NV voice acting.

[Mad Bomber]

I agree that it can be pretty annoying to hear the same voice again and again....
But I have to admit, I love some voices in FNV, Ulysses or Chief Hanlon for example. And I really like the voice of Zoe Bell, especially her Melissa, with her beautiful accent - really makes her unique

 

[Josan12]

I agree that it can be pretty annoying to hear the same voice again and again....
But I have to admit, I love some voices in FNV, Ulysses or Chief Hanlon for example. And I really like the voice of Zoe Bell, especially her Melissa, with her beautiful accent - really makes her unique

Sure - don't get me wrong: i'm not saying i don't like the few voices there are. The first two voices you hear, for example - doc mitchell and sunny smiles are both pleasant, rich voices.

But take the NCR officers for example - after meeting two or three i realised they all sound the same and are, in fact, mostly voiced by the same actor with little effort to 'act'.

It's all the stranger because the wiki lists 71 actors for NV and all DLC's!!

Wait, I'm not trying to be a prick here, but Graham? Really? He's got a pretty good voice actor by Bethesda standards, but I found his reading to be incredibly flat. Not flat like a calm, centered, reborn man of purpose, not flat like the eye of a storm, just... flat.

Yeah, i know what you mean. I suppose i like the sound of the actors voice. But the flatness I find a common problem. Here i am out in the desert wastes with the wind howling and the sun beating down at the 188 - and the voices sound like the person i'm talking to is in ... well, a recording studio! I imagine This would be technically difficult problem to overcome, however. I find its always jarring when i've just survived a hectic battle deep in vault 34 up to my ankles in ghoul blood and i talk to veronica and she responds like we're lounging by the pool. Oh well.

 

[Ekans22]

I actually thought the voice acting in Skyrim was terrible, too, on par with NV and FO3. Just because they have 'accents' doesn't mean they don't sound empty and equally uninspiring (or unmotivated?). Then again, I hate that game about all around, so maybe its just contaminated my experience.

after meeting two or three i realised they all sound the same and are, in fact, mostly voiced by the same actor with little effort to 'act'.

But the flatness I find a common problem.

Josan12, I know what you mean, but weirdly, that actually worked out for me in terms of the NCR soldiers. I felt like they were mostly casual/bored/uninspired - which fit the atmosphere perfectly, seeing as they're spending all their time guarding an empty wasteland.

 

[Alesia]

I agree. If I had to walk around in heavy armor in 100+ degree heat all day, I'd be pretty emotionless too.

 

[pyroD]

At least they got Danny Trejo to play the voice of the only ghoul without a raspy voice. But Danny Trejo never the less.

 

[Walpknut]

Raul has a Raspy voice too, on account of being voiced by Danny Trejo. The only ghoul without a raspy voice is Dean Domino.

 

[pyroD]

It's not as emphasized compared to your generic ghoul. And I forgot about Dean. Always hated that guy.

 

[Atomic Postman]

I believe, that when it comes to voice acting in games like the Elder-Scrolls and the more recent Fallout games, it is all or nothing.

You either have over one hundred voice actors, a ridiculous premise at first, but in the end, could add a needed feeling of liveliness into the world, or you have no voice acting save for major characters(maybe) in the way of Fallout and Fallout 2,this also allows for more in depth conversations and easy modding.

 

[5545Trey]

I would rather have a game that is not fully voiced than a game where every generic NPC sounds the same.

 

[zegh8578]

One of the first things I noticed w FONV compared to FO3 was that voice-acting was much more natural. They spoke like people, not shouted like stage performers.

As for Oblivion, I loaaathe the voices. The every-bosmer-in-the-game-voice, the female-elf-low-pitched-voice, I hate all of them.
Morrowind was much more entertaining, but then again, it wasn't fully voiced, only random greetings, still "The preeey approaaaches!"

 

[naossano]

I actually liked a lot of the voice, including some voice that are used for multiple characters, like the voice for Melissa or for the black guys.
Those really fit with the environnment, IMO.

On the other hand, i can't stand the fact that the list of generic thought for generic character is too low.
Regardless the location you are in, if you talk to everyone, you are likely to hear ten times the same sentences.
Which is totally unbearable with the NCR guys, that are the same generic guys regardless where you are, regardless your are in the strip, underground, in a village, near a powerplant or in the middle of the desert, they have the exact same things to say, even if with different voices.

They all wished they were more gambling, all wish for a nuclear winter, all say that the legion could count on them not going down quietly, all are waiting the veteran from the Baja. It get old VERY fast. (and yet, i can't help but talking to everyone. It is an RPG after all)

 

[5545Trey]

"The preeey approaaaches!"

Argonians, I loved them so much in Morrowind. They were actually a beast race, they walked like they were supposed to be beasts, they used their claws in Hand-to-Hand combat, in their voices were not similar to the Khajiit. Morrowind was the most unique game in the franchise.

 

[Walpknut]

I actually liked a lot of the voice, including some voice that are used for multiple characters, like the voice for Melissa or for the black guys.
Those really fit with the environnment, IMO.

On the other hand, i can't stand the fact that the list of generic thought for generic character is too low.
Regardless the location you are in, if you talk to everyone, you are likely to hear ten times the same sentences.
Which is totally unbearable with the NCR guys, that are the same generic guys regardless where you are, regardless your are in the strip, underground, in a village, near a powerplant or in the middle of the desert, they have the exact same things to say, even if with different voices.

They all wished they were more gambling, all wish for a nuclear winter, all say that the legion could count on them not going down quietly, all are waiting the veteran from the Baja. It get old VERY fast. (and yet, i can't help but talking to everyone. It is an RPG after all)

Actually it seems like the repetitiveness of the generic NPC barks is more due to a glitch, or lack of time to integrate them all. A lot of Mods exist to reintegrate a lot of them, Freeside actually has a lot of unsued dialogue and NPCs will usually have something different to say about your companion selection. After installing a few of Moburna's "Uncut" mods It really feels like a more alive world. My favorite instance of this is Rotface's cut sidequest. I always felt there was more to that raggedy ghoul, and it turns out he had an unmarked quest planned for him with like 4 different outcomes or even the fact that when you recruit the ex con to be the Sheriff of Primm there was a planned sequence where he would congregate his fellow Podwer Gangers and offer them the opportunity to turn a new leaf as his deputies. Hell there is even an unused voice clip of a recording of House announcing his own death when you do the deed.

I am not really thristing for having 200 different voice actors for generic NPCs, like what's even the point? Racking up the production cost at the expense of actual game content? Voice work is very expensive and as long as the unique voices are kept for the important characters I am happy. I mean they do have some rather talented voice actors in New Vegas that aren't the celebrity ones, Yuri Lowenthal voices a lot of characters but he can still give some uniqueness to the important ones, same with Laura Bailey.

 

[Lexx]

(and yet, i can't help but talking to everyone. It is an RPG after all)

I only talk to people with a real name. Everyone else has nothing to say, just as it is in pretty much every other rpg. There is no reason to click every soldier or peasant.

 

[naossano]

Actually, this is different with many RPG.
If you play the old Fallout, for instance, the generic npcs are differents in each town, or each area, or different kind of generic npcs within the same area, so it keep fresh. Sometime they take into account some changes around your characters & companions. I don't re-talk to them, but i talk to each of them once on each playthrough, and it doesn't get boring as quickly as FoNV. Even if FoNV, the most boring are NCR/Legion soldiers as other generic npc are local. Those two kind are the same everywhere in the gameworld.

Also, some games actually reward you for talking to these generic NPC. If you take The Witcher 1, for instance, those npc don't have multiple floating lines. They have one line (or an entire speech) where you are close, and one line (or an entire speech) if you click on them. Some generic characters have the same line, but not that much. So if you want to hear all they have to say, you need to click on many of them. Also, you might get some informations about the society, the lore, the current quests, some other lines are just fun. Finally, some of these characters are labelled as generic, but in fact aren't. They might open up dialogs or even quests if you click on them. You wouldn't have these quests and interractions if you didn't click on every generic npc, which really reward the players that bother.
(also, i don't see the point of playing an RPG if you purposly miss what the characters have to say. This is the point of a living world for me. If i wanted to fight stuff, i would play an FPS or an hack'n'slash)

 

[SnapSlav]

Voice work is very expensive

This is a myth, and this really needs to be dispelled from the collective opinion as immediately as possible. "Can" is not the same as "is", which many people still struggle with comprehending for reasons that elude me, but the fact of the matter is while it CAN be excruciatingly expensive to hire a lot of high-cost voice talent, it can also be dirt cheap to just get some variety. There was a number of dev journals from telltale studios about their creation of The Walking Dead where they explained their methods while creating the game, and one was about their voice recordings. In it they described hiring some random old woman to eat a candy bar which they used as the "voice" for the babysitter zombie encountered at the beginning of the first episode. Was she expensive? Was her time taxing to telltale? Absolutely not. There are hordes of eager wannabe voice actors that can be tapped for their talent or at the very least their eagerness for an incredibly paltry sum... assuming you pay them at all. Including more wav files is more space, true. Including more files instead of looping the same ones is more work, true. But these on their own don't eclipse game developers from seeking out the abundance of cheap opportunities that abound. This myth is part in parcel with the myth of triple-A gaming expenses in general, that better quality must equate to more money put into the product, and it's ALL got to stop.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

The voice acting in New Vegas leaves a lot to be desired, IMO, but it's certainly better than Skyrim's and other recent Beth games (In New Vegas it feels like a dozen people are trying to voice a cast of hundreds; in Skyrim it feels like three people are trying to voice a cast of thousands).

My biggest complaint with New Vegas' voice acting (aside from the repetitiveness) is that in a lot of dialogues the actors clearly emphasize the wrong words, or speak with an intonation that seems at odds with the content of the lines. The worst offender is the little kid who runs the Boomer Museum; whatever child actor voiced him clearly had no idea what he was supposed to be saying, and whoever directed him didn't care enough to record a proper take.

Granted, there are also a number of stellar performances in NV, especially in the DLC, which balances it out. My expectations for voice acting in modern video games is fairly low, and given the sheer amount of dialogue in NV I would say that overall it's not bad.

 

[SnapSlav]

My biggest complaint with New Vegas' voice acting (aside from the repetitiveness) is that in a lot of dialogues the actors clearly emphasize the wrong words, or speak with an intonation that seems at odds with the content of the lines. The worst offender is the little kid who runs the Boomer Museum

Out of curiosity, because nothing else comes to my mind, what other examples where there? I'm sure you're right, I just can't think of any. I'm one of those who's haunted by the repetition, so the other offenses fell by the wayside. XD

 

[Walpknut]

Voice work is very expensive

This is a myth, and this really needs to be dispelled from the collective opinion as immediately as possible. "Can" is not the same as "is", which many people still struggle with comprehending for reasons that elude me, but the fact of the matter is while it CAN be excruciatingly expensive to hire a lot of high-cost voice talent, it can also be dirt cheap to just get some variety. There was a number of dev journals from telltale studios about their creation of The Walking Dead where they explained their methods while creating the game, and one was about their voice recordings. In it they described hiring some random old woman to eat a candy bar which they used as the "voice" for the babysitter zombie encountered at the beginning of the first episode. Was she expensive? Was her time taxing to telltale? Absolutely not. There are hordes of eager wannabe voice actors that can be tapped for their talent or at the very least their eagerness for an incredibly paltry sum... assuming you pay them at all. Including more wav files is more space, true. Including more files instead of looping the same ones is more work, true. But these on their own don't eclipse game developers from seeking out the abundance of cheap opportunities that abound. This myth is part in parcel with the myth of triple-A gaming expenses in general, that better quality must equate to more money put into the product, and it's ALL got to stop.

Ok, ego stroking semantics pendancy aside. Are you seriously using TellTale as an example of good economic voice work? Dude, those game barely last 6hours and a lot of the voice work is pretty terrible, not to mention the fact that they don't have to work on mechanics, balancing and the like. Comparign an interactive 6 hour movie to an ope world rpg with lots of quests with branching paths has to be the dumbest argument ever.
Also, I guess if the dev is a cheap ass and hires c-list voice actors and then reuses dialogue like a motherfucker then yeah I guess you can save up on a lot. THere is also the argument of quality over quantity, what's the point on hiring a bunch of bad voice actors, hiring them on the absolute cheapest just to have some shallow sense of "diversity" if it's gonna be mediocre? I rather have them either get rid of voice acting alltogether (or at least reduce it to just the important npcs) so they can make more actual content without worrying about recording every single line of Disgruntled Villager #78 or give generic npcs a fairly decent range of actors (New Vegas has at least 2 voices for every kind of generic NPC) and then put money on good voice actors for the main characters. In the end, generic NPCs are just that, generic, they can serve to give background exposition and reactivity but there is no actual need to have everyone voiced. If your argument is that people who live off bringing characters to life full time should work on the cheap, then try doing your own work for half the salary but the same amount of time.

 

[SnapSlav]

It appears I have to use bite-sized responses with you, because paragraphs trip some kind of faulty douche alarm in your brain.

Ok, ego stroking semantics pendancy aside.

You say that like it means something, when all it is is your poor attempt at an insult without the courage to just state your insult.

[Comparing] an interactive 6 hour movie to an ope world rpg with lots of quests with branching paths has to be the dumbest argument ever.

Curious. When did I compare the two?

Also, I guess if the dev is a cheap ass and hires c-list voice actors and then reuses dialogue like a motherfucker then yeah I guess you can save up on a lot. THere is also the argument of quality over quantity, what's the point on hiring a bunch of bad voice actors, hiring them on the absolute cheapest just to have some shallow sense of "diversity" if it's gonna be mediocre? I rather have them either get rid of voice acting alltogether (or at least reduce it to just the important npcs) so they can make more actual content without worrying about recording every single line of Disgruntled Villager #78 or give generic npcs a fairly decent range of actors (New Vegas has at least 2 voices for every kind of generic NPC) and then put money on good voice actors for the main characters.

So your reaction to my point that you exhibit a narrow fixation on a limitation of ideas, limited to binary possibilities alone, and that there's actually many possibilities open to attemping... is to select a narrow and hyper-exaggerated negative scenario of the worst possible outcome and completely disregard the entire point of there being MANY options to choose from? The point that you can BOTH hire great actors for important roles AND save money on generic roles? The point that it's POSSIBLE? Remind me what makes thinking critically "ego stroking" and what makes your drivel in any way worth consideration?

Woops, that last part was a paragraph.... Guess I tripped that alarm again. >_<