Why was the game voiced this way?...

    It sounds like the Chinese voice acting approached this game with a very serious style in an effort to really sell us on a cast of very cool characters, that immerse us into the world of SOLO. A lot of the bosses sound cool, and powerful, and like they are truly something to be feared. Even the audio queues for our own characters, their greetings, their mounting calls, their battle taunts, they all seem to fit really well to immerse you into the world of the game.



    It sounds like the English voice acting approached this game in an effort to portray the game with a certain style of comedy. In some cases, like the Chanchu's, I think the voice acting does this really well, but in a lot of cases, like the voice of Li Xiaotang or even our own character voices, the delivery seems just a little bit too off the mark without quite hitting the point of comedy. In my opinion, the game suffers heavily for this.



    Without trying to create a gigantic fighting point, I am curious if anyone at GameForge can share with us why the English voice acting ended up this way. I don't want to be a real jerk, so I'm sorry if someone at GameForge out there is actually a VA and they really did try their hardest on this. My assumption has always just been that maybe it was a stylistic decision, or maybe there was a partnered studio that has worked with GameForge in the past that they chose to keep using. I thought maybe in the worst case, it was actually hard to find a voice acting team during a global pandemic. At the end of they day, I'm just curious if anyone at GameForge can or is willing to give us more concrete answers or insight.




    In my opinion:


    In the best case, I feel like the comedic approach to the voicing has hurt the game's ability to market itself, because while some of the voice lines are iconic and funny in their own right (I think the voice of the Chanchu's is an amazing example of this working really well), I can't see many people willing to tolerate them or take the English version of this game seriously when it seems it wont even take itself seriously.


    In the worst case, the English VA's almost seem like a downright mockery of Chinese themed MMO culture, like there was just some assumption, "Westerner wont like China MMO, why waste the effort or give it a chance?", and that feels really really unfair to the game itself given how great it actually is. Even Final Fantasy 14, which I hate to admit is arguably one of the most of successful western MMO's of our time, is a Japanese MMO (A Southeast Asian MMO, if you will, just like SOLO) at the end of the day.



    I realise it's a high bar to hit, but it feels like the voice acting for SOLO pulled it out of the running before it even had a chance to fight. Was there a style choice that people made here, or is this just a matter of unrealistic dreams and managing the expectations for the game's release?

    Its no different than watching Japanese anime dubbed into English. If you want the real experience you will listen to the native language and read subtitles. If you wont to do that....you have to accept lesser quality.

    Well, for one, VA in China is a super big thing (at least as big, if not bigger as in Japan). So they actually got academies etc for this kind of thing. Plus as far I could recognize, there are actual (veteran) actors, who dubbed themselves a ton already, voice acting in this game~ So that alone brings lot's of quality.


    And then the other thing is probably the director. I assume that VA director of China did know a lot of context etc, meanwhile in english, it's probably similar to the translations. Neither VA nor director, nor translator had much of a feel/context for what they were actually dubbing.



    These are just some observations/guesses of mine tho x:

    PS: I AM STILL waiting for a complete Chinese VA list! QAQ !

    Quote from Toadwart

    Its no different than watching Japanese anime dubbed into English. If you want the real experience you will listen to the native language and read subtitles. If you wont to do that....you have to accept lesser quality.

    I feel like this is less and less true with passing and also depends on the quality of the voice acting studio.

    There are plenty of games and TV shows where the voice acting is perfectly reasonable, both in western cartoons and games, and even in something like Naruto or BNHA or games like Final Fantasy.


    I don't think this should just be like an, oh well, I guess it can't be done type of thing. It's perfectly possible.

    This makes sense, but there's also plenty of Western VA's who voice cartoon characters every day to a reasonable degree of quality. I guess maybe because the field isn't as prominent in the west, it's maybe a lot harder to find quality VA's who don't cost a fortune or something?

    Yea it's just a super different kind of thing in west/east. IN the west, you go do an academie, have talent agiencies and do all kinds of thing. Usually you are actually an actor also doing VA work, due to chinese Dubbing almost everything.

    Meanwhile in the west, unless you are maybe one of the top5 popular VA, you probabily have side jobs, don't actually have any vocal or actor training. And for example anime VAs, the most money they make is actually from conventions and not VA work itself. They don't mean sht in the west. Also I feel VA work (including directors) does not seem to be viewed as an important part. I dunno if it's even common to have a VA director in the west?


    And I also heard *ahem* that even big companies sometimes, just pick up some VAs un fiver or so x: so yea~


    I still believe the VO situation here is due to a mix of lack of quality VA, good Direction, and either shitty translations/writing, or ppl just not getting paid/provided the context of what they are supposed to translate/say

    I agree with everything said - it's almost certainly a combination of lack of quality VAs, poor direction and lack of context given. I do not believe for a second that any of the English VAs are fans of GuJianQiTan and studied the characters, lore and culture extensively. This was just another typical MMO job for them. It's really detrimental to the game reputation and player experience.
    It makes me sad. I cringed seeing big Youtube streamers/reviewers playing SOLO in English, and then seeing the absolute onslaught of mockery towards the VA in the comments.

    It comes back to this for me: Voice Acting: Alert new players to their options (CN or EN)

    I feel like a lot of problems would be solved if the options are laid out for the players right off the bat. At least this allows them to think; "Hmmm. I can play with the Chinese VA for an authentic experience, or I can try the English VA even though I know it has a bad reputation."

    Offering the authentic alternative as visible option is the best that can be done at this point - since they sure as hell aren't going to re-do all the English voice acting lol


    I went through this with Blade & Soul - except I had to download the Korean voice packs and use a script to swap all voice files into Korean every time I launched the game. I had a pretty good grasp of the language, so it was absolutely appalling to me to see how dumbed-down the translations were compared to the actual Korean dialogue.

    Meanwhile my brother was playing the game in English, which made it like an ENTIRELY different game with drastically different character personalities. Insanity.


    The only MMO I've played so far that actually has quality voice acting, with VAs that actually grasp the characters and story, is Guild Wars 2. However, that's a western game that is made IN the west - rather than quickly dubbing a ported Eastern game.

    Not true for German VA. In Germany the VA-Business is a HUGE thing. Germans dub EVERYTHING and this since the beginning of the TV. Many VA are locked in for a specific Actor after a while.

    But well, thats german VA. i know in english VA is not that big of a thing because many tv-series are produced in english and its the OV.

    Quote from PikaChokeMe

    In the worst case, the English VA's almost seem like a downright mockery of Chinese themed MMO culture, like there was just some assumption, "Westerner wont like China MMO, why waste the effort or give it a chance?",

    Probably that. I can almost guarantee you there was no professional localization / VO work involved here. Even if you got a few passionate students without any professional background, you would do much better than this. You cannot tell me that any professional translator would come up with sentences like you see in the story. This is not the kind of stuff you get when you think "How do I translate Chinese culture into easily understandable dialogue for a western audience?", it's the kind of sentences you get when you yeet the Chinese text into Google Translate, and I am 98% certain that is what happened here.


    The truth is that Gameforge is simply not a good company. From their SOLO Livestreams where they literally figure out what is in their game version as they go, to the Aion Classic debacle where they dumped a golden goose into the trashcan because they can't manage keeping up more than 1 game at once, Gameforge seems to survive solely based on accidental hits (OGame, Aion, SOLO), which they then proceed to kill of way ahead of their time. They don't really seem to have a proper management level, or really a plan at all. It really is a shame because SOLO is actually the first MMO since XIV that genuinely makes me interested in its world because of the presentation of bosses, zones and the outstanding music. But I got about 5 levels into trying to actually read the story before the random cut off sentences, mixed with occasional chinese, and sentences that just don't make sense to westerners got to me and I went back to skipping everything. The devs of this game would've been genuinely better off self-publishing.

    Yes I remember an interview with "Yami Yugi" VA, saying that he was just being an Unistudent looking for a part time job. Going in, having 5 min to prep and doing lines x:

    It might be "huge" due to the fact that they dub everything, because most of the stuff is still american (aka engish) in it's original so yea~. But it is not even CLOSE that big to CHN/JPN VA.

    I will say that like... since I wrote this thread... there has been some localisation VA reworks and stuff and I was super pleased/impressed.


    So my current guess is that not everything is in it's final form, and GF is actually receptive and working on improvements :D

    They redid the first boss in jade, which was pleasant to see/hear relative to the old one.

    The Horror of Huaixiu line though is more of an abomination than anything else I've heard in a while. "In the name of Turquoise Lantern you will perish!" She sounds like a magical girl/cheerleader right out of an anime and completely missing the context/tone of the entire fight or environment.

    I wonder what the process is for some of this voice work to get approved/implemented. I can't imagine that stuff like that passes through a lot of people before getting slapped into the game.

    Quote from Altrius

    They redid the first boss in jade, which was pleasant to see/hear relative to the old one.

    The Horror of Huaixiu line though is more of an abomination than anything else I've heard in a while. "In the name of Turquoise Lantern you will perish!" She sounds like a magical girl/cheerleader right out of an anime and completely missing the context/tone of the entire fight or environment.

    I wonder what the process is for some of this voice work to get approved/implemented. I can't imagine that stuff like that passes through a lot of people before getting slapped into the game.

    The Chinese voice actress for the Lantern Wick is actually somewhat on the nasally side imo.... so idk for sure, but this may or may not be intentional.