Who are the most poorly voice-acted/poorly cast characters in New Vegas?

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Dracomies

First time out of the vault
Hi!

I'd like to ask a question and I love how involved the community is here.

Who do you feel are the most poorly voice-acted/poorly cast characters in New Vegas? I'm working on a project in which I am going to fix this problem but would need to spot and find each and every poorly acted voice actor/voice actress. If you can, please list names of NPCs that could use some work.
 
Hi Dracomies! Love your work on New Vegas Redesigned. For now, though, I can't really think of any character off the top of my head. Since I'm currently in Zion, maybe Follows-Chalk? He's kind of sounded like a bit too old, of course his youth has passed as he admitted himself, but still...

And maybe also Stella? She supposedly much older, but sounds like a woman in her mid 20s..

All of these is just me, though, so feel free to ignore my dumb suggestion.
 
@BlackAngel

Do you have any you would recommend for the original game? Who are some actors that really stuck out as horrible in the original New Vegas?
 
Izak said:
I never liked General Oliver, I feel as though he lacked emotion during the last confrontation, he definitely wasn't as well cast as Lanius which was a shame as he should've been on par with his Legion equivalent.
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Well that's kind of the point. Oliver was a sniveling incompetent chump. He was known as "General Wait and See" by even his own men. Of course he's not going to be very intimidating. Hell, when you fight him as the Legion he doesn't fight you directly until he has to, preferring to hide behind an armada of NCR Power Armors, laser trip wires, and unpassable laser walls.
 
The most poorly voiced characters are the ones where the voice artist wasn't sent a full script to read, so they have no idea which words to emphasize with the proper infliction.
To take a quote from Taxi Driver: "We are the people" is a little different than "We are the people".
The right infliction on the right word makes all the difference.
That's what I think is Bethesdas weak point regarding dialogue, I've seen bad examples of this in every single one of their games. Fallout 4 is the worst so far.
 
Ragemage said:
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He just doesn't have the correct intonation when you're threatening him with death or when you're actively fucking up his legacy.

I feel as though his voice actor just isn't in it when he says "No get away from me you goddamn TV on wheels!", he sounds as though he's only slightly pissed off when in reality you're ordering his brutal execution; he should be scared shitless, not slightly agitated.
 
Izak said:
he should be scared shitless, not slightly agitated.
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Well that's another thing. Though Oliver in and of himself is a coward, and Colonel Hsu is the real one fit for General status, Oliver knows how to put on a brave act. Even when you confront him with armies of securitrons or entire hordes of Legionaries, he doesn't shit his pants. At most he just gets a little uneasy. That's probably the reason why he got the job. Oliver isn't known for his battle tactics or his skills when it comes to strategy, but what he is known for is giving rousing speeches, kissing ass, and holding strong in the face of the enemy, even if he's secretly wetting himself from fear.
 
I suppose I just don't get that; when I hear Oliver speak I feel as though I'm listening to someone reading from a script rather than a pretending battlefield commander, with Lanius I felt a wide range of emotions, with Oliver I felt disappointment.
 
Izak said:
I suppose I just don't get that; when I hear Oliver speak I feel as though I'm listening to someone reading from a script rather than a pretending battlefield commander, with Lanius I felt a wide range of emotions, with Oliver I felt disappointment.
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Considering how absolutely amazing the voice acting in New Vegas is, I really don't think they'd let General Oliver sound so hard-assed when delivering his lines without knowing what they were doing. Like I said, I feel like he's just trying to bluff you into thinking he's emotionless and a tough guy. Fairly certain one of the speech options asks him about this. I mean really, why go through all the work of making so many good voice actors and then fucking up the final product on basically the end-game speech guy? It doesn't make sense unless you remember the fact Oliver's secretly a flat foot trying to puff his chest out and seem like post-apocalypse Patton.

Meanwhile, to steer us back closer to the original topic, my least favorite voice actor is none other than the guy who writes the voice acting atrocities in FO4, Emil:



And yes, Emil really did voice act this guy.
 
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Oh dude, this is specifically for New Vegas so that Dracomies can redo things in New Vegas that weren't well received. I do agree though.
 
General Oliver says "Plumbed" instead of "Plumed". If there was a character I wanted re-voiced, it would be him, because damn does that one word take me out of the moment.

I guess some of the more generic characters could be re-voiced just to give us some more variety. Characters like Mick and Ralph, Hardin, Ranger Jackson, Motor-Runner, Eddie, some of the lesser Legion. Characters like that.

And if you could voice act some of the Generic NPC soundbites, again, just to give a bigger variety of voices, that'd be great.

I know you've re-aged Elder McNamara, but I always felt his voice was too young for the role. The voice of a 50-ish year old man would be more appropriate. Someone senior, but still a lot younger than Elijah.

A controversial opinion is Ulysses. I know some people have complained about the performance. I agree to an extent but you'd better find one hell of a badass voice to replace it.

I wouldn't want you re-voicing characters just for the sake of re-voicing though. I've fallen in love with a great deal of some of the better acted NPCs. Melissa comes to mind ("Diffclaws"), Boyd, Nash, characters like that. Basically anyone who sounds like the voice actor really put a fun little twist into the voice.

Characters like Astor and Frank Weathers though? Sure go nuts.

EDIT: Should probably just say, love your work. Keep it up.
 
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Thank you for this great feedback. Also Oliver was mentioned quite a few times. I didn't notice him before but it looks like he was a serious issue for a lot of players. I'll take a look into him.

@Earth - Thank you for your feedback. I also didn't like Elder Mcnamara's voice. His voice sounded much too young. I was thinking of getting an older guy to revoice him. Maybe somebody like this....


Middle aged guy <==

And agree with you on making sure not to revoice what's not broken. As an example, not touching Boyd, not touching Cristina Morales, etc.

My main objective is to fix the ones that hurt. Not the ones that were ok but could use a fix..but the ones that were pretty damn horrible.

I couldn't stand Cook-Cook
Cook-Cook original voice

So he now sounds like this:
New Cook-Cook voice

As it stands, the following have been revoiced:

Driver Nephi
Motor-Runner
Lucius
Aurelius
Officer Lenk
Cachino ==> His voice
Also an audio log about Cachino ==> Audio log
Oscar Velasco
Sheriff Myers
Caleb
Don Hostettler

Melody (the girl at the Fort)==> (Still have to do a couple redos with the voice actress to make it more realistic but here's a rough draft) (Had to revoice Melody because something is being added near her that wasn't there before. She now says much more if you have a high speech and charisma that she never said in the original game.)

Audio log <----
Melody talks about her mother <---

Otho
Antony
Esteban Morales (he's dead but he now has an audio log)==> Audio log
Daniel Wyan (He's dead but he now has an audio log)
 
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Just letting you know I just added General Lee Oliver so i will be expecting auditions shortly. He has 169 lines of dialogue. Phew. So we'll see who takes the bait.
 
Fantastic. Especially loved the Cachino and Cook-Cook voices. Good luck and hope auditioning goes well. I imagine it must be difficult finding appropriate people.
 
@Earth

It's really hard choosing between people for sure. Sometimes I'll come across 2-3 people who I feel are all equally good but you can only choose one. Hard to do this without making someone feel bad.
 
@Dracomies

Good to hear you're getting a lot of variety at least. I'm actually really chuffed that you're doing this. We've had modded faces, bodies, weapons, landscape etc...but one of the most immersion-breaking things in Fallout: New Vegas has always been the voice acting. Not necessarily because the voice acting in some cases was bad, but more just the fact that you would hear the same voice from twenty different people.
 
Ok, so what sound signature would work for General Oliver?

Would the following work, okay? Or would a different character work better?
 
@Dracomies

It seems appropriate. I always figured while playing that General Oliver would be an older guy, especially after seeing President Kimball (who is apparently 52, which seems about right). Considering that Oliver only has his position because he's friends with the president, the voice of a man in his 40s-50s, like General Shepherd, would be right.

At the same time, he's supposedly a blockhead, and incompetent. I'm not sure how you would show that through voice acting. General Shepherd seems far too in-control.

Did find this video of General Mattis if it's any help. A general who makes stupid comments and clearly hasn't seen action in a very, very long time.



EDIT: On a side note, I noticed that Ambassador Dennis Crocker is also voiced by Emerson Brooks. It seems a shame that (yet another) prominent NCR character doesn't have a unique voice. In the original lore Crocker is also supposed to be Caucasian, so I guess it's another voice for consideration, though I understand there's probably a hell of a lot of dialogue to sift through there.
 
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@Earth
So yep, got a voice actor to do the role of Lee Oliver. It's going to be sounding like General Shepard. I realize that General Oliver is supposed to be incompetent as well but hard to pull that off and get good voice-acting at the same time. Right now, just focused on making each line have that emotion I want and he nailed it.

I gave the voice actor these practice lines.


(This is what he says when he wins the war)
Caesar on the cross, been a long time since I've seen the kind of work you've laid down today... a{emph} damn long time.
{Wistful} And the screams of those Legion bastards as they kicked dirt running East... like a choir of angels to my ears.

(Fear) (Unease)
(This is what he says when a group of men surround him ready to kill him)
Guess it ain't no secret how you, uh.............Can you ask them to put their weapons down. I was just reaching in my coat to give you a cigar.

(Disgruntedl)
{Mutters as he is walking away} Got leveled by a goddamn courier - screw the message, it's the messenger that'll fuck you.

(Furious)
(Told to withdraw his troops)
Withdraw my troops? What the fuck is this?! We just held the dam, we didn't do it to let it go! This paper of yours…I’ll use this wipe my ass! If you think after all that's happened, I'm going to grab my ankles and take it like the Legion...

(Defiant)
(Told the Legion will destroy the NCR)
Do you really think your ragtag band of slavers has more manpower than the armed forces of the NCR?

(Honor and obligation)
My men and I are soldiers. We share an obligation to follow orders. And our orders are to hold this dam.

(Threatened)
{Cold} I would sooner spit on the grave of my dead mother than let you talk to me like that. Who the fuck do you think you are? Look, I know you're riding high right now, but let me tell you - you ain't pissing on me right now, you're pissing on the Bear. No, I came for a fight today, and if you're looking to make me budge, you better have a damn good left hook or I'm not going anywhere.

Regarding Ambassador Crocker...for some reason he never bothered me at all. But you did mention a guy earlier, Astor. Astor realy bugs me. But man, I've checked on about five different platforms and it's really difficult to find an African-American voice actor. I'm trying to get this guy to voice my project.

https://www.voices.com/people/ithrowtdz05

But can't get a hold of him.
 
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