Nintendo needs to fix their voice acting problems. It's ruining some of their games/marketing

[Cinemikel]

-Only recently, I should add. The past few years-

Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Nintendo's BIG buck franchise in the action adventure genre, stained with amateur voice acting on some of its main characters! Zelda, Hyrule King, Impa, Mipha. That's not all of them either. Cringeworthy attempts at voice acting on Zelda's DEBUT voice acting game, with bad sound mixing which just highlights how awful they are.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - Bogged down with emotionless, painful, stilted dialogue and moments that just ruin a scene.
Example #1 being the one we all know from the E3 trailer. "TAAKE THIIIIIIISSS"
Another example being the really bizarre and terrible narration choice of the old man during the last Nintendo Direct. Explaining combat while the actor is basically falling asleep on the script.

Fire Emblem everything - No one can defend the atrocity that is Fire Emblem Warriors. Every single story trailer for the game, like the E3 one, is abysmal. No one ever sounds like they're speaking to anyone with how disjointed everyone talks. They don't talk like human beings with their stilted dialogue with awkward inflections and speech patterns. Fire Emblem Fates wasn't much better.


This voice acting problem is beginning to really take the wind out of the sails of every single game/trailer Nintendo has with voice acting. It's distracting at best, disastrous at worst. It's hard to watch or get excited for any Fire Emblem Warriors story trailer for example. It's downright impossible. Most of the Xenoblade 2 story trailers and gameplay showcases are difficult to watch and kill a lot of hype people might have.

Another bad thing is how badly paced dialogue is in trailers because of them adapting Japanese voice acting into English when clearly the two languages are paced quite differently. This leads to those awkwardly stretched out moments of silence because the animations/trailers/cutscenes are obviously adjusted to Japanese only voice acting speed. One example of this is in the Xenoblade 2 E3 trailers where like 2 seconds a guy is talking (his mouth is moving) but he literally only says "You...", and that's AFTER HE STOPS TALKING IN THE SHOT. This just kills any sense of flow in a trailer.
https://youtu.be/Xjpao-nD5YU

Maybe spend more than 2 bucks on your voice actors and/or voice director? That and actually adapt your trailers if need be for western audiences for lipsyncing/pacing purposes.

Edit: I only criticise them for this because I want them to be better. That and working to become a film director has got me noticing these things and disecting them

 

[Deleted member 4292]

I'm sure they spend more than 2 dollars friend.

I don't disagree with Zelda though. Was hoping for much better VA then what we got.

 

[linko9]

Yeah, Zelda's was pretty bad. Never get Americans to try to do British accents. But honestly I doubt any of these performances are having an effect on sales.

 

[DecoReturns]

Fire Emblem Warriors is actually pretty decent.

 

[NinjaCoachZ]

Yup I agree bigtime on BOTW. The English dub was kind of frustrating because it wasn't great, but it wasn't really outright awful either. It was just this awkward middle ground that was serviceable but gave you this nagging feeling it could've been so much better. It's especially a downer since the other language dubs are really good.

I don't want to judge Xenoblade 2 too much until it's out though. I do want to say Kid Icarus: Uprising, Xenoblade 1 and X, and the Fire Emblem 3DS games have amazing dubs so they do have good track records there. BOTW is the one real swing and a miss I've personally felt lately. FE Warriors losing so many of the original VAs is a total downer but I haven't played the game proper to have a full opinion.

 

[NintendoMariah]

Naaa, I think its their uniqueness.

 

[Xavi]

Not sure about the others but the latin american spanish VAing was amazing.

 

[Deleted member 1413]

The xenoblade lack of lip sync in the trailers might just be a trailer thing.
It's way off in the narration video with the titan.
Well, I hope it's just that.

Zelda is mostly fine outside of Mipha and the King.
Zelda is much better in Japanese but she's fine in English too.

FE needs some changes, tho.
I hear 8-4's attempt was really good, so there's that

 

[TinfoilHatsROn]

I mean I agree with you OP but that hyperbole is outrageous. Come on, they spend a decent amount on VA.

 

[Fantastical]

I cannot believe those voices were allowed to be in BOTW. Zelda sounds so bad.

 

[Kangi]

And Kid Icarus: Uprising's was so good, too.

 

[jackal27]

It's really strange because some of their games have really excellent voice acting. I loved the performances in Kid Icarus Uprising for example. I don't think Fire Emblem is always terrible either.

If you look at the record of many of these actors, they're not amateurs either, which leads me to believe that this may be a directing problem.

 

[Syril]

Breath of the Wild never bothered me much, but they've certainly had better. I mean, Kid Icarus Uprising is the best English dub I've heard in any game, let alone from Nintendo. The low point for me is still Super Mario Sunshine.

 

[evilromero]

I thought the VA in Prime 3 was fine.

 

[Mario_Bones]

Fire Emblem everything - No one can defend the atrocity that is Fire Emblem Warriors. Every single story trailer for the game, like the E3 one, is abysmal. No one ever sounds like they're speaking to anyone with how disjointed everyone talks. They don't talk like human beings with their stilted dialogue with awkward inflections and speech patterns. Fire Emblem Fates wasn't much better.

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The voice acting for Echoes was actually great. Some characters in particular, like Berkut, were really well done and it was satisfying hearing voices outside of the same usual talent you hear in a lot of games.

I didn't think the Zelda voice acting was that bad, but I was one of the people who thought the series was better off without VA so I probably had my expectations set really low. If we wanna talk bad voice acting then look at Pokken, it's a work of art.

 

[DecoReturns]

Also Fates marketing was pretty positive if I recall.

The end product also had pretty good voice acting during its cutscenes. I think it's was only 2-3 characters that were questionable.

 

[SatoAilDarko]

I really liked the voice acting in Xenoblade Chronicles X. 8-4 did a good job with localization.

 

[Deleted member 6582]

Seems a bit hyperbolic. It pretty objectively didn't "ruin" BOTW by any metric, Xenoblade 2 trailer, okay fine it ruined the trailer for you. Ironically the voice acting was perhaps one of the more fondly remembered parts of the original XBC, and XBX was actually good. FE Warriors is definitely not "Fire Emblem everything," most would agree that Shadows of Valentia was very well done. Fates was primarily single word grunts.

 

[toastyToast]

Fire Emblem Warriors isn't bad. It's the writing that's terrible. Hinoka sounds like she swallowed a frog but everyone else is serviceable. In comparison Fire Emblem Echoes is stellar

It's more an issue of the script and voice direction. No beef with the VAs here.

 

[Cinemikel]

I may have been a bit harsh on the voice actors themselves, my apologies for that. They really need to replace the director. It is weird because Nintendo was perfectly fine up until a few years ago. Xenoblade was great, Kid Icarus was awesome. I doknt know what happened though

 

[jackal27]

I really liked the voice acting in Xenoblade Chronicles X. 8-4 did a good job with localization.

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As much as I didn't like that game, I had no complaints about the voice acting from what I remember. I also really liked the performances in the first Xenoblade. I think they get discounted because some of the lines are repeated so much.

 

[Fantastical]

Seems a bit hyperbolic. It pretty objectively didn't "ruin" BOTW by any metric, Xenoblade 2 trailer, okay fine it ruined the trailer for you. Ironically the voice acting was perhaps one of the more fondly remembered parts of the original XBC, and XBX was actually good. FE Warriors is definitely not "Fire Emblem everything," most would agree that Shadows of Valentia was very well done. Fates was primarily single word grunts.

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It certainly didn't ruin the whole game but it definitely ruined the effectiveness of some scenes. Zelda didn't really feel like a real person to me... hard to get past what sounds like someone just putting on a fake voice.

I really liked the voice acting in Xenoblade Chronicles X. 8-4 did a good job with localization.

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Yeah now that you mention it XCX voices were decent.

 

[Mr.Gamerson]

Yeah noticed this as well, some of the voice acting is jarringly bad especially considering how well made their games are in other areas.

 

[Eliseo]

Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Nintendo's BIG buck franchise in the action adventure genre, stained with amateur voice acting on some of its main characters! Zelda, Hyrule King, Impa, Mipha. That's not all of them either. Cringeworthy attempts at voice acting on Zelda's DEBUT voice acting game, with bad sound mixing which just highlights how awful they are.

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To be fair, it was only for the american dub, the latin american spanish dub was quite good.

 

[David]

Not sure about the others but the latin american spanish VAing was amazing.

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^ This

The Latin american voices have been great.

 

[KtSlime]

Was the English that bad? I really didn't have much problem with the Japanese.

 

[HardTimesFamilyPride]

Honestly felt like BotW could have done without VA. Everyone clamoured for it then we got... well, we got what we got.

I don't like how VA is handled in the industry from what I understand of it, and don't care about games having it until those issues get sorted out.

 

[RampagingSoul]

The voice acting for BOTW was just fine to me with exceptions to certain characters and moments. I think it was more voice direction than the actors/actresses themselves, but I could be wrong.
Fire Emblem Warriors VA is fine and Fire Emblem Echoes has some of the best VAing in any game I've played this year.
I'll have to wait and see on Xenoblade 2 far as how bad the VA is until it's out since trailers can be out of context or just one or two lines.
I only time I've felt bad about VA in a Nintendo game is probably Pokken Tournament.

 

[thekonamicode]

Spanish language BotW dub is great!!!

 

[Neoxon]

Part of the reason for this is that (with a select few exceptions, like Kid Icarus Uprising) NoA refuses to hire unionized talent for their games. Plus they're overall cheap with their voice acting, & I wouldn't be surprised if that extended to getting inexpensive voice directors. Given how big BotW was, it definitely should have warranted a unionized voice cast.

 

[Raysoul]

Kid Icarus Uprising and Wonderful 101 are exceptions though. Those games have top notch voice acting.

 

[Harpoon]

I may have been a bit harsh on the voice actors themselves, my apologies for that. They really need to replace the director. It is weird because Nintendo was perfectly fine up until a few years ago. Xenoblade was great, Kid Icarus was awesome. I doknt know what happened though

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"Director"? Most these games have different voice directors, not just one guy. Hell, the Xenoblade games with the exception of X aren't even localized in America like most of the others.

 

[NinjaCoachZ]

I may have been a bit harsh on the voice actors themselves, my apologies for that. They really need to replace the director. It is weird because Nintendo was perfectly fine up until a few years ago. Xenoblade was great, Kid Icarus was awesome. I doknt know what happened though

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Uprising was done by a well-known cartoon voice director named Ginny McSwain. She's done tons of cartoons and also the Mass Effect series. It was also unionized so it had a decent budget for VO.

Xenoblade was done by Mark Healy at Side UK, who work on a lot of games.

The Fire Emblem games (except Fates) and Xenoblade X were non-union and recorded by Cup of Tea Productions. Cup of Tea does a lot of game dubs. Tales series, Nier series, Soulcalibur III onward, etc.

Code Name S.T.E.A.M., Wonderful 101, Bayonetta 2 (and 1), and Fire Emblem Fates were directed by an extremely prolific voice director named Kris Zimmerman-Salter who has worked on around a billion games, but is probably best known for Metal Gear. S.T.E.A.M. and the Platinum games were union productions, Fates was non-union.

Breath of the Wild was a non-union production directed by Jamie Mortellaro.

Part of the reason for this is that (with a select few exceptions, like Kid Icarus Uprising) NoA refuses to hire unionized talent for their games. Plus they're overall cheap with their voice acting, & I wouldn't be surprised if that extended to getting inexpensive voice directors. Given how big BotW was, it definitely should have warranted a unionized voice cast.

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Nintendo like most companies don't "refuse" to work with SAG-AFTRA. They go on a case-by-case basis depending on the project. Sometimes there are creative reasons that may factor into it (e.g. Kid Icarus: Uprising was supposed to be done in Seattle, but they re-evaluated as the scope of the game changed and Sakurai wanted a more "cartoon"-esque direction) but often it will be based on the game itself, its budget, how much the expect it to sell, etc.

Breath of the Wild is the only non-union Nintendo game that seems like it would have been big enough to justify the extra splurging/paperwork, but since it has so many dubs in other languages, and is such a massive game to begin with, at the same time they probably decided to allocate resources elsewhere.

Companies like Square Enix and Capcom will also go union on Japanese games that can justify it and non-union for smaller titles that wouldn't.

 

[Aristos Achaion]

Kid Icarus Uprising and Fire Emblem Echoes have some of the best voice acting

 

[Neoxon]

Kid Icarus Uprising and Wonderful 101 are exceptions though. Those games have top notch voice acting.

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I think Platinum handled the voice acting with W101, & they usually go for unionized talent for their games. As for Kid Icarus Uprising, if I recall correctly, Sakurai specifically wanted the voice acting to feel like a Saturday morning cartoon (hence the need for unionized talent).

 

[tazmin]

I play BoTW with Japanese dub and English sub so no issue here

 

[Neoxon]

Uprising was done by a well-known cartoon voice director named Ginny McSwain. She's done tons of cartoons and also the Mass Effect series. It was also unionized so it had a decent budget for VO.

Xenoblade was done by Mark Healy at Side UK, who work on a lot of games.

The Fire Emblem games (except Fates) and Xenoblade X were non-union and recorded by Cup of Tea Productions. Cup of Tea does a lot of game dubs. Tales series, Nier series, Soulcalibur III onward, etc.

Code Name S.T.E.A.M., Wonderful 101, Bayonetta 2 (and 1), and Fire Emblem Fates were directed by an extremely prolific voice director named Kris Zimmerman-Salter who has worked on around a billion games, but is probably best known for Metal Gear. S.T.E.A.M. and the Platinum games were union productions, Fates was non-union.

Breath of the Wild was a non-union production directed by Jamie Mortellaro.

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And there lies the problem. When even PlatinumGames spends more money on voice acting than you on most occasions (all due respect to Platinum, I love them to death, but they aren't nearly as big of a developer as Nintendo), you know you fucked up in that regard.

 

[Jubern]

I'm note sure I agree on all accounts but it can be uneven yes.

If we talk non-English BOTW dubs then I must say I was also a tad disappointed by the French Zelda dub. They got decent actors, including a recurring actress from Ghibli movies to do Zelda. I usually like her but in that case it was definitely a miss and I'm not sure what went wrong - direction maybe + while they weren't too bad a lot of voices seemed like a mismatch to me.

 

[mute]

Just wish they would consistently give us a dual audio option where applicable.

 

[NinjaCoachZ]

And there lies the problem. When even PlatinumGames spends more money on voice acting than you on most occasions (all due respect to Platinum, I love them to death, but they aren't nearly as big of a developer as Nintendo), you know you fucked up in that regard.

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See my edit. There's no "fuckup" involved.

Platinum's decision to go union or otherwise is one that would have to be approved by their publisher anyway because they're the ones providing the budget. Nintendo authorized them to work with SAG-AFTRA on W101 and Bayo2, Sega did for MadWorld, Vanquish, Bayo1, Konami did for Metal Gear Rising, etc.

 

[TaurosPuff]

Fire Emblem Heroes isn't that bad but to be fair it's just snippets of dialogue and not full blown conversations.

 

[FantasyZone]

Zelda's voice was absolutely awful in BotW. Kept me from wanting to even bother with the memories quest.

As for Xenoblade 2, I could live with the VA if it wasn't for the lip sync. I don't know if it's still that bad, but I'm probably going to switch to JPN voices.

 

[Platy]

I will take text and small voice clips with smaller file sizes any day

 

[Neoxon]

Nintendo like most companies don't "refuse" to work with SAG-AFTRA. They go on a case-by-case basis depending on the project. Sometimes there are creative reasons that may factor into it (e.g. Kid Icarus: Uprising was supposed to be done in Seattle, but they re-evaluated as the scope of the game changed and Sakurai wanted a more "cartoon"-esque direction) but often it will be based on the game itself, its budget, how much the expect it to sell, etc.

Breath of the Wild is the only non-union Nintendo game that seems like it would have been big enough to justify the extra splurging/paperwork, but since it has so many dubs in other languages, and is such a massive game to begin with, at the same time they probably decided to allocate resources elsewhere.

Companies like Square Enix and Capcom will also go union on Japanese games that can justify it and non-union for smaller titles that wouldn't.

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But going by what you said, Nintendo made some pretty poor choices on what to unionize & what not to. I can somewhat understand Fire Emblem (& even then, as you said, they got a great voice director for Fates), but going union with S.T.E.A.M. & not Zelda of all games was a weird decision (unless it had something to do with the multitude of languages in Zelda to split the VO budget between).

 

[Xbro]

Fire Emblem Echoes and Xenoblade X had great VAs. I recall there being concerns for X before it's release so I'll reserve my judgement for X2.

 

[Zen Hero]

It's definitely a bad stand out part in Nintendo games recently. I wonder why they can't get it right. Even really niche stuff like Etrian Odyssey V can have excellent voice work, so I don't know what's stopping a major company like Nintendo. Usually Nintendo puts out all the effort to polish like crazy, so it's a shame they won't go the extra mile for voice work.

 

[EatChildren]

Man, this reminds me how fucking great the voice direction and performances were in Kid Icarus: Uprising.

 

[NinjaCoachZ]

But going by what you said, Nintendo made some pretty poor choices on what to unionize & what not to. I can somewhat understand Fire Emblem (& even then, as you said, they got a great voice director for Fates), but going union with S.T.E.A.M. & not Zelda of all games was a weird decision (unless it had something to do with the multitude of languages in Zelda to split the VO budget between).

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S.T.E.A.M. was a western-focused game intended to evoke American comics. So as such IntSys might have pushed to get bigger-name/"cartoon"-experienced talent. They also used Wil Wheaton's involvement to help market the game. Granted it didn't pay off that well in the end, but it's not really too weird when you look at the details.

Zelda is the only one that really seems weird but again, that's probably just something that came down to how they allocated resources in the game. If the budget on VO could have gone toward other aspects of localization, or even manufacturing, marketing, or game development, and the VO in the game is relatively minimal to begin with, they probably decided that was an efficient place to cut costs. Not saying I agree with it, but I get why it happened. Considering how long-in-the-tooth it was, and the fact that English VO was apparently done less than a year before release, I don't think they wanted the budget to balloon too much or have all the paperwork/approval process of signing with SAG-AFTRA drag things down or potentially cause delays.

 

[Neoxon]

Man, this reminds me how fucking great the voice direction and performances were in Kid Icarus: Uprising.

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You can thank Ginny McSwain & the stellar voice cast they got for KI: Uprising for that. It's one of the bright spots in an otherwise-mediocre track record for voice acting in Nintendo games.

S.T.E.A.M. was a western-focused game intended to evoke American comics. So as such IntSys might have pushed to get bigger-name/"cartoon"-experienced talent. They also used Wil Wheaton's involvement to help market the game. Granted it didn't pay off that well in the end, but it's not really too weird when you look at the details.

Zelda is the only one that really seems weird but again, that's probably just something that came down to how they allocated resources in the game. If the budget on VO could have gone toward other aspects of localization, or even manufacturing, marketing, or game development, and the VO in the game is relatively minimal to begin with, they probably decided that was an efficient place to cut costs. Not saying I agree with it, but I get why it happened.

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If that was the case, I can somewhat understand why Nintendo made the choice that they did. But as an aspiring actor myself, it just pisses me off that the quality of the performances were short-changed like what they seemed to be for budgeting reasons (however justified said budgeting reasons may be).

 

[RPGam3r]

I never thought while playing Zelda that the VO was bad in anyway. So the odd hate train for it has always puzzled me.