2010 AG Awards: The John Laws' Golden Microphone Award for Excellence in Voice Acting
Feature from Nat - Monday, 20 December 2010 @ 8:33am
The 2010 AG Awards #7: The John Laws' Golden Microphone Award for Excellence in Voice Acting
As the first week of AG awards draws to a close, we celebrate the best of the best voice acting throughout 2010, with the winner taking home this bad boy right here:
They know they want it.
The AG Nominations:
Cormac’s Nomination: Mass Effect 2
This nomination should be a tougher pick than it was. Fallout: New Vegas and Fable 3 both boasted a very impressive line-up of big name actors, but this could only go to Mass Effect 2. The sheer number of unique characters brought to life by a truly talent voice cast should be enough. Across two games, we've never seen Tali's face, but I'm yet to hear of a fan who doesn't empathise with the character in some way. Thane's voice alone had me head over heels for the scaley green man (yes I just wrote that and I’m comfortable with it being in my digital footprint for decades to come). But the real goods of this award are tributed to Jennifer Hale and Mark Meer for female and male Commander Shepard respectively. Bioware give their players a lot of room to develop a character. They could be comforting a dying worker one moment then pushing a mercenary out a window the next. These two tie all that together to make it believably the same Shepard no matter what the circumstances. That’s fucking impressive and something I couldn't say about any other title.
Memorable voice acting from a fantastic cast of characters.
Cav's Nomination: Gary Oldman as Reznov in Call of Duty: Black Ops
Gary Oldman is outstanding in just about everything he does and Black Ops is no exception. His accent is so spot on, 100% of the time, that you would have assumed a real Ruskie was playing the part. It’s just such a damn shame that Sam Worthington went all multinational with his voice acting. This really drew attention away from Mr Oldman’s performance. The lip synch for this game was quite exceptional as well, which lends well to Oldman’s performance. Overall, I do not think that there could have been a better selection made when casting this role.
One of my favourite characters of the year, voiced superbly by Mr. Oldman
Sarge's Nomination: The entire cast of Red Dead Redemption
Without a doubt, Red Dead Redemption as a whole. All the characters seemed bang on. I did have a bit of a man-crush on John Marsten. All of the voices seemed spot on and perfectly delivered, suited to each of the characters perfectly, from John himself, to Abigail, to Leigh Johnson, the Marshal of Armadillo. A phenomenal voice cast.
A wonderful relationship between two superb characters, amplified by phenomenal voice acting.
Nat's Nomination: Alan Wake
As I fully expect someone to say Red Dead Redemption, I’ll swing for the fences a little more and say Alan Wake. Whilst the lip syncing is ordinary and the performance capture isn’t perfect, the voice work within the entire game is phenomenal and builds the atmosphere even higher.
The fear and unease of Alan Wake was palpable, and perfectly voiced. A spectacular ensemble cast, as well.
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Have to agree with Cormac's pick. Mass Effect 2's voice acting was excellent (as was the writing for that matter). Quite a feat considering it's nature as a truly epic RPG with a fuck load of content and it's branching conversation trees. I can think of few instances where the conversations didn't flow seamlessly.
I did find Mark Meer's performance to be a little bland however, where as I thought Jennifer Hale did an outstanding job.
A combination of the quality wiring and superb voice acting meant that I became more connected with these characters than any character in any other game ever. By the end of the game I really did care about them (even Black Dude who's name no one ever remembers!) and was genuinely scared of losing any one of them through the game's final sequence (and terrified of losing Tali, whom I hooked up with - and who didn't honestly). And when I inevitably did lose one (Thane, who was so fucking cool) I actually cared.
Red Dead Redemption's voice acting was also fantastic, and would have to be my second pick.
Oh, and how could I forget Assassin's Creed II; which even if the acting wasn't as amazing as the above games (plus I couldn't really understand what they were saying most of the time anyway), it sounded fucking cool and really help sell the Renaissance Italian setting. 
