I do not envy the job of being an English voice actor for Triangle Strategy. Benedict, the advisor to the main protagonist of the story, always delivers his lines in the same way and with zero emotional tact. Most characters are sometimes overdramatic or too direct. Is it unfair for me to say this without further explanation? What do I mean when I say that the voice acting doesn’t “sound right?” Without getting too far into it, there are a variety of problems that keep the dialogue from feeling natural. Voice Acting, p.2, Something’s Just Wrong Here Their performances range from average to mediocre to just plain bad. But unfortunately, I don’t have much positive to say about the rest of the cast. The voice actor’s take on the cruel, politically conniving villain archetype, with his cool and level-headed tone, is interesting and well-executed. The voice of Gustadolph, the main villain of the story, stands out from the rest of the cast in a good way. That’s not to say there aren’t some well-acted lines. So, it has to come down to the more nebulous problem of whether the dialogue “sounds right.”Īnd a large amount of the English voice acting in TS just doesn’t (sound right). The thing is though, in a game like TS whose characters are represented by sprites, there really isn’t an issue of timing or lip-syncing. My thinking follows that my bias persists whether we are considering an anime or a game with Japanese voice acting. It also helps that, because I don’t understand the language of Japanese, it probably means it’s easier for me to let unnaturalistic dialogue go unnoticed. I feel that the show’s original voice actors usually have a better feel for their character’s emotional identity. I find that there is often an issue with lip-syncing and timing, and that the actors end up sounding awkward. I personally cannot stand English-dubbed anime. I think the arguments around the quality of English-language voice acting in Japanese-developed games follows a similar pattern to the dub-or-sub argument w/r/t anime. To me, the voice acting sticks out like a sore thumb. As such, it’s important to note that all of the criticism in this article regarding voice acting pertains only to the English language voice acting. Ideally, I would listen to the Japanese VA, but there is no option to switch the voice language in the demo (although I expect there will be in the final game). You can turn down the voice volume all the way to zero, and it doesn’t bother me to read lots of text, but because I’m the kind of masochist called “game critic,” I felt I was obligated to keep listening. This wouldn’t really be an issue for me if I was playing the game just to play the game. Let’s get this out of the way first: the voice acting in TS is its weakest component. Instead, it’s an analysis that seeks to answer the question, “What would it take to turn Triangle Strategy (TS) into a good game?”īriefly, there are a lot of promising things about TS, but the game is held back by bad voice acting and a slow story, among a few other things. The game’s release is at least a year out, so the primary goal of this article is not to review Triangle Strategy. Having played through the entire demo, my feelings about the game could be described as “mild interest” and “a general lack of excitement.”īut knowing my visceral reaction to the game and describing why I feel this way about the game are two very different things. The game looks nice, but does it play nice? What might the demo tell us about the final quality of the game? This article is me taking a stab at these questions.
0 kommentar(er)
