GamerBraves Newsletter vol. 67 – Do Modern Video Games Need Voice Acting?

It really says something about video games that we now have awards for the best people voice acting a character in one. Where video game characters can become iconic from their voice alone. Even Mario, who still doesn’t speak in full dialogue, likely wouldn’t be quite the worldwide sensation without the “wahoos!” of Charles Martinet.

Pokemon is the highest-grossing media franchise of all time and with Scarlet and Violet coming out next week, there’s been a recent discussion regarding one aspect of the game: should it have full voice acting? It’s not just Pokemon either, Square Enix’s latest RPG Havestella also lacks full voice acting with many players feeling something is missing from the title as a result.

I can understand why developers may not see the need to have voices in their games. Hiring voice actors can be expensive, it also means that animations may have to be changed to match up the voices. There’s also the fact that less story-oriented games may not even need voice acting as they often don’t have a lot of dialogue. You can even argue this applies to Pokemon when much of its dialogue often includes lines like “I like shorts because they’re comfy to wear.”

Despite this though, I’d argue that a game series like Pokemon would actually benefit from voice acting and that’s in part because of how good the game’s design and the world are. To find out how, consider subscribing to our newsletter. You can read the full article for free just by putting your email address in the box below:

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