Is Baldurs Gate 3's voice acting so great that it ruined other games for me?
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BG3 has great voice acting, but I don't really think it's that far beyond any other games. As a personal example, Cherami Leigh as Female V in Cyberpunk 2077 is probably my favorite voice actor in the last several years, even if BG3 is probably my favorite game in that same time.
Dude Cherami Leigh also voiced my favorite gaming character, Gaige the Mechromancer from Borderlands 2. She's fucking phenomenal.
It's a bummer none of the echo logs made it into the game, but they're still great. The fact that she cuts her arm, and then instead of patching it up, she just slices her arm clean off and then builds a mecha arm WHILE she's bleeding out is so fuckin hardcore. I love it
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Now that I think about it, the marvellous thing about BG3 isn't just the acting of the main characters but of the minor NPCs as well. It shows an unprecedented attention to detail and love and care.
I think the only "bad" acting I encountered in the game was that one kid who was apparently voiced by one of the staff's kids. And that's only because the model looked too old, for which I suspect that the kid chose their own model.
Agreed. Great voice acting is one thing. Quality voicing a cast that gigantic is another. I first noticed with that frog in the hag's area. You don't even get it if you don't cast speak with animals and talk to this random frog hopping around, but if you bother to, you get this short, amazingly acted dialogue.
The attention to detail is just off the charts.
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Finished my first BG3 run, man the acting is great, especially at the when characters get their big emotional moments. I'm thinking "that's acting!", also recognised Omni Man immediately.
Now I'm on to Alan Wake 2 and omg I can't take the dialogue and voice acting. It feels jarring. The prior game I played was Silent Hill 2 and I remembered it was OK, the MC was very chill in a horror game but its kinda explained by the story
Voice acting? Reject modernity, embrace Dwarf Fortress.
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Oh really Alan Wake 2? Haven't played it yet but I thought Control voice acting and face expressions were well done?
I keep hearing this, but I honestly don't like both VA & facial expressions in Control. Both are usually incredibly wooden and stiff, with the facial expressions veering hard into the uncanny valley, but without redeeming stylized highlights.
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Honestly, for the most part I really enjoyed the voice acting in Guild Wars 2. But femme V is probably my favourite as of late.
Femme V really nails the emotional arc of V's story in ways that the VA for masc V doesn't, to the point that I'm truthfully less invested in my current playthrough (male street kid origin) than I was in my original (female corpo).
That says, everybody who did voice work in BG3 did fantastic, but Neil Newborn has been rightfully getting acclaim for Astarion, and you have to hand it to him -- they gave him the character, but he was the one who decided "I'm gonna chew the scenery so hard I shit splinters" and made it work so damn well.
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BG3 is great and all but there are other games with at least equal voice acting quality. For all its qualities I never felt like "wow, I've never seen voice acting like this in a game!" when I played BG3. It's really good and really consistent but nothing earth shattering.
I know I bring up Disco Elysium a lot, but that is one game where I got repeatedly shocked at the quality and diversity of the voice acting. With the exception of one single character I think it's acted to absolute perfection.
I also didn't really feel the same about Alan Wake 2 like, at all. I thought it had superb acting (both voice and full video segments) and probably hold the quality of its acting above BG3 personally. Alan Wake 1 less so.
Agreed. BG3 is outstanding but I loved AW2, thought the acting and Mocap etc was brilliant
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Voice acting? Reject modernity, embrace Dwarf Fortress.
embrace [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected], except you mash past all the voice acting because you can read faster than the lines are acted out
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Finished my first BG3 run, man the acting is great, especially at the when characters get their big emotional moments. I'm thinking "that's acting!", also recognised Omni Man immediately.
Now I'm on to Alan Wake 2 and omg I can't take the dialogue and voice acting. It feels jarring. The prior game I played was Silent Hill 2 and I remembered it was OK, the MC was very chill in a horror game but its kinda explained by the story
Alan Wake 2 is very x-files/zany in its own way. They don’t play it as serious in some ways.
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Finished my first BG3 run, man the acting is great, especially at the when characters get their big emotional moments. I'm thinking "that's acting!", also recognised Omni Man immediately.
Now I'm on to Alan Wake 2 and omg I can't take the dialogue and voice acting. It feels jarring. The prior game I played was Silent Hill 2 and I remembered it was OK, the MC was very chill in a horror game but its kinda explained by the story
JK Simmons performance was absolute dogshit
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Finished my first BG3 run, man the acting is great, especially at the when characters get their big emotional moments. I'm thinking "that's acting!", also recognised Omni Man immediately.
Now I'm on to Alan Wake 2 and omg I can't take the dialogue and voice acting. It feels jarring. The prior game I played was Silent Hill 2 and I remembered it was OK, the MC was very chill in a horror game but its kinda explained by the story
Dragon Age: Origins is also a master class in this vain.
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Finished my first BG3 run, man the acting is great, especially at the when characters get their big emotional moments. I'm thinking "that's acting!", also recognised Omni Man immediately.
Now I'm on to Alan Wake 2 and omg I can't take the dialogue and voice acting. It feels jarring. The prior game I played was Silent Hill 2 and I remembered it was OK, the MC was very chill in a horror game but its kinda explained by the story
BG3 is definitely one of those games with good (even great) voice acting. But there are more of them out there.
RDR2 has some of the best writing and acting performances I’ve ever encountered in a game. The Last of Us is in a similar vein.
The Uncharted series has some of my favourite voice acting, especially Claudia Black (Chloe) and of course Nolan North (Nathan).Claudia Black also voices Morrigan in Dragon Age Origins, which is chock full of stellar voice performances. I’d argue that Dragon Age 2 and even Inquisition had some memorable performances but The Veilguard sucked.
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Finished my first BG3 run, man the acting is great, especially at the when characters get their big emotional moments. I'm thinking "that's acting!", also recognised Omni Man immediately.
Now I'm on to Alan Wake 2 and omg I can't take the dialogue and voice acting. It feels jarring. The prior game I played was Silent Hill 2 and I remembered it was OK, the MC was very chill in a horror game but its kinda explained by the story
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Finished my first BG3 run, man the acting is great, especially at the when characters get their big emotional moments. I'm thinking "that's acting!", also recognised Omni Man immediately.
Now I'm on to Alan Wake 2 and omg I can't take the dialogue and voice acting. It feels jarring. The prior game I played was Silent Hill 2 and I remembered it was OK, the MC was very chill in a horror game but its kinda explained by the story
One thing I find jarring about BG3 is the lack of vo for the player character. It seems like a weird omission in this day and age.
(Not counting the dumb 'I clicked here, so my player has to say something' vo. Like, shut the fuck up with your dumb chess references, Gale!) -
Dragon Age: Origins is also a master class in this vain.
All the dragon Age games, really.
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One thing I find jarring about BG3 is the lack of vo for the player character. It seems like a weird omission in this day and age.
(Not counting the dumb 'I clicked here, so my player has to say something' vo. Like, shut the fuck up with your dumb chess references, Gale!)It's supposed to be immersive, I think, so as not to force a voice that doesn't match the roleplaying in your head.
I'm with you, though, I'd much prefer VA.
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One thing I find jarring about BG3 is the lack of vo for the player character. It seems like a weird omission in this day and age.
(Not counting the dumb 'I clicked here, so my player has to say something' vo. Like, shut the fuck up with your dumb chess references, Gale!)I played BG3 straight after Cyberpunk and that really stood out to me as well. The immersion and emotional impact of voiced protagonist lines really got me invested in Cyberpunk in a way I missed in BG3.
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One thing I find jarring about BG3 is the lack of vo for the player character. It seems like a weird omission in this day and age.
(Not counting the dumb 'I clicked here, so my player has to say something' vo. Like, shut the fuck up with your dumb chess references, Gale!)They recorded some lines for the custom character. They think aloud when you approach the gith gank squad.
They also reverted a decision to have all the origin characters do a bizarre past tense narration that the narrator VA does present tense. Maybe they abandoned having the player character speak when they changed that course.
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It's supposed to be immersive, I think, so as not to force a voice that doesn't match the roleplaying in your head.
I'm with you, though, I'd much prefer VA.
I am in the other camp, I like the immersion.
I also have a tendency to not bother with VA, though, and to just click through the second I finish reading the dialogue, except for lines in particularly dramatic parts of the story. Sometimes not even then. Just figure I'd offer a counter opinion especially since this thread is probably going to be full of people who always choose voice acting when it is an option, given the thread is all about it. I am glad so many people derive joy from it, just because it is Not For Me doesn't mean I think it's Bad And Worthless
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One thing I find jarring about BG3 is the lack of vo for the player character. It seems like a weird omission in this day and age.
(Not counting the dumb 'I clicked here, so my player has to say something' vo. Like, shut the fuck up with your dumb chess references, Gale!)I think the silent protagonist choice is valid in more of "sandbox" story like BG3. Speaking for myself, voiced protagonists tend to "lock" me into a specific role. I absolutely love the voice acting for Geralt of Rivia but when I play a witcher game I'm not inserting myself into the game, I'm becoming Geralt and making choices based on how I believe Geralt would make them.
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I think the silent protagonist choice is valid in more of "sandbox" story like BG3. Speaking for myself, voiced protagonists tend to "lock" me into a specific role. I absolutely love the voice acting for Geralt of Rivia but when I play a witcher game I'm not inserting myself into the game, I'm becoming Geralt and making choices based on how I believe Geralt would make them.
I don't really see it being a sandbox. I mean, all answers are given, and you select from those choices. That's the same as other games that have pc vo.
I feel like it would have made more sense to have no voice options at all, and to just get rid of the ridiculous quips. That way, you create your own voice in your head. In no universe would the character I created complain about having to put her hands onto everything before opening a door.Anyway, not a big deal, but like I said, it was a bit jarring.
