conan started calling out the dev and the dev was like "whaat?" that's when I realized oh wait this is actually like legit real. Thought they might've been pullin one over on Conan, cause his intial reaction sure sounded genuine.

    So weird.

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    Lazyimperial

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    Is it... too late to apply a voice filter? Do some audio tweaks? Cause eek... that's just a regular dude voice. It's like having a Khajiit that speaks in first person. Just wrong.

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    TheKramer89

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    I kinda dig it...

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    OMGFather

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    Wait.. this is real? I thought they were just doing this for the show.

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    Fredchuckdave

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    Well meme'd game developers, well meme'd.

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    Tom_omb

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    @theht said:
    @nodima said:

    I'll be honest, when I watched this clip the other day I thought it was a gag put on by Conan and Kumail to point out how silly it would be if his regular voice were mixed in with all these cockney orcs. Felt weird to find out that isn't the case. Love Kumail but what a weird decision from the vocal producers.

    Yup. When Conan started calling out the dev and the dev was like "whaat?" that's when I realized oh wait this is actually like legit real. Thought they might've been pullin one over on Conan, cause his intial reaction sure sounded genuine.

    So weird.

    Why would you hire a comic talent like Kumail then mask his voice with dumb effects? This is the right decision. The fact that he sounds like some nerd is a part of the brutish horde is what makes it funny. Also makes it great fodder to make fun of. I love Conan!

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    Zeik

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    @tom_omb: Yeah, I kinda agree. I almost wish the game had more of this. Maybe if you're a LOTR super nerd it would bug you that it's out of place, but Orcs are pretty boring enemies honestly. Anything they can do to infuse personality and uniqueness into them is a-okay with me.

    I don't get the impression anybody gives much of a fuck about the story or lore of these games at this point anyway, so doing weird shit like this will probably leave a much more lasting impression than if they just made him sound like every other orc.

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    poobumbutt

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    @thekramer89: Same.

    Somehow, in the midst of the Hot Shelob, blatant plot liberties and loot boxes, I have actually completely stopped seeing this as a LOTR game, and rather just an "orc killing and dating sim". I don't even think that's a negative, either. I think it'll let me enjoy it more. Anyway, because of that, things like this come off as silly and fun, rather than cringe-worthy or insulting.

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    notnert427

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    #15  Edited By notnert427

    This is pretty funny. I like Kumail in general, and having his semi-whiny voice in there is the kind of random shit I can get on board with. The game has enough gruff, vaguely British-sounding orcs doing their equivalent of "SPEHSS MUHREENS!" anyway, and the idea of LOTR uber-fanboys potentially getting all pissy about this is amusing in its own right. Also, Conan is still great.

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    Nodima

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    #16  Edited By Nodima

    @tom_omb said:
    @theht said:
    @nodima said:

    I'll be honest, when I watched this clip the other day I thought it was a gag put on by Conan and Kumail to point out how silly it would be if his regular voice were mixed in with all these cockney orcs. Felt weird to find out that isn't the case. Love Kumail but what a weird decision from the vocal producers.

    Yup. When Conan started calling out the dev and the dev was like "whaat?" that's when I realized oh wait this is actually like legit real. Thought they might've been pullin one over on Conan, cause his intial reaction sure sounded genuine.

    So weird.

    Why would you hire a comic talent like Kumail then mask his voice with dumb effects? This is the right decision. The fact that he sounds like some nerd is a part of the brutish horde is what makes it funny. Also makes it great fodder to make fun of. I love Conan!

    Didn't say it was bad, just weird. Especially if it's the only voice like that in the game. At this point, I'd almost wish they had just gone full Call of Duty and had Snoop Dogg, Ice-T, Nathan Fillion, Jeff Bridges, DMX, Jesse Eisenberg, Natalie Portman and Javier Bardem orcs.

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    linkster7

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    That video was pretty funny

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    Capum15

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    @nodima: Ramirez! Shoot that Orc in the face!

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    hippie_genocide

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    @tom_omb: Yeah, I agree. It's the juxtaposition of Kumail's voice among all the other orcs that makes it funny.

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    Retris

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    This is some The Room levels of unintentional hilarity. It's all just so shitty it makes you crack up.

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    Lazyimperial

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    @hippie_genocide: The thing is... it's not funny in a particularly good way. It's funny in a "wow, this voice is so badly out of place and the audio quality sucks, haha" way... which works great for poking at the guy on Conan, but not so much in-game. I mean, you could also argue that the voice acting in Mass Effect: Andromeda was funny, but there's a difference between genuinely comedic material and "haha, this is so bad" amusement. This is the latter, at best. His line reading lacks even a semblance of the growly throat quality that every single other orc has, let alone any hint of the fairly ubiquitous Mordor-cockney accent. It literally just sounds like a regular dude reading a script for the first time with very little inflection, which I would wager has more to do with a bad voice director than Kumail. He seemed legitimately stunned that they not only told him to read it straight up with no throwing of his voice, but also didn't add any filters to his performance afterwards. I feel for the guy. It could have turned out much better with very little effort from the sound guys.

    You know... like this wonderfully off-kilter orc bard that Brad found: https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/917583666972205057

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    hippie_genocide

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    @hippie_genocide: His line reading lacks even a semblance of the growly throat quality that every single other orc has, let alone any hint of the fairly ubiquitous Mordor-cockney accent. It literally just sounds like a regular dude reading a script for the first time with very little inflection, which I would wager has more to do with a bad voice director than Kumail.

    That is like the whole point though. The fact that he sounds so different from all the other orcs is why I dig it. If it's bad voice direction, cheers for a happy accident.

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    TheRealTurk

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    I can't decide if that's cool or lame.

    I kinda like the idea of just normal people voices for orcs as a kind of a funny Easter Egg thing to break up the monotony of killing thousands of these guys over the course of the game. If I were a dev on the game I'd rather do that than have some dumb item named after me.

    But on the other hand that performance is painful. I really didn't like his voice in Andromeda either, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt because I figured that it was like a lot of the voice acting in that game and just suffered from bad direction. Now I'm not so sure. He just might not have the vocal qualities to be a great voice actor.

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    Zeik

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    #24  Edited By Zeik

    @therealturk: He does a lot of voice work in various animated series (from Bob's Burgers to Adventure Time, etc), so he's definitely a capable voice actor.

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    mikewhy

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    #25  Edited By mikewhy

    4:30 for anyone looking for a handy time code.

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    BrainScratch

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    If I knew nothing about it, I would totally believe that it was just a gag for Conan's show. Kumail sounds completely out of place there, it's like they just gave his voice to a random orc. They could've at least tried to make the orc look like something that would fit his voice. And he could also had at least a bit of a growly sound on his voice instead of completely going for the normal one. The idea was good, but it just sounds so out of place.

    I kinda like the idea of a nerdy orc and I'm all in for easter eggs but, as others mentioned, between this and Andromeda I'm not sure if he's a good voice actor.

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    BisonHero

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    MezZa

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    #28  Edited By MezZa

    @johnymyko: To be fair to him, neither this or Andromeda are his fault. If the developers don't work with his voice properly then you can't really blame that on him. He has a good voice, these games are just misusing it. Both Mordor and Andromeda would have benefited him being ran through the usual salarian and orc voice treatments so that it doesn't just sound like he's skyping in.

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    soulcake

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    The Orcs make up a diverse British language mix From Hindi accents to straight up Cockney.

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    Pazy

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    Something seems very off with that. Im totally in for comic relief orc's on the 'artistic' side but on a purely technicaly level that just sound kind of lazy and unfinished, like they took his blind reading of the script recording accidentally using a webcam mic and then just pasted it into the game without any audio mixing. Hopefully thats just the video though or if its not they can patch it, I'm all in for one or more of the orcs to be jokey guys.

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