And one last thing: I nominate SWTOR's worst voice acting....

noncley

With the advent of the Knights of the Fallen Empire chapter, the acting and narration of SWTOR, which had always been touted by Bioware as one of its great selling features, has become ludicrously amateur and fanfic-ish - and, even worse, they seem to have made some exceptionally bizarre choices in terms of voice-acting and direction.

In that spirit, I would like to nominate Natasha Loring as the *worst* voice-actor not only in the game but in all of video-game history. Check it out for yourself. In a way, it's hilarious.



She is trying to play Vaylin, a super-powerful force-sensitive princess, as a kind of psycho-sex-kitten but instead is coming across dead, flat and incredibly downmarket, like a footballer's WAG reading out excerpts from an Argos catalogue while having her nails done. What's so odd is that while her father and her brother both have snarling American accents, her is like a weather girl from Essex. I cannot imagine why she was hired for this job except, if you google her publicity shots, she is very good looking which suggests she might have been hired by a drooling cubicle-restricted BW dev rather than an actual casting director. I hope he got some after all that.

[Note: What makes this more ridiculous is that some of the voice actors on SWTOR, both in its glory days and even now, are excellent: I'm thinking the English actors they got to play the Imperial Agent - Bertie Carvell and Jo Wyatt - and even the actor they have on now to play Valkorian - Darin De Paul - does a pretty good job with the ridiculous 'I'm so evil I'm now good' fanfic storlyline written for him by whatever chump is now writing the english-as-a-foreign language script].

MagikarpsGhost

for a mmo its top VA for bioware its middle grade.

H0urg1ass

When I think of first class voice acting, my initial thought always jumps to The Last of Us.  There's something about the emotional quality of a voice, the way information is imparted, that can take a set of pixels and make you cheer, laugh and cry for them.  By the end of The Last of Us, I had been on an emotional roller coaster made possible entirely by the quality of the VA.

KOTFE is exactly the opposite.  Whenever I hear Vaylin speak, I immediately am pulled out of the story.  The image that comes to mind is of a guy with a top hat, monocle and curled mustache.  He's standing by a set of railroad tracks where he just tied up some poor girl and he's twisting his mustache while taunting "Come save this girl that I just tied to these railroad tracks! kekekeke!"

"What possible purpose does tying that girl to railroad tracks serve the empire?"

"Serve the empire?  I'm chaotic evil, can't you see?!?  I'm bad because I do bad things, and you're supposed to hate me because of my badness!  You're good, so you need to save the girl!  Muahhahah"

In fact, all of KOTFE is pretty much summed up in this video:

Phry

Overall i think the voice acting in SW:TOR is far superior to that found in other MMO's, but, have to agree, Vaylin just doesn't quite fit somehow, and doesn't seem to be on the same kind of level as the rest of voice acting, i don't hate it, but i am not sure i like it either, though i can see what they were trying to achieve by having her voice acted that way, i think its just that the 'attitude' they were aiming for is not an easy one to carry off, and no matter how close you get to it, unless you get it right, it sounds out of place.
Have to disagree about the script though, from what i've seen so far, i really do like it, and the Emperor is imo, very well done, just the right level of malice and persuasion, and implied hidden intent.
SW:TOR is definitely my go-to game for the storylines, and its looking to continue to be that way for some time to come, particularly if they keep it up, though could wish for less of a gap between episodes, but i'd rather that than they released a half assed episode due to time constraints.
So, yes, still subbed to SW:TOR.

MyNameIsV

Love TOR voice acting and cut scenes, but yeah she doesn't cut it.

Jonnyp2

If we're being honest swtor has an overall good story and voice acting for an MMO.  

noncley

Jonnyp2 said:

If we're being honest swtor has an overall good story and voice acting for an MMO.  

No, if we're being honest, both those things are absolutely untrue. They may be true if if you're not terribly experienced in what good writing and good acting it.

Kyarra

Darn it, I didn't want to watch that since I haven't played SWTOR in a bit and didn't get to that part yet Spoiler alert :P

Amathe

It's not that bad. 

Sovrath

noncley said:

She is trying to play Vaylin, a super-powerful force-sensitive princess, as a kind of psycho-sex-kitten but instead is coming across dead, flat and incredibly downmarket, like a footballer's WAG reading out excerpts from an Argos catalogue while having her nails done. 

It's not that bad. I would go so far as to say it's fine.

Maybe it's your expectations. Additionally, I've seen enough comparisons from the actors in the booth to merging their performances with what's on the screen and sometimes it's just that, a mismatch of animations and their performance.

Scot

She was subpar for a MMO with excellent voice acting but not horrendous. The idea of it being "English as a foreign language" did make me laugh, but I would not agree it is that bad.