Ever since video games had the capability for voice acting, it has not always been good. And sometimes this is great. Other times it might be annoying, and this is more likely due to the direction or script rather than the acting work involved. For instance, there’s the whole Metroid: Other M thing where its biggest complaints are about how they messed with Samus’s character to go on about monologuing and talking about “the baby” so many times you’d think she’d take her face ship and drive out saying “LET’S GO”. Meanwhile they also bring in these Federation troops as companion characters, one of which you’re apparently supposed to remember despite being a new character at that point. The series keeps doing to mixed at best results, to the point where that one Federation Force game was thought to have killed the series off until Nintendo took down that Metroid 2 fan remake and made their own.
Now that Metroid Prime 4 is finally out after having been developed, cancelled, then re-developed, there’s another new character to complain about. Of course this character is intentionally a dork so this actually fits that he’s annoying, though in terms of the overall mood of the series, comic relief isn’t exactly a thing it’s had much in the way of, so it seems to clash with that. Of course even before Other M there was voice acting in cutscenes for the series, like with Prime 3’s cutscenes involving everyone else, including the Federation of course. So it’s not new, it just encroaches on the whole feeling of being alone in a hostile creature-filled environment that the series was built on, which the “purists” are mad about. And for some reason with this character being prominent in the opening hours of the game, the press previews ended up focusing on this aspect a fair bit.
There’s a bigger concern at play here, and it’s the whole thing about “Marvel movie writing” or whatever where characters are overly self-aware or genre-savvy or just sarcastic in general so nothing’s really taken seriously even in situations where it narratively should be. On the other hand, it might be a way to show that a character isn’t quite right in the head when next to nobody else in the cast is doing this, which both keeps things a little more grounded and also doesn’t overstay its welcome for a number of viewers. Or maybe the setting itself is just that unhinged so it makes more sense for the characters to be that way, like in an over-the-top horror movie or series.
In any case, my standards for audio/visual media aren’t exactly high, it just has to be “entertaining”. Whether genuinely good or awesomely bad, just not boring or sappy, unless it’s so sappy and saccharine it’s back to terribly entertaining. For video games, they should be fun, even if it’s a walking simulator or interactive movie, which means that the narrative elements have to carry it in those cases. So to some sort of degree I’m fine with bad acting or directing in games, and a number of games I’ll also play in dub form even if anime fans insist that the original language is better, but the whole sub versus dub thing is another debate. And of course the option to mute the voice volume completely is good to have for those who can’t stand it.
Another recent example would be the new Skate game, which I haven’t touched in a while and not sure I will anytime soon given everything else going on at the moment, including Kirby Air Riders. Yes, I did end up getting a secondhand Switch 2 that worked and put the savings from that toward the game. It’s not often I get a console in its release year, but there’s been a lot for it now, which makes me concerned about next year’s release schedule if this one’s gotten so strong in a short time, plus the impending nuke of GTA 6 that I probably won’t be playing anytime soon unless I decide to check my local library. Or maybe whatever Devolver’s planning to release that exact day would actually catch my interest. Anyway, the new Skate game has this app assistant character who guides to the next objective or tutorial thing and attempts to match up with whatever this game thinks skater lingo is. There’s also an option to specifically turn off her comments during just skating around outside of missions, which I feel like if people become aware of this setting, they’ll probably toggle that off, unless they already turned down the voice volume entirely. I mean, I did toggle off that setting, just because I wanted to focus on attempting glitches so I didn’t quite need frequent feedback about intentionally bailing constantly to try to reach space, but I still wanted to hear how the apparent story in this weird skating-obsessed island was going.
Then there’s that clip from the game Viewfinder, which has this interesting puzzle mechanic involving attaching worlds from photos onto the level, but also felt the need to add a character who has to act amazed at the game mechanics and make other remarks. In the clip, the character says something like, “Hang on, did you just shift reality?” and Vinny Vinesauce himself goes and shuts off the voice volume immediately, only briefly turning it up once to hear what the subtitles described as “terrible guitar rift noises”, not even spelling “riff” correctly. Notably this streamer would also go on to mess with the voice settings in both the new Skate and Metroid Prime 4, though he was a little more forgiving with the latter to leave the voice on after a moment, mentioning wanting to show off how annoying this new character might be for the viewers, including taking over a minute to destroy a basic enemy due to being unable to time shots with basic follower AI that just constantly shoots and reloads.
Long story short, dorky characters who act as comic relief and possibly assistants in video games and such, for better or worse against the main narrative, just keep happening. Like sure, have sidequests that end up being hilarious but the main story is pretty dramatic, that seems to be what some folks are after. Kinda like how the Yakuza/Like A Dragon series handled its big difference between the main and side quests, but now the series features a guy who’s obsessed over turn-based RPGs as the main protagonist and there’s a spinoff about pirates in Hawaii. The series just ends up weird either way, and the weird mixed with the drama works in its favor. I’m not after the perfect game here, but there’s a lot of good ones, and a number of good ones have some crust to them, whether it’s with age or just weird decisions. I have my limits with some things but it’s not often I’m running into them.
If a certain trend ends up dragging down a bunch of games then it’ll eventually have to stop so they can sell more copies, otherwise it’ll even itself out probably or at least people might not be as collectively loud about it. Then there’s the case of Call of Duty, where people seem to be cooling off on that more than ever, but it’ll still sell lots thanks to their core addict audience which practically works as a pyramid scheme; essentially people get the game because their friends are playing it online and so on. It’s the big thing propping up Microsoft’s insanely profit-chasing staff-cutting gaming division at this point and might not hold much longer if enough of those friends’ friends drop out. And I and many others don’t feel like spending $1000 USD on an Xbox of any sort, even if it’s a portable PC one. Unless I really want an original Xbox or 360 signed by Fred Durst or some other celebrity, but those were Dreamcasts anyway.