SAG-AFTRA Approves AI Voice Actors, Enrages the VA Community::SAG-AFTRA has approved AI voice actors and partnered with Replica Studios, enraging the voice acting community on a global scale.
SAG-AFTRA Approves AI Voice Actors, Enrages the VA Community::SAG-AFTRA has approved AI voice actors and partnered with Replica Studios, enraging the voice acting community on a global scale.
None. Bad voice acting is worse than none for sure. Like for example Morrowind had a pretty good story and writing but Oblivion’s voice acting has been a joke for over a decade now.
Compared to anything nowadays, yes - Oblivion was awful. But let me tell you, I played that game as a kid and it wouldn’t have been even half as interesting with no VA. When you’re a stealth archer and someone gets close to you and you think you’re safely hidden, but then you hear “you’re not supposed to be here”, it scared the hell out of 15-yo me and made me run away sooo fast. I tried morrowind just after that and couldn’t stomach playing it - no VA? At all? It was awful.
Maybe we sometimes forget, games are also for kids. Kids don’t need the best acting. And while adult me can’t take oblivion VA seriously - it is still one of the best games I’ve ever played as a child, while Morrowind never even made it into the list because I was spoiled by playing Oblivion first, with its VA, bad as it is.
Morrowind had voice acting for lines like detecting you and greetings when you got close, plus a few lines in story, most notably Dagoth Ur and Vivec.
For the majority of the story there was none while oblivion had like 11 people voice the entire thing and poorly. The voice acting of Oblivion was also accompanied by the way worse writing. I grew up on Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 and later Morrowind and those were only partially voice acted and I definitely liked that as a kid as well, at least more than I did Oblivion.
Also having voice acting limits roleplaying. That’s why in Baldurs Gate 3 even though everything else is voiced, you the player keep silent. That way they can write 6 different ways you pick what and how you would like your character to say something, even if the end result from the NPC is the same for all of them, because it doesn’t increase the VA workload at all.
…which, granted, would be something using AI would solve…