While playing through a recently-released role-playing game for the Nintendo Switch, I got to thinking. Wouldn’t it be great if, instead of simply turning voice-over on or off, we could selectively mute individual characters? Who would you silence?
Aside from Tidus.
Some characters are just too damn annoying to speak. Sometimes it’s about bad voice acting or direction. Other times it’s a creative choice. Even in a game filled with otherwise pleasant voices, that one high-pitched, uncomfortably wacky or cutesy word-skipping character sneaks in.
Case in point is Xenoblade Chronicles 2. I seem to be enjoying the game a bit more than Jason Schreier did, but on one point I wholeheartedly concur: Nopon engineer Tora is one of the most irritating characters ever. He skips words (his whole race does). He refers to himself in third person. He replaces normal words with his own cutesy versions, like “bum-bum” for arse. He is the worst (light spoiler in the clip below).
If only I could just turn off his voice. The rest of the cast is pretty great. Al Weaver voices main character Rex as a young, vibrant Scrooge McDuck. His companion Prya’s voice, played by Skye Bennett, has this amazing little crack to it that I could listen to for hours.
Or I could if Tora would just be quiet. It’s not voice actor Rasmus Hardiker’s fault. It’s the character.
There seems to be one of these in every Japanese role-playing game. Oftentimes it’s a sidekick of some sort, or a pet, like Final Fantasy X‘s Tidus. James Arnold Taylor did what he could with Tidus, but the end result made many fans wonder if Square should have held off on added voices to the series a bit longer. Here’s a clip of Tidus and Jecht having a conversation.
Now imagine if we had the ability to open a menu, select a character and uncheck their voice.
Ahhh, that’s so much better.
Now imagine every game you’ve ever played had such a feature. Whose voice would get the axe? The squeaky sidekick? The over-emotional hero? The crass stereotype? Go ahead and switch them off in the comments.
Comments
41 responses to “Video Game Characters Who Should Go On Mute”
Vanille from FF13, but then that would mean playing FF13 again.
Play? You mean, watch, right?
Zing
Piros the Third from the .hack// games.
Might actually make him tolerable. But I’m also a .hack// fan that would be happy to see him gone altogether.
Sera from Dragon Age: Inquisition
Queen Elizabeth I from Civilization V. If I am asked if I would be interested in a trade agreement with England one more time…
Aww don’t pick on my Sera!
Sera is the only NPC I have ever seriously considered taking up their threat to leave my party in any Bioware RPG.
I’ve got a lot of time for Sera, she weirdly talks and has the same personality as a friend of mine
but manic pixie dreamgirl trope!
Imoen in BGI.
(I felt she calmed down a lot in BGII, but that might just be me projecting.)
heya! It’s me Imoen!
I didn’t mind her she tended to play the annoying little sibling role in BG, what’s more creepy is the mods that made her a romance option in 2 when shes your actual sister
Fa-Nuit-Hen in ESO maelstrom arena. I swear if I hear this one more times:
“Pay attention you daedra, it’s never the same twice!”
Every single piece of infuriating mumbling nonsense from the whole of Okami.
Top 3 –
1- Yes Tidus from FF10….as above article.
2- Fang from FF13. Why? Because c’mon, anyone from Aus or NZ can tell the voice has been bunged on and the accent is wrong, if anything I could tell that Vanille was voiced by someone who was actually Australian, as annoying as she was.
3- Fricken Mario….I hate Mario
Gotta agree about Fang. As much as I liked her character compared to Vanille, at least the latter didn’t sound like a bad impression.
Nolan North. He was so omnipresent last decade that he now ruins a lot of immersion for me
HEY LISTEN!
SHUDDAP!!!!!!
[Puts Navi!Paradork into a bottle, puts bottle into a regular chest, then a boss key chest, uses the power bracelet to sit a bolder on top of said chest and finally surrounds the site with immovable jars of Vegemite.]
There … (huff) … no escape….
X-P
Genuinely surprised it took this long down the comments to find this.
Kaiden Alenko (Mass Effect) / Carth Onasi (KOTOR) – Same character, same voice actor, same smug, condescending, whiny douchebag. The character(s) are bad but their voices just make me want to punch them through the screen.
Jack Marston in Red Dead Redemption.
YEEHAW! WORK YE DAMN NAG!
You are all wrong, the correct answer is the main character in two Worlds.. “Forsooth thy game is a stinker, verily thou voice acting sucks”
Aveline? From the mess that was Dragon Age 2… if I have to hear you talk about the “City Watch” one more damn time…..
Aveline was adorable and helping her in her romance was one of the best quests in the game
Oh holy shit, Chie in Persona 4. I can’t tell you why exactly, but she drives me up the POLE.
If downvotes didn’t have consequences…
PS2 or Golden (different voice actors)
Both. But Golden shits me more.
Handsome Jack from Borderlands 2.
Link.
Sam – “Pathfinder, there are mining resources nearby. You can extract them through your mining interface.”
You win one internet.. Shut up Sam
For a few solid weeks after my 3rd ME:A playthrough and platinum, I legit wanted to ask Sam to identify and give contextual information about everything I looked at in the real world.
URGH.
only one NPC annoys me so far… Lord Shaxx. there seriously needs to be a mute button fot hat piece of shit npc. doesnt matter whether Im winning or losing, i want him to shut the fuck up. when it comes to an announcer all i want is the Unreal Tornament announcer style
Moira from Resident Evil Revelations 2. Obnoxious and annoying.
Like a bunch of execs sat down trying to work out how a young person talks.
Awful forced dialogue.
The main character from heavy rain.
I’ve never wanted to punch a fictional character so much.
But every game from David Cage makes me want to stab and burn the universe.
Which one? There were 4 main characters.
Laura from sfv needs a mute.
Gordon Freeman’s incessant yapping has always got on my nerves, as has Link’s long winded speeches. On the other end of the spectrum I’d love to hear more of Snake’s voice in any of the MGS games, (except MGSV where his voice featured far too prominently) he’s just so quiet all the time. It’d also be great if he asked more questions.
Real talk though I hate mario’s noises in all the 3D titles. Just all of them, especially in the more recent titles where I’m convinced the ‘hups’ and ‘yahoos’ are actually the loudest parts of the game, and become incredibly grating after only world 1. In fact I hate his regular noises so much that I think I’d rather listen to his crying in Yoshi’s Island which itself was the worst part of that game.
I’m not sure why I’ve developed such a pathological hatred of his grunts and exclamations, especially when I like them in Link and love them in Mirror’s Edge’s Faith, but perhaps it has something to do with my love for Super Mario World and Yoshi’s Island (and the subsequent disappointment all the 3D Mario titles I’ve played brought in comparison).
Daisy in Mario Kart Wii