Idk I found the voice acting great especially compared to the usual quality of voice over work for jrpgs and many shows that weren't originally American/English.
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Dunkey - Final Fantasy VII Remake (dunkview) [Spoilers]
- Thread starter AlexFlame116
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On the subject of voice acting it's not the worst, but the bar is so low for JRPGs (And FF in general at this point) that I think people are just happy to have something that isn't 100% garbage from the offset. The actors themselves are fine, it's when they're forced to do anime grunts like the Rude liftoff thing where you're like "What emotion is this supposed to be?" and I don't blame the VAs for having much to work with there lol
That being said glad SOMEONE drew attention to the "stop, walk slow, pull lever, flip switch" since everyone seems to ignore that half the game is wasting your time.
Lol I just laugh at the new dialogue in a lot of scenes. I would argue a lot of the stuff in the original script is nailed but every time they go off we get some GoT vibes. We'll see in part II.
That being said glad SOMEONE drew attention to the "stop, walk slow, pull lever, flip switch" since everyone seems to ignore that half the game is wasting your time.
Well, he is spot on and i laughed several times throughout the video.
That is because her death scene was completely flat and forced, regardless of the amount of Tifa's tears.
I mean, if they point you to the guy then just skip making the player approach them? Why spend time and money on the dialogue lines and fleshing the area out?
If that garbage is in there then why should it be ignored?
Different opinions are 'bizaroo world'?
This is really irritating as there are exceptional performances in this game. FF7 has always been corny, I hope people aren't confusing corniness with poor performances. The VA is exceptional. Perhaps you haven't seen certain scenes because I never know if the people commenting have played the game or just watched a playthrough or think that just watching a video like this is a good way to judge the game. Besides the grunts mentioned earlier in the thread, which really do not come up very often anyway, I have no idea what people are talking about.
You cringed from beginning to end? Your face must hurt since it's a 30 hour game and all.
What really confuses me with the voice acting is how they were able to achieve much better voice acting with some of the same characters in other iterations---Dirge, Advent Children, Crisis Core. I don't think Remake voice acting is bad; just not great. And it is a step back from other Final Fantasy 7 works.
I think you're right. I made a similar point earlier that I think it's easy to mix bad writing with bad voice acting. And you know...sometimes voice acting is bad because an actor has shit lines to work with in the first place. I think the same voice actors with better lines could have given great performances. John Bentley knocked Barret out of the park when given the opportunity. He stole the show after the plate fell.
FF7R has great VA if you compare across the genre... The side quest characters are pretty meh, but all of the main cast and main scenes are great. After finishing the game I was playing Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Torna and my god the VA is so bad, flat, poorly directed and incessant when wandering around. I'd say the same is true of DQXI except Sylvando who is fantastic but incredibly over the top. I picked up Trials of Mana last weekend and the VA is so flat out terrible it is giving me Ghost Stories funimation dub vibes.
I don't think it's Uncharted or Last of Us good, but it's also a 40 hour script that has been adapted from JP to English vs a 15-20 hour script that was made with English first.
I don't find the anime grunts/noises that distracting, but shit like that is omnipresent in just about EVERY japanese game. Zelda is filled with it for example, and I've never really see people complain about it there.
I think there are spots of great VA. But for every good moment, there's... one of those instances shown in the video. It's unfortunately uneven. I didn't get too far in XV, but I think that game had much more natural VA, with some exceptions.
FF7 OG was some of the cheesiest shit ever. Are people confusing the script with the VA?
As somebody who has spent almost 100 hours with the game, my opinions on the Voices are mixed. The actors are clearly great and know what they're doing with actors like the ones for Cloud clearly knowing how to vary up what could be a substantially one note character and giving him tons of minor inflections.
But like...Barret's best scenes are the plate fall and an optional/completely missable scene, while the rest he's kinda just either angry or made a fool out of. His voice work with Marlene is where we kind of get to see what the actor is truly capable of, but the actors are limited to the script, and the script is sometimes...really bad.
Jessie is one of hte worst because I love Erica Lindbeck but just going "she's in theatre and it's all a smokescreen" doesn't change the fact that my gf hated every scene with her and it was all basically "my hero" and "Hey honey" and "Come over tonight when my roomies aren't over" so again, script limitations I believe.
Tifa never sounded great to me personally but that's subjective. I think part of that is because they're trying to do TV/mature sounding cast for what is arguably a younger looking cast (I know their real ages) and Tifa's voice with some of the "anime" mannerisms are like jarringly weird.
Aerith grew on me. I think she got monotone at the end when she had to deliver "Nomura's wild ride of exposition" but she nailed the rest I think, even if some of that was poorly written too or silly to look at like some of the Wall market scenes.
Red XIII was perfection.
Almost every non main NPC though is anywhere from shit terrible to "why is Dimitri from Three Houses every other character in Sector 5?" That's not including the fact that they force an onslaught of voice lines on you from walking past characters that repeat without a substantial cooldown so the amount of times I heard the "You're going to try the training sim? Now?" Just for walking to the shop and back and other forced dialogue I can see why people would still have issues with the voice acting compared to the typical Western offerings.
Don't get me wrong the "direction" of the VA is as good as it can be given the material, but there's a lot of spots where the production values betray that it has just as many stilted gasps and weird "Anime moments" as any other anime game, which makes it a bit jarring to some people.
Yeah the VAs did great with most the scenes, it's the "Anime moments" and animations that tend to betray and be uncanny with the scenes, but it's not nearly as bad as Xenoblade 2 where characters flat out sound completely different than what the animation is inferring (and I say that as someone who LOVES XB2)
I love when people don't know what the he'll they're talking about. Square has probably the best localized Japanese game on their resume.
Sorry, I clarified later that the VA is not uniformly bad. It's not that there are no great performances, but rather there are too many poor performances. As someone who actually watches anime and dubs occasionally, it's really irritating to see that the bad end of that spectrum being represented in a big budget game. Especially one of this... heritage?
I can't get over how poor certain events were handled in XV. There are similar events in VIIR that are done so much better. I honestly had a hard time going through the rest of XV after those events because of how bad they were.
This point was made in the video. People forgive silly or overly dramatic text, but hearing it read by a voice actor changes how we feel about it. It somehow brings how cheesy it is to life.
Yeah sorry I missed that clarification. I realize we all have different opinions I guess I'm just surprised. I thought beyond everything else, the way they brought these characters to life, which I thought was always going to be hard because of how people have their preconceptions from 23 years ago, was well done.
I think people should be specific then, because a lot of the criticisms I've seen in this thread have targeted the voice acting. I'm sure some are like what's really the difference, but to me there is one.
I don't think it's a great idea to say that the game has bad voice acting when the only thing you offer in terms of good voice acting is a bunch of western games, some of which lack the amount of NPCs that you see in VII Remake. And that doesn't even begin to account for out different those games are tobally from something like VII Remake.
The grunts are clearly brought over from the Japanese version and the translation and dub team doesn't exactly have much they can work with in eliminating those as the animations are carried over and the alternative is awkward mannerisms with no sounds in cutscenes.
The grunts are clearly brought over from the Japanese version and the translation and dub team doesn't exactly have much they can work with in eliminating those as the animations are carried over and the alternative is awkward mannerisms with no sounds in cutscenes.
There is always spoilers in dunkey's videos, why people keep watching his stuff when they haven't finished the games he played or keep asking this question
I mean there's plenty of greatly acted scenes in the game, but there's also lots of terrible gasps moans and terrible NPC dialogue in the game (Kyrie makes me want to stick dull pencils into my eardrums directly).
That being said the OT and other places have literally tried to shit on people for calling out terrible textures at this point, so I think most of the threads outside the spoiler threads are only really welcoming for the positive opinions anyways.
Like if you don't think Madame M is terrible or Jessie is grating, that's fine, but it doesn't mean there's some conspiracy behind a youtuber. I could make the same point about everyone being down with changes and the spoiler stuff after Max said he was down with it too.
Bad direction and script is a Nomura staple. Like he's responsible for the worst aspects of the game.
I wouldn't say either DQXI or FFXV had particularly bad voice acting
Aerith VA is pretty awful and they made Barret a complete clown. Jessie I blame on the writing more than the voice actor
So this topic is safe heaven for haters? Wow, I'm out then.
Nomura is also responsible for some of the best things in the game. I shit on Nomura and his writing abilities a lot but the man knows how to direct action and put the audience in a moment. It's why I compare him to JJ ABrams so much. The "in the moment" scenes and editing and acting and music all sync up while you're there, and then you pan out a bit and go "wait that was really dumb."
Like Star Trek 09 and TFA I loved on my first viewing, and then I went "wait...what." when I went back over it in a subsequent viewing. That being said I think Nomura is a reason for a lot of bad things in the game, but he's also integral to why it's being so positively received in its highest points.
Woof. This forum really has a problem with literally any criticism or critique that isn't blind praise sometimes, shit.
I mean there is tons of great acting in the game. It's just funny how now that Dunkey said it's bad, now suddenly everyone thinks it's bad too.
(Also the Middle Manager voice acting was spot on for someone whose supposed to be both afraid and trying to act all high and mighty despite clearly not.)
Middle Manager and Jessie are also good too.
This thread just reinforces my feelings that people don't know what good voice acting is.
Personal taste and all that. Erica Lindbeck is a great voice actress. I was counting down until I never had to see Jessie again. To each their own.
There is no "sudden" to this. Unless you can find people in another thread who said the voice acting was good, then find those same people in here who said it was bad?
Jessie was one of the worst parts of the game. I couldn't believe it, seemed like it was written by a child.
Skipped her death scene,
I mean even people who have been down on the game at least praised the English dub. Everywhere I go is constant praise for it.
The only thread I've seen of people who are down on the dub- is this thread.
I think Barret's voice actor is talented, however I agree that they could have given him a lot more to work with. He's the only character to speak a certain way in all the slums, and as far as I'm aware, where he's from, the people don't speak like that either. You know he has in it in him with scenes like Chapter 13 and Chapter 14 as well as bits and pieces in the opening chapters between the overly top angry stereotype. Square needed to do better and give him more of speeches like the end of Chapter 2 and less of most of the other stuff. I realize at times he's played as comic relief, but there are plenty of other ways to do it.
Jessie is a side character, I thought when she was sincere and what you learn about her, it makes sense that she's the way she is. Knowing what happened to her parents just makes her story so much worse imo. I don't have much to say about the character itself because most people would agree that she is incredibly thirsty to the point of absurdity. But she has these lucid moments where I wonder if there was a better character in there.
People have been critical about Tifa and her lack of agency. I didn't really see it as much but I'll take their word for it. As far as her actor, she's really talented and she's been in quite a few other games and has done well. I think again, this is more on the script and how there are things about Tifa that we can't know about until subsequent games.
Aerith at the end was quite weird, I'm not sure about the direction she was given, but obviously she knew more about what's going on than anyone throughout the story. Besides that though, I felt her VA was wonderful.
The NPCs could use some work, I thought the sheer number of lines was great, but a lot of their designs do not exactly fit in to the slums areas that you visit. Some of them belong in an Abercrombie catalog.
Well you sure showed her. Also could you not spoil shit? This game is new to a lot of people.
People were talking about the grunting and "anime" moments(frequently) as early as the demo. And also Barret's cartoonish voice (that luckily got more nuanced as the game went on). None of this is sudden.
The voice changes have been a topic of debate since they first happened, and I for one definitely laughed at Aerith's delivery of "Shinra isn't the real enemy. I want to protect all of you. And the planet" in the trailer where they first introduced that line. -shrug-
She was the one I was most nervous before playing the game. I thought she was pretty ehhhh in the first trailer/reveal with her. Playing the game though? She did great.
Honestly, Biggs was the worst. I'm surprised he doesn't get more hate. He sounds like he was reading off his script. Not in a, "I'm reading this for the first time" kind of way. More of a, "I'm just going to say the words on this paper," way.
Jesus those English voices.
This will so be played in their original voices when I get to play it on Xbox next year.
This will so be played in their original voices when I get to play it on Xbox next year.
English is voice acting are praised overseas....
You guys here are weird.
The usually echo chamber of Nomura/Kingdom Hearts/Voice acting bashing who hasn't played the game.
You guys here are weird.
The usually echo chamber of Nomura/Kingdom Hearts/Voice acting bashing who hasn't played the game.
Reading cheesy stuff is different than having it voiced over in earnest.
Also it's like dunkey said, FF7 was a goofy game with serious bits in it, the OG FF7 script, weird translations and all works really damn well for the overall feel the game has.
Tbh FF7R needs to remove about 90% of its grunting.
Nah, this is how Dunkey reviews are made, you don't have to watch them before finishing the game.
Let him out the bullshit parts regardless of how spoilery they are.
There are clearly a lot of people who here played the game and thought the voice acting wasn't dynamite. It's fine for people to not like the voice acting. You don't have to resort to calling out echo chambers and shit.
lmao that video is great
Do I agree with most of what he said? no because I loved the remake and think it improved on almost every character from the OG but there is a few things he is on point about.
Anyway the VA is amazing and the only annoyance is the grunts. Everything else is natural.
Do I agree with most of what he said? no because I loved the remake and think it improved on almost every character from the OG but there is a few things he is on point about.
Anyway the VA is amazing and the only annoyance is the grunts. Everything else is natural.
Why does have to be so binary? There is nuance here. I've beaten the game. There are times when the acting is pretty good (e.g. Tifa) and times when it's just... eh.
People point this out with things like TLOU and BOTW and the like but the entire premise of "Unless the group says it's okay to shit on it, you can't say good thing about game" or "Unless the group says it's okay to praise it, you have to hate it" is like an unspoken rule at this point. There is no nuance or room for varying opinions (I even pointed out my praise for a lot of the game's VA) it's either you hate it or you love it and you're just an echo chamber in both.
Text conversation has really gone down hill.
Always laugh when people expect every game to have Writing like it should be an Oscar contender if it wasn't a game. So many here are Storytelling experts. It's really grating. It's Final Fantasy 7, a fun adventure flick you watch on a Sat night with popcorn not Citizen Kane. Some of you are in the wrong hobby if that's all you want out of a game.