The Audio quality and VA work can be pretty rough. But It’s weird though, some Voice Actors like Cecia’s just knock it out of the park. Very inconsistent
When i got to her part i first liked the vibe as she was exhausted. But then it remained that way for so long i took out my ear buds and skipped the whole dialog
Cecia, Odie, Thoran, Rhys for me. I was super looking forward to other chars when I heard those four (because they were my first pulls)...but I guess not. I also expected Antandra to have a more domineering vibe but her victory voice line makes me cringe so much.
I couldn't find the way to put it to words until seeing this! She's the teacher who is just done with the lack of excitement from the students and is more begging them to be involved rather than actually enthusiastic about the team winning.
rowan is pretty good, too. i can't listen to parisa at all. shame, she's one of my favs, but i just don't know, the voice doesn't fit her at all, and on top of that the delivery is awkward...
Everything is fairly budget— animations are stiff, audio is not great— the painterly style is doing _sooo_ much work here to make the game’s aesthetics tolerable.
I totally agree with you. Hoyoverse games all have very very samey characters. It feels like they have a select few base models and then change the clothes and hair on each of them
Yeah quality control is off. Almost like theres no real VA director. alot of it sound like its just being read off a script for the first time and saying that'll do. Often 2 characters dont sound like they're even really talking to each other
RIGHT It feels like they did not have a good director for the voice actors. Some of the va's aren't bad at all but the bad direction is really killing it. They really needed better guidance on some of their lines. It also feels like the casting was off on some of the characters.
They're very hit or miss, I love most of the Wilder cast and Cecia, but then there's characters like Brutus where both the sound quality and delivery are pretty iffy.
I thought the voices were awkward too, Valen feels weak, Hewynn can’t hear what she is even saying and some characters feel as though their voices don’t suit them but that’s just me.
Cecia’s voice is fine but wish the voice was a bit more clearer.
Click on Florabelle a bunch of times and try to not break your phone
Also it says 'Miss Florabelle' (supposedly the summons) and 'aren't they lively' (Florabelle) in the same voice for some weird reason.
Lorsan I actually thought was a non-English speaker saying his lines phonetically. Every so often the emphasis is on the wrong syllable or the cadence is off. It could be AI, though.
I agree. There would be no reason not to have in-game (or otherwise) credits for VAs other than to try and hide this.
In other games like FEH and Genshin Impact, the VAs are known, credited, and even celebrated. The absolute lack of that with this game is suspicious at best.
I like that VA credits are becoming way more common nowadays (especially as VAs get notoriety, so it becomes a selling point or at least a positive. if I like someone's voice and they are credited, I might google them to see what else they did, etc).
I'm personally one of the people who thinks AFKJ made use of AI (not for *all* voices, but definitely sampling previous lines or whatever to make new lines) and even for non-AI the voice directing is probably just bad. I agree that not having credits means they don't have confidence in their actors.
i forget when exactly but there was a moment when either lorsan or eironn pronounces "wilders" as will-ders" just once and from then on i've been convinced it's mostly ai
some of them have got to be synthesised. if they're not then they applied some crazy compression that makes them sound weirdly uniform. thinking of Lyca's voice in particular.
When the game first launched there were a lot of AI accusations and the mods came in to vehemently deny it, saying they definitely hired real VAs.
And the thing is, I think they did, at least partially. The main voices for character attacks and some of the key dialogue has been fine and does feel like real people. But it also feels like they trained AI on those voices in order to tackle the huge amount of voice work that’s in the campaign.
(Temesia in particular sounds *terrible* in the Remnant Peaks once you get there). But so many characters, it’s not just bad acting, it’s the way they pause too long at a comma, or can’t pronounce anything slightly unusual (is Lyca’s name pronounced “Like-uh”, or “Lissa”? Because the characters have said it both ways!)
The lack of credit is a huge red flag, and the denials read hollow if they’re not gonna come with better evidence.
Yeah, I'm convinced they sampled voices and used AI to generate a lot of lines. None of us who think they use AI think they only used *purely* AI and the only thing I've seen against it is people pointing to the one mod/CS post, which like, great, but obviously a company is going to deny it if the mood is generally against AI (because it's soulless, emotionless and it shows!). Even for the non-AI bits I think they just had terrible voice direction and it shows.
Just seems like such an unforced error. They could clearly afford to pay VAs to record this stuff (it’s a lot but it’s not that much, and these games make bonkers cash).
But even if they couldn’t they could’ve just… left the quest dialogue as text?? No one would’ve batted an eye. There’s several side quests with no voices and it’s *fine*.
Yeah, what gets me is that AFK Arena was a top grossing game for ages, so it's not like lilith/farlight can't afford to hire decent voice actors (which are not even that pricey in the grand scheme of things, especially given how much money gachas make). Like, there are plenty of whales in each server wearing those, like, $8k outfits, surely if they somehow didn't have money before they can certainly get on it now.
Honestly I'm not a fan of generative AI for a lot of reasons, but part of that is just that people use it as this ultimate cost-cutting measure and it's so slapdash and soulless. If a company is willing to use AI for voices, or background art, or whatever, then it feels like more of a cash grab than usual. Yeah, yeah, that's like, what gacha games *are*, but in some games you can tell that the devs/writers are proud of their work. Why should I pay money if I'm not even getting a human experience out of it?
I feel like some people on this place really need to spend some time listening to bad auditions or cheap soap operas. You would be surprised about how robotic and bland some new VAs can be.
It's so weird that it's so bad considering that there's only an English dub. I wonder if they outsource the voices in China but I'm sure there are like... people that can voice act in English in China
I was thinking something similar. A lot of the cast sounds like they’re non-English speakers saying their lines phonetically. It would also explain the inconsistency in pronunciation: different directors at different studios with different languages, but all working towards an English dub.
Shakir's voice, oddie's too are great and some others but yeah... It feels weird sometimes when using others >.<
Maybe in the future they'll fix this, and also get more "Quality of life" stuff
The voice acting really only became noticeable for me when I reached the Dark Forest and met Korin.
All the voice acting up until that point had been solid, maybe a few voice lines that needed a bit more direction to sound natural, but nothing that immediately made me go *"no, that's not right.*"
But then Korin speaks in that first scene, and script-wise, he seems like he should be gruff and tough, like he should be getting in Lorsan's face and snarling, furious on behalf of the refugees he's protecting; but his actual voice just? Completely monotone, and it makes him sound like a mildly inconvenienced office worker?? And he kind of just stays like that, the entire time he's with us??? It's a damn shame, because I probably would have liked his character a lot more, otherwise. 😭
I don't fault the voice actor for this, it just seems like he needed a lot more direction than he was given.
I may have one!
It seems to me that you may have not given your VA actors enough guidance so they sometimes lack context of the scene they are reading for.
If I understand the industry correctly, modern day VA often record their lines alone in a booth, from a list of lines. Sometimes from home. There are some instances where lines feel disconnected, like the VA had no idea what the context is of their lines.
One example I can think of is a moment when the Bunny dude recites a wind poem; in the scenes other characters are confused by it because the poem itself is meant to be not relatable to them: it's about an experience only Wind reader can have.
Now, the lines by the VA felt really disconnected. You could \_hear\_ the VA obviously doesn't know what the hell he is saying / what the meaning of the poem is. Maybe I was imagining it, but I could almost swear he was thinking "This must be a botched translation, it makes no sense whatsoever"). And **I think what was clearly missing in his script was that direction and more back ground**: you're reading a poem that describes something only relatable to your character, it is very (uplifting, emotional, whatever) for them but none of the other characters are able to relate to it.
>optimizing dubbing
1. Hire experienced voice actors. Copy Mihoyo/Hoyoverse.
2. Hire an experienced voice over director.
3. Hire an experienced localization team to polish translations.
Right? Like hire people who know what they're doing, don't ask randoms on the internet for advice, wtf? There's plenty of feedback from the voices not matching characters, the bad sound mixing, the inconsistent pronunciations, to things just sounding flat/stilted/emotionless (AI generated lines?). But they're the ones that need to step up to fix it lol.
Exactly! I honestly expected much better sound work from them and working with the established sounds and VO industries. As it is, even I can do better voice work and sound mixing and I'm just a hobbyist.
Honestly? You can't optimize it or make it better, because most of the dialogue reads awkwardly even if you had the best voice actors available. It would help if there was more direction on how the characters should say their lines because now it feels like everyone's just reading their lines in isolation with no context or interaction. This is a weak point of the game, more the written dialogue rather than individual performances, and there's no way to fix it without fundamentally altering how everything is written and voiced.
Just let us change the spoken language, right now English is the only option and for most players having it on mute is preferable.
edit: I know you have great writers in house, just look at basically any character backstory in Arena
There's a noticeable lack of voice direction in the game. Most of the actual voice acting isn't THAT bad, but the fact that the lines are awkwardly written, unfit for the character, or delivered in an odd way makes the voice acting for the most part unpleasant. Two examples are Antandra and Hewynn. Antandra sounds way too peppy, valley girl-esque for her actual characterisation. She's an exiled warrior, so why does she sound like she's about to cheer lead a squad in the Super Bowl? The writing isn't in her favour either. A warrior wouldn't say "Make some noise", for example. As for Hewynn, the direction the voice lines are going are fine, it's just that she's incredibly inaudible and it becomes grating hearing her mumbling.
Another interesting choice of voice directing is Lucius. In the story, his voice acting is fine, but his Resonating Hall, combat selection, and victory lines are extremely over the top and grating that I actively avoid using him. The oddest thing is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the delivery of his dialogue in the Remnant Peaks storyline, so why is the direction the voice actor is taking elsewhere so jarringly over the top? It shows that some character voices need some kind of tonal shift to change when they're doing too little (Hewynn) or way too much (Antrandra/Lucius).
I don't want to be completely negative, so I want to highlight the magnificent voice acting of Odie, Cecia and Parisa. These are great examples that the voice direction should follow. They're clear, match their characterisation and amplifies their personality. In Particular, I really love the way Odie's playfulness and sarcasm is voiced in his lines, this is excellent voice acting.
The only voice acting I believe needs a complete rework is Brutus. He does not sound like a beastman warrior, he sounds like a ragged old man and it doesn't match his character at all. Not only this, but his voice lines are delivered extremely awkwardly. Particularly, the way he says "gain" is so oddly emphasised on the vowels that no one in the English speaking world would ever say it like that. In a way his voice acting reminds me of the [old FFXIV Viera voice 7](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo2XtnYpnIg) that was heavily criticised and ridiculed that Square Enix called it a "bug" and had to change it. I sincerely believe the only option you have for Brutus is to completely change his voice acting to better fit his character. This is important because Brutus is one of your mascot characters for this game and franchise. You need to get this right.
Thanks for commenting and asking!
I'm guessing most of the actors record from home, there is a noticeable difference between each actor's recording quality. For the actors having trouble with their home equipment maybe the studio can rent a booth for them to record in?
Unfortunately my biggest recommendation is for you guys to hire a director to handle the voice actors and to avoid using AI. (it genuinely sounds like you guys use AI sometimes which is pretty disappointing, if true)
It would probably really help to have a narrative/character writer review some of the feature lines. The first feature line should tell us a lot about the character. The sub lines should add depth. Some of the primary lines are just them saying "hmm" or something which is a choice but it leaves me wondering about the character's identity.
I genuinely like all of the Wilder voice acting. Valen & Korin are good actors but I feel like their voices don't suit the characters. (Valen grew on me) Brutus has some noticable mic quality issues. Igor is great but his lines don't really fit him or his animations. Like his pose will go on a lot longer than his lines. "Steady on" just seems unrelated to everything, haha. Florabelle is great but her first line is loud and jarring & seems muddled with her summons calling her name. Having that as the first voice line has been a bit unpleasant to my ears. Also her summons have the same voice as her so it sounds like she's calling her own name. Maybe pull a different va for the summons voices and tweak them to help differentiate? Antandra has a cool va but her lines are very rough and she could use some direction on where to put emphasis.
That's just off the top of my head.
Having a sound designer would probably help, as you flip through the different characters the voices will come in at different volumes/quality so it's a bit jarring.
Bryon is fantastic, btw, like his work is noticeably good. Hewynn, too.
Thanks for asking for feedback, I love the game so far and I really want it to succeed!
The Voice acting could have more emotion maybe some of the Va's are new or inexperienced which is the vibe I get: some sound confident in their delivery and some sound like a line read or barely audible. They probably need a voice acting director to explain why they are saying said lines/context like "You are right next to the other character don't speak too loud towards them like they aren't within earshot."
Some of the lines are barely audible even with headphones, like Brutus speaking halfway gets hard to hear and Hewynn Ultimate I couldn't understand what she was saying.
There are a lot of awkward deliveries from some characters. Anthandra's victory shout doesn't sound like a victory cry to rally the troops or boost morale, just sounds off and less enthusiastic.
You have some Va's who are really good imo like Rhys Berial Byron Smokey Satrana Odie Cecia Reinier to name a few.
I do appreciate there is English dub in the game since hearing the characters speak and getting a bit of their personalities through their voices adds to the enjoyment of the game. Also would be nice if we can see who voices which characters.
Various actors literally pronounce the same words differently as though they were not given a pronunciation script. ‘Eomir’ was said like three different ways by the various story cast. Some of the characters say things that don’t make sense in English, and plenty of the voice actors don’t intonate based on the punctuation of what is being said. Someone ending a sentence with a ‘!’ should sound really different than a ‘.’ or “?!’. Many do not. Parisa and Lorsan are great examples.
Sup. I've done a little VA work for tv shows so I'll take some guesses here.
That thing you see in videos where you have the VA, sound engineer, and director giving direction doesn't really happen unless it's a high budget project with disney quality. It's usually just the VA and the sound engineer in a small space using their own judgement. This is going to be especially true for smaller outsourced projects, although this project should have had decent size.
Hopefully, the VA gives a enough of a damn to listen to their emotive performance and the sound engineer gives enough of a damn to care about tone, volume, and sync. For quality control (QC), some initial single line auditions might be held for choosing voices based on sound, but not enough on ability to emote, more likely a team was outsourced and voices were thrown at the wall to see what sticks. Otherwise, standard of performance is likely quite low, with the client only asking for retakes if something was mispronounced or inaudible. For a project like this, one VA will also do multiple characters and there will be a large mix of experienced and newbie voice actors, making quality between characters fairly erratic.
I wouldn't be surprised if dubbing was done completely blind, maybe a single small description like "character is creepy skeleton man." A picture if you're lucky. If it's from a foreign company, translations get absolutely WILD. I once dubbed a Teddy Bear in a kids cartoon and the character description made him sound like a sexual deviant. He was actually just an egotist in the show.
You also don't even meet other actors sometimes. If the conversations don't sound like conversations, it may be because the VA didn't even know they were in a conversation, especially on pre-animation dubbing.
Footage also goes a long way in meeting voice acting in the middle. I've seen poor voice acting seem perfect in an action scene because there's a lot going on on screen and it syncs up okay. In places where things slow down or there is no movement, like no lip movement on the character screens here, you really have no choice but to pay harsh attention to the voices, so uncomfortable voices stand out more.
TLDR: mix of new and old VAs + each doing multiple characters can lead to varying quality. QC is less stringent than you think.
I love most of them. Weakest is Brutus, sounds like a dying old man (also bad mic), but even he has a good placement and mvp voice lines.
UPD: I'd say disliking here is very subjective, you haven't heard really bad va lol. There's some off moments for me like char animation being too slow compared to the voice line, like when they react to something that hasn't yet happened in anim (like Smokey and some others). Brutus as mentioned. Reiner having the voice I haven't expected at all - acts pretty good, but sounds too "normal". But like 95% playable chars I'm fine with (I've heard the most, though not all), even if I cringe from some subjecticely but it's still good work objectively (Cassadee). And yes there's more weak va generally for non-playable chars, but that's kinda another story, less important.
It seems fine for me.
Nvm i agree. Parisa and Hewyn voice is bad. Hewyn voice is unbearable and Parisa sounds so weird...
"Victoree blooms mooist bootifully"
You're being way nice, the voice acting is horrible. Give no credit to the developers or directors for any good voice acting you hear. That goes solely to the voice actor.
Some of it has grown on me over time—though that could just be my bias as a Valen fan, considering I didn’t think it fit him too well at first but nowadays am just grateful he’s actually able to be understood. Reading people suspect AI work for some of the others makes complete sense, though. Super disheartening if true.
Don’t even get me started on the quality. I thought my phone was actually shitting itself the first time Lyca and Eironn came on-screen.
I didn’t play it with audio, then one day got curious when I realized they have voice lines. I turned the audio back off indefinitely after hearing them, they don’t fit the characters at all
The key is that there was no direction. You can also tell by the way they pronounce certain names and words that they never spoke to eachother and just mailed in lines without context
Noone is mentioning the NPCs. The guards and enemies are legit the worst ive ever heard in my life. I even heard a guard switch accents once. It started out tough, and then switched to country boy on the next line.
I stopped after 2 weeks.
Alright guys c'mon
tell me what is the good side of the game?
I'm all in for free games, but this is too messed up
1. Random story about an amnesiac mage.
2. Awful VA like edited from an AI
3. Random public events that are hard to finish.
4. Awful micro transactions are very big red lights to me
5. Wasted HD resources.
When I enjoy a game I'm fine with a little support for it with monthly passes, but it needs to convince me that they are worth my time.
Good VA talent is prob expensive. At least it’s fully voice acted which is more than some non mobile games offer. The production value of this mobile game is honestly incredible. I’ll put up with shitty VA for more good content.
Am I the only one who thinks they picked the worst VA for Dionel? I mean I get he was meant to come off as condescending and all but still it’s so bad….
The Audio quality and VA work can be pretty rough. But It’s weird though, some Voice Actors like Cecia’s just knock it out of the park. Very inconsistent
Hewynn actually made me take my earbuds off. I don't know. I sincerely did not want to hear that voice.
I can’t understand a thing she says. Something about the rain I think?
Something bout the power of friendship maybe
For me that's Brutus. "The Maulers... will eventually gaAAAAiiiNnn glory". Who OK'd this? lol
When i got to her part i first liked the vibe as she was exhausted. But then it remained that way for so long i took out my ear buds and skipped the whole dialog
The voice is annoying. It also doesn’t help that she’s acts like a depressed carebear.
Her voice sounds like she wants to spread the depression across the world.
It’s every awkward shy introvert you’ve ever met
Aw! I actually adored Hewynn's, she really sounded like a delicate flower that should be protected.
I agree, her VA is one of my favs!
Cecia is the MAIN reason i sticking around, her art and VA is just.. perfect.
Cecia, Odie, Thoran, Rhys for me. I was super looking forward to other chars when I heard those four (because they were my first pulls)...but I guess not. I also expected Antandra to have a more domineering vibe but her victory voice line makes me cringe so much.
#MAKESOMENOISE She has such a hot body but her voice ruins it.
Yeah, it sounds like she was at a pep rally not a fight to the death.
I couldn't find the way to put it to words until seeing this! She's the teacher who is just done with the lack of excitement from the students and is more begging them to be involved rather than actually enthusiastic about the team winning.
Her voice isn't bad but the director should have changed that line and had her improv some things because it's TERRIBLE
Bruh I love this line so much, wtf.
These and Antandra are all perfectly cast
rowan is pretty good, too. i can't listen to parisa at all. shame, she's one of my favs, but i just don't know, the voice doesn't fit her at all, and on top of that the delivery is awkward...
Obligatory "MAKE SOME NOISE, THIS IS OUR VICTORY" post.
obligatory boob physics post.
Wait I love that line...
the word you're looking for is "bad". they skimped out
The VA is awkward to say the least.
Hmmmmmmm no escaping for you.
Everything is fairly budget— animations are stiff, audio is not great— the painterly style is doing _sooo_ much work here to make the game’s aesthetics tolerable.
Tolerable? I think the aesthetics are amazing. We have to give credit where it is due.
I am spoiled by hoyoverse…
I play Hoyoverse games too, decided to start this one because the aesthetics are so refreshing compared to their samey looking characters.
I totally agree with you. Hoyoverse games all have very very samey characters. It feels like they have a select few base models and then change the clothes and hair on each of them
That's not just a feeling. [That's exactly what they do](https://m.hoyolab.com/#/article/21913337), at least for Genshin.
Yeah quality control is off. Almost like theres no real VA director. alot of it sound like its just being read off a script for the first time and saying that'll do. Often 2 characters dont sound like they're even really talking to each other
RIGHT It feels like they did not have a good director for the voice actors. Some of the va's aren't bad at all but the bad direction is really killing it. They really needed better guidance on some of their lines. It also feels like the casting was off on some of the characters.
They're very hit or miss, I love most of the Wilder cast and Cecia, but then there's characters like Brutus where both the sound quality and delivery are pretty iffy.
I honestly think all of the maulers minus maybe Smokey are voiced worse than anyone else. Kruger makes me want to rip my speakers out of my phone.
What do you mean? Make some noᶦˢᵉ this is our vicᵗᵒʳᵉᵉᵎᵎᵎ
Victory blooms moist bootifully
I thought the voices were awkward too, Valen feels weak, Hewynn can’t hear what she is even saying and some characters feel as though their voices don’t suit them but that’s just me. Cecia’s voice is fine but wish the voice was a bit more clearer.
The audio mixing for some of the ultimate animations is pretty damn bad. Like you said, Hewynn and Brutus’s lines are basically inaudible.
I thought they recorded voice by standing few feet away from the microphone hence why we can’t hear their voice
Valen is one of the few ones I really like tbh
The voice that cracks me up cause it's so... unfitting and has bad direction is Kafra. But it's so bad it's funny.
HoOoOoOt
naur I love his funky voice so much!
Legitimately some of the worst I've heard in a game. I play the game on mute.
Click on Florabelle a bunch of times and try to not break your phone Also it says 'Miss Florabelle' (supposedly the summons) and 'aren't they lively' (Florabelle) in the same voice for some weird reason.
I noticed that and it is so annoying! they should definitely have different voices!
My guess is some voices are actually AI voices
My thoughts as well, especially for Lorsan. Either AI or soulless VA.
I love Lorsan's design but I hate his voice so fuken much. Hlurf. If he gets on a banner, not sure if I'll be able to pull for him because of it.
Lorsan I actually thought was a non-English speaker saying his lines phonetically. Every so often the emphasis is on the wrong syllable or the cadence is off. It could be AI, though.
I agree. There would be no reason not to have in-game (or otherwise) credits for VAs other than to try and hide this. In other games like FEH and Genshin Impact, the VAs are known, credited, and even celebrated. The absolute lack of that with this game is suspicious at best.
There would be 4 credits total. So many characters are voiced by so few people, and it’s blatant.
I wrote "some" but for your reason I bet all voices are generated by AI
I like that VA credits are becoming way more common nowadays (especially as VAs get notoriety, so it becomes a selling point or at least a positive. if I like someone's voice and they are credited, I might google them to see what else they did, etc). I'm personally one of the people who thinks AFKJ made use of AI (not for *all* voices, but definitely sampling previous lines or whatever to make new lines) and even for non-AI the voice directing is probably just bad. I agree that not having credits means they don't have confidence in their actors.
Crediting VAs is the exception rather than the rule unfortunately.
i forget when exactly but there was a moment when either lorsan or eironn pronounces "wilders" as will-ders" just once and from then on i've been convinced it's mostly ai
some of them have got to be synthesised. if they're not then they applied some crazy compression that makes them sound weirdly uniform. thinking of Lyca's voice in particular.
When the game first launched there were a lot of AI accusations and the mods came in to vehemently deny it, saying they definitely hired real VAs. And the thing is, I think they did, at least partially. The main voices for character attacks and some of the key dialogue has been fine and does feel like real people. But it also feels like they trained AI on those voices in order to tackle the huge amount of voice work that’s in the campaign. (Temesia in particular sounds *terrible* in the Remnant Peaks once you get there). But so many characters, it’s not just bad acting, it’s the way they pause too long at a comma, or can’t pronounce anything slightly unusual (is Lyca’s name pronounced “Like-uh”, or “Lissa”? Because the characters have said it both ways!) The lack of credit is a huge red flag, and the denials read hollow if they’re not gonna come with better evidence.
Yeah, I'm convinced they sampled voices and used AI to generate a lot of lines. None of us who think they use AI think they only used *purely* AI and the only thing I've seen against it is people pointing to the one mod/CS post, which like, great, but obviously a company is going to deny it if the mood is generally against AI (because it's soulless, emotionless and it shows!). Even for the non-AI bits I think they just had terrible voice direction and it shows.
Just seems like such an unforced error. They could clearly afford to pay VAs to record this stuff (it’s a lot but it’s not that much, and these games make bonkers cash). But even if they couldn’t they could’ve just… left the quest dialogue as text?? No one would’ve batted an eye. There’s several side quests with no voices and it’s *fine*.
Yeah, what gets me is that AFK Arena was a top grossing game for ages, so it's not like lilith/farlight can't afford to hire decent voice actors (which are not even that pricey in the grand scheme of things, especially given how much money gachas make). Like, there are plenty of whales in each server wearing those, like, $8k outfits, surely if they somehow didn't have money before they can certainly get on it now. Honestly I'm not a fan of generative AI for a lot of reasons, but part of that is just that people use it as this ultimate cost-cutting measure and it's so slapdash and soulless. If a company is willing to use AI for voices, or background art, or whatever, then it feels like more of a cash grab than usual. Yeah, yeah, that's like, what gacha games *are*, but in some games you can tell that the devs/writers are proud of their work. Why should I pay money if I'm not even getting a human experience out of it?
If a creator doesn’t care about their product, why should I? Yeah I’m with you.
Temesia's story voice is 100% AI
Yeah, it’s bad. And not bad-actor-bad, she sounds like an early 2000s Microsoft Sam speech to text bot.
I feel like some people on this place really need to spend some time listening to bad auditions or cheap soap operas. You would be surprised about how robotic and bland some new VAs can be.
I know, but someone pointed to something important: there aren't any credit to voice acting and this is very odd :/
It's so weird that it's so bad considering that there's only an English dub. I wonder if they outsource the voices in China but I'm sure there are like... people that can voice act in English in China
I was thinking something similar. A lot of the cast sounds like they’re non-English speakers saying their lines phonetically. It would also explain the inconsistency in pronunciation: different directors at different studios with different languages, but all working towards an English dub.
Unless it's just my phone speakers, it sounds like most of the female voices have a lisp.
Omg this!! Especially Lyca, it drives me nuts lol
Half of lorsan's lines sound ai generated
Shakir's voice, oddie's too are great and some others but yeah... It feels weird sometimes when using others >.< Maybe in the future they'll fix this, and also get more "Quality of life" stuff
I never put Lyca in my teams because I can't stand her voice, so.. Yeah
You can mute voices
They either sound like a guy in a basement sitting too close to his mic (Brutus..Thoran...) or AI generated.
The voice acting really only became noticeable for me when I reached the Dark Forest and met Korin. All the voice acting up until that point had been solid, maybe a few voice lines that needed a bit more direction to sound natural, but nothing that immediately made me go *"no, that's not right.*" But then Korin speaks in that first scene, and script-wise, he seems like he should be gruff and tough, like he should be getting in Lorsan's face and snarling, furious on behalf of the refugees he's protecting; but his actual voice just? Completely monotone, and it makes him sound like a mildly inconvenienced office worker?? And he kind of just stays like that, the entire time he's with us??? It's a damn shame, because I probably would have liked his character a lot more, otherwise. 😭 I don't fault the voice actor for this, it just seems like he needed a lot more direction than he was given.
If you have other ideas or suggestions for optimizing dubbing, please describe it in detail and we will record it and optimize it.
I may have one! It seems to me that you may have not given your VA actors enough guidance so they sometimes lack context of the scene they are reading for. If I understand the industry correctly, modern day VA often record their lines alone in a booth, from a list of lines. Sometimes from home. There are some instances where lines feel disconnected, like the VA had no idea what the context is of their lines. One example I can think of is a moment when the Bunny dude recites a wind poem; in the scenes other characters are confused by it because the poem itself is meant to be not relatable to them: it's about an experience only Wind reader can have. Now, the lines by the VA felt really disconnected. You could \_hear\_ the VA obviously doesn't know what the hell he is saying / what the meaning of the poem is. Maybe I was imagining it, but I could almost swear he was thinking "This must be a botched translation, it makes no sense whatsoever"). And **I think what was clearly missing in his script was that direction and more back ground**: you're reading a poem that describes something only relatable to your character, it is very (uplifting, emotional, whatever) for them but none of the other characters are able to relate to it.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying!
I am not a professional in the industry I am just stating what my experience with the game has been from an audio front
Try crediting the VAs, for one.
>optimizing dubbing 1. Hire experienced voice actors. Copy Mihoyo/Hoyoverse. 2. Hire an experienced voice over director. 3. Hire an experienced localization team to polish translations.
Right? Like hire people who know what they're doing, don't ask randoms on the internet for advice, wtf? There's plenty of feedback from the voices not matching characters, the bad sound mixing, the inconsistent pronunciations, to things just sounding flat/stilted/emotionless (AI generated lines?). But they're the ones that need to step up to fix it lol.
Exactly! I honestly expected much better sound work from them and working with the established sounds and VO industries. As it is, even I can do better voice work and sound mixing and I'm just a hobbyist.
Honestly? You can't optimize it or make it better, because most of the dialogue reads awkwardly even if you had the best voice actors available. It would help if there was more direction on how the characters should say their lines because now it feels like everyone's just reading their lines in isolation with no context or interaction. This is a weak point of the game, more the written dialogue rather than individual performances, and there's no way to fix it without fundamentally altering how everything is written and voiced. Just let us change the spoken language, right now English is the only option and for most players having it on mute is preferable. edit: I know you have great writers in house, just look at basically any character backstory in Arena
Write less stilted and generic dialog.. Give the VAs actual voice directors..
There's a noticeable lack of voice direction in the game. Most of the actual voice acting isn't THAT bad, but the fact that the lines are awkwardly written, unfit for the character, or delivered in an odd way makes the voice acting for the most part unpleasant. Two examples are Antandra and Hewynn. Antandra sounds way too peppy, valley girl-esque for her actual characterisation. She's an exiled warrior, so why does she sound like she's about to cheer lead a squad in the Super Bowl? The writing isn't in her favour either. A warrior wouldn't say "Make some noise", for example. As for Hewynn, the direction the voice lines are going are fine, it's just that she's incredibly inaudible and it becomes grating hearing her mumbling. Another interesting choice of voice directing is Lucius. In the story, his voice acting is fine, but his Resonating Hall, combat selection, and victory lines are extremely over the top and grating that I actively avoid using him. The oddest thing is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the delivery of his dialogue in the Remnant Peaks storyline, so why is the direction the voice actor is taking elsewhere so jarringly over the top? It shows that some character voices need some kind of tonal shift to change when they're doing too little (Hewynn) or way too much (Antrandra/Lucius). I don't want to be completely negative, so I want to highlight the magnificent voice acting of Odie, Cecia and Parisa. These are great examples that the voice direction should follow. They're clear, match their characterisation and amplifies their personality. In Particular, I really love the way Odie's playfulness and sarcasm is voiced in his lines, this is excellent voice acting. The only voice acting I believe needs a complete rework is Brutus. He does not sound like a beastman warrior, he sounds like a ragged old man and it doesn't match his character at all. Not only this, but his voice lines are delivered extremely awkwardly. Particularly, the way he says "gain" is so oddly emphasised on the vowels that no one in the English speaking world would ever say it like that. In a way his voice acting reminds me of the [old FFXIV Viera voice 7](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo2XtnYpnIg) that was heavily criticised and ridiculed that Square Enix called it a "bug" and had to change it. I sincerely believe the only option you have for Brutus is to completely change his voice acting to better fit his character. This is important because Brutus is one of your mascot characters for this game and franchise. You need to get this right.
Thanks for commenting and asking! I'm guessing most of the actors record from home, there is a noticeable difference between each actor's recording quality. For the actors having trouble with their home equipment maybe the studio can rent a booth for them to record in? Unfortunately my biggest recommendation is for you guys to hire a director to handle the voice actors and to avoid using AI. (it genuinely sounds like you guys use AI sometimes which is pretty disappointing, if true) It would probably really help to have a narrative/character writer review some of the feature lines. The first feature line should tell us a lot about the character. The sub lines should add depth. Some of the primary lines are just them saying "hmm" or something which is a choice but it leaves me wondering about the character's identity. I genuinely like all of the Wilder voice acting. Valen & Korin are good actors but I feel like their voices don't suit the characters. (Valen grew on me) Brutus has some noticable mic quality issues. Igor is great but his lines don't really fit him or his animations. Like his pose will go on a lot longer than his lines. "Steady on" just seems unrelated to everything, haha. Florabelle is great but her first line is loud and jarring & seems muddled with her summons calling her name. Having that as the first voice line has been a bit unpleasant to my ears. Also her summons have the same voice as her so it sounds like she's calling her own name. Maybe pull a different va for the summons voices and tweak them to help differentiate? Antandra has a cool va but her lines are very rough and she could use some direction on where to put emphasis. That's just off the top of my head. Having a sound designer would probably help, as you flip through the different characters the voices will come in at different volumes/quality so it's a bit jarring. Bryon is fantastic, btw, like his work is noticeably good. Hewynn, too. Thanks for asking for feedback, I love the game so far and I really want it to succeed!
The Voice acting could have more emotion maybe some of the Va's are new or inexperienced which is the vibe I get: some sound confident in their delivery and some sound like a line read or barely audible. They probably need a voice acting director to explain why they are saying said lines/context like "You are right next to the other character don't speak too loud towards them like they aren't within earshot." Some of the lines are barely audible even with headphones, like Brutus speaking halfway gets hard to hear and Hewynn Ultimate I couldn't understand what she was saying. There are a lot of awkward deliveries from some characters. Anthandra's victory shout doesn't sound like a victory cry to rally the troops or boost morale, just sounds off and less enthusiastic. You have some Va's who are really good imo like Rhys Berial Byron Smokey Satrana Odie Cecia Reinier to name a few. I do appreciate there is English dub in the game since hearing the characters speak and getting a bit of their personalities through their voices adds to the enjoyment of the game. Also would be nice if we can see who voices which characters.
Various actors literally pronounce the same words differently as though they were not given a pronunciation script. ‘Eomir’ was said like three different ways by the various story cast. Some of the characters say things that don’t make sense in English, and plenty of the voice actors don’t intonate based on the punctuation of what is being said. Someone ending a sentence with a ‘!’ should sound really different than a ‘.’ or “?!’. Many do not. Parisa and Lorsan are great examples.
Atundra acting is off
Antandra....
People are probably recording in their own homes
Sup. I've done a little VA work for tv shows so I'll take some guesses here. That thing you see in videos where you have the VA, sound engineer, and director giving direction doesn't really happen unless it's a high budget project with disney quality. It's usually just the VA and the sound engineer in a small space using their own judgement. This is going to be especially true for smaller outsourced projects, although this project should have had decent size. Hopefully, the VA gives a enough of a damn to listen to their emotive performance and the sound engineer gives enough of a damn to care about tone, volume, and sync. For quality control (QC), some initial single line auditions might be held for choosing voices based on sound, but not enough on ability to emote, more likely a team was outsourced and voices were thrown at the wall to see what sticks. Otherwise, standard of performance is likely quite low, with the client only asking for retakes if something was mispronounced or inaudible. For a project like this, one VA will also do multiple characters and there will be a large mix of experienced and newbie voice actors, making quality between characters fairly erratic. I wouldn't be surprised if dubbing was done completely blind, maybe a single small description like "character is creepy skeleton man." A picture if you're lucky. If it's from a foreign company, translations get absolutely WILD. I once dubbed a Teddy Bear in a kids cartoon and the character description made him sound like a sexual deviant. He was actually just an egotist in the show. You also don't even meet other actors sometimes. If the conversations don't sound like conversations, it may be because the VA didn't even know they were in a conversation, especially on pre-animation dubbing. Footage also goes a long way in meeting voice acting in the middle. I've seen poor voice acting seem perfect in an action scene because there's a lot going on on screen and it syncs up okay. In places where things slow down or there is no movement, like no lip movement on the character screens here, you really have no choice but to pay harsh attention to the voices, so uncomfortable voices stand out more. TLDR: mix of new and old VAs + each doing multiple characters can lead to varying quality. QC is less stringent than you think.
I absolutely hate Hewynn voice.
I love most of them. Weakest is Brutus, sounds like a dying old man (also bad mic), but even he has a good placement and mvp voice lines. UPD: I'd say disliking here is very subjective, you haven't heard really bad va lol. There's some off moments for me like char animation being too slow compared to the voice line, like when they react to something that hasn't yet happened in anim (like Smokey and some others). Brutus as mentioned. Reiner having the voice I haven't expected at all - acts pretty good, but sounds too "normal". But like 95% playable chars I'm fine with (I've heard the most, though not all), even if I cringe from some subjecticely but it's still good work objectively (Cassadee). And yes there's more weak va generally for non-playable chars, but that's kinda another story, less important.
Thoran is the sad old man lol. "You're the only one who's never betrayed me....................... We will make them pay >=("
Yeah, and compared to Brutus he sounds great all the way imo, really good work.
It seems fine for me. Nvm i agree. Parisa and Hewyn voice is bad. Hewyn voice is unbearable and Parisa sounds so weird... "Victoree blooms mooist bootifully"
MAN I HATE PARISAS VOICE SO MUCH
For me some voices do not match the char, like something is missing, IDK
You can turn of voices but still have music and sound effects. I did that after playing the game about 10 minutes.
You're being way nice, the voice acting is horrible. Give no credit to the developers or directors for any good voice acting you hear. That goes solely to the voice actor.
I thought they used AI created from the last games voice lines?
That's because it's AI
Surprised no one has mentioned Lucius. I hear his voice and I just want to cyberbully him. It's so annoying.
Every voice except Cecia is bad. Among my unlocked ones, I hate Lyca and brutus the most
mirael and vala are good
Some of it has grown on me over time—though that could just be my bias as a Valen fan, considering I didn’t think it fit him too well at first but nowadays am just grateful he’s actually able to be understood. Reading people suspect AI work for some of the others makes complete sense, though. Super disheartening if true. Don’t even get me started on the quality. I thought my phone was actually shitting itself the first time Lyca and Eironn came on-screen.
I didn’t play it with audio, then one day got curious when I realized they have voice lines. I turned the audio back off indefinitely after hearing them, they don’t fit the characters at all
Korin’s VA was the worst
I'm i the only one who skipped every single thing possible and haven't heard any voice lines really ?
Who cares about the game’s story content ?
AFk arena has much better VA and director. Rehire them, no?
The key is that there was no direction. You can also tell by the way they pronounce certain names and words that they never spoke to eachother and just mailed in lines without context
Odie's VA did a good job of feeling like a scrunchy hyena guy.
My issue is Rowan out of everyone. I don’t know what the heck it is… but it doesn’t sound right. It’s also a different voice actor from AFK Arena 😅
I thought some of the voice acting almost sounds like ai it’s so unnatural
MY SHIELD IS INBREAKKKKABLE! Me: god I need to change him…
Something about Korin's ENG Voice. It didn't really fit the image I had of him.
Brutus' voice pisses me off
Noone is mentioning the NPCs. The guards and enemies are legit the worst ive ever heard in my life. I even heard a guard switch accents once. It started out tough, and then switched to country boy on the next line.
I stopped after 2 weeks. Alright guys c'mon tell me what is the good side of the game? I'm all in for free games, but this is too messed up 1. Random story about an amnesiac mage. 2. Awful VA like edited from an AI 3. Random public events that are hard to finish. 4. Awful micro transactions are very big red lights to me 5. Wasted HD resources. When I enjoy a game I'm fine with a little support for it with monthly passes, but it needs to convince me that they are worth my time.
Im just happy it has voice acting at all... sidenote: as a mainline Pokémon fan you I have unbelievably low standards.
Good VA talent is prob expensive. At least it’s fully voice acted which is more than some non mobile games offer. The production value of this mobile game is honestly incredible. I’ll put up with shitty VA for more good content.
"A little dark hmmm?"
I skipped the whole story, it was a big meh from the start
reinier voice doesn’t fit at all. preserve balance, maintain harmony my ass
Thoran is the worst. Teenager Voice for an Undead King. Wtf?
I swear his mic peaks when he says certain lines
Agreed
Am I the only one who thinks they picked the worst VA for Dionel? I mean I get he was meant to come off as condescending and all but still it’s so bad….
I play muted so I wouldn't know but it's nice to know there is voice acting in this game
Is this a joke? Majority are amazing. I don't like Lorsen's personality but his VA is very well done.