Cutscenes and character/voice acting

As I hinted in my earlier blog entry “3D impressions“, to me good acting is an important factor to make a game immersive. Unfortunately I find that the voice and character acting, in most cases, aren’t up to standard. It’s not that the dialogs have to be ultra-realistic; it’s more a case of having to work in their context. In this entry I’m going to point to some games/developers which I think some others should learn from.

My critique comes from a sense that many game developers don’t care about the quality of the character- and voice-acting. Sometimes I find myself wondering if they add cutscenes just because it is an industry requirement rather than to try to tell a story. I assume that they figure that people play the games for the action bits, so why put any work into the storytelling? Well, then why even add the story bits?, I ask. While it may be true for many (or even most?) gamers that only the action matters, there are quite a few of us who treat games like any piece of culture; we pay attention to the dialogs, just as we pay attention to a dialog in a book or in a movie.

There are no reasons for games not to be up to the standard of other more “traditional” media today (at least not for heavily linear games). Obviously different developers will have different goals with their products (in movie-terms, think Steven Spielberg vs. Uwe Boll), but I’m specifically referring to those wanting to create a somewhat cinematic experience (The Steven Spielbergs of game development).

There are a few notable exceptions to the rule. For instance, the Uncharted games. Naughty Dog did it as I feel it should be done; they used real actresses/-ors who played out the cutscenes. Both their movements as well as their voices were captured at the same time — and it shows. I have yet to see any game which can match the acting in the Uncharted games. And it’s not difficult to imagine why their method leads to a better result; if the actresses/-ors have a better chance to themselves get immersed into their roles, this will shine through in both movements and dialog in the final product. To see one of my favorite examples which illustrates this so well, watch the cutscene in Uncharted 2 when Chloe visits Drake in his room and gets on top of him while telling him that her association with Flynn is professional .. mostly. That entire cutscene is pure brilliance.

Of course, there are games in which traditional voice recording in sound studios has been done well. For instance God of War III has a lot of good voice-acting, almost on par with Uncharted at times. But there’s also the question of context; yelling “I’m agry!” towards an unseen god in the skies is probably much easier to get right than a dialog between two characters facing each other. Though there are examples of pulling this off with excellence too; some particular favorites of mine are the dialogs between Kratos and the Olympian blacksmith Hephaestus.

One game which has a very varied voice acting quality is Heavenly Sword. I love the voice acting done by Anna Torv for the protagonist Nariko; it really sets the mood for the game. Some other characters are also good, but then there are those which are pretty bad too; I forgot the characters name, and I don’t particularly want to look it up because it’ll bring back bad memories, but those of you who have played it have probably guessed that I’m referring to the character with the (very) nasal voice. It’s quite a shame that they didn’t find talents to match the acting of Torv. Fortunately, her voice carries the story; so the instances of bad acting become minor annoyances rather than major catastrophes to the quality of the game.

As an example of what annoys me, I feel compelled to mention Killzone 2. It’s strengths (the battles, the AI, the music, the environments, etc) help to create a very strong immersion. However, when it’s time for a cutscene, I feel like I get yanked right out of that experience, because the characters and dialogs feel so rigid and fake. The only really memorable cutscene which I found sort of convincing was the final scene with Visari. Which was lucky, seeing as how it was the end of the game. Thinking back, there was one or two other good cutscenes, but – and this is the core of my gripe – most of them were underwhelming compared to the quality of the actual gameplay. I wouldn’t necessarily categorize them as “bad”, it’s just that they don’t measure up to what I expect of them, having just fought an epic battle. They spent so much time and money on Killzone 2 — they set out to perfect the gameplay, and they pulled it off. Why, then, couldn’t they just take the last few steps to get the cutscenes on par with the rest of the game?

I’m hoping gamers and reviewers will start taking notes on these issues, and let developers know when the character and voice acting is not on par with the rest of the game.

Although it’s a pretty special case, I don’t want to write about voice acting without mentioning The Joker, played by Mark Hamill, in Batman Arkham Asylum. It’s another case of pure brilliance. I think Batman AA in itself is a very good game, but hearing The Joker all the time through the game adds something very special to it. It’s rare that a voice does that much for a game.

Oh, and on a slight tangent and final note: The Old Cole sounded like he’d been swollowing an engine block every morning for breakfast, just to keep his voice in shape; it’s a brutal, unique and memorable voice. The New Cole sounds like Joe Average; bland, everyday and mind-numbingly boring (compared to the Old Cole). Not exactly a change I would vote for, would there have been a vote. (Though there’s no doubt in my mind that inFamous 2 will be very good, despite the wussyfication of Cole).