Finished my first BG3 run, man the acting is great, especially at the when characters get their big emotional moments. I’m thinking “that’s acting!”, also recognised Omni Man immediately.
Now I’m on to Alan Wake 2 and omg I can’t take the dialogue and voice acting. It feels jarring. The prior game I played was Silent Hill 2 and I remembered it was OK, the MC was very chill in a horror game but its kinda explained by the story
BG3 is a milestone in gaming. It may be a bit unfair to compare it to games that were produced at the same time, they couldn’t hope to compete lmao.
Dragon Age: Origins is also a master class in this vain.
One thing I find jarring about BG3 is the lack of vo for the player character. It seems like a weird omission in this day and age. (Not counting the dumb ‘I clicked here, so my player has to say something’ vo. Like, shut the fuck up with your dumb chess references, Gale!)
It’s supposed to be immersive, I think, so as not to force a voice that doesn’t match the roleplaying in your head.
I’m with you, though, I’d much prefer VA.
I am in the other camp, I like the immersion.
I also have a tendency to not bother with VA, though, and to just click through the second I finish reading the dialogue, except for lines in particularly dramatic parts of the story. Sometimes not even then. Just figure I’d offer a counter opinion especially since this thread is probably going to be full of people who always choose voice acting when it is an option, given the thread is all about it. I am glad so many people derive joy from it, just because it is Not For Me doesn’t mean I think it’s Bad And Worthless :)
I played BG3 straight after Cyberpunk and that really stood out to me as well. The immersion and emotional impact of voiced protagonist lines really got me invested in Cyberpunk in a way I missed in BG3.
I think the silent protagonist choice is valid in more of “sandbox” story like BG3. Speaking for myself, voiced protagonists tend to “lock” me into a specific role. I absolutely love the voice acting for Geralt of Rivia but when I play a witcher game I’m not inserting myself into the game, I’m becoming Geralt and making choices based on how I believe Geralt would make them.
I don’t really see it being a sandbox. I mean, all answers are given, and you select from those choices. That’s the same as other games that have pc vo. I feel like it would have made more sense to have no voice options at all, and to just get rid of the ridiculous quips. That way, you create your own voice in your head. In no universe would the character I created complain about having to put her hands onto everything before opening a door.
Anyway, not a big deal, but like I said, it was a bit jarring.
BG3 is definitely one of those games with good (even great) voice acting. But there are more of them out there.
RDR2 has some of the best writing and acting performances I’ve ever encountered in a game. The Last of Us is in a similar vein. The Uncharted series has some of my favourite voice acting, especially Claudia Black (Chloe) and of course Nolan North (Nathan).
Claudia Black also voices Morrigan in Dragon Age Origins, which is chock full of stellar voice performances. I’d argue that Dragon Age 2 and even Inquisition had some memorable performances but The Veilguard sucked.
BG3 is great and all but there are other games with at least equal voice acting quality. For all its qualities I never felt like “wow, I’ve never seen voice acting like this in a game!” when I played BG3. It’s really good and really consistent but nothing earth shattering.
I know I bring up Disco Elysium a lot, but that is one game where I got repeatedly shocked at the quality and diversity of the voice acting. With the exception of one single character I think it’s acted to absolute perfection.
I also didn’t really feel the same about Alan Wake 2 like, at all. I thought it had superb acting (both voice and full video segments) and probably hold the quality of its acting above BG3 personally. Alan Wake 1 less so.
I second Disco Elysium’s voice acting and also all of Supergiant Games catalogue, especially Bastion, Transistor, and Hades. Portal 2 is the most hilarious video game of all time, and a major part of that is its voice acting.
The Stanley Parable, Borderlands 1/2, Prey, System Shock 1/2, the Bioshock series, SOMA, the new Doom games, Path of Exile, all elevated by their voice acting.
I’d also put Still Wakes the Deep on that list.
What makes BG3 so great is that it doesn‘t just have voice acting, it has full acting. The actor of Astarion worked for 4 years on it and claimed it was the equivalent to shooting 4 seasons of a TV show. It‘s a huge scope that almost nobody can or want to afford. I mean those studios who can just don‘t take that part very seriously and are eyeing with simply opting to use AI instead. I doubt it will ever be recreated, maybe not even by Larian themselves.
