Voice actors through the ages

[Steedward]

Complaints about the lack of variety in voice acting in Rome 2/Attila crop up from time to time here, and a friend and I were just discussing the games and got on to the subject ourselves. This prompted a little IMDB searching, shared for you here, which makes for pretty grim reading.

Rome, which I remember having pretty good spice, had 22:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0373274/...=tt_cl_sm#cast

Medieval 2, which had fantastic variety, a whopping 40 voice actors:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1072440/...=tt_cl_sm#cast

Empire also has a vast number (as is somewhat necessary), at 51 and Shogun 2 actually has a respectable 40-odd, but from my brief playing still sounded very limited.

Rome 2 meanwhile, has only 10 voice actors:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2849138/?ref_=rvi_tt

Attila, humorously (and of course erroneously) has one:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4070812/...f_=tt_ov_st_sm

CA is a large, rich studio... there's no reasonable reason for this decline in VA numbers and it really hurts the end product. This thread won't change anything, but it'll put numbers to the notion for anyone else thinking the same.

Here to hoping for a new engine and new budgetary structure for Medieval 3!

[AnonMilwaukean]

Attila has re-used a great deal of V/O and sounds from Rome 2. Generally, I don't mind this fact.

My only issue is with a very small amount of V/O related to Hunnic cavalry units in battle: they sometimes reference Parthia ("For Parthia!" or "Parthian Horsemen!"). This is very, very silly given that, well, even if the Huns had men from that area of the world, it probably was no longer called Parthia by then. So, it's sort of immersion breaking for me.

Again, the voice/over work is certainly less polished than some titles in the series, but it's at least passable in Attila save for some elements that really, really need to be addressed (and I'm sure there's probably one or two other silly things than the 'Parthia' one I mentioned).

[craziii]

this is so tiny of a concern it didn't even register in my mind.

[Riekopo]

I hope we can mod the voice acting. I would pay to have better voice acting in Attila. I can't stand the voices in diplomacy. Please post this on the official forum.

[Vice]

They should at least double the number...It always bugged me when the Greeks and the Romans had the same diplomacy voice...Would it of been so hard to get 2-4 different Barbarian VA's - 2-4 Greek VA's - 2-4 Eastern Factions VA's etc...

[Captain W. Handberg]

They should at least double the number...It always bugged me when the Greeks and the Romans had the same diplomacy voice...Would it of been so hard to get 2-4 different Barbarian VA's - 2-4 Greek VA's - 2-4 Eastern Factions VA's etc...

Yes, and both sound like they're British, instead of proto-Italian or proto-Greek.

All Barbarians got the same voice. The Germanic tribes should keep it, sure, but the Celts(just give them a Scottish accent, it's easy), Slavs (Not Russian. South Slavic). African tribes also need their unique voice acting.
I really like the Steppe Nomad's voice acting tho!

[Captain Arrrgh!]

Number of voice actors is not the issue. What is important is number of troops/characters speaking in game, and the variety of dialogue, and in this regard Rome 2 leads the way, both for immersion, cultural-specific remarks, and variety.

Rome 1's character dialogue was atrocious to the point of annoying, with the only notable dialogue being the Roman pre battle speeches. The quavering, metrosexual battlefield voice from Rome 1 is part of franchise legend now. The Middle eastern generals sounded like hissing reptilians, the Greek generals sounded like Chechen arms dealers. Campaign map voices were unremarkable.

Medieval 2's campaign voice acting was fantastic, and full of character, from coquettish princesses to marching generals. Battle speeches were an improvement over Rome 2, and there was great improvement in the faction negotiation dialogue.

With Empire, immersive voices began to really shine. Finally on the battlefield there was engaging, frequently humorous banter between the troops, heightening the nervous tension as your lines of musket men waited and chatted while the enemy marched towards you. The Native American warriors' voices were immersion breaking, though, failing entirely to sound like fearsome warriors, but sounding completely like the pasty white CA staff trying to sound like native warriors. "Ya-ya-yeee-aaah!" .... good grief.

Rome 2's voices are the best in the series, from the intro campaign's stories, to the various comments of the troops on the battlefield.

The various agents' voices and dialogue are FANTASTIC for Rome 2, reflecting their culture, and drawing on bits and pieces from classical history. The women agents' voices are dripping with intelligence and sexuality, the diplomats are both erudite and pompous, and the warrior agents suitably bombastic.

Unlike many fans, I actually like that pre battle speeches are now down real time on the battlefield, rather than in a pre recorded cut scene. The diplomatic dialogue is the most varied and intelligent yet, though the barbarian factions seem a trifle bit forced. "You're word horde is...."

Attila reuses most of the dialogue from Rome 2, but this has always been the case for CA - they always cut corners in animations and sound for their expansions.

In general, I don't see how anyone can complain about Rome 2's/Attila's voices, dialogue and voice acting.

[Captain Arrrgh!]

Also, like a lot of polls, the two choices are limited and a red herring when it comes to the topics of voice actors, dialogue, immersion, etc.

[GussieFinkNottle]

Number of voice actors is not the issue. What is important is number of troops/characters speaking in game, and the variety of dialogue, and in this regard Rome 2 leads the way, both for immersion, cultural-specific remarks, and variety.

Rome 1's character dialogue was atrocious to the point of annoying, with the only notable dialogue being the Roman pre battle speeches. The quavering, metrosexual battlefield voice from Rome 1 is part of franchise legend now. The Middle eastern generals sounded like hissing reptilians, the Greek generals sounded like Chechen arms dealers. Campaign map voices were unremarkable.

Medieval 2's campaign voice acting was fantastic, and full of character, from coquettish princesses to marching generals. Battle speeches were an improvement over Rome 2, and there was great improvement in the faction negotiation dialogue.

With Empire, immersive voices began to really shine. Finally on the battlefield there was engaging, frequently humorous banter between the troops, heightening the nervous tension as your lines of musket men waited and chatted while the enemy marched towards you. The Native American warriors' voices were immersion breaking, though, failing entirely to sound like fearsome warriors, but sounding completely like the pasty white CA staff trying to sound like native warriors. "Ya-ya-yeee-aaah!" .... good grief.

Rome 2's voices are the best in the series, from the intro campaign's stories, to the various comments of the troops on the battlefield.

The various agents' voices and dialogue are FANTASTIC for Rome 2, reflecting their culture, and drawing on bits and pieces from classical history. The women agents' voices are dripping with intelligence and sexuality, the diplomats are both erudite and pompous, and the warrior agents suitably bombastic.

Unlike many fans, I actually like that pre battle speeches are now down real time on the battlefield, rather than in a pre recorded cut scene. The diplomatic dialogue is the most varied and intelligent yet, though the barbarian factions seem a trifle bit forced. "You're word horde is...."

Attila reuses most of the dialogue from Rome 2, but this has always been the case for CA - they always cut corners in animations and sound for their expansions.

In general, I don't see how anyone can complain about Rome 2's/Attila's voices, dialogue and voice acting.

I agreed with everything except your take on the pre-battle speeches. I loved those long, situation-dependent speeches. Otherwise I'm fine with the voice acting, and I keep hearing hilarious bits of dialogue between troops.

In fact I like the choices for voice actors now, I think the new advisor works well and the clipped aristocratic accents of the Romans (together with earthier ones for the dialogue between grunts) work much better than the horrible teenage American accents they had in Rome TW.

Other aspects of the sound design are fantastic now too, every individual soldier killed will cry out (zoom in when your men are chasing routed troops to see this) and make a small thump sound as they crumple to the floor. More things make sounds, and the quality of sounds are better. On top of that, Beddow has written his best soundtrack yet for Attila, by a long way (though not quite Jeff van Dyck level).

[The Chocolate Jesus]

Number of voice actors is not the issue. What is important is number of troops/characters speaking in game, and the variety of dialogue, and in this regard Rome 2 leads the way, both for immersion, cultural-specific remarks, and variety.

Rome 1's character dialogue was atrocious to the point of annoying, with the only notable dialogue being the Roman pre battle speeches. The quavering, metrosexual battlefield voice from Rome 1 is part of franchise legend now. The Middle eastern generals sounded like hissing reptilians, the Greek generals sounded like Chechen arms dealers. Campaign map voices were unremarkable.

Medieval 2's campaign voice acting was fantastic, and full of character, from coquettish princesses to marching generals. Battle speeches were an improvement over Rome 2, and there was great improvement in the faction negotiation dialogue.

With Empire, immersive voices began to really shine. Finally on the battlefield there was engaging, frequently humorous banter between the troops, heightening the nervous tension as your lines of musket men waited and chatted while the enemy marched towards you. The Native American warriors' voices were immersion breaking, though, failing entirely to sound like fearsome warriors, but sounding completely like the pasty white CA staff trying to sound like native warriors. "Ya-ya-yeee-aaah!" .... good grief.

Rome 2's voices are the best in the series, from the intro campaign's stories, to the various comments of the troops on the battlefield.

The various agents' voices and dialogue are FANTASTIC for Rome 2, reflecting their culture, and drawing on bits and pieces from classical history. The women agents' voices are dripping with intelligence and sexuality, the diplomats are both erudite and pompous, and the warrior agents suitably bombastic.

Unlike many fans, I actually like that pre battle speeches are now down real time on the battlefield, rather than in a pre recorded cut scene. The diplomatic dialogue is the most varied and intelligent yet, though the barbarian factions seem a trifle bit forced. "You're word horde is...."

Attila reuses most of the dialogue from Rome 2, but this has always been the case for CA - they always cut corners in animations and sound for their expansions.

In general, I don't see how anyone can complain about Rome 2's/Attila's voices, dialogue and voice acting.

Absolutely agree with you.

[Imperator Artorius]

A very minor issue for me personally, but I prefer Medieval II's voice acting out of all the TW games.
Rome II/Attila's voice acting is decent enough (more so now without Mark Strong's monotone contributions), but the barbarian VA does get on my nerves a tad.
Ultimately its a strategy game, not a story driven TLOU-esque experience so voice acting is very far down the list of what money needs to be spent in my opinion.

[caratacus]

A very minor issue for me personally, but I prefer Medieval II's voice acting out of all the TW games.
Rome II/Attila's voice acting is decent enough (more so now without Mark Strong's monotone contributions), but the barbarian VA does get on my nerves a tad.
Ultimately its a strategy game, not a story driven TLOU-esque experience so voice acting is very far down the list of what money needs to be spent in my opinion.

Yes, but the voices do add to the atmosphere and immersion of the game, which R2TW definitely lacked. Some of the voices in R1TW were annoying but despite hiring an actor (Mark Strong) the result for R2TW was repetitive and somewhat out of place with the Roman period for my ears. Shameful display!!. Pity they didn't utilise Latin like Europa Barbarorum.

I agree that many of the voices in Medieval 2TW were well done. There was one particular voice that was reminiscent of Patrick Troughton's. Now he would have been a superb voice actor for Total War games. In fact a more deeper mature tone which he had, would be welcome in general.

The best voice acting in my opinion was in the Shogun games, possibly because they used authentic Japanese voice actors (or at least British-born Japanese voice actors) as well as dialogue in the Japanese language. The voice of the Dutch diplomat from Shogun still makes me laugh though.

Yes the use if Japanese was a good development.But didn't they drop it in Fall of the Samurai?

[Humble Warrior]

I didn`t like the voice acting in Rome 1 at all, far too American... Yea, I know, being British voiced isn`t any closer to realistic either. Hmm. Guess its those bad movies fault,

The MTW2 voice acting was brilliant, not absolutely real, but it was a good transference and it had that nice, gritty sounding feel `ar$e` as opposed to `a$$` for example. The unit voice acting was excellent as well especially since I never played the music, so i heard everything.

Rome 2, I hated. It was such a mish mash. Mostly sounds of interns mixed in with too little decent voice acting. Very bad.

Attila is better, a lot better. The general voices acting of main figures sounds authentic and have a strong ring of MTW2, I love the adviser speeches in battles; very real-feeling and appropriate. However, the unit speeches on ground level still take something to be desired and I can still here the red head.

I would have liked the General speech at the start, but it`s not very varied and is very easy to completely miss- also, he shouts unfeasibly hard. It just sounds like he`s trying too hard. Most of the time I can`t be bothered to listen to it. They should have used the adviser who tells you how the battle is going. He would`ve been much better.

[Captain Arrrgh!]

Yeah, it was a coin toss for me too, but in the end I prefer the in-battle speeches of Rome 2, primarily because Rome 1's voice acting was so horrid except for the Roman general.

[RGA]

All of my Total war games are in German and they all sound the same

Actually, after a while I changed my game language for Rome 2 and Attila to English and it's much better

[FrozenmenSS]

Complaints about the lack of variety in voice acting in Rome 2/Attila crop up from time to time here, and a friend and I were just discussing the games and got on to the subject ourselves. This prompted a little IMDB searching, shared for you here, which makes for pretty grim reading.

Rome, which I remember having pretty good spice, had 22:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0373274/...=tt_cl_sm#cast

Medieval 2, which had fantastic variety, a whopping 40 voice actors:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1072440/...=tt_cl_sm#cast

Empire also has a vast number (as is somewhat necessary), at 51 and Shogun 2 actually has a respectable 40-odd, but from my brief playing still sounded very limited.

Rome 2 meanwhile, has only 10 voice actors:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2849138/?ref_=rvi_tt

Attila, humorously (and of course erroneously) has one:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4070812/...f_=tt_ov_st_sm

CA is a large, rich studio... there's no reasonable reason for this decline in VA numbers and it really hurts the end product. This thread won't change anything, but it'll put numbers to the notion for anyone else thinking the same.

Here to hoping for a new engine and new budgetary structure for Medieval 3!

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahah Good call !!!

[Steedward]

I agreed with everything except your take on the pre-battle speeches. I loved those long, situation-dependent speeches. Otherwise I'm fine with the voice acting, and I keep hearing hilarious bits of dialogue between troops.

The speeches (proper pre battle speeches, not the 'speak until your general moves' rubbish) were a fantastic part of Rome and Med 2. For me, they gave the characters character and cemented their position in the world - my horrificly scarred general who's never been beaten by the Gauls and won't be dying today. Sometimes lines were a bit off or out of place, but the rate at which a sucessful speech came together was pretty damn high.

[barry12]

I'd rather they worked on giving the units more variety. I swear every Roman soldier has the same face.

[GussieFinkNottle]

I'd rather they worked on giving the units more variety. I swear every Roman soldier has the same face.

I think it's actually just the framing of faces by the helmet that gives this impression (particularly evident in the third picture below). If you look closer the face variety is actually pretty good, down even to stuff like eye colour. And the detail in Attila is amazing, somehow a whole new level from Rome II, helmets, faces and armour look much better and even the teeth are highly detailed. Particle effects, dust kicked up by units and artillery projectiles barrelling through the earth kicking up clouds of dust all look great. The only things I thought were better visually in Rome II were the shields, which could have an incredible amount of variety, and the trees on the campaign map.
http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/...86767C7BF7178/
http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/...9145EBFC1A957/
http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/...07ED5D699636E/

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Tora]

The Afrighid's emissary has just popped in to negotiate a peace treaty - for a substantial fee from me, of course - in his best 'shifty foreigner' accent. After much haggling he turned me down, with the parting shot - 'texted' rather than spoken unfortunately - something along the lines of "Your accent is atrocious, at first I thought it was some sort of joke."

Sadly I'd closed it before I realised how amusing it was. Anyone else seen this?