Why don't Nintendo 1st party games have full voice acting?

I think it depends. Much of Nintendo's game style can get away with out it, but Nintendos console business cant thrive without 3rd party, voice acted games like Skyrim, Witcher 3, or Arkham knight. Not getting games like these is why WiiU is dead last even though it launched first.

Ehh... an exception to the rule, using the smaller budgeted recent 2012 handheld title developed by Masahiro Sakurai, Project Sora, and Sora Ltd. produced by Nintendo is not what I was referring to when I said internally developed. Plus, Icarus was pretty short as well, which means less lines for the actors, although it was funny / done well for what it was. Sakurai and team are more parallel to Monolith Soft's Xenoblade than say Nintendo's own EAD. One might argue Xenoblade was at least a better example over Rising since it was a bigger budgeted home console game with VA. I also remember reading Uprising had good sales for what it was, but not seeing a Icarus Uprising sequel is a bit telling. I read a lot of interviews and speculation pieces since 2012 on why there will be no sequel, but beyond that... I was thinking internal studios like EAD (under Tezuka or Miyamoto) alone or what have you.

Either way, looking past Masahiro Sakurai, Project Sora, and Sora Ltd's handheld game and Sakurai's Nintendo and Non-Nintendo history (Q-Entertainment, Sora, etc), Kid Icarus U would be an exception to the VA from Nintendo. The strange thing to me too, was Kid Icarus was treated as a new IP because it had been a very, very long time so VA in it's case might help sell the product or maybe it was Sakurai's insistence. It definitely didn't feel like a sequel to my NES Kid Icarus with regards to mechanics (still sad about Gunpei Yokoi).

I do agree that Nintendo emphasize game-play fundamentals over narrative, which if I had to choose one I'll always choose Gameplay but that doesn't mean we don't have examples of the entire gaming industry doing both Narrative VA and great gameplay, because there are hundreds of games that have both excellent stories with VA and fantastic mechanics over the last decade+. Again, it boils down to money and it's just not worth it I think for them given I've pondered this since N64, Gamecube, Wii, and now Wii U era, even for a title like Zelda or Metroid because those games will sell in the millions and adding VA most likely won't boost the sales of say Zelda dramatically.

However, I would love for them to go for it anyways, but I just sort of doubt they will based on their history. There is hope though with devs like Monolith, Sora, Tecmo, Koei, Platinum, and even HAL (although HAL is more "old guard" and seem pretty set in their ways and work really well with Nintendo's current philosophy).

Anywho, my 2 pesos, not a big deal as I'm not committed to this discussion since I think I may have had it about 500 times in my life and I'm having trouble powering through this response as it is. :P

tl;dr:

I think money is the major variable.

I think Nintendo's focus on mechanics is definitely a huge variable as well, but I think money is still the primary.

I think there are other variables as well as I discussed on this topic before, but we'll just lay the two big ones on the feet of this thread.

I think it would be nice if they did more VA as it's certainly a deficit with particular games (as mentioned Zelda and Metroid), but I'm not too worried about it anymore these days.

And Starfox 64

And Sin and Punishment

And Sin and Punishment Star Successor

And Metroid Other M

And Metroid Prime 3

And Geist

And Pandora's Tower

And Eternal Darkness

And The Last Story

As far as I can tell the only franchise that could benefit from VA or even fully voiced acting is Zelda. BTW @SolidGame_basic your threads suck as much as your research skills.

Skyrim sucks too.

This is always obligatory when this subject is brought up. :P

@SolidTy: Yep, like I said, definitely wouldn't mind voice acted Nintendo games. But barring Zelda and maybe Metroid (jury's out on whether that game would benefit from VA, honestly), I don't ever actively miss it in the Nintendo games I play.

@charizard1605: Right, and I'm with you there, and there could be hope with other hypothetical Wii U and beyond New Nintendo IPs that perhaps could be narrative focused as well (to go with Zelda and arguably Metroid). I wonder too if there have been projects internally that have not been green-lighted due to their philosophy and approach to design.

One thing is for sure, I'm definitely not going to pass on beloved franchises that lack VA that I felt could have improved the narrative/game. I feel the same with movies, I can enjoy a B&W film and not skip over it just because it's lacks color or modern technique. You take the good with the bad, and usually with Nintendo games that means a lot more good that bad. :P

Because the voice acting would most likely be annoying and detract from their games' charm.

• Star Fox 64 I also forgot.
• Sin and Punishment - Was not successful, it didn't sell all too well despite it being AMAZINGLY good.
• Metroid Other M - considered to be the WORST in the series thanks to SJWs. Also didn't sell amazingly well either.
• Metroid Prime 3 - Sold well, but weakest of the Prime games.
• Geist - Don't hype this garbage game.
• Pandora's Tower - Great Game, Slow Sales. NOA didn't even publish.
• Eternal Darkness - Low Sales.
• The Last Story - Amazing game, Slow Sales, NOA didn't publish.

Also Sin and Punishment, Star Fox, and Kid Icarus were for the most part On-rail shooters so The Budget was low and Nintendo could afford the Voice Acting.

Metroid was coming off of the incredibly popular Prime series. They knew they would get a return with Metroid Prime 3 and Other M they thought the notoriety of Super Metroid would increase the sales of Other M, They also mentioned the fact the Team behind Ninja Gaiden was making the game to try to increase sales.

NOE saw the increasing need of Pandora's Tower, The Last Story, and Xenoblade so they justified the cost of Localization to get a return, and they did. NOA didn't see it so They made only Xenoblade a Gamestop Exclusive and let Xseed publish the rest.

Geist and Eternal Darkness were two big risks that saw no reward.

Another game Super Mario Sunshine was also considered to be the Worst in the Mario Franchise because of the voice acting for a while.

Fire Emblem is JUST NOW seeing the attention it deserved. Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn weren't heavy in the sales.

Again I'm with SolidTy on this one, It's all about the money. If Nintendo doesn't see a reason to hire a Voice cast they won't.

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Just to be clear, I was just listing games that had voice acting that were developed or were published by Nintendo. I mainly posted that list to dispel this long myth about voice overs and Nintendo games.

I don't know what Soildty, you and charizard are stating that has something to with my point.

@Seabas989: awwwww shit, I'm out of it.

Main point I'm trying to make was that if Nintendo don't want Voice Acting in their games or don't see a reason to add Voice Acting in their games they won't put it in there.

Zelda Voice Acting would be cool and would add to the experience, but is it needed? Probably not. But yeah Skyrim is not a great example of Voice Acting either.

Speaking of IP VOs. Who here wants a pokemon game to be fully voiced? I know I don't. Every goddamn trainer has the most random translated dialog. Even when I played R/B/Y as a kid I thought it was eye rolling.

So when OP says "Nintendo first party games," he only means Zelda, Mario, Kirby, and Pokemon, right? Games that would actually suffer from having full voice acted dialogue? Because all of these first party Nintendo games have full voice acting:

• Star Fox
• Fire Emblem
• Kid Icarus
• Xenoblade

Can you imagine the horror of English VAs for a Zelda game? It'd suck. And if you're using a game with shit voice acting like Skyrim as a point of reference that doesn't convince me that voice acting is necessary.

No worries. I was just confused. :P

I think with Zelda it could work so long as Link remains a "mute."

If a Zelda game has voice acting, it is most likely stay in future games unless there is a huge backlash from fans if they are against it. Nintendo (as do most Japanese developers) do not have sollid reputations in terms of English voice-acting. Even Western developers do not have solid reputations for good English voice-acting.

The problem with this thinking is that when Nintendo gets voice actors that it must be shit. Plenty of video games have voice acting in the 21st century, plenty of them aren't Other M levels of shitty. It goes without saying that if someone wants Nintendo to implement voice acting, that they would want it done well.

I think it's probably because most of their games just don't have AAA budgets. They spend their money where they will get the most bang for the buck. There are positives, such as not having to make the same game every year so as to minimize risk, plus an enormous amount of games released in any given year for one publisher, and negatives, like no voice acting and cheap hardware designed to play games with their development budget.

As long as they continue putting out games focused on gameplay that that run well with few bugs, I'll continue to consider them a top-tier publisher, though.

Star Fox 64 has some of the biggest game quotes of all time. That wouldn't have happened without their voice acting.

@jg4xchamp: It's true for everything, whether your game has an emphasis on narrative or gameplay, it should be executed and done well. That said, for all the money publishers spend on voice acting, it's astounding they still think they could get away with crummy writing that wouldn't even make it past a b-list producer.

It was getting ridiculous in Skyward Sword. That game has many scenes where Link speaks, but there is no speech bubble. The screen would fade to black at the start of it, where the scene returns with Link having finished a whole conversation with another character.

It shows that it seems to be more of a creative decision than Nintendo being cheap per se. There must be some kind of game bible where speaking characters in video games is some sin. The whole silent protagonist thing makes some sense as a player insert way but that doesn't explain why all other characters can't have voices. My preference would be for Link to be silent by choice instead of some kind of mute who cannot speak even he wanted to, like Claude from GTA3 (which was spoofed well in SA). Link could be like Silent Bob, where he never speaks because he would be a strong silent type, but that silence would be punctuated by poignant speech.

Maybe Nintendo is just generally slow to change when it comes to their main franchises

"Looks at TC"

Lol.

Voice actors cost money.

Design philosophy - they try to keep games feeling like a game first, and a movie second (if at all). Western developers cannot wait to get the two to meet though, and that's why you get games like The Order and so on...

I always look at pokemon and shake my head on how the game after so many years and so many millions it does for Nintendo every single year the games STILL have zero voice acting! how hard is it nintendo?

Why the **** do you want Pokemon to have voice acting?

Why the **** would you NOT have pokemon to have voice acting?

did you watch the anime show? pretty sure ALL the pokemons actually have voices and they all say their actual names or how about the characters in the game? "I chose you Blastoise" .. *pokemon out* "Blastoise!!" you know how awesome that would be?

from start to end pokemon to this date is still in silent mode :/

how can a small company, very small company like say NISA create games and have almost full voice acting while Nintendo.. THE Nintendo that makes millions a year.. cant do even 10% voice acting (in pokemon)?

I know your a huge fan of Nintendo but to me they are the laziest company in the industry.. note the IMO there

The anime is pure garbage; I wouldn't use it in an argument

And really, 10%? Read some posts above to see how wrong you are.

Maybe it's because I'm so accustomed to it, but I cannot imagine playing a Mario, Zelda or Pokemon title with full-fledged voice acting. It mainly has to due with how they're built and designed. Voice acting wouldn't necessarily be some automatic benefit, but more so a needless element. Why spend money on resources which aren't needed in the first place?

We must also remember the last time Nintendo gave us full VO: Super Mario Sunshine. Shit was awkward.

you're really missing the woods for the trees here. you named a handful of games from the past 20 years as opposed to this being standard for most games on sony and ms consoles. if anything, you proved my point, silly.

What? "Proving your point?" If anything, you're trying so damn hard to damage control the fact that you failed to do any research on Nintendo and voice acting.

no, you failed to understand the topic

Given that Zelda games let you name your character anything you want, I don't think full voice-acting is viable for that series until technology allows for that personal touch to be maintained in a fully voice acted game.

TC must've never played this title either:

Or this:

lol

Nice backpedaling solid

Next time why don't you do some research before clicking the new thread button

Eh, I just want it in Zelda. I feel odd reading screens of text while static NPCs stare at me unblinking. To be honest they could even speak made up "Hylian" and still keep the text for actual meaning. It would just be nice to see the characters as more alive and interactive. They still feel very "N64" to me, even in the Wii Zeldas.

It would probably be like Knights of the Old Republic I and II, where several alien characters (Wookies, Rodian, Ithorian, some Twi'lek) speak their native tongue and repeat the same alien words over and over, while having different subtitles.

@nintendoboy16: Or you know, we could not assume the worst... It's as possible to record unique "Hylian" as unique real language. Either would be cool with me. I found Fable for example had great voice acting that really enhanched the atmosphere.

Voice acting raises costs, and often it doesn't add anything to games. In fact, voice acting is largely what led to the decline in CRPG script length and quality. Sure, Dragon Age: Origins has 790k words that are mostly voice acted save the lead, but most of it was trite and not very good quality. Compare that to Pillars of Eternity which had 700k words that are all great quality, or even Bioware's magnum opus Baldur's Gate 2 which clocks in at 1 million words and is considered one of the greatest games of all time. I would much rather get games where the money is poured into the two pillars, story and gameplay, above all else.

This game has lotsa VA ...hehehe.. didn't score well in metacritic/on GS..but still fun game. :P

It's just metroid and possibly zelda that could use voice acting. Zelda already has characters like Midna and Fi speaking made up languages. Just let everyone talk like them

lol terrible thread. You need to do some research before you push your agenda. Otherwise it makes your argument look bad.

If you're going to make the same games for a century, it would be impossible to keep the same voices for the same characters.

Pretty obvious. :D

I should beat Kid Icarus.

One game that I actually play to listen to the banter over actual game mechanics.