Any era, doesnt matter. I just want to know of games where the actors knocked it out of the park.
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Some of my favorites:
- GLaDOS from Portal 1+2: Ellen McClain did such a fantastic job balancing a monotonous robotic tone with human emotions and adding subtle glitches to show not everything was 100% alright. She defined what a female robot voice should sound like for that decade. I saw that Stephen Merchant was mentioned and while his performance was good and Wheatley’s character was hilarious, I think McLain’s performance as GLaDOS was more original and memorable.
- Narrator from The Stanley Parable: Kevan Brighting was arguably the protagonist of the game and the player was the annoying mob to him. As the only chacter with dialogue in the entire walking sim game, he had to carry almost the entire game’s story, personality, and charm all through his voice. And it’s honestly so fun how disappointed, annoyed, and exasperated he gets when the player refuses to listen.
- The Joker from Batman Arkham Asylum: This one is cheating cause Mark Hamill has played The Joker in almost every modern animated medium available. Still, there’s a reason his version is so iconic. It’s just so bittersweet that he refuses to ever voice The Joker again since Kevin Conroy, the VA for his Batman passed away.
Edit: After reviewing my list, it seems like I like offscreen narrators who insult the player. How funny
Getting the animated series actors to voice the Arkham games was a stroke of genius, though.
The Joker reveal in Arkham City was also some brilliant writing carried through by Hamill’s amazing voice acting: https://youtu.be/GvZTjWpuuKw?t=63
I enjoyed having him follow me around throughout Arkham Knight too.
Ellen McClain did such a good, iconic job that she landed herself a role in Pacific Rim as the computer in Gipsy Danger.
Didn’t know that. That’s pretty cool!
Yeah, Del Toro specifically asked for her in that role.
Also shout-out to wikipedia sources helping me find an article to support my claim.
https://kotaku.com/how-glad0s-is-glad0s-in-pacific-rim-pretty-glad0s-636252650
Oh that’s really funny. Never knew that about Del Toro. He has good taste
In terms of pure voice acting I think it’s Date Everything. The game have a 100 different professional voice actors that want to seduce you.
“Trust me.”
Terry Bogard
Hey c’mon! Get serious!
Powah wave! Kickbat! Kickbat! Kickbat! Burn-u knuckle!
(Let’s add the announcer from the original Metal Slug games while we’re at it. “Rawket Lawnchair!!!”)
Homeworld - Few lines. All brilliant. " Detecting no communication from anywhere in the system, not even beacons." - “We are being overwhelmed!”
Ixion - So many lines that would make no sense if they weren’t being delivered with conviction and sincerity.
The semi-emotionless, or at least restrained emotional delivery of the lines always hit me really hard. They never screamed, never cried, but the matter of fact way they said Kharak was burning, and how you needed to hunt down the perpetrators… it was chilling. The emotion was somehow bleached out of the voices, yet so, so, so powerfully deep and present nonetheless… I don’t know how they managed it, but it was incredible.
I agree, that’s the genuine beauty of it, their layered performance. We could hear their emotions as much as we could hear them hiding their emotions. Genius
Final Fantasy 3/6. Kefka’s laugh will forever be the best evil laugh.
Arthur Morgan in Red Dead 2
Rockstar games have some pretty spectacular stories and acting and they’re just getting better, ever since GTA IV/RDR/LA Noire. RDR2 was one of the most heartbreaking and melancholy stories I’ve ever been told, game or otherwise. It’s a different genre, of course, but I have high hopes for GTA VI.
I can’t think of any game at the moment that was particularly notable across the board, but I can think of a few specific performances.
Kazuhiro Nakaya as Nishiki and later Ichiban in the Yakuza/Like a dragon series. He is fantastic at getting the character’s personality across just in general scenes, and the emotional moments genuinely stick with me.
Rene Zagger as Emet Selch in FFXIV. That game has some fantastic performances but Emet Selch’s is honestly one of my favorites. Every one of his lines is delivered perfectly. The arrogance theatrics that later tive way to genuine anger and sadness at what he’s gone through. Along with more specifics I won’t get into. 100%, A+ Performance.
Though, actually… Now that I think about it… The Persona 3 Reload dub is probably one of the best English dubs for a Japanese game in a looooong time. And generally they’re pretty good these days. But that one nails it.
I think Hades is the best overall, which has been mentioned here. Everything from Supergiant Games is great. I’ve seen Disco Elysium mentioned too, which is also great.
But I think one game that is underappreciated and not mentioned here is Horizon: Zero Dawn. Ashley Burch won several awards for her performance as Aloy. I think part of the reason it gets forgotten is that the facial animations in cutscenes are bad, at least in the main game, which led to people just not liking the cutscenes very much. The DLC’s animations are pretty good though.
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, for the original PlayStation. All these years later it’s still an amazing standout.
It really was one of the first games to go all out with good voice acting.
Go and play other “big budget” games of the PS1 era like the Resident Evil series or even Metal Gear Solid to see the difference.
Soul Reaver really stood head and shoulders above everything at the time.
The whole series was fantastic, really. Absolute masterpieces of writing and voice acting.
Alan wake is damn good
I remember most of the super giant and double fine games having good voice acting. Jennifer Hale Femshepard from mass effect is a classic, and Matt Mercer does some great work with Edér and Aloth in pillars of eternity. Anything Keith David does is gold.
The voice acting in Tangle Tower (a point and click murder mystery game) is 10/10
Resident Evil on the PlayStation
