BG3 is a milestone in gaming. It may be a bit unfair to compare it to games that were produced at the same time, they couldn’t hope to compete lmao.
this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
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BG3 is great and all but there are other games with at least equal voice acting quality. For all its qualities I never felt like "wow, I've never seen voice acting like this in a game!" when I played BG3. It's really good and really consistent but nothing earth shattering.
I know I bring up Disco Elysium a lot, but that is one game where I got repeatedly shocked at the quality and diversity of the voice acting. With the exception of one single character I think it's acted to absolute perfection.
I also didn't really feel the same about Alan Wake 2 like, at all. I thought it had superb acting (both voice and full video segments) and probably hold the quality of its acting above BG3 personally. Alan Wake 1 less so.
I second Disco Elysium's voice acting and also all of Supergiant Games catalogue, especially Bastion, Transistor, and Hades. Portal 2 is the most hilarious video game of all time, and a major part of that is its voice acting.
The Stanley Parable, Borderlands 1/2, Prey, System Shock 1/2, the Bioshock series, SOMA, the new Doom games, Path of Exile, all elevated by their voice acting.
I'd also put Still Wakes the Deep on that list.
mass effect and the first few dragon age games had great acting, Kingdom come has great acting, most of the Sony exclusives have great acting, it's out there. It's just rare.
Which character did you not like?
I don't think Ruby works well but I suspect it's a problem with direction rather than the voice actor themselves.
What makes BG3 so great is that it doesn‘t just have voice acting, it has full acting. The actor of Astarion worked for 4 years on it and claimed it was the equivalent to shooting 4 seasons of a TV show. It‘s a huge scope that almost nobody can or want to afford. I mean those studios who can just don‘t take that part very seriously and are eyeing with simply opting to use AI instead. I doubt it will ever be recreated, maybe not even by Larian themselves.
Dragon Age: Origins is also a master class in this vain.
All the dragon Age games, really.
Dragon age 2? Sure. Inquisition? Not really. The unspeakable one? Hell no.
Having just played Veilguard and Origins back to back, that's a hard disagree from me. The voice acting in Veilguard was top notch. 🤷
One thing I find jarring about BG3 is the lack of vo for the player character. It seems like a weird omission in this day and age. (Not counting the dumb 'I clicked here, so my player has to say something' vo. Like, shut the fuck up with your dumb chess references, Gale!)
I think the silent protagonist choice is valid in more of "sandbox" story like BG3. Speaking for myself, voiced protagonists tend to "lock" me into a specific role. I absolutely love the voice acting for Geralt of Rivia but when I play a witcher game I'm not inserting myself into the game, I'm becoming Geralt and making choices based on how I believe Geralt would make them.
I don't really see it being a sandbox. I mean, all answers are given, and you select from those choices. That's the same as other games that have pc vo. I feel like it would have made more sense to have no voice options at all, and to just get rid of the ridiculous quips. That way, you create your own voice in your head. In no universe would the character I created complain about having to put her hands onto everything before opening a door.
Anyway, not a big deal, but like I said, it was a bit jarring.
I played BG3 straight after Cyberpunk and that really stood out to me as well. The immersion and emotional impact of voiced protagonist lines really got me invested in Cyberpunk in a way I missed in BG3.
It's supposed to be immersive, I think, so as not to force a voice that doesn't match the roleplaying in your head.
I'm with you, though, I'd much prefer VA.
I am in the other camp, I like the immersion.
I also have a tendency to not bother with VA, though, and to just click through the second I finish reading the dialogue, except for lines in particularly dramatic parts of the story. Sometimes not even then. Just figure I'd offer a counter opinion especially since this thread is probably going to be full of people who always choose voice acting when it is an option, given the thread is all about it. I am glad so many people derive joy from it, just because it is Not For Me doesn't mean I think it's Bad And Worthless :)
They recorded some lines for the custom character. They think aloud when you approach the gith gank squad.
They also reverted a decision to have all the origin characters do a bizarre past tense narration in favor of the present universal narration the familiar narrator VA does present tense. Maybe they abandoned having the player character speak when they changed that course.
BG3 is definitely one of those games with good (even great) voice acting. But there are more of them out there.
RDR2 has some of the best writing and acting performances I’ve ever encountered in a game. The Last of Us is in a similar vein. The Uncharted series has some of my favourite voice acting, especially Claudia Black (Chloe) and of course Nolan North (Nathan).
Claudia Black also voices Morrigan in Dragon Age Origins, which is chock full of stellar voice performances. I’d argue that Dragon Age 2 and even Inquisition had some memorable performances but The Veilguard sucked.
BG3 has great voice acting, but I don't really think it's that far beyond any other games. As a personal example, Cherami Leigh as Female V in Cyberpunk 2077 is probably my favorite voice actor in the last several years, even if BG3 is probably my favorite game in that same time.
Cherami Leigh did a great job, but the script was sometimes such a cringefest, ugh.
Voice acting? Reject modernity, embrace Dwarf Fortress.
Honestly, for the most part I really enjoyed the voice acting in Guild Wars 2. But femme V is probably my favourite as of late.
FemV in CP2077 totally killed it. Her voice acting was one of my favorite parts of the game.
AC Odyssey didn't have as many emotional beats, but Kassanda was still way better than her brother.
And of course Jennifer Hale as FemShep... I'm starting to see a pattern here, lol.
and mShep, and Mordin, and Liara.... the ME series just had a whoooole lotta amazing voice acting.
Kingdome Come 2 has great voice acting too. Some really funny characters (Adder is my favorite crazy Pollack) . They suffer from a lack of voice actors though so some characters have the same actor.