Edit: As a lot of people rightfully stated it, I should have started with this: they are three excellent actors (and they all seem like great people) and companies are more to blame than them. The fact that I can't stand their voices in AAA and AA games is unfortunate given how talented and invested they are in most of their roles.
I am a big fan of acting performances in games.
Some of my favourite games are deeply tied to the voices / performance captures of actors. My personal best game of the generation is Mafia 3, and it would never be the case without the incredible performances of Alex Hernandez (Lincoln), Lane Compton (Donovan) or Jay Acovone (Sal Marcano).
And what about Red Dead Redemption 2? Holy cow this cast is amazing. I can remember most of the gang's voices just by thinking about them. They have personality, these actors are engaged with their characters. Just watching some interviews of the actors make you realize how deep they went into understanding their pixel couterparts, it's outstanding.
In the previous generation, it felt like most of the big story-driven games were hugely dominated by three actors : Laura Bailey, Nolan North, Troy Baker.
Just take a look at all the PS360 AAA and AA games featuring one of these actors:
All Assassin's Creed Games (Nolan North)
CoD Black Ops (Nolan North)
All Uncharted Games (Nolan North, Troy Baker)
Spec Ops: The Line (Nolan North)
Deadpool (Nolan North)
The Last of Us (Nolan North, Troy Baker)
Final Fantasy XIII (Troy Baker, Laura Bailey)
Nier (Laura Bailey)
Catherine (Troy Baker)
Batman Arkham City (Troy Baker, where he has like 4 different roles)
Batman Arkham Origins (Troy Baker)
Mass Effect 3 (Troy Baker, Laura Bailey)
Binary Domain (Troy Baker, Laura Bailey)
Resident Evil 6 (Troy Baker, Laura Bailey)
Bioshock Infinite (Troy Baker, Laura Bailey)
Saints Row IV (the player can portray Nolan North, Laura Bailey and Troy Baker...)
In 2013, two of the main GOTY contenders had their main protagonist played by Troy Baker. In 2012 he appeared in 14 (!!!) games. That is obviously not a complete list, but if you are a AAA solo story-driven game enthusiast like me, chances are most of your favourite PS360 games had one of these 3 actors as the main / supporting cast.
It seems like this has been a tiny bit less obvious in this generation. Since 2015, Nolan North only had two very big roles in Uncharted 4 (main character) and Mafia 3 (supporting cast, with his actual appearence) and Laura Bailey mostly has secondary characters voices - although the importance of her wharacters in debatable. Troy Baker on the other hand is EVERYWHERE. He is Revolver Ocelot, he is Death Stranding bad guy, he's the CoD Advance Warfare main character, He's The Lord of the Ring's main character, he is Batman in TWO DIFFERENT UNRELATED GAMES, Lego Dimensions and Telltale's Batman... and he also played the Joker in Akham Origins.
This means... Troy Baker has played Batman in 2012, and the joker in 2013. This is ridiculous.
So... I think I'm deeply tired and bored of hearing the same voices over and over. I'm happy for them that they managed to be successful at what they do, acting being such a difficult field of work to enter in. But the joke "if you want to be a voice actor in video games, just wait for Nolan and me to die" made by Troy Baker during the Game Awards isn't a joke anymore.
I'm French, so a lot of the games shipped in my country are dubbed in French (except for Nier, Catherine and the Telltale games, all the previous examples had French voice acting), and I'm at the point that if I know the game will be casting one of these 3 actors, I either play it in French without any hesitation, or simply don't play it at all. Even replaying some of the previously quoted games can be a struggle for me. I recently replayed Spec Ops: The Line, which is an outstanding dark and harsh story about PTSD and war making humans go crazy. Yet, most of Nolan North's acting is just Uncharted-level of lightness (the first part, which is coherent with the story), and when it gets darker it's like watching Jim Carrey in The Number 23 trying to be all somber and down-to-earth (I suppose a lot of people like his performance, I'm just explaining why it felt very off to me).
I believe the weirdest performance was Troy Baker's Ocelot. It feels like Baker is trying to make an impression of Patric Zimmerman but also kind of not being very invested in what he says at all. He's actually trying to make his voice hard to recognize, but I spent the game struggling to understand why the hell this hugely known video game actor was casted just so he could transform his voice so much that it's impossible to recognize and is pretty damn boring. It's the opposite with Laura Bailey as Nadine in Uncharted 4. She's a good actress and all, but we all know her voice, and knowing what Laura Bailey looks like, it was so weird listening to her voice dubbing a black woman.
There are of course some exceptions. It's hard to imagine Uncharted without Nolan, and when the character's model is actually the face of the actor (Death Stranding, Mafia 3, Call of Duty Advanced Warfare), it's a bit different. But overall, I wish a lot of casting directors weren't so scared of hiring a wider set of less known and less safe actors, like they did for most of Mafia 3 and all of RDR/GTA cast - although it seems not all of them were treated correctly, that has to be noted.
I'd rather say "when I see Steven Ogg's actor all I can see is Trevor" than "when I hear the Bioshock Infinite dude all I can hear is Batman/TLOU/Catherine/Joker".
I am a big fan of acting performances in games.
Some of my favourite games are deeply tied to the voices / performance captures of actors. My personal best game of the generation is Mafia 3, and it would never be the case without the incredible performances of Alex Hernandez (Lincoln), Lane Compton (Donovan) or Jay Acovone (Sal Marcano).
And what about Red Dead Redemption 2? Holy cow this cast is amazing. I can remember most of the gang's voices just by thinking about them. They have personality, these actors are engaged with their characters. Just watching some interviews of the actors make you realize how deep they went into understanding their pixel couterparts, it's outstanding.
In the previous generation, it felt like most of the big story-driven games were hugely dominated by three actors : Laura Bailey, Nolan North, Troy Baker.
Just take a look at all the PS360 AAA and AA games featuring one of these actors:
All Assassin's Creed Games (Nolan North)
CoD Black Ops (Nolan North)
All Uncharted Games (Nolan North, Troy Baker)
Spec Ops: The Line (Nolan North)
Deadpool (Nolan North)
The Last of Us (Nolan North, Troy Baker)
Final Fantasy XIII (Troy Baker, Laura Bailey)
Nier (Laura Bailey)
Catherine (Troy Baker)
Batman Arkham City (Troy Baker, where he has like 4 different roles)
Batman Arkham Origins (Troy Baker)
Mass Effect 3 (Troy Baker, Laura Bailey)
Binary Domain (Troy Baker, Laura Bailey)
Resident Evil 6 (Troy Baker, Laura Bailey)
Bioshock Infinite (Troy Baker, Laura Bailey)
Saints Row IV (the player can portray Nolan North, Laura Bailey and Troy Baker...)
In 2013, two of the main GOTY contenders had their main protagonist played by Troy Baker. In 2012 he appeared in 14 (!!!) games. That is obviously not a complete list, but if you are a AAA solo story-driven game enthusiast like me, chances are most of your favourite PS360 games had one of these 3 actors as the main / supporting cast.
It seems like this has been a tiny bit less obvious in this generation. Since 2015, Nolan North only had two very big roles in Uncharted 4 (main character) and Mafia 3 (supporting cast, with his actual appearence) and Laura Bailey mostly has secondary characters voices - although the importance of her wharacters in debatable. Troy Baker on the other hand is EVERYWHERE. He is Revolver Ocelot, he is Death Stranding bad guy, he's the CoD Advance Warfare main character, He's The Lord of the Ring's main character, he is Batman in TWO DIFFERENT UNRELATED GAMES, Lego Dimensions and Telltale's Batman... and he also played the Joker in Akham Origins.
This means... Troy Baker has played Batman in 2012, and the joker in 2013. This is ridiculous.
So... I think I'm deeply tired and bored of hearing the same voices over and over. I'm happy for them that they managed to be successful at what they do, acting being such a difficult field of work to enter in. But the joke "if you want to be a voice actor in video games, just wait for Nolan and me to die" made by Troy Baker during the Game Awards isn't a joke anymore.
I'm French, so a lot of the games shipped in my country are dubbed in French (except for Nier, Catherine and the Telltale games, all the previous examples had French voice acting), and I'm at the point that if I know the game will be casting one of these 3 actors, I either play it in French without any hesitation, or simply don't play it at all. Even replaying some of the previously quoted games can be a struggle for me. I recently replayed Spec Ops: The Line, which is an outstanding dark and harsh story about PTSD and war making humans go crazy. Yet, most of Nolan North's acting is just Uncharted-level of lightness (the first part, which is coherent with the story), and when it gets darker it's like watching Jim Carrey in The Number 23 trying to be all somber and down-to-earth (I suppose a lot of people like his performance, I'm just explaining why it felt very off to me).
I believe the weirdest performance was Troy Baker's Ocelot. It feels like Baker is trying to make an impression of Patric Zimmerman but also kind of not being very invested in what he says at all. He's actually trying to make his voice hard to recognize, but I spent the game struggling to understand why the hell this hugely known video game actor was casted just so he could transform his voice so much that it's impossible to recognize and is pretty damn boring. It's the opposite with Laura Bailey as Nadine in Uncharted 4. She's a good actress and all, but we all know her voice, and knowing what Laura Bailey looks like, it was so weird listening to her voice dubbing a black woman.
There are of course some exceptions. It's hard to imagine Uncharted without Nolan, and when the character's model is actually the face of the actor (Death Stranding, Mafia 3, Call of Duty Advanced Warfare), it's a bit different. But overall, I wish a lot of casting directors weren't so scared of hiring a wider set of less known and less safe actors, like they did for most of Mafia 3 and all of RDR/GTA cast - although it seems not all of them were treated correctly, that has to be noted.
I'd rather say "when I see Steven Ogg's actor all I can see is Trevor" than "when I hear the Bioshock Infinite dude all I can hear is Batman/TLOU/Catherine/Joker".
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