|
As we prepare to forge ahead into an oncoming generation of new consoles, the landscape of the modern RPG will no doubt face many new challenges. Many obstacles will be overcome by the capabilities of the systems and the ingenuity of game designers. However, even in the face of a new generation of gaming, there is a weakness that dogs many games - RPGs especially - regardless of a system's specs or a storage medium's capacity. Failing in this area can reduce even the most captivating of stories and the most moving of characters to things that are "tolerated" rather than "enjoyed."
This critical aspect of today's RPG experience is voice acting. And more than likely, you have played games that run the full spectrum of quality in voice work. If so, you can attest to the effect that voice acting - good or bad - can have on a game.
RPGs, classically the story and dialogue-heavy genre, are put in a tight spot when it comes to voice acting. They have rich and complex stories to tell, but they tend to have a lot of characters, many of whom have a lot of dialogue. The more characters, dialogue, and cutscenes there are, the more pricey it becomes to hire voice actors. Whoever said that "talk is cheap" obviously never had to localize a modern RPG.
This problem is less noticeable in Japan, where voice acting is a trade that has a much larger and varied talent pool from which to draw, ensuring that not only are quality actors and actresses generally chosen, but that they fit the role to which they're assigned. This non-issue is amplified into a problem when a voice-laden game is localized in the U.S., where the pool of quality voice actors is considerably smaller. I've heard too many game and anime dubs where a character's voice seemed ill-suited to their personality, only to switch over to the Japanese dialogue with subtitles and find that the English voice actor or actress completely failed to capture the spirit of the character as represented by their original voice. In some cases, it almost feels like a dub actor was chosen as the "least jarring" of a list of available options and told to "work with it" as best they were able. That might be passable if RPGs gave gamers the option of hearing their dialogue in Japanese or English, but aside from a few titles, most localizations don't.
Here's some timely news for game companies regarding subpar voice acting: it's not going to cut it.
I'll admit that with university coursework and a lack of sufficient funds, I've been unable to play many of the latest RPGs myself, but of what I have played on the current generation of consoles, which RPGs pass the test? I can think of four RPGs I've played that stood out to me as having what I consider quality English voiceover work: Xenosaga Episode I, Kingdom Hearts, Shadow Hearts: Covenant, and Tales of Symphonia. Are they perfect? No, but is anything? There are always a couple cringe-worthy voices in any RPG, whether main character or occasional NPC. The acting quality in these games truly facilitates the player in not only immersing themselves into the game, but also in enabling them to really believe in and feel for the characters that they're playing. When I hear Xenosaga's Shion Uzuki, I hear Shion Uzuki, not a voice actress trying to sound like a character named Shion Uzuki. That's the secret to success - making people believe the fantasy.
Before voice acting, when we read scores of text boxes eager for the next revelation of the story, our imaginations supplied the voices - the perfect voices for the characters, tailored to each of us. Personally, I like such 'silent' RPGs. There's no worries about mangling voice acting that isn't there, and if a game isn't made with it, you don't really miss it (unlike Wild Arms: Alter Code F, which removed voices from cutscenes that originally had them). RPG players are, in general, a very imaginative lot, and we embraced these games and their stories long before every character had to have a speaking voice. In my opinion, I'd rather there be no voice acting at all than poorly-done voice acting.
It's unfair to hold voice actors up against the untarnishable measuring rod of our imaginations - no one voice will please everyone. But the important part is that the localization team really tries. If nothing else, Kingdom Hearts proved that with enough money you can assemble a truly talented cast of voice actors and actresses and get surprisingly good performances out of them (for a videogame) - enough to turn what's in reality a simplistic story into something that one finds themselves immersed in.
"But we don't have that kind of money!" It's a valid excuse many companies would respond with. In a perfect world, localization teams would have huge budgets and be able to hire top-rate voice actors to lend their voices to RPG characters, resulting in powerful and moving performances that strengthen the story and impress us, rather than forcing us to enjoy the game in spite of them. However, most RPGs aren't the mighty million-sellers that Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest are, so there are realistic limits on what can be done. There's a very simple solution to this, one that I brooched earlier: include the Japanese voices. If the English voice work is good, that's great! We can all play with that on, crank up the volume, and enjoy the story in, what would be to most of us, our native language. If some of us find that the voice work falls short of the mark, we can just switch over, hearing the original Japanese voice acting and 'reading' the dialogue just like we've been doing all these years with text boxes anyway. So voice acting takes up a lot of space on the DVD? Make the game two DVDs then. Blank discs aren't expensive; there's no reason this couldn't be done. Go ahead and add five dollars to the price tag, even. I know I'd pay an extra five dollars to have the guarantee that, one language or the other, I'd have my RPG's dialogue delivered with the quality it deserves.
Voice acting is a powerful, powerful tool in the presentation of any media. Its tone, inflection, and pitch shape how we understand the characters and how they relate to the world and people around them. When your mind doesn't consciously register it as 'voice acting', that's when you know you have a winner. Good voice acting can add so much to a game, but bad voice acting can take so much away, turning emotionally charged scenes into an unintentional fit of laughter on the part of the player, or causing them to grimace as though a cheese grater was being pulled across their ears. As long as companies continue to be content with mediocre voice acting, the full emotional range of these stories will be stunted.
With the future's focus on the multimedia experience, the need for quality voice acting in games isn't about to go away. In fact (big surprise here), it'll continue to grow, as more and more games have the budget and the media storage space to make it a feasible reality. Game companies shouldn't wake up one day in the future and say "Oh...hey, I guess we should get our act together with that voice acting stuff, huh?" High standards and quality in voice acting are goals that can and should be strived for now because it will only become more important as time goes on. And I can guarantee you that, set against a painstakingly-rendered fantasy cityscape with trees that rustle in the wind and townspeople that wander the bazaar, poor voice acting will stick out like even more of a sore thumb than it does now. We're talking road cone orange, farting-in-church voice acting that jars even the most forgiving players, giving rise to thoughts such as, "well…I guess that not everything has improved with the next generation..."
It could be like that, but it doesn't have to be. Hiring quality voice actors and actresses, spending a little extra cash for higher-profile voices, including the Japanese language track - these are all ways in which the games of tomorrow might become as immersive aurally as they are visually. Now that's music to my ears.
|
RSS feed
iTunes
