Support NeoGAF

[nkarafo]

What are the characters that used to be great but after audio tech and resources allowed the developers to "improve" them with real voices, they completely ruined them?

For me it's Sonic and Yoshi.

First time i heard Sonic talking and acting like he did in the first Adventure, i knew the franchise was dead for me. One of my favorite, actually cool looking characters was not cool anymore. And i know many Sonic fans like to say how Sonic was "always like that" but i disagree. Because now he is just cringe. And even if he was always supposed to be like that and the old tech didn't allow the devs to show Sonic's "real personality", well, i'm grateful for that. Sometimes restrain and cutting corners is for the best.

Yoshi is a weird one. It's not exactly voice acting, more like voice samples. But WHY? Yoshi's Island SFX on the SNES were great. The way his jump sounded like a spring or the way his float animation sounded like.... whatever that sound was. I loved those sound effects. Very distinct and sweet. And then they made Yoshi's Story. Unbelievably saccharine and overly cute voice samples, not to mention the intro music, to the point where i had to play with the sound volume low enough so others in the house won't hear. And the worst thing about these embarrassing samples, it's how they became the default Yoshi sound style. They even ruined the GBA port of the original game with them.

I have no issues with cute games in general, i play a lot of childish looking and sounding games, i'm still a Nintendo fan for the most part. But with Yoshi i think they pushed it a bit too far. Can't play Yoshi related games because of that, lol.

I'm curious to know if other characters got ruined for you because of this.

Spoiler

And remember kids, Link should never talk.

 

[Goliath77]

Most rpg's for me. I generally now will use Japanese audio with subtitles where I can because the english is always so cringey.

 

[Drizzlehell]

Emo Prince in PoP Warrior Within

Reefer Sutherland in MGS 5, I hope Konami re-dubs him with Dave Hayter at some point

Kratos - YEAH, I liked TC Carson and that version of Kratos better, eat me

 

[Mithos]

Most rpg's for me. I generally now will use Japanese audio with subtitles where I can because the english is always so cringey.

I find the Japanese voices in any game cringey and embarrasing, maybe because I don't "get" the male "angry" and female "soft uwu" voice thing...

 

[Fbh]

I think JRPG's in general really suffered from voice acting.
The dialogue was never particularly strong in most games, even if the overall narrative and characters are good, but once we actually started hearing it spoken out loud it suddenly felt 10X worse.
I think a part of it is also the type of writing, just like you wouldn't take a comic book and just use the dialogue 1:1 for a movie I think JRPG dialogue needed to be adapted to voiced scenes, but they never did.
Half the reason I tend to play them with Japanese voice acting is that simply not understanding the langue makes it less cringy.

I only played the demo of FFXVI but that's the first JRPG in ages that doesn't sound terrible in English

 

[mopspear]

I wonder if the Japanese actually sounds bad too, but we are unable to tell. I've watched a ton of Japanese movies and I've only seen one person that I could call a bad actor, yet I've seen plenty of bad acting in English movies.

 

[01011001]

Kratos - YEAH, I liked TC Carson and that version of Kratos better, eat me

super fucking weird thing about Kratos in the German dub of the GoW games

in God of War 1, 2, and 3, the German voice of Kratos was Tilo Schmitz.
Tilo Schmitz is also the German voice for Christopher Judge in many projects, including his biggest one, Stargate...

So the german voice of Teal’c was also Kratos' German voice in the original God of War games...
AND AS SOON AS CHRISTOPHER JUDGE GOT THE ROLE IN THE ENGLISH DUB, THEY REPLACED THE GERMAN VA WITH TOBIAS BRECKLINGHAUSEN...
like... wtf happened there? that was such an odd thing to do... Tilo Schmitz voiced Judge in Stargate, Snowdogs and Dark Knight Rises.

so yeah... TLDR: an odd little tidbit from thr German dub of God of War... Teal’c was the German voice of Kratos only until Teal’c became the English voice of Kratos, at which point Teal’c stopped being the German voice of Kratos

 

[Drizzlehell]

super fucking weird thing about Kratos in the German dub of the GoW games

in God of War 1, 2, and 3, the German voice of Kratos was Tilo Schmitz.
Tilo Schmitz is also the German voice for Christopher Judge in many projects, including his biggest one, Stargate...

So the german voice of Teal’c was also Kratos' German voice in the original God of War games...
AND AS SOON AS CHRISTOPHER JUDGE GOT THE ROLE IN THE ENGLISH DUB, THEY REPLACED THE GERMAN VA WITH TOBIAS BRECKLINGHAUSEN...
like... wtf happened there? that was such an odd thing to do... Tilo Schmitz voiced Judge in Stargate, Snowdogs and Dark Knoght Rises.

so yeah... an odd little tidbit from thr German dub of God of War...

Maybe they thought that it needs to be a different guy too, like in the native versions, lol.

Germany's obsession with dubbing everything always confused me in general. I remember as kid I hated how the only thing that we could catch on satellite TV were German stations like ProSieben where they always played cool movies but shit was always dubbed.

Although I suppose it's better than what we had in Poland, where most movies on TV were dubbed by just one guy who basically read the dialogue over the original audio track and you could still hear the original voices in the background.

 

[01011001]

Maybe they thought that it needs to be a different guy too, like in the native versions, lol.

Germany's obsession with dubbing everything always confused me in general. I remember as kid I hated how the only thing that we could catch on satellite TV were German stations like ProSieben where they always played cool movies but shit was always dubbed.

Although I suppose it's better than what we had in Poland, where most movies on TV were dubbed by just one guy who basically read the dialogue over the original audio track and you could still hear the original voices in the background.

that obsession lead to pretty good dubs over the year tho. there are instances where the german dub is better than the original, often because the gernan VA is a better actor than the original and therefore reads the lines better
Schwarzenegger movies are legit a whole different experience in german compared to the english originals... of course way less iconic, but also just way easier to take serious

 

[existensmaximum]

Mario, Link and Guybrush Threepwood come to mind for me. Not that the franchises were destroyed but their voices annoy the fuck out of me for different reasons.

I would have much preferred them to just be silent. Well maybe not Guybrush, but a different voice then.

 

[Fuz]

Most rpg's for me. I generally now will use Japanese audio with subtitles where I can because the english is always so cringey.

If you mean jrpgs then I agree. Not sure why English VA is always so awkward and cringy in them. Maybe they just don't translate well, culturally.

 

[Hudo]

Maybe they thought that it needs to be a different guy too, like in the native versions, lol.

Germany's obsession with dubbing everything always confused me in general. I remember as kid I hated how the only thing that we could catch on satellite TV were German stations like ProSieben where they always played cool movies but shit was always dubbed.

Although I suppose it's better than what we had in Poland, where most movies on TV were dubbed by just one guy who basically read the dialogue over the original audio track and you could still hear the original voices in the background.

And nowadays one of the best dubs of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdoms is the German one. But maybe I am also kinda biased because you just grow up with everything dubbed in German. And even the worst dubbed shit was at least passable. At the top of my head, I also think the German dub of the first Crysis is the best one and the German dub of Curse of Monkey Island is easily on par with the English one (except for the part where you had to derail the song your crew sang on your ship to get them back to work by interjecting "orange!" which seemingly doesn't rhyme with anything. That part got fucked in the German version)

 

[Drizzlehell]

that obsession lead to pretty good dubs over the year tho. there are instances where the german dub is better than the original, often because the gernan VA is a better actor than the original and therefore reads the lines better
Schwarzenegger movies are legit a whole different experience in german compared to the english originals... of course way less iconic, but also just way easier to take serious

Doesn't Schwarzenegger dub his own roles, though? You mean he's a better actor when speaking his native language?

 

[01011001]

Doesn't Schwarzenegger dub his own roles, though? You mean he's a better actor when speaking his native language?

nope he doesn't. and they recently had to replace his german VA because he's retiring sadly :/ so watching his newer movies is fucking weird in german...
same with Sylvester Stallone, who had the same VA in basically all movies until recently.

also he would sound incredibly out of place if he did voice himself lol. he has this weird mix of american and austrian accent now, it sounds really weird... basically he would sound just as weird as in the English version

 

[Drizzlehell]

nope he doesn't. and they recently had to replace his german VA because he's retiring sadly :/ so watching his newer movies is fucking weird in german...
same with Sylvester Stallone, who had the same VA in basically all movies until recently.

also he would sound incredibly out of place if he did voice himself lol. he has this weird mix of american and austrian accent now, it sounds really weird... basically he would sound just as weird as in the English version

Ah yeah, I remember reading some IMDb trivia about those German actors who dub Sly and Arnie, I think it caused some trouble when they were doing Expendables 3 or something because they both starred in that movie, lol.

Although I do remember that there was some movie where Arnold dubbed his own characters in German. Or maybe I'm thinking about some other German actor who often stars in American films...

 

[killatopak]

Certainly not ruined but I do prefer the VO in original RE games than the remakes. Nemesis' voice, Jill, Krauser, Salazar, Saddler and Ada in particular. Emphasis on Nemesis. His is just iconic.

Some are purely because of the direction they put into the backstory and emotions differ from the original and that's completely understandable.

 

[01011001]

Ah yeah, I remember reading some IMDb trivia about those German actors who dub Sly and Arnie, I think it caused some trouble when they were doing Expendables 3 or something because they both starred in that movie, lol.

yeah but that wasn't really an issue. he voiced both slightly differently usually.

Although I do remember that there was some movie where Arnold dubbed his own characters in German. Or maybe I'm thinking about some other German actor who often stars in American films...

in Escape Plan they had a second VA that voiced Schwarzenegger. an Austrian one... sounded super weird. they should have just let him voice both like in Expendables tbh

he never dubbed himself tho

 

[squarealex]

- Ada Wong
- Leon Scott Kenedy

 

[Elysium44]

The Resident Evil series. I think the last game with great (English) voice acting was Revelations 2. After that I believe Capcom decided to hire voice actors on the cheap and every game since then has been poor. Resident Evil 4 remake is the most recent example, where the new actors have none of the charm or charisma of the originals.

 

[Trilobit]

And the worst thing about these embarrassing samples, it's how they became the default Yoshi sound style. They even ruined the GBA port of the original game with them.

Huh? I had to compare that on youtube as the GBA version was the one I grew up with and loved. And... YOU HAVE JUST NOW RUINED IT FOR ME, NKARAFO! Argh...why...The SNES version is like a silent film in comparison. Next time I replay it I'll just hear every single added Yoshi sound. Him pushing a rolling stone sounds just like Cartman. Yoshi jumping sounds just like me after eating too much fibers.

Why, nkarafo! Why?!?

 

[mild sriracha]

I dare say the voice acting in anime dubs is getting better. But is it up to par?



Z episode 185 - Japanese original (1993)




Z episode 170 - Funimation English dub (2000)




Kai episode 92 - Funimation English dub (2011)

 

[TheInfamousKira]

Snake when Keifer Sutherland replaced David Hayter.

Snake when David Hayter forgot how Snake sounded.

Snake when David Hayter tried to sound old.

Snake in Smash Brothers when his codec art was clearly MGS1 but he had that ham ass MGS2 voice.

Snake in Metal Gear Solid.

Mei Ling when she learned English.

Any role Quinton Flynn has that isn't Reno or Axel because he invariably sounds like a used car salesman regardless of role.

 

[AeonGaidenRaiden]

Reefer Sutherland in MGS 5, I hope Konami re-dubs him with Dave Hayter at some point

I dont think theres anything wrong with Keefs voice but considering how little he speaks at all in the game, it makes it that much more annoying that David wasnt chosen again and that Keef was a just a marketing thing....loook, we have a AAA actor giving voice to our beloved character. Oh btw, he has 10 min dialogue max for the whole game.