Voice acting (what do you think about it?)

[Spindel]

Ok so I've been thinking a bit (take cover)...

What do you think of voice acting in games?

Personally I prefer story heavy games having text that I have to read than having dialouges being preformed by voice acting. Just as I in general prefer to read a good book over watching a movie. For me this adds an element to the game not having to hear the charachters voices and also I can determine the pace of the dialouges by my self (most of the time they pass faster and I still get all the info when I read instead of listening to them). For me it also means one less irritation moment in the game, that takes away from the experience, if the voices are anoying or the voice acting really stinks (for some reason FarCry pops up in my head when talking about bad voice acting ).

Even if the charachters have voices I prefer them to be just jibberish on some make up language which still leaves me to read the actual dialogue.

But if the game has voice acting I really really want the protagonist of the game being silent while everyone around him talks and "acts" like he answers questions etc. For me this is because I am the protagonist of the game. If the protagonist has another voice than mine it imedietly breaks imersion for me.

This is just my thoughts on this issue. My guess is that there are as many opinions as there are people playing games.

So what does anyone else of this forum thing about this?

EDIT:// Oh also I prefer reading dialogues over hearing them because you can pass much more information with text than with voice acting without really increasing the dialogue too much = more story (just as movies based on books usually throw away about 95% of the story and information of the original book)

killer7

[boffo]

It usually depends on the game for me and how it's set up. Usually I'll prefer voice acting just because it tends to add a bit more depth to the characters. Emotions don't tend to come out as well in text so it can often take a bit longer to get a feel for the different characters in a text based game. I often find as well that text kind of feels like it's slowing the game down. With a cut scene you usually have the option to skip it, but with text if you want to skip something you've done already it requires repeated button presses. And in the case of a certain owl from a certain Zelda game that caused more problems than it needed to.

I think text can still work for RPG's as they tend to be longer and more drawn out giving more time for the player to get to know the characters and the storyline. However the majority of games now-a-days seem to be closer to the 10 hour mark in playtime and text based play just doesn't suit that type of game as well.

[boffo]

Plus I'm the type of person that finds humour in horrible acting, so without voice overs Resident Evil just wouldn't have been the same for me.

[Ark]

depends on what game...if they can pull of a good voice acting, i'll take it
or take a game like shadow of the collossus/ico, the language is gibberish but still entertaining...

[codenamelenny]

I like emotion in my characters, voice acting is the best way to achieve that.

[E6600]

don't care
it doesn't add nor take from the game

[superslug]

I generally like voice acting though bad voice acting has more potential to ruin a game for me than bad text. Though I agree that RE was in the "so bad its good category".

mass effect and ff10 come to mind as 2 rpgs where I have enjoyed the voice acting but I recently replayed paper mario on VC and it didn't bother me that there wasn't any.

no more heroes

[Spindel]

The best imotion for me in charachters I've seen so far was Link in WW and PH. That was achieved by an art style that allowed clear facial expressions.

For me personally i would prefer devs going that way instead.