The power of a voice

Voice actors. They make a good game great and a great game, epic.

But many of them still work in relative anonymity, despite their amazing talents and the invaluable work they do bringing our favorite characters to life. Some, like the great Jennifer Hale are well known, but many toil in relative obscurity.

Then there are those who are also full on actors, and who mostly do voice work on the side. It's broad spectrum of people.

The first game that really made me sit up and take notice when it came to voice work, was Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. The main character (you) is voiced by none other than Ray Liotta. This alone makes the game amazing. It's like playing Miami Vice and Goodfellas all rolled into one. But he wasn't the only big name to voice that game. Oh no, I bet there will never again be a cast list for voice-over work that is as star studded as GTA:VC.

Apart from Ray Liotta we have William Fichtner, Tom Sizemore, Dennis Hopper, Burt Reynolds, Luis Guzmán, Philip Michael Thomas, Robert Davi, Danny Trejo, Gary Busey, Lee Majors, Fairuza Balk, Danny Dyer, Kevin McKidd and Debbie Harry. And that's just the first page on IMDB.

If someone was to produce a film with a cast list like this, every magazine, blog and entertainment channel in the world would be following the production like crazy.

Then we have talent like Mark Hamill. You may know him better as Luke Skywalker, but he has done sterling work as none other than The Joker. Both in the long running animation show and the recent video games. In fact, his resume has more voice work than face work. And it makes sense. Unlike Harrison Ford, Hamill couldn't get out from under the shadow of Star Wars, at least not in the same way. But as a voice-over actor, your face is irrelevant. Your voice, (obviously) is what counts. And just to be clear, I'm not saying voice work is easy or that it doesn't take talent, alright? It's hard work.

A talented voice-over artist can make you care about an otherwise unimportant character, or likewise make you hate her. Quests that might be a bit lackluster can shine if the voice-over people are allowed to do their thing. But since speech is one of the most, if not the most, important way we communicate, we also tend to take it a bit for granted. Unless you are mute, you talk every day. And to somehow make that exceptional, isn't easy.

An interesting note, is the fact that our brains tend to “save” voices. Some years ago, my wife and I used to watch morning TV before going to work. It was something to rest the eyes on while drinking coffee. One certain weekdays, we were shown The Powerpuff Girls, a silly cartoon about a trio of sisters in kindergarten who happened to be superheros. The episodes we watched were expertly dubbed to Finnish, but when we tried watching it in English, we couldn't. It sounded all wrong. That's the power of a voice. It's arguably worse than when a “regular” actor is changed. A new face automatically means a new voice, but when the face is the same and the character sounds all wrong, it's unbearable. It's the same problem when a band gets a new vocalist. Right sound – wrong voice.

If you care to find out more, I found a Youtube channel, that's all about this, at least who plays who. I only found it an hour ago, so I don't know much about it, but I'll link it anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/user/TeddyKGaming/playlists

That's that. Until next time, have a lovely week!