Audio Atrocities (TM) :: Grandia (Playstation)

Once upon a time there was an awesome game for the Saturn called Grandia. Since the American kingdom of SEGA was ruled by an evil emperor, that version stayed in Japan, and the US got this port of it for the PlayStation that was inferior in every way - including the acting, which hit a new low in the land of the falling IQ.

What are the problems with the voice acting, you say? Well, the biggest problem is that there's weird pauses in the dialogue throughout the game. Seriously, they should have put the "Dr. Frankenfurter seal of Antici...Pation" on the game to let people know the kind of brain-numbing dialogue waiting-game hell they were in for before they walked out of the store. The other things wrong are more garden-variety dialogarrhea resulting from bad writing, plain delivery, bad casting, manic delivery - it's really all over the place, which is not good. Ever. (Well, except for House of the Dead series where the enjoyment-to-acting-quality ratio is inversely proportional, but that's an extremely rare occurance in console-land)

Exhibit A: “Heh heh heh...ya tryin' to act tough, fool?!”
Why have a crappy Mr. T, Jr. when they could have had the real thing? Think how much more entertaining this game would have been with Mr. T running around telling bad guys "I pity the fool!" in random encounters. But the only fool here is the player, subjected to an emotionally disfunctional reading of a badly-written line. Pity us.

Exhibit B: “There's no other way to save the world from destruction. Don't you understand?!”
This clip is a great example of actor indecision with a deaf director. He starts by building intensity, as if mounting a verbal attack - then fakes us out and abruptly changes course to end the first part soft as a baby's bottom. But he's not done! The REAL ending shoots out strong and hard like a...well...you get the point.

Exhibit C: “Have I...too...been given...the protection of the spirits?”
This actor has obviously been given the gift of Shatner, with faux-sublime delivery and intonation that William Shatner pioneered on a crazy little show you might have heard of called Star Trek. His show became huge, so Shatner got away with it. Grandia was not, and this is probably one reason why.

The Rest:
Haven't had enough? Here's some additional clips for your amusement:
Clip 4, Clip 5, Clip 6, Clip 7, Clip 8, Clip 9, Clip 10, Clip 11, Clip 12, Clip 13, Clip 14, Clip 15, Clip 16, Clip 17, Clip 18, Clip 19, Clip 20, Clip 21, Clip 22, Clip 23, Clip 24, Clip 25

“Have I...too...been given...the protection of the spirits?”