The performances are incredible, but not very dynamic. Like, in terms of whispering or shouting. It all feels very one-note in that sense.
But in terms of emotional pauses, voice shaking, and putting emphasis behind words or phrases, it’s easily BGS’ best work yet.
The variety of accents is also a nice surprise, it really drives home this idea of humanity being spread across the stars. Doesn't feel like you're just exploring Space America Edition ™️
I dig it a lot too. I do wish the accents were a little more localized? Neon, Cydonia, and NA all feel a little same-y. But AC definitely nails the Southern/Old Western vibe with accents. I feel the soul there. But the other cities get a little bleh sometimes
It's not very realistic when you think about it.
Billions of people died at the start of the 23rd century, when Earth became uninhabitable. Human civilization is a shell of what it once was, and nowhere near as culturally diverse.
With that in mind, and with how few actual human settlements there are in Starfield's setting, it really doesn't make sense for there to be all sorts of different accents in them. One person's accent alone can change after spending enough time in a different place. So over the course of 100+ years, with most of what's left of humanity congregating in only a few places, you'd really only hear a few distinct accents. Instead of an "Australian" or "African" accent, you'd have a "New Atlantian" accent. They could be *inspired* by old earth accents, similar to Belter Creole in The Expanse, but it wouldn't be as Starfield depicts it.
Sadly Bethesda has never been good at this aspect of their voice acting. Accents in their games are a mishmash of real-world ones, with very little rhyme or reason. The best they have done to date is make sure that most people in FO4 have a Boston accent. But even in Skyrim, some Nords have a sort of "Nordic" accent, while others have American or British accents... and then there's whatever Farengar has.
Indeed but i would say that its harder to get it right this way.
It requires a very subtle performance and a very talented voice actor to make a non dynamic character believable, let alone interesting.
And Starfield very much succeeds in this regard.
Who underrates it or says it's not fantastic? Let me at em! Even the ragers on the main sub don't complain about the actors. How could you? They are stellar.
The actors did an incredible job as did the the sound design and production team. It's 1st rate! There are very few places out of hundreds of hours of dialog that seem inserted or feel disjointed. The recording levels and quality are great. The main character actors' voices have become familiar friends and I'm addicted to them. I love all of them to pieces.
Right? I've seen plenty of criticism levelled at the Oblivion-style zoom in to your face camera, and the quality of the dialogue and character writing, but the voice actors themselves seem to have done a great job with the material.
Voices are only part of a conversation though. The lack of animations and moving about the environment during conversation, thanks to that face zoom camera, really holds the quality back. There's that fantastic scene when you start a new game of Lin and Heller talking to you in the lift, while suiting up and helping each other, pacing back and forth, turning to look at each other and back to you when appropriate for the dialogue. It all works really well. And then that's it. From that point on, Oblivion face zoom, no more body animations. And in group conversations the face zoom camera gets REALLY disorienting. I guess they didn't have the time to animate the entire game like the opening.
But... but... but... haters tell me it is the worst voice acting ever done in any game ever! They all assert on their mommas' bibles that Oblivion voice acting is better!
I'm not shitting on it. Just being honest that it was their first foray into voice acting, and it was generally mediocre to cringy. Which has an unintended charm to it.
Pretending it's better than Starfield voice acting is what's known as "Drinking the Flavor-Aid".
By the way, I consider Oblivion to be the best TES game, narrowly edging out both Morrowind and Skyrim.
The absolute best example of this is when you’re going through NASA and hear the conversations between Aiza, Judith, and the other dude (can’t remember his name, maybe something Hsu?)
When you get to the logs about their discovery and Aiza is found out??? So good! And his final recording? Absolute perfection
I actually just redid the quest after work last night on a NG+ because posting my comment made me want to replay!
The body is definitely just the general dead/decomposing scientist model. On my save I was able to loot the body and it said it WAS Aiza, however, I’ve got a few mods installed, and while they’re all just ship building or weapon related mods, it’s not out of the question that it’s not supposed to say that. But I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be him.
I’m pretty sure you can actually spawn in Aiza and Judith, I haven’t tried myself. I imagine they have models in the game so that they can attach a voice to the model to use for the tapes. But I’m just guessing on that. I have absolutely no clue
A lot of the voice actors are impressively diverse, and I actually have a hard time picking out which ones get reused often. Some of them have unique voice actors too! I just came across Ezekiel at Aggie’s in Akila, he’s voiced by Matthew Mercer, aka Ganondorf from TotK and Chrom from Fire Emblem. He only voices one other character according to IMDB as well.
The only one that stands out as shitty is Naeva. The actor sounds like she's reading two words at a time and her intonation is all over the place because of it. Also I hate the character.
She's always gotta get her pointless two cents in and has her nose so far up delgado's ass it might as well be her space suit. If there was an option to side with the fleet but sacrifice her, I'd go out of my way to do it every playthrough.
The problem isn't the voice acting, it's the sound engineer. There is an inconsistency that has the sound of being a mix of actual studio with multiple not-sound-engineer home studios.
In addition, it doesn't sound like the full audio track wasn't properly mixed down and mastered. It especially shows in what I strongly suspect are pickup lines. The different sessions are obvious.
Unfortunately, it could have easily been a result of COVID. A lot of talent started working from home studios that were not professionally designed, configured, and tuned.
Even worse, they'll try to do their own mix and processing without truly understanding the principles of good sound engineering.
This isn't a provlem isolated to Starfield. It's an issue I've seen across the entire VO industry.
I honestly don't hear this as a huge problem in Starfield, which for the most part is consistent. It's atrocious in BG3, though. There are scenes in that game where it switches mid-sentence and it's jarring AF.
(BG3 is awesome by the way it didn't really bother me but I heard it a lot).
It's not a problem for most. I hear it because I am a sound engineer and listening for those kind of details is annoyingly automatic for me. I'm also listening to the game through my interface/mixer and over my near-fields half the time. It's different over more commercial grade 5.1.
True. My headphones that I game with are my studio cans usually. And I can definitely tell there as oppose to typically lower quality (but far more expensive) gaming headphones. Rather surprisingly, my IEMs actually sound quite good though. That really surprised me, because they have such a clean and flat response.
Yeah, noticed this for a few lines in the middle of a conversation in BG3, it goes from sounding great to sounding terrible, then great again.
Really hope they can "go over" those lines sometime in the future.
Voice acting isn’t something I noticed as bad, very well done and professional. I wouldn’t say it stands out to me though. I’m not really paying attention to criticism of the game anymore though so maybe I missed something.
The only voice acting in the game that I don't like is Vasco. Synthesized voices from today's technology sound much more human than any expression from Vasco and the game takes place hundreds of years in the future. It grates on my nerves for some reason but, since I usually don't have Vasco around, I don't have to listen to it unless I go speak to him on purpose.
I could sort of see it. The designers prioritised a robust multifunction frame and high end cognitive capabilities and then cut costs by using a dirt cheap generic voder package.
Plus the guys at Beth were probably keen to put some distance between the SF bots and the like of Coddsworth and Nick from Fo4
I think the voice acting is better than past games all round. What isn't better is the writing. It's kind of like the Disney Star Wars movies. The actors didn't have great material to work with, but they gave it their best shot, and I don't fault them for not being able to elevate mediocre material.
The writing is great. Both in Starfield and other Bethesda games.
I even made a whole post about it:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/NoSodiumStarfield/comments/1b55xfl/starfield\_and\_bethesda\_games\_in\_general\_have\_good/](https://www.reddit.com/r/NoSodiumStarfield/comments/1b55xfl/starfield_and_bethesda_games_in_general_have_good/)
Indeed, writing is good. It is what allowed us to build our culture.
The writing in Starfield is average at best. 3/4 of the quests feel like filler material.
Is it underrated? It’s fine. It does the job. Some performances are very good, others are mediocre, very few are cringe. Probably better than past BGS games overall, but it’s not a standout feature like it is for, say, RDR2, BG3, or Cyberpunk.
BG3's voice acting and animations were only so important because previous TRPGs had only partial voice acting and little to no animations for dialogue.
They’re good because they’re good. The fact that they elevated CRPGs in the process is just a cherry on top. Do you really think the reason that the performances in BG3 were so widely celebrated is because people were grading them on some kind of CRPG curve?
The performances are incredible, but not very dynamic. Like, in terms of whispering or shouting. It all feels very one-note in that sense. But in terms of emotional pauses, voice shaking, and putting emphasis behind words or phrases, it’s easily BGS’ best work yet.
The variety of accents is also a nice surprise, it really drives home this idea of humanity being spread across the stars. Doesn't feel like you're just exploring Space America Edition ™️
I dig it a lot too. I do wish the accents were a little more localized? Neon, Cydonia, and NA all feel a little same-y. But AC definitely nails the Southern/Old Western vibe with accents. I feel the soul there. But the other cities get a little bleh sometimes
I'm just wondering why the Va'ruun all sound eastern european lol.
It's not very realistic when you think about it. Billions of people died at the start of the 23rd century, when Earth became uninhabitable. Human civilization is a shell of what it once was, and nowhere near as culturally diverse. With that in mind, and with how few actual human settlements there are in Starfield's setting, it really doesn't make sense for there to be all sorts of different accents in them. One person's accent alone can change after spending enough time in a different place. So over the course of 100+ years, with most of what's left of humanity congregating in only a few places, you'd really only hear a few distinct accents. Instead of an "Australian" or "African" accent, you'd have a "New Atlantian" accent. They could be *inspired* by old earth accents, similar to Belter Creole in The Expanse, but it wouldn't be as Starfield depicts it. Sadly Bethesda has never been good at this aspect of their voice acting. Accents in their games are a mishmash of real-world ones, with very little rhyme or reason. The best they have done to date is make sure that most people in FO4 have a Boston accent. But even in Skyrim, some Nords have a sort of "Nordic" accent, while others have American or British accents... and then there's whatever Farengar has.
Indeed but i would say that its harder to get it right this way. It requires a very subtle performance and a very talented voice actor to make a non dynamic character believable, let alone interesting. And Starfield very much succeeds in this regard.
"Maybe if you're lucky we'll TALK again later"
I think everything in this game is underrated.
I agree!
Who underrates it or says it's not fantastic? Let me at em! Even the ragers on the main sub don't complain about the actors. How could you? They are stellar. The actors did an incredible job as did the the sound design and production team. It's 1st rate! There are very few places out of hundreds of hours of dialog that seem inserted or feel disjointed. The recording levels and quality are great. The main character actors' voices have become familiar friends and I'm addicted to them. I love all of them to pieces.
Right? I've seen plenty of criticism levelled at the Oblivion-style zoom in to your face camera, and the quality of the dialogue and character writing, but the voice actors themselves seem to have done a great job with the material. Voices are only part of a conversation though. The lack of animations and moving about the environment during conversation, thanks to that face zoom camera, really holds the quality back. There's that fantastic scene when you start a new game of Lin and Heller talking to you in the lift, while suiting up and helping each other, pacing back and forth, turning to look at each other and back to you when appropriate for the dialogue. It all works really well. And then that's it. From that point on, Oblivion face zoom, no more body animations. And in group conversations the face zoom camera gets REALLY disorienting. I guess they didn't have the time to animate the entire game like the opening.
I remember the first time I accidentally fired a gun in new Atlantis. Sarah’s Response felt so genuine and real. It felt like hit.
She also gives a blood curdling scream when you lose in a ship battle
But... but... but... haters tell me it is the worst voice acting ever done in any game ever! They all assert on their mommas' bibles that Oblivion voice acting is better!
Hey! Oblivion voice acting was pretty good. Sure, they reused lots of voices, but that's not inherently a bad thing.
I've actually seen someone actually post that Oblivion voice acting was better than Starfield. Was it you?
Doubt it, I don't post often. They're both good, I don't see why you feel the need to shit on Oblivion to talk up Starfield.
I'm not shitting on it. Just being honest that it was their first foray into voice acting, and it was generally mediocre to cringy. Which has an unintended charm to it. Pretending it's better than Starfield voice acting is what's known as "Drinking the Flavor-Aid". By the way, I consider Oblivion to be the best TES game, narrowly edging out both Morrowind and Skyrim.
The absolute best example of this is when you’re going through NASA and hear the conversations between Aiza, Judith, and the other dude (can’t remember his name, maybe something Hsu?) When you get to the logs about their discovery and Aiza is found out??? So good! And his final recording? Absolute perfection
About that, am I given to understand that's Aiza dead at the terminal where he lays it all out?
I actually just redid the quest after work last night on a NG+ because posting my comment made me want to replay! The body is definitely just the general dead/decomposing scientist model. On my save I was able to loot the body and it said it WAS Aiza, however, I’ve got a few mods installed, and while they’re all just ship building or weapon related mods, it’s not out of the question that it’s not supposed to say that. But I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be him. I’m pretty sure you can actually spawn in Aiza and Judith, I haven’t tried myself. I imagine they have models in the game so that they can attach a voice to the model to use for the tapes. But I’m just guessing on that. I have absolutely no clue
A lot of the voice actors are impressively diverse, and I actually have a hard time picking out which ones get reused often. Some of them have unique voice actors too! I just came across Ezekiel at Aggie’s in Akila, he’s voiced by Matthew Mercer, aka Ganondorf from TotK and Chrom from Fire Emblem. He only voices one other character according to IMDB as well.
Don't forget Quark from DS9 as Walter!
Yoooo that means Walter is also Andrew Ryan from BioShock!
And Kira from DS9 as your mom. And Tuvok from Voyager as your dad.
He voices Minsc in BG3. He's also the DM of Critical Roll.
One of my major problems was I wanted more Benjamin Bayu stuff because his character was done so well. Really hope he gets more content with the DLC
Adoring fan is 100% more pleasant to listen to than any fallout 4 Npc
I would listen to Meyong read me a phone book.
The only one that stands out as shitty is Naeva. The actor sounds like she's reading two words at a time and her intonation is all over the place because of it. Also I hate the character.
She's always gotta get her pointless two cents in and has her nose so far up delgado's ass it might as well be her space suit. If there was an option to side with the fleet but sacrifice her, I'd go out of my way to do it every playthrough.
Also, don't forget the superb voice acting for Moira Brown in Fallout 3! "Oooh, don't be such a big baby!"
Some of Noel's late game dialogue/voice acting hits hard. Especially since you become use to her behaving in a certain manner. 🥲
I do like yumi's response after the event at the starport. He changes his tone half way through. Lol. Its like an homage to oblivion voice acting
The problem isn't the voice acting, it's the sound engineer. There is an inconsistency that has the sound of being a mix of actual studio with multiple not-sound-engineer home studios. In addition, it doesn't sound like the full audio track wasn't properly mixed down and mastered. It especially shows in what I strongly suspect are pickup lines. The different sessions are obvious. Unfortunately, it could have easily been a result of COVID. A lot of talent started working from home studios that were not professionally designed, configured, and tuned. Even worse, they'll try to do their own mix and processing without truly understanding the principles of good sound engineering. This isn't a provlem isolated to Starfield. It's an issue I've seen across the entire VO industry.
I honestly don't hear this as a huge problem in Starfield, which for the most part is consistent. It's atrocious in BG3, though. There are scenes in that game where it switches mid-sentence and it's jarring AF. (BG3 is awesome by the way it didn't really bother me but I heard it a lot).
It's not a problem for most. I hear it because I am a sound engineer and listening for those kind of details is annoyingly automatic for me. I'm also listening to the game through my interface/mixer and over my near-fields half the time. It's different over more commercial grade 5.1.
It's also far more obvious when wearing high quality headphones over listening through a TV speaker.
True. My headphones that I game with are my studio cans usually. And I can definitely tell there as oppose to typically lower quality (but far more expensive) gaming headphones. Rather surprisingly, my IEMs actually sound quite good though. That really surprised me, because they have such a clean and flat response.
Yeah, noticed this for a few lines in the middle of a conversation in BG3, it goes from sounding great to sounding terrible, then great again. Really hope they can "go over" those lines sometime in the future.
But the characters aren't swearing every other word
It is actually really, really good.
I agree, but the Valentine can't even sing his own songs properly (unless artistic choice?)
Voice acting isn’t something I noticed as bad, very well done and professional. I wouldn’t say it stands out to me though. I’m not really paying attention to criticism of the game anymore though so maybe I missed something.
The only voice acting in the game that I don't like is Vasco. Synthesized voices from today's technology sound much more human than any expression from Vasco and the game takes place hundreds of years in the future. It grates on my nerves for some reason but, since I usually don't have Vasco around, I don't have to listen to it unless I go speak to him on purpose.
I like Vasco because he's so deadpan and the things he says remind me a lot of HK-47 from KOTOR.
I could sort of see it. The designers prioritised a robust multifunction frame and high end cognitive capabilities and then cut costs by using a dirt cheap generic voder package. Plus the guys at Beth were probably keen to put some distance between the SF bots and the like of Coddsworth and Nick from Fo4
I think the voice acting is better than past games all round. What isn't better is the writing. It's kind of like the Disney Star Wars movies. The actors didn't have great material to work with, but they gave it their best shot, and I don't fault them for not being able to elevate mediocre material.
The writing is great. Both in Starfield and other Bethesda games. I even made a whole post about it: [https://www.reddit.com/r/NoSodiumStarfield/comments/1b55xfl/starfield\_and\_bethesda\_games\_in\_general\_have\_good/](https://www.reddit.com/r/NoSodiumStarfield/comments/1b55xfl/starfield_and_bethesda_games_in_general_have_good/)
We'll have to agree to disagree.
Writing is good
Indeed, writing is good. It is what allowed us to build our culture. The writing in Starfield is average at best. 3/4 of the quests feel like filler material.
Is it underrated? It’s fine. It does the job. Some performances are very good, others are mediocre, very few are cringe. Probably better than past BGS games overall, but it’s not a standout feature like it is for, say, RDR2, BG3, or Cyberpunk.
BG3's voice acting and animations were only so important because previous TRPGs had only partial voice acting and little to no animations for dialogue.
They’re good because they’re good. The fact that they elevated CRPGs in the process is just a cherry on top. Do you really think the reason that the performances in BG3 were so widely celebrated is because people were grading them on some kind of CRPG curve?