Why Is Early Video Game Voice Acting So Terrible?

give me a drink bartender what are you saying i'm just a soldier to protect the life cycle i have made a creature to rule over mankind we did it we deactivated the bomb now bear my arctic blast we all know that video games play host to some of the worst voice acting around the internet is full of low lights just waiting for you to cringe through we could spend hours upon hours highlighting the worst of the worst but i'm less interested in making fun of poor performances and more interested in breaking down why they happen from way over the top line readings to the downright lazy bad voice acting can turn even the best gaming experience sour and while things have definitely improved in recent years the performances of days and games gone by leave a lot to be desired oh no something's coming oh no he's going to explode seriously what gives i mean it's not like voice acting as a practice was undeveloped during the decades these video games were released some of arguably the best voice acting ever recorded can be found in motion pictures and animated tv shows that circulated the same time as these infamous acting flops if hollywood could find great vocal performers why couldn't game studios wait don't let him pass arrest him [Music] for better or worse it all boils down to the state of the medium at the time these days popular video games can have development teams of hundreds of people with budgets topping over a hundred million dollars generating billions in revenue every year but early video games from the 80s and 90s even the 2000s were created for a limited customer base with limited funds and limited resources these small scale teams had to prioritize essential functions like programming research and development art design and promotion in order to bring their games to market often leaving little to no room in the budget for things like proper voice acting and what money they did have for such performances had to be spent economically this could mean having an actor performing multiple parts sometimes even one or two people voicing an entire game and sometimes developers couldn't even afford trained actors at all and programmers or game designers had to find a way to voice characters themselves which naturally led to comically poor performances so how come you've got a spider for a pet my elephant ran away low budgets meant lackluster talent that's not too hard to understand but matters could be made even worse if the game's script failed to measure up now plenty of early video games had terrible writing sure but even a great script could suffer from poor translation japanese video games were known to feature rich storytelling and world building yet this solid foundation was sometimes rendered unintelligible thanks to the methods used to bring the game to america this is most apparent when comparing game translations and game localizations the two terms are not interchangeable a translation is a literal one-to-one conversion of a source language to a target language when you're just straight up translating a script word for word it's easy to miss particular cultural context phraseology figures of speech what have you and you'll end up with lines that make no sense outside of their native tongue and no amount of acting chops can sell a line that amounts to gibberish jill here's a lockpick it might be handy if you the master of unlocking take it with you game localizations are a much more meticulous process involving taking the core message of a particular text and crafting a version of it that makes more sense to the culture it's being targeted towards so certain figures of speech that wouldn't make sense in english were rewritten so they conveyed as close to the intended feeling as possible while doing their best to honor the original story translations were quick and cheap localizations they took time and cost a lot of money guess which of the two usually won out but hey even if a game's script got good localization it would generally end up a moo point thanks to the document's formatting video game scripts are not screenplays the latter is a cohesive and coherent narrative document with a definitive beginning middle and end with context for every story beat along the way video game scripts are a massive database of any audible asset needed to present every possible permutation of dialogue or action video games are interactive by nature sometimes a player will walk down the left path sometimes the right path one player might unlock certain narrative moments that another player might miss or make choices that can completely alter the context of a cutscene voice actors have to faithfully render every possible option so in days gone by when a voice actor got a video game script it wasn't like opening up a neat little easy to read novel instead it was a massive document of hundreds upon hundreds of lines of dialogue often coded into a strange numbering system that only made sense to the game's programmers and sometimes lines were even listed alphabetically this complete lack of narrative context on the page meant actors weren't always certain if they were using the right kind of inflection for the right kind of moment so a line like yeah thanks for the help could very well have needed to be read yeah thanks for the help during a table read for a traditional movie or tv show every actor gathers together and they all play off of each other so the dialogue captured feels natural early video game voice acting on the other hand was usually an isolated affair actors almost never performed together and worse they rarely even heard each other's dialogue to have something to play off of if you've ever sat through an awkward cut scene where two characters have completely different emotions or vocal intensity you'll know exactly what i'm talking about okay let's separate again just a moment i found something what is it it's a weapon it's really powerful especially against living things better take it with you but how about you barry i have this thank you i'll take this then poor formatting likely killed more potential knockouts than we'll ever know if a video game has a name actor attached who turns in a terrible performance that sounds like they had no clue who they were or what they were supposed to be doing in a particular scene maybe cut him some slack for all you know they didn't let's keep this in the groove hey smooth moves like smooth little babies smooth moves smooth hello but hey maybe the talent wasn't so bad maybe they even got a pretty solid script with context clues the struggle then became finding adequate direction vocal directors sit just outside of the booth and guide actors through a session into finding the right performance they offer them context on lines that they're unsure of information on the character that they're voicing the universe the story is set in and most importantly feedback on what works and what doesn't but as you might have guessed the games in question rarely even had directors in the first place with no real guidance actors were forced to figure things out on their own more often than not shooting from the hip on a limited time table if they had questions about their character or the script they just had to wing it and take their best guess am i running in this scene or am i standing still do i need to whisper this line or shout it how do i pronounce this character's name again wait am i supposed to be a robot in this game unless the engineer running the studio that weekend happened to know the answer performers would make decisions on the spot that could irreversibly ruin a character's depiction all of this culminated in a lack of overall quality assurance see if there's one thing money can buy you in the vocal booth it's time actors in studio time cost cash but these early shoestring budgets meant that when booking talent game developers were in a race against the clock to get characters fully voiced while still being able to afford both the artist and engineers hourly rate during a typical recording session there's a ton of material to get through so more often than not when a line was delivered cut print perfect whatever next it was locked in regardless of an actor's personal satisfaction and they hurriedly moved on to the next line doing more than three takes was a luxury and if the schedule was tight lines were just crammed together with little to no review meaning mistakes and mess-ups could easily slip through i heard that thieves broke into the arcane university the imperial legion compound and the temple all on the same night wait a minute let me do that one again i heard the thieves broke into the arcane university the imperial legion compound and the temple all on the same night you must recover all the energy immediately mega man but where is dr wylie that's a good question we may be able to locate another energy emission from the radar room when we find that media we'll find dr wali no time for planning practice and rehearsal is a surefire way to have an actor deliver subpar work you think that's a poor excuse all right do me a favor crack open a book or movie script that you have never seen or read before and step in front of a microphone press record start performing all the dialogue you get one take one hour no redos not so easy eh that's what you should have done in the beginning it's easy to poke fun at early video games and brand many of these performers as terrible voice actors but the truth is that a variety of challenges took place behind the scenes that made proper portrayals hard for all we know a comically bad line reading could simply have been the result of a good actor being given next to no resources or direction for the character that they were voicing and it's a mistake to judge a vocal artist's entire body of work based on one bad day in the booth it's worth remembering that in the early days of video game voice acting good days were hard to come by today video game voice acting has improved by leaps and bounds technological advancements in facial and motion capture software have helped bring character performances and modern games to cinematic heights offering what is practically a one-to-one reflection of an actor's on-set performance this attention to fine detail has meant a shift from pure vocals to more stage and screen acting techniques as even the most minuscule facial movements are scanned and faithfully recreated in 3d engines with high budget projects gone are the days of actors recording all their lines in an afternoon in a cheap sound booth with a cup of coffee now aaa titles are hiring actors to rehearse for weeks with scripts and directors that supply full context and action for every moment and they're even performing on sound stages with state-of-the-art technology alongside the rest of the game's cast these improvements have meant that acting in games is better than ever now that's not to suggest that just because a game is modern that it'll be free of poor voice acting low budget and indie video games that don't have all of those motion capture bells and whistles are becoming more and more common which has led to a resurgence of early voice acting tropes and even still some games consciously choose wooden or choppy dialogue as an artistic or aesthetic choice especially if they're attempting to imitate an early generation gaming experience some franchises have embraced so bad that it's good voice acting and sometimes games are so fun that players will overlook poor dialogue altogether as gaming enters into the next decade and more and more titles are being developed no matter what's happened before you can be sure that the best and even worst is still to come want to learn your way around a microphone check out this video's sponsor skillshare they're an online learning community that offers practical classes in various creative areas and they don't force you to put your 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Channel: AustinMcConnell

Views: 683,076

Keywords: austinmcconnell, austin mcconnell, austin mcconnel, video game, video game voice acting, bad voice acting, terrible voice acting, voice acting, video games, video essay, austinmcconnel

Id: WjnRvDulhek

Length: 13min 37sec (817 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2020