Should the games have voice acting?

What would you think of the games having voice acting? Would you support it, or do you think it'd be weird? I've seen arguments that main series Pokémon games really should have voice acting by now, and that scenes like Piers singing and Rose speaking in the beginning of SwSh fall flat emotionally otherwise.

Thoughts? Are there any voice actors you think would be good fits for characters?

Yes! At this point there's no reason not to. The games need to grow and evolve and change. Tired of all these cliches, especially this one.

I think it would improve the experience, so why not.

Not really. I like it better to read character voices in my head, and I don't think there's much reason to have voice-overs in Pokémon in the first place - there's a lot of lines of dialogue in an average Pokémon game, and acting it all out in a studio would be lots of work and questionably necessary if you're just playing the voices over speech bubbles. That is a practice I generally don't understand - players can read, and if they can't, they probably don't follow interestingly acted scenes because they're very little kids. Pokémon-specifically, you already need to know how to read to do battles.

My opinion is that using voices in games is a matter of style, not modernity of the game - if the game needs voice acting, if the developers have such a vision for it, go ahead and use it. If it can go perfectly fine without voice acting, if it wasn't intended to have it as a necessary thing from the start, you don't have to go out of your way to add it in - use your speech bubbles to their full extent.

I guess I'm so used to Pokémon games as silent films with a music soundtrack that imagining characters actually talking seems really weird.

I think the games would be better with voice acting. Although it wasn't the end of the world, I was a bit disappointed that SwSh didn't have voice acting tbh.

I feel like it'd be hard to make the main series games voice acted since...I'm not confident that in future anime series, they'd retain the same voice actors as the games. Also, the challenging task of hiring voice actors in various languages. So, for now, I'm gonna say no. :x

It would make the games better but I think it would take them longer times to make the games then

there's some notable awkward moments in swsh where voice acting i think would've helped. whether the voice acting would be good or not is another story and that's my main concern, but alas debate over good/bad voices i feel comes with the inclusion of voice acting in anything.

I think if they did it right it could work really well, none of us are used to having voice acting in Pokemon games so it might seem a little weird but change can be good sometimes :)

You guys are right though, there was several underwhelming and awkward moments in SwSh when voice acting would have been perfect, and playing other Switch titles it makes you wonder if it's only a matter of time before they include it.

I think it's time for voice acting... I feel like SwSh wouldn't have been as subpar if they had voices in at some point. Even if it's only to the extent of the voice acting in Pokémon Masters, it would give a new dimension to the future games.

It will improve the experience, why not. I wish

Yeah, that would be cool.. but it will ruin the overall feel of the game, I would never get used to it.

I absolutely think so. There are moments in SwSh that would've benefitted from it - see the battle with Piers.

at this point in the franchise, i think so. i would even argue this was necessary in gen 7 because of how cinematic it got. like yeah gen 5 and 6 had some long cutscenes too but gen 7 had some looooong cutscenes that i think could have benefitted from voice acting. but it's glaring in gen 8. it really needs it now and i think there are so many talented voice actors out there that could have really lended their voices to this and made it a much more endearing experience. like if pokemon wants to try to make the story and characters more bold, i'm all for it, but now that it's moved onto home consoles forever (presumably), then i think it needs to make the serious jump into having voice actors. there are a lot of scenes in swsh that could have had more weight if the dialog was voiced.

It would certainly be nice to have, but it's something I can wait for since there's other higher priority things that'd be good to have happen first.

NikolaP said:

there's a lot of lines of dialogue in an average Pokémon game, and acting it all out in a studio would be lots of work and questionably necessary if you're just playing the voices over speech bubbles.

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Palamon said:

I feel like it'd be hard to make the main series games voice acted since...I'm not confident that in future anime series, they'd retain the same voice actors as the games. Also, the challenging task of hiring voice actors in various languages. So, for now, I'm gonna say no. :x

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It's not really as difficult as it might seem given that games have had voice acting in them and in more than one language for quite some time now. They also don't necessarily have to have voice acting for every line of dialogue, they can just start with important scenes and stuff.

But we ARE talking about Game Freak here so.....

Nah said:

It would certainly be nice to have, but it's something I can wait for since there's other higher priority things that'd be good to have happen first.



It's not really as difficult as it might seem given that games have had voice acting in them and in more than one language for quite some time now. They also don't necessarily have to have voice acting for every line of dialogue, they can just start with important scenes and stuff.

But we ARE talking about Game Freak here so.....

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While that's true, Pokemon is released in over ten languages at this point in time. But it could still happen someday, I just can't see it happening in Gen 9. Ido know that there are a few voice acted Pokemon games like Detective Pikachu, Pokken Tournament and Pokemon Masters, but those are side games.

It's not what I'd call a priority, but that would be a nice feature. Although for me it'd be already enough if they went the route of other JRPGs and just had Japanese voice acting along with subtitles for other languages.

I would love it if they ever decide to do voice acting and it ends up sounding like The House of the Dead 2

https://youtu.be/wDZs1LSgsSU

Nah said:

It would certainly be nice to have, but it's something I can wait for since there's other higher priority things that'd be good to have happen first.



It's not really as difficult as it might seem given that games have had voice acting in them and in more than one language for quite some time now. They also don't necessarily have to have voice acting for every line of dialogue, they can just start with important scenes and stuff.

But we ARE talking about Game Freak here so.....

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Yep my lack of faith in them, while disturbing, is also what makes me think this wouldn't work. GameFreak half asses everything they do so why would this be any better? I think it would be worse than BotW. I don't think BotW is as bad as the bandwagon thinks it is but it sure isn't great either.

No. No no no no noooooo. I hold up The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - or more specifically, Zelda herself - as a prime example of why Nintendo games should NOT have voice acting. Going back a little further, there's also Metroid Prime 3: Corruption as another great example. Pick any Fire Emblem title from Awakening onwards as another example. The thing of it is that these were all made by developers with more capability than Game Freak and they're all terrible quality. They all significantly detract from the experience.

I'd rather they put the money that giving these games voice acting would cost into actually making a decent product tbh. There are so many things wrong with Pokemon that need to be fixed that something like voice acting is pretty unimportant really, nice as it would be to have if it was done properly...but nothing about Pokemon is done properly, so there's no reason to believe the voice acting would be any different. I can't argue that some cutscenes in the later games would have more impact if they had voices behind them (although whether this would be positive or not is another matter entirely) but a lot of Pokemon's "story" events and dialogue doesn't happen inside cutscenes, and the contrast between full voice acting and silence would be even more jarring than the utter silence we have now. Or worse, stock phrases and grunts, gasps, laughs, and other noises.

You can bet that the majority of the dialogue would not be spoken in a project like this, which is another reason why I'd say it'd be a terrible idea. It'd need to be done in multiple languages and the cost, time, and resources for such a project would be astronomical. Pokemon is already under staffed and under budget, allocating more of the already sparse budget into hiring mediocre voice actors to record one or two lines of dialogue that the characters repeat over and over and OVER would come with further costs to the gameplay, and I think we've already sacrificed enough with Sword and Shield to have it cut down even further.