Top 10 Lists : The Top 10 Voiceover Performances In Gaming

There's no way to write a list like this without some bias, unless you do something really stupid like count the game mentions over all the top ten lists and list the games based on that. The important thing is to recognize that bias -- and this pick has my bias written all over it. Call this my strictly-biased "editor's pick" selection, but I love this game, I think Will Friedle is generally fantastic, and I think this combination brought a lot of quality to the game. At the time of the selection, Friedle at done relatively little gaming voiceover work, but had long participated in television voiceovers. Given the role of Jaster Rogue, the title character of Rogue Galaxy, Friedle brought experience with him, but the significant part of his role in Rogue Galaxy is the way he fits his vocal performance and intonations to his character's development over the game as a whole. Often missed in the realm of voice acting is that the actor is not simply playing a static role -- they're playing a dynamic character, and thus they should not only change with respect to the specific situation at hand, but also with respect to the plot progression as a whole. A casual conversation with a character who develops over the story should not sound the same at the beginning and in the end -- the changes that have taken place should actually play into every element of the character. That's what Friedle expertly brings to the character Jaster Rogue -- as the story develops, you can feel the changes the character goes through because of the minor changes in the voice. The credit for this goes to both Friedle for his performance and to the game designers, for willingly putting the effort and attention it to get this performance.

If Will Friedle had a short voiceover resumé when given his first leading role, then Jon St. John had no resumé at all. Well, scratch that -- Jon St. John really didn't have one at all. A lifelong radio DJ and voice personality, Jon St. John's first role was the starring role in the 1996 Duke Nukem 3D. The role would be the start of a career-long pursuit which has seen John play the part in every subsequent Duke Nukem game, including Duke Nukem Forever (well, theoretically). There's no real questioning the impact that John's vocal work has had on the popularity of the Duke Nukem character -- his deep voice is as much a part of the character as the flat-top hairstyle, the enormous bulging muscles and the propensity for killing. There's no doubt that John's performance played an enormous role in taking the Duke Nukem character, itself a pretty unbelievable caricature, and making it somehow tangible and real. But what really strikes me about John's performance is the respect and acknowledgment he has for the character he's playing. I'm no expert, but I have a hunch that most gaming voiceover artists don't play the games they provide their voices to. But John has a real grasp over the popularity and cult following that his character leads, and interviews indicate he really does appreciate the notoriety. In one interview, he goes as far as to say he is "honored" to be associated with the character he plays. Such respect for the craft and for the narrative process is rare to see in the industry, and I feel it's important that it be recognized that while John may feel honored to be associated with such a great character, he is largely responsible for that character being considered great in the first place.

Released in 2008, Mass Effect was one of the few truly revolutionary video games in the latest generation. We could talk all day about the graphics, gameplay or primary plotline, but what Mass Effect's truly revolutionary legacy will be is the way it has changed video games from a simple diversion to a new form of interactive storytelling, playing on their inherent advantage over static mediums like books and movies. But in order for it to achieve all it set out to achieve -- in order to make the player feel like they were really affecting the plot and not just pseudo-willingly playing through a preset number of steps -- there had to be real reactions by the main character to the events of the storyline. Truth be told, Mark Meer, who voiced Commander Shepard, likely would be featured on this list solely for the sheer immensity of this role -- there are not statistics available, but I would venture a guess to say that voicing the main character in Mass Effect is the single largest voiceover role for a static entity (not an ongoing TV show) of all time, in terms of hours of recordings or number of lines. The amount of dialogue Meer delivers in this performance is sheerly astounding, and the quality of his performance goes a long way toward enhancing the believability and story-telling aspects of the game. Meer truly completed a fantastic game in the only way that would do it justice -- through completely believable, authentic, realistic and 100% situated voice bits and responses. I could go on and on about how thorough this role was and how his performance impacted the game's success, but then I'd have nothing to write about...

...the voice of the female version of Commander Shepard, Jennifer Hale. This was one of the truly remarkable elements of Mass Effect -- the main character can be chosen to be either a male or a female, and either way the entire game is voiced. Every line, every event, every reaction is available for both a male character and a female character, representing an astounding commitment to realism, player control and interactivity on the part of the game's developers. Whereas Mark Meer had a relatively small voiceover resumé coming into his role as Commander Shepard, Jennifer Hale had already established herself with roles in the Metal Gear and Metroid series -- but her performance is still just as impressive. The challenges of this role facing both were immense -- whereas most voiceover artists need to be informed of a plotline and motivations to perform adequately, those elements are largely absent from Mass Effect. The player can sculpt the character however they want, and therefore what the vocal artists had to bring to Commander Shepard is an element of vocal ambiguity -- a single line had to be believable for both a hardened, near-cruel commander and an altruistic, benevolent one. The game's success hinged on this very ambiguity, and Meer's and Hale's performances encompass it perfectly. Without their talents, Mass Effect would still have been an excellent example of interactive fiction, but it would not have been nearly as commercially acclaimed or successful.

Here's a bit of a personal favorite like the first, though in this case I feel that the credit is most certainly deserved. With relatively nothing on her voiceover resumé, Ellen McLain was brought in by Valve to play the voice of the amusingly sinister antagonist of the unexpected hit game Portal, and in my opinion, she (and the writers who created her role) is the chief reason why Portal is regarded as a great game rather than a simple tech demo for an interesting new feature. Portal is a relatively short, innovative game, but at its heart is really simply a glorified puzzle game. In the modern age of video games, such a shallow game arc likely would not find an audience as anything more than a demo of a new feature, so the developers added a simplistic plot: enter GLaDOS. My Portal review goes into excruciating detail on how well this plot was pulled off, but enormous credit goes to Ellen McLain for her role as this antagonist. The plot walks a delicate balance -- it must be more than simply a facilitator, but it cannot become the main element of the game. McLain's performance matches this perfectly -- she creates a real, believable antagonist, but also takes full ownership over the darkly comedic nature of her character's dialogue. She never breaks the character's demeanor in a way that makes it obvious that her lines are meant as jokes, but at the same time she delivers them with enough sharp wit to lead the player to laugh. The result shouldn't be underestimated: Ellen McLain's performance is solely responsible for GLaDOS being simultaneously a true antagonist and a comedic character without devolving into the realm of simple comic relief.

The next three voice artists on this list are all similar stylistically -- they're all that low, sinister, mysterious baritone that is all too common in gaming. Most of the time, this character is the antagonist, but in the case of these next three performances, the character is actually the main playable protagonist who the player controls throughout the majority of the game. There's a very difficult dichotomy introduced in all three cases by this, with subtle variations. In all cases, the vocal artists have to somehow stay true to the dark nature of their characters, but without letting them venture into the realm of true evil -- and without getting too annoying, because let's face it, dark characters can get a little tedious after too long. Vincent Valentine is a perfect example of this type of character -- he's dark, sinister and obviously not terribly compassionate, but at the same time he's the protagonist with a noble goal and selfless ambitions. How do you reconcile the two? It takes a unified effort of graphic designers and writers, but a huge portion of the credit goes to Steven Jay Blum's portrayal. In his depiction of the game's main character, he very carefully toes the line between truly sinister and truly heroic. It's truly a remarkable conflict of interests: from the game's perspective, Vincent is its star, but from the character perspective, he himself shuns the spotlight. The voiceover artist has to make the player pay attention to the actions and words of the character, without ever feeling like the character is trying to make anyone listen to him. But Blum plays the role perfectly, subtly commanding attention without ever making the big screen-controlling stand that characterizes most main characters.

Like Steven Jay Blum, Simon Templeman brings a deep, low, sinister baritone to his portrayal of Kain of the Legacy of Kain series. But in many ways, portraying Kain presents even more challenges than portraying Vincent Valentine for Blum, for one basic reason: while Vincent is merely dark and brooding, Kain legitimately has some elements of evil in him -- and that's quite an understatement. Truth be told, Kain is downright evil, and even calling him an 'anti-hero' is perhaps giving him more credit than he deserves considering the term's normal connotations. So if the difficulty in portraying Vincent is in keeping him dark and redeemable at the same time, how is a purely evil character somehow more difficult? The challenge comes in Kain still being the main protagonist in his game. What that means is that despite being evil and selfish, the player still has to actually like him. We don't usually like characters like him -- the 'badass' character archetype is popular, but Kain is far more than that. He's a legitimately indefensible, untenable character -- the type that you usually spend the entire game dying to destroy. So how does this character function as a protagonist? Solely through the quality of Simon Templeman's portrayal. With the quality of his intonations, Templeman takes a character that could've been considered a bitter, whiny, self-indulgent power freak and instead somehow makes his motives believable and objectives defensible. Templeman has you believing not that Kain has honorable motives, but that somehow his dishonorable motives are justifiable to have. He makes him redeemable and appealing without making him redeemable or appealing at all. It's a complete paradox -- the player loves playing as him, but would hate him if they stepped back and considered who he actually is. This dichotomy here is solely resultant from Simon Templeman's brilliant portrayal of the character.

Where Blum and Templeman's baritones were challenged in their roles, Terrence C. Carson, the voice of Kratos in God of War, faced the toughest challenge of all. Where the previous two actors' roles could be argued to be making characters seem more human, Carson's role was in many ways the opposite: to make a human character seem the opposite. Kratos is a true Leonidas-esque man's man, but what's remarkable is that throughout the game, Carson is called upon to show a broader range of emotions in the hardened Spartan than any of the dark roles we've already considered. That's not to say that the previous two characters were emotionless -- Vincent on multiple occasions displays flashes of irritation and anger, while Kain's rageful outbursts are near-legendary -- but rather that Kratos actually touches emotions that the others never come near. At different points throughout the game, Kratos is filled with rage, regret, pensiveness, remorse, and jubilation, and somehow Carson had to portray him through all these emotions as the same brutal, masculine, near-immortal Spartan that his character dictates he be. It's not an easy task -- the annals of movies and games are filled with masculine characters whose emotions are used to add a soft soul under their hardened exterior. That's not what Kratos is, though -- he is hardened through and through, yet not emotionless, and in his portrayal of the Spartan, Carson never drops the aura and mystique of the character, while still allowing and displaying the emotions that logically follow from the plot elements. It's truly a remarkable display, and serves as perhaps one of the most moving elements of the game -- where such a hardened man can display human emotions that do not betray or counter his own masculinity, but perhaps even enhance it.

The third of the real voice actors mentioned on both my previous list and this one is David Hayter, voice of Solid Snake in the Metal Gear Solid series. While the other listing may have been a tiny bit contrived considering the relatively brevity of his voicework resumé, David Hayter deserves to be on this list more than anyone else. Hayter does not just give Solid Snake his voice -- he is Solid Snake. He's who we hear when we think of the character. He's more than just the voice for a separate character with a separate background and style for whom he happens to be reading the lines -- it's simply impossible to separate Hayter from the character. The reason for this is more than just how iconic Solid Snake has become or that Hayter has provided the voice in so many different games -- in fact, it's thanks to Hayter's initial portrayal that either of those subsequent developments took place. The heart of the role's success lies in how well Hayter tailors his performance to be simultaneously distinctive and archetypal. On the one hand, when you hear Solid Snake's voice in any other situation, you know it's him -- there's no ambiguity to it. But at the same time, it's the type of fairly standard vocal quality that one would typically associate with the character Snake is intended to be -- when you picture a grizzled, masculine special operative, you picture a voice like Hayter's portrayal. He simultaneously satisfied the needs of the character and story, and provided enough distinctiveness to set Solid Snake apart from all the other 'cynical solider' characters out there. His performance is truly in a league of its own, and in the eyes of many, it represents the single best bit of voicework in video game history. But in the interest of being unconventional and giving credit to recent games that are often underappreciated, my choice for best vocal performance in gaming is...

In many ways, this pick might be cheating a bit -- after all, Kevin Conroy had played Batman almost as often as anyone else, voicing him in numerous television series and TV movies. But let's look at the landscape that preceded this landmark release. There were two types of games that met with near-universal criticism: movie-based games and superhero games -- this game was both. The game follows the second highest-grossing of all time. The title character is an absolutely iconic figure, unarguably one of the most famous and popular fictional characters of all time. Combine all that preceded it, the game was set up for failure: hyped beyond belief yet following a long line of disappointments. Now, I wouldn't dare suggest that Conroy is solely responsible for the game living up to its hype -- far from it. But what I am confident in is that the vocal performance of the title character was an absolutely crucial element for the game's success. The game centers around Batman, and if Batman is not believable -- in demeanor, appearance, ability and voice -- then the game might be entertaining, but nothing more. It would not reach the level of popularity that it clearly has, even for such a recent release. Conroy's impact cannot be underestimated: his performance is largely the hinge that commands the believability of the entire Batman character, and combining his flawless inflections with his experience with the character, he provides the absolute perfect performance. I might be overstretching my bounds, but I actually believe (and have heard several others agree) that Conroy's presentation of Batman's voice might even be better than the heavily modified one heard in The Dark Knight itself. For any aspect of a movie-based game to even draw any comparisons to the movie itself -- especially one that grossed over $500 million -- shows just how incredible this performance really was, and why I'm labeling it the greatest voiceover performance in video game history.

All these voiceover performances have something in common: they all existed at a point where a poor performance could've ruined the game. These aren't vocal elements that simply supplement a game whose focus is in the gameplay -- these are vocal performances supplied to critical characters, whose believability is a critical element in each game's success. But that could be said for any number of other vocal performances as well -- "it didn't ruin the game" isn't exactly high praise for a performance. What's more critical about all these voiceover performances is that they're more than just the necessary minimum to reach success; they're more than just a simple recitation of lines in a studio. They reflect a knowledge of the plot of the games' storylines, a respect for the character's motivations, and an acknowledgment of the artistic nature of their position's demands. They show extra effort, and extra push to make their characters believable. In fact, I'd venture to say that these voiceover artists in these roles are more playing a role than others who simple recite lines. I believe that to deliver performances of the quality of the ones mentioned here, the artists must take on as much of the characters they play as screen actors do -- there's simply no less way to deliver performances of this caliber, and the artists responsible for them deserve the respect afforded to any other form of performance artistry.

List by DetroitDJ (09/10/2009)

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