The Cardassian Diplomat voice actor must have been told to "play a caricature of a sinister guy pretending to voice-act in an opera...that's pretending" Same with the female Vorta...these two stood out. TERRIBLE.
Overall...all of the voice acting was overdone... Tell all voice actors to tone it down.....and stop ACTING! and start acting.
Every time I watch a STO cutscene I ask myself do people or aliens from the show really act LIKE THIS? Do they gesticulate this much with their hand motions?
Don't give us voice-overs if it makes me laugh at what's going on with the story.
You haven't lived until you've seen an Orion gesticulate without using hand motions.
haha I haven't had the pleasure. During the Doomsday remastered episode there's one point where you're on the Klingon ship that you contact someone back at Starfleet...but man...hahah...the gesticulating is borderline seizure-like
I am of a different opinion -- ANY voice acting is better than stone-cold silence. I found it a welcome and worthy addition. Sure, the quality wasn't the best, but that's become a trademark of STO and I wasn't expecting any more.
I am of a different opinion -- ANY voice acting is better than stone-cold silence. I found it a welcome and worthy addition. Sure, the quality wasn't the best, but that's become a trademark of STO and I wasn't expecting any more.
Glad to have VOs!!
I'm of the school that if you're not going to take it to a certain credible standard, don't insult me by having some $10 an hour voice actor do some laughable dialog that's going to break my immersion...my favorite part of the new ep was the last 1/4th of it battling Jem'Hadar ships outside DS9...the part without voice dialog.
Wow, Chris did a good job then, I couldn't actually tell it was him. Jeremy... Well he's got room for improvement. I liked how they had Staas speak English layered on the Gorn language, just like in ENT with Slar.
You have to understand that most of the voice acting is done by Cryptic staff, not professionals, so don't expect Off Broadway quality. As far as the gestures are concerned, that seems to be a staple in video games, I've seen worse.
Kurland was voice by Jeremy (aka J-man aka Borticus). I believe that Chris voiced Hadron the Ferengi in Quark's Bar.
Really, that was Chris? The Ferengi voice was excellent (so good I actually laughed). More short/random, incidental character dialog like that for characters would be great IMO. Even when it's repeated dialog I think it's a lot better than nothing (if done well).
Of the rest, if I'm honest the only ones I was a fan of were Caption Shon (perhaps a slightly cheesy character, but was well voice acted and I liked the character anyway ;-) and our Gorn friend from Klingon Empire (slightly odd audio post processing background noise there - could have done without that - but I the effort put into the voice acting was good).
If I'm honest, I was not a fan of the Deferi or Cardassian voices in this episode (and if I'm going to be critical, I might have visually styled our Cardassian Ambassador a little differently too). I agree with other posters that the Cardassian voice came across as a bit hammy. The Deferi voice felt really grated with the character I felt (but by all means could work well on another character, mostly a casting issue really).
I didn't mind the Tellarite voice per se, but I have credibility issues with Tellarites full stop (not a fault with STO). I didn't feel his voice particularly fit the character, I guess I'm expecting a more distinctive character acted voice like the Gorn voice, when it comes to a such a distinct race like the Tellarites, it was still a reasonable effort though.
Edit: squiddude: Oh is THAT was was going on with the Gorn voice? Haha I fail for bailing on ENT :-) In that case extra bonus points for coolness on that VO!
You have to understand that most of the voice acting is done by Cryptic staff, not professionals, so don't expect Off Broadway quality. As far as the gestures are concerned, that seems to be a staple in video games, I've seen worse.
when the topic over user-generated voice overs was brought up, one of the devs mentioned that sound quality would be an issue and that even their remote voice actors that they hire ie NON-Cryptic staff that they HIRE must go to a studio to record their work.
well, without doing more animation work, I think they were limited by what Emotes they could trigger, although the couple of times I saw the Khaan! emote made me chuckle, that did seem out of place.
Are you sure you're talking about the same TOR as the one I play when not playing STO?
TOR's is much higher quality than STO's. And...in all honesty...I think STO is better off without VO of this current quality.
lol?
The voice acting in TOR is, at times, utterly atrocious. There are a handful of central characters that are pretty good, but the rest are just poor cheese at best.
Definitely some of the worst voice acting I've ever heard. Personally I would prefer the option to just disable voices, it's THAT bad.
The voice acting in TOR is, at times, utterly atrocious. There are a handful of central characters that are pretty good, but the rest are just poor cheese at best.
Ummm... the quality of TOR's VO's is at minimum twice as 'good' as any VO in STO, lol.
Almost all of the main story archs have tremendously good VO's; which is a very very large amount of voice work. While I will agree that many 'shared quests' VO's aren't up to par with the rest of the game; they are still -without a doubt- better then any other in-game-voice work of any other title.
Maybe you could link some examples of 'so bad' voice acting that it's onpar/worse then this atrocity that we had to endure in this FE?
Are you sure you're talking about the same TOR as the one I play when not playing STO?
TOR's is much higher quality than STO's. And...in all honesty...I think STO is better off without VO of this current quality.
Sorry Cryptic, but I agree with this. The only VOs I actually felt were any good were Hadron and Shon. Overall, though, it just seemed like they were "acting" too much, it wasn't natural. I've kinda felt like the VOs have been rather sub-par ever since they introduced them. And yes, there have been a few gems (psychotic hologram from What Lies Beneath, for example), but for the most part I could care less for the VOs at this point.
I'll be blunt, Chris needs to seriously work on his delivery. As an actor myself, I was thoroughly displeased with the lack of emotion in his voice when he said "blast it." It was supposed to be voiced frustration, not another word.
Correcting above statements about the STOked cast doing voiceovers. Jeremy had two, Captain Kurland and the Ferengi in Quarks Bar. Chris voiced the Bajoran outside the shrine.
Correcting above statements about the STOked cast doing voiceovers. Jeremy had two, Captain Kurland and the Ferengi in Quarks Bar. Chris voiced the Bajoran outside the shrine.
In any case, whoever voiced Kurland needs to work on their acting ability.
I've found that most of the voice acting in STO is... well you hear it and you can tell instantly it's computer game voiceover, slow, monotone, almost as if the voice was digitally synthesized entirely on a comptuer. Kurland just seemed to... real... to me compared to the others. I thought it was very well done, just way too real world sounding compared to the rest which threw me off.
I've found that most of the voice acting in STO is... well you hear it and you can tell instantly it's computer game voiceover, slow, monotone, almost as if the voice was digitally synthesized entirely on a comptuer. Kurland just seemed to... real... to me compared to the others. I thought it was very well done, just way too real world sounding compared to the rest which threw me off.
Listen to him say "Blast it" again, and then tell me that was believable in the slightest.
I'm not going to bag on the people that did it, that's not a good way to express anything. I will say though that I'd probably have prefered text only, unless you are going to run with v/o professionals it's best to just use that time and energy for polish and gameplay.
It requires a budget to do v/o at a level that doesn't break immersion, and I don't think the episode really was made better by the inclusion of v/o.
Obesek was great, but that was a professional and you can hear it, just my opinion, good on the people that stepped up to the mic and are going to take the beating, but for me personally It didn't do much.
Comments
( okay I don't know haven't played yet
haha I haven't had the pleasure. During the Doomsday remastered episode there's one point where you're on the Klingon ship that you contact someone back at Starfleet...but man...hahah...the gesticulating is borderline seizure-like
I want to say that it's worse...actually it is worse.
Glad to have VOs!!
I'm of the school that if you're not going to take it to a certain credible standard, don't insult me by having some $10 an hour voice actor do some laughable dialog that's going to break my immersion...my favorite part of the new ep was the last 1/4th of it battling Jem'Hadar ships outside DS9...the part without voice dialog.
Captain Shon was probably the best of the bunch.
Everyone else was a caricature.
Kurland was voice by Jeremy (aka J-man aka Borticus). I believe that Chris voiced Hadron the Ferengi in Quark's Bar.
Really, that was Chris? The Ferengi voice was excellent (so good I actually laughed). More short/random, incidental character dialog like that for characters would be great IMO. Even when it's repeated dialog I think it's a lot better than nothing (if done well).
Of the rest, if I'm honest the only ones I was a fan of were Caption Shon (perhaps a slightly cheesy character, but was well voice acted and I liked the character anyway ;-) and our Gorn friend from Klingon Empire (slightly odd audio post processing background noise there - could have done without that - but I the effort put into the voice acting was good).
If I'm honest, I was not a fan of the Deferi or Cardassian voices in this episode (and if I'm going to be critical, I might have visually styled our Cardassian Ambassador a little differently too). I agree with other posters that the Cardassian voice came across as a bit hammy. The Deferi voice felt really grated with the character I felt (but by all means could work well on another character, mostly a casting issue really).
I didn't mind the Tellarite voice per se, but I have credibility issues with Tellarites full stop (not a fault with STO). I didn't feel his voice particularly fit the character, I guess I'm expecting a more distinctive character acted voice like the Gorn voice, when it comes to a such a distinct race like the Tellarites, it was still a reasonable effort though.
Edit: squiddude: Oh is THAT was was going on with the Gorn voice? Haha I fail for bailing on ENT :-) In that case extra bonus points for coolness on that VO!
when the topic over user-generated voice overs was brought up, one of the devs mentioned that sound quality would be an issue and that even their remote voice actors that they hire ie NON-Cryptic staff that they HIRE must go to a studio to record their work.
As far as the gestures, this comes to mind: http://stanmonorail.ytmnd.com/
So all in all, good ob. Can't expect them to funnel millions into it, and as someone pointed out: ANY voice acting is better than no voice acting.
Are you sure you're talking about the same TOR as the one I play when not playing STO?
TOR's is much higher quality than STO's. And...in all honesty...I think STO is better off without VO of this current quality.
lol?
The voice acting in TOR is, at times, utterly atrocious. There are a handful of central characters that are pretty good, but the rest are just poor cheese at best.
Ummm... the quality of TOR's VO's is at minimum twice as 'good' as any VO in STO, lol.
Almost all of the main story archs have tremendously good VO's; which is a very very large amount of voice work. While I will agree that many 'shared quests' VO's aren't up to par with the rest of the game; they are still -without a doubt- better then any other in-game-voice work of any other title.
Maybe you could link some examples of 'so bad' voice acting that it's onpar/worse then this atrocity that we had to endure in this FE?
The rest... ...Pitiful... :eek:
Sorry guys..., ...pay the money and get some talent in there next time.
The main Ambassadorial Characters all sounded like the same guy... (which if it was, is just sad)
I could tell there was a lot of effort put into it.. But it failed miserably.
I'm a long time amateur actor for local troops. doing backstage voice overs and such.
IMO, there was too much emphasis on making the guys voice sound different with each toon, instead of just trying to naturally speak the lines...
At the very least, next time hire a Voice Coach.
By the way, the ambassadors all sounded like they were voiced by the guy that did the Romulan Villain in the last FE.
Which would be OK...
...if he only knew how to alter his natural speaking voice without MAKING IT OBVIOUS that that is what he was doing.
<shrug>
Liked the mission though.
The new Conference Room... ACES...
A Really Big Thumbs Up on that one
I just stood there and stared at it for a few minutes, most impressive.
Sorry Cryptic, but I agree with this. The only VOs I actually felt were any good were Hadron and Shon. Overall, though, it just seemed like they were "acting" too much, it wasn't natural. I've kinda felt like the VOs have been rather sub-par ever since they introduced them. And yes, there have been a few gems (psychotic hologram from What Lies Beneath, for example), but for the most part I could care less for the VOs at this point.
In any case, whoever voiced Kurland needs to work on their acting ability.
Listen to him say "Blast it" again, and then tell me that was believable in the slightest.
It requires a budget to do v/o at a level that doesn't break immersion, and I don't think the episode really was made better by the inclusion of v/o.
Obesek was great, but that was a professional and you can hear it, just my opinion, good on the people that stepped up to the mic and are going to take the beating, but for me personally It didn't do much.