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Am I the only one annoyed with the poor Voiceover work from actual Trek actors?
doubleohnine
Member Posts: 818 Arc User
First Denise Crosby, and now Michael Dorn. Does Cryptic even HAVE a sound director? Once again nearly every Worf line sounded like he was reading from a script. He read it slow and had no Worf aggression in his voice for lines that I KNOW he would have sounded differently on the show. Do Cryptic employees not have the guts to tell these actors how mundane their VO work sounds? Its pointless to get these actors doing their characters lines if they are all going to sound phoned in. And as is my favorite pasttime, Im calling out the Executive Producer yet again on this failing. Dan, hire someone who actually knows how to direct voiceover talent. Some of the auxillary characters know how to act their lines, but most dont. And the two biggest Trek stars are totally sounding bad. Its bad enough the characters can only use wooden emotes to act lines, but when the star voiceover work is wooden as well, whats the point. Anyone who watches Trek knows Tasha and Worf never sounded so plain in their line delivery.
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2: Dorn is a decade older than when he last did Worf. I imagine it's hard for him to get back into the Worf role, especially since he's older.
People should be grateful they are doing this,to add to the trek feel about it.
I hope we will see more startrek characters do voiceovers in future.
Yes, you are one of a handful of nitpickers. I enjoy the guest stars. 'Nuff said
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as for Worf... JEEZE - some people are never satisfied! When that guardian came flying at me I jumped when he said LOOK OUT!! And the part when the Klingon homeworld was revealed as being under observation and he sounded worried I got little tingles up and down my spine wondering
okay... are we safe ANYWHERE?
And his playoff on Grilka's daughter was top-notch! I mean... come on! This WAS Worf - I heard that same disdain he has for techs and scientists in his voice when he was telling the Roms this plan was going to go horribly wrong :P sounded like it was straight out of DS9
jeeze...
Worf always felt "slow" talking. Since he is much older (in STO, and just older for Dorn), I don't see a problem about talking a bit more slowly.
I especially enjoyed the "this is a live image of MY WORLD !". I was glad I wasn't on the opposite side.
I am happy when they add any story content and there was a lot to like in this mission. However, I have to agree with the OP. Michael Dorn seems like a good actor. but the VO he did for STO just seemed really flat. I felt the same way with the zachary quinto voice work too.
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You have to give the actors a break, acting is being able to act off another character's responses. In Voice Over work, all you have is a microphone and a script. If they were lucky, cryptic gave them a "storyboard" or basically a comic book style picture of the scenes for them to see. You are really just delivering a speech at that point. It would be difficult to bring across emotion under those circumstances.
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This ^
"I never get tired of watching thalaron weapons detonate"
I believe that is the line, it actually gave me a near chill when I heard it the first time. She sounded downright diabolical.
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We can't just be a bit critical for the sake of constructive criticism? We're not saying we're ungrateful and in no way should it be seen as such. When people really start saying things like "Mr. Dorn's performance was terrible!", just glossing over some of the great delivered lines.
Yes, he's had some on-the-nose lines and some were just awkward. When he shouts ".. defend yourself!" (example) when being attacked by a security drone sounded so empty and devoid of emotion or emergence.
The beef should actually be with the voice/sound director. Maybe they were star-struck and I wouldn't blame them for that.
If that's nit-picking, than we sure live in the most perfect world ever. Put up and shut up is the attitude it seems.
Some games have very very good VO work (my personal favorites were the CoD:WaW "Der Riese" zombie level, those guys were really committed to it). For some reason this game has uniiformly poor VO work. Even when they hire good actors, the work is poor. I dunno, maybe its part of being under pressure to constantly add content. Cant say anything about it because the fans take it like a personal insult.
As to the lack of 'aggression', i think it's because Worf is an older, wiser diplomat. He's more thoughtful than his younger self. I think the voice acting was very appropriate.
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Directors, writers, and editors. They all have influence on the quality of a production.
It wasn't just Dorn's performance that was, at times, seemed amateurish. So the problem was not likely Dorn's.
Perhaps PWE/Cryptic could bring in a professional director and Trek Alumni like Levar Burton or Robert Duncan McNeill to produce the VO content.
Michael Dorn has done voice work in a variety of projects previously, and honestly, has done better than he did here. I have a feeling it was a combination of not a lot of time available, and perhaps the voice director either not being able to provide him with the in story context (again, either due to time pressure, or other factors, etc.) Overall (IMO) the actual acting was okay (yes, there were a few poorly delivered lines here); but (and this is just IMO - in a lot of spots Worf's voice sounded different <--- But again, that may have been because Mr. Dorn is older; and he may not be able top do the voice as before, or it was a conscious choice on Mr.Dorn's part, as the Worf character itself is now 30+ years older.
As for Denise Crosby's work - I think this was some of the first VO work she ever really did, and that kind of showed. her ratio of hit to miss for me was more 'miss'; but in the mind control mission where she's saying individual lines, she did a good job.
Still if I had to choose between having them do lines as opposed to not getting them to do it; I'd rather have the actors doing the lines, because in the end, I think it's fun to see the original actors willing and able to return to their previous Trek roles; and it adds to the fun of the game for me (YMMV.)
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This, lots of this. By no means did Michael Dorn (or Denis Crosby) deliver a bad performance, but I feel that they were inconsistent performances. During Sphere of Influence, every Worf line sounded like it was the first line in the script; none of them sounded like the were continuations of previous sentences.
Now, to be fair, technically few of them would likely have been continuations of previous sentences; most video game voice over work is disjointed and recorded line by line often not in good story order, but in convenient production order. Due to this, no matter how good each individual line is performed (and in this case, they were all performed perfectly well), the sense of script continuity is not present.
It's very hard to make a simple line like "You activate the console, and I'll guard the door" sound flowing and continuous to the mood when you, as the actor, have no idea what the mood or storyline is at the current point of delivery of that line. This is where the director comes in, a good director is able to take the actor through the story and motivation of a particular line when it's delivered out of context so that when it's edited, it sounds in context. Unfortunately, I believe the director here was no good at that, and so poor Michael is pretty much left to his own devices, trying to make each line sound good in it's own right, but also non-sequential so as to prevent the final edit having unusual emotion or pacing.
tl;dr - Dorn and Crosby did their best, but the director screwed them over.
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Indeed. I think that Worf can be verbose because unlike many other Klingons, he grew up in an environment where he had to express himself much more verbally and less physically. He puts more thought and more words into what he's saying, and as a result, he can be a lot slower and a lot wordier.
I have to agree with Denise Crosby, though. I don't think it was really her fault, seems more like they may have been in a hurry for Temporal Ambassador. She seemed much better as Sela in the LoR episodes.
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