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What Video Game Character’s Voice Do You Hate?
With high-caliber voice talent and advanced recording technology, the quality of voice acting in video games is at an all-time high. Gone are the days of Jill sandwich and fill-your-dark-soul-with-light blunders. In their place, we have performances like Troy Baker’s nuanced turn as Joel in The Last of Us, and Melissa Hutchinson’s bold take on Clementine in Telltale’s The Walking Dead.
But even today, sometimes you can’t help but hate a character’s voice. No matter what they say or how they deliver it, every time these characters speak it just sounds like nails on a chalkboard. That’s not to say the voice actor performing the voice is bad, just that you don’t like their take on that particular character.
Earlier this week, I took a crack at playing Watch Dogs. I had played a brief level a few months back, but this was my first extended session with the game. While I enjoyed parts of what I played, I could not for the life of me stand Aiden Pearce’s voice. His low-pitched, emotionless grumble sounds incongruous with the rest of the game’s normal-sounding voice cast. Ubisoft is clearly trying to paint Pearce as a family man driven by revenge, but Pearce comes off like a person who’s never felt anything in his life. I can’t imagine his stodgy demeanor won him any uncle of the year awards even before his niece’s untimely death. With sandpaper vocal cords and gravely intonations, it’s no wonder his nephew is uncomfortable around him at the game’s start.
But enough about my beef with Aiden Pearce. Who’s the character that you can’t stand to hear? Sound off in the comments below.
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