LogFAQs > #885267552

AllstarSniper32 posted...

Oh, and I actually liked Tidus' VA. I think most people just don't like it cause they played 9 FF games before it without any VAs.

Not really, because the performance doesn't really stand up well to games that came after, either. Even to people who grew up playing nothing but voiced games and only go back to hear their dialogue today, it's still poor audio.

Being the first voiced FF game WAS part of the problem - but less in the sense that people weren't used to the idea, and more because Square didn't know what the fuck they were doing yet and produced substandard audio tracks because they didn't have a high-quality anime-level voice director involved to keep the localization smooth.

Or to put it another way, it's precisely the same reason why a lot of early anime dubs sucked so much that purists ranted about how the subbed version was always better. Eventually, over time, dubbing practices became more advanced, directors and VAs became more skilled, and dubs became much, much better (at which point it was mostly only the crusty old-timers and anime hipsters who still screamed that subs were the Only True Way to watch anime).

A lot of the first voice-acted video games - FFX among them - were absolutely terrible. Because it took a few years for the industry to figure out how to do it well.

In FFX specifically, Tidus and Yuna were the absolute worst voices because it was Hedy Burress's first VA job and James Arnold Taylor was still pretty early in his own career, so the combination of their own inexperience, the lack of a skilled director to help compensate, and the added problems of attempting to match lip movements to characters who were originally animated speaking a different language (which makes a lot of their speeches kind of stuttering or filled with awkward pauses) meant that their performances weren't really as strong as they should have been.

Conversely, Tara Strong, John DiMaggio, and Paula Tiso were already established voice actors by the time of the game, so they were MUCH better at emoting solely via voice and matching lip movements without sounding as awkward. Even so, there are still people who were equally annoyed by Rikku (for being too goddamned chipper) or Wakka (for being a terrible islander stereotype)'s dialogue.

Matt McKenzie (Auron) was mainly in the same boat as Hedy Burress (ie, he was a normal actor and not a VA), but it was easier for him to do a good job because he was a mostly quiet, generally secondary character with much more subdued delivery.



Metalsonic66 posted...

James Arnold Taylor is a great actor.

NOW, maybe.

But FFX was one of his earlier roles, and it's entirely possible that his lack of experience and/or confident could have impacted his performance negatively.

For funsies, watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DR8pAjTu_M

That's the first VA job Mark Hamill ever had. Now watch/listen to that and compare it with his performance as the Joker in Batman: the Animated Series.


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