Sunday, August 24, 2025
Giving Words Life
How
a character is presented is key to a player’s impression of them
and what they sound like is a major component of it. Voice Acting is an
important element in most styles of games and visual novels are no
exception. Just like background music and sound effects, it plays
into the texture of each scene and helps add some much needed life to
the walls of text. It gives the characters a way to appear more
personable to the player and so help bridge the divide between their
worlds. Beyond simple character voices, Voice Acting has other facets
from spoken narration to voicing protagonists and they provide a
wide range of avenues through which visual novels can adapt to the
needs of developers. The elephant in the room is that not every title
can afford to hire voice actors or even wants voices in the first
place. Smaller indie visual novels are the main proponents of this
choice/limitation and the results are creative ways around the issue
or deliberately leaning into it for a distinctive effect. Let’s
listen to some talking and uncover the power of Voice Acting.
Speaking To The Player
Hearing
a character talking is a powerful tool in shaping how they are
perceived and their place within a title’s overall presentational
space. It moves characters out from just being purely visual entities of
portraits and text and gives them an auditory angle through which
they can communicate their identity to the player. We naturally have
a natural predisposition as humans to pay attention to the voices of
others when we can clearly make them out, hence why you can sometimes
find yourself accidentally eavesdropping on a conversation happening
nearby. So when we hear a fictional character speak there is an
immediate connection made in our mind to this instinct that makes
them appear more human. There is also a spatial element to the
audible voices since they sound close to the player and so the game
gains the sense of the events on screen happening right in front of
the player rather than in some fantastical distant world. As such
when a visual novel is utilising Voice Acting, these changes in
perception have to be kept in mind when constructing the other
presentational elements. Other audio needs to mixed to not overpower
the voices while key sound effects or changes in music which the game
wants attention drawn to need to not be drowned out by characters
talking over them. The Voice Acting can pull some of the narrative
weight since the way something is said can convey the emotions and
intent of a character and this frees the story from the need to
explain details that could bog down the pace of a scene.
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| Given how much of Clannad is just talking, its Voice Acting gains additional importance |
Given the
sheer number of visual novels with Voice Acting among the mid to high
budget titles, any of which could demonstrate the effect of voices,
it is best to look at a few key examples to best capture the broader
picture. Fate Stay Night heavily leans into the immediacy offered by
Voice Acting as a means to sell the danger and violence of its
actions scenes. It not only has its characters shouting at each other
with emotion deeply ingrained in every line, but also has a lot of
grunts of exertion and howls of pain to craft the feeling of the harm
which is befalling them. Those noises are ones we make
subconsciously and work as a means of grounded the heightened
emotions of the conflicts. On the opposite end of the spectrum sit
titles like Clannad where the Voice Acting is a means to sell
character banter and interactions. This is especially important for
Clannad since it is these engagements between characters which form
the majority of its content so the extra layer provided by voices
helps add variety to their conversation while keeping player engaged.
Visual novels with a greater focus on character interactions
naturally have more dialogue to voice than those focused other on
aspects like action, mystery or horror and as such Voice Acting is
most impactful on them than on those interested in other aspects.
Differing Styles
Not
every visual novels implements Voice Acting in the same way and the
choices in what to include and exclude from it offers a lot of
flexibility for a developer. The most common of these is the choice
to not give the protagonist a voice despite the rest of the cast
being given one. At first glance this might seem like a decision
which would be distracting from the player’s immersion in the story
since the silence will stand out. However, for titles in genres like
romance or slice of life, the game wants the player to insert
themselves into the role of the protagonist and this void allows them
to do so they can create their own internal voice for the character
rather than having it dictated to them. Take Minazuki Kashou from
NekoPara, everything about his personality is set up in a way for a player self-insert so giving him Voice Acting would harm this
direction by providing mixed signals and so his silence is the space
needed to experience his intended purpose. Another implementation of
voices is the use of binaural audio. The goal of this feature is
to create a sense of 3D space where the speaker sounds close to the
player’s ear and it allows for a feeling of intimacy with them. How
this intimacy is used can be split into two camps, affection and
fear. Affection is straight forward, it aims to utilise the intimacy
of binaural audio to reinforce the romance element of the speakers
relationship with the protagonist. A Sky Full of Stars makes full use
of it to set the mood with the heroines and sell the fantasy of the
relationship in a very direct manner. Fear is the domain of horror
and intimacy here is used to establish the close proximity of the
threat and make the player directly feel the danger. Perhaps the most
notable example of this style of binaural audio is in Corpse Party:
Book of Shadows which makes use of it sparingly for moments so it
never becomes familiar and to ensure it always coincides with
something dangerous being uncomfortable close.
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| Sharnoth's narration is made clear through a picture of the speaker's face in the text box |
Voice Acting can
expand beyond the words of the characters and bleed into the
narration as part of its implementation. This generally takes the
form of one of the existing cast extending their role and giving
their thoughts on events on a higher narrative level then their
immediate actions. While this can involve breaking the fourth wall,
it is most often just the character reflecting on what is happening
in a more detached manner so as to give the player a greater insight
into their choices and provide information which would not otherwise
make sense for them to give. Voicing these sections is key to helping them be
presented as the character’s raw thoughts rather than the filtered
and controlled words they use when speaking out load. Sharnoth of the
Deepest Black makes liberal use of voiced narration from its POV
characters and they all talk in a calm manner as they narrate what is
going on even if they are currently in danger. It lends this
narration a sense of bluntness as if this is the characters being
honest with the player and is used to explore their personal thoughts
as they struggle with the emotions and events happening around them.
The Power Of Silence
It
is expensive to have every character voiced and many games can
function fine without it, as such many lower budget titles use
minimal voices or none at all. This design choice has a profound
effect on how the rest of the visual novel deals with presenting
character emotion and intent since it cannot rely on the way words
are spoken. Partial Voice Acting involves a series of repeated basic
words, phrases or emotive noises being played when a character’s
dialogue appears on screen and serves as a way to add some extra flare
to the text at a lower cost. The Danganronpa games make use of this
technique outside of their big story moments in various places from
the character bond events to the investigation sections. Having over
the top character portraits which clearly express emotion in the most
in your face way possible helps smooth over the transition between
full and partial voicing by connecting the characters emotion and
intent to their appearance rather than simply their voice.
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| Having a strong asthetic and wild plot can allow a game to get away with a lot |
Going
beyond the use of voices and removing them entirely requires the
visual novel to step in and state clearly what would be conveyed through
speech. This means being more explicit about how a character is
feeling or their actions in text while weaving them into each scene in order for them
not to feel distracting or unnatural. One way many titles choose to
adopt these elements is through merging it into a broader expansion
of the character’s inner thoughts. Take Higurashi and Umineko,
which were released without Voice Acting, they lean heavily into the
internal space of the cast and each one is direct in their
presentation of the way they say things, even if they might be
engaging in deception or pushed through the lens of an unreliable
narrator. Given the limited ability of their portraits to pick up the
slack, the text does most of heavy lifting and there are many cleaver
ways used to underscore certain words and phrases such as the red truths from Umineko. The lack of voices makes these sudden changes
in the text stand out clearly and adding Voice Acting after the fact
muddled the messaging of these important moments.
Conclusion
As
with all audio in visual novels, Voice Acting holds a powerful role
in immersing the player and selling the story and its characters. It
plays off the innate human instinct to pay attention to voices and
speech to hold the player’s attention and add a layer of humanity
to the speaker. There are various ways to play around with Voice
Acting from binaural audio to voiced narration and these expand and
reshape how it can be engaged with resulting in vastly different
effects. Not having voiced characters is a valid option and requires
the title to adopt a more intimate approach while offering new ways
to create emphasis. Choosing whether or not to have Voice Acting in
your visual novel has such a wide reaching impact it should be
carefully considered in order to best utilise its many facets.
