Voice Acting and Language Dabbling.

Lets face it... with the possible exception of parts of Nightfall... the Guild Wars trilogy suffers from terrible voice-acting... Factions was the absolute worst for teeth-gratingly bad cut-scenes ( "Be-ware... the harvest... CEREmony! They... are going to KEEL you!" o_@;; )...

So when fiddling about in the options screen the other day... I came across the option to change the audio to other languages.
I was immediately disappointed that Japanese wasn't an option for Audio.... but curious that Korean actually was. I figured that since all but two of my PvE characters have Korean names anyway (or maybe all but three, since Hyun Tau Yera has asian-pronouncable african names in the Korean format) that I might as well set the audio to Korean. Since I'm very used to reading subtitles while watching what is going on anyway (I watch a lot of anime).... I actually found it enhanced the experience of Guild Wars.

Now I'm not saying that the Korean voice-acting is awesome... as I'm not really in a position to judge... but that is precisely the reason why I can't tell if it is awful or not. Plus of course the fact that having the entire Hyun family speaking Korean in cutscenes just seems more appropriate.


So.... anyone else have a different audio-language to the text-language?
Anyone else tried it?

If only they'd done voice packs for the Swedish Chef language option

Sounds like a good idea, will change the audio language and see if watching the cinematics gives me a reason to acctually watch them^^

I should get one of my friends to try that, he knows German, and I've heard the German text with English language is horrible.

Actually, the audio in Factions is really bad...
I saw that korean option too. Unfortunately, when I set the audio to it I heard the good ol' english voices like before well, maybe I should try again

Factions wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the terrible direction of the cutscenes - camera angle and animation gaffes are what really kill it. And the voice acting is nothing compared to some games out there, (eg 90% of VA'ed console RPGs.)

Basically, if you think the Seer and co sound bad, you must have never heard the VA for the main character of Suikoden Tactics. Now that is terrible...

The Ghostly Hero's voice from Prophecies makes my ears bleed... He elongates all his vowels, and he's way too raspy. I actually have to go AFK if my party won't skip the cutscenes with him talking and come back when I think it's over...

I admit, I never have.
I am a console gamer with a strict non-S*ny policy...
That said... most of the console games I've played with Voice Acting haven't been half so terrible as listening to Shiro and the fortune-teller.


I'm vaguely aware of what you mean about the cutscenes.... but aside from the Voice Acting, the number 2 main ruiner of cutscenes is .... Minions.
I'm sure it couldn't be THAT hard for A-Net to make cutscenes acknowledge minions as part of the party.... then scenes like the end of Vizunah Square wouldn't occur (and since I've never got through Vizunah Square without at least one Minion Master, I honestly don't know what it is like NOT to see the heralds of the mists and anyone else after res being constantly attacked). Not to mention scenes like that one in Elona where you free the Centaurs.... and although the party has left the scene, we get to see the Hunger being heavily bombarded by an entire minion hoarde and it ruins the feel of the cutscene (in an admittedly comical way).
... Oh... and Minister Cho's Estate.
I have never laughed so much as the last time I did that and tried to watch Master Togo talking to the kid REALLY closely while hunched over and being rimmed by a Jagged Horror.


But I digress... the voice-acting is amongst the worst I've heard in any game.... (amongst) .... but it seems fairly improved if I listen to it in another language so I can't tell that its bad (I bet it is still terrible to anyone who actually understands the other language). ^_^

This could be a good way to improve my french!

*turns french language on*

should be a voice option for the Bork! Bork! Bork! language.

Beewuare-a...teh hareveest seeremony, hee ish gooing-a to keel-a yooh! @_o

I'm waiting for the 1337! speak option.

Terrible voice over? listen the ending speech of neverwinter nights 2

I will challenge everyone in this thread who says Nightfall has the best voice acting.

The best voice acting is in Prophecies.

The greatest story ever told: http://youtube.com/watch?v=7GLjcAVdutU

Changing the language is totally worth it just for the sake of getting rid of Danika's voice >.< She makes me cringe everytime she opens her mouth.

I would have never gotten through Factions, if I couldn't scream out "Master Togo", in the voice that that first guard used (you know, the one that got the spear sporked through his back on noob island?).

"Maaaasssster TOOOOOgooooo!"

Corny voice acting rules.

Am I the only one who didn't have problems with the cinematics. Guess it's just me.

Yeah I got the same feeling when I saw Jap(I really can't stand the way that word sound, even worse in frensh) wasn't there (I was about to restart Proph just to hear it).
But to answer your question : If i'm right, most japanese know the basics of english (if they don't just SPEAK it), but I think china and Korea are rather close-minded when it comes to laguages. So i guess they needed to get Chinese/Korean voices.
(Another side note... most people won't reallize but Korean sounds really different from Jap.)

No, i'm curently running with a pure French game(the subs are there because I can't hear with the music). And I must say it makes the game more funny (I really hear every one talking with a real Francais de France accent) and the cinematics more epic (I really don't know why, maybe I am used to hear Fantasy character in english but not yet in french).

Why am I not surprised...

heh that guy did a pretty good job matching up the music with the cutscenes. though the nolani academy one was kind of ruined since he had a charr standing there next to king adelburn as well as his team lying dead at their feet. he left out rurik's final fate as well.

The script writing and voice acting is excellent!!!!




(compared to all your base are belong to us)