Wanted: Dead has questionable VA

Cold and shifty eyes

Wanted: Dead is one of those little games that you catch passing you briefly in the hallway in a scene out of a movie, your eyes lock and a singular primitive hunger instantly descends upon you; you must have that game, whatever it takes. Unfortunately, more often than not these days I'm getting those 'animal brain on' moments for games that aren't long for this world at all. Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2 has been entirely reworked, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is on life support in the hands of entirely new studio due out for 2025 at the absolute earliest... heck, I even ended up falling for that Batman: Damian Wayne game and that thing never even entered development! I'm just a hopeless wreck for the projects destined for doom which is why even though I hear no one ever talk about this game and it seems to have an audience of less than 10,000 whenever it shows itself off; I really don't want Wanted: Dead to fade away into the cruel night.

If you're not familiar, and despite the fact I've gone over my thoughts on the game before when it was first revealed I hold no grudge against you if you don't; 'Wanted: Dead' is an action movie of a video game that was probably born from a board-room style pitch held entirely by blockbuster enthusiasts. "What if there was a girl with a katana and a gun" is literally the only part of this game that had any pre-thought before the thing went into production; and you can see that sort of unburnished child-like creative glee from the restrainless mirth present in the gameplay presentations. Of course, ambition is nothing without talent, and this is a team that worked on the Ninja Gaiden games in the past so they sure know how to throw an action game or two at the gaming public. 

There's also some heritage of Dead or Alive left in the freshly born body of this game, and you can really see it in the tightness of the animation suite on display here. These are the kinds of great chorography that only a fighting-game alum would design, featuring overly complicated, but superbly pleasing, acrobatic feats of both sword and gun when practicality would say a simple 'point and shoot' approach would clear rooms so much quicker. (But what is efficiency worth when the cost is style?) What the Dead and Alive heritage hasn't granted the team is a hint of it's visual appeal, both graphically and design-wise. Although I feel that latter is probably an intentional choice, scantily-clad ninja girls probably wouldn't sell the grungy splatter-action vibe so well, the former is sore spot when the game is looking rough.

I'm not a graphics hound, far from it; but there does come a point where a visual style slides out of the realm of 'distinctive' and just lands on plain ugly. I don't think that Wanted: Dead is quite in the danger zone there with what I've seen so far, but it is very close for comfort. When I look at the graphics this game is going for, I can't help but be reminded of the washed out painting style of Babylon's Fall; a game that fell so hard it not only made Square Enix totally revise their business model but averages around 6 players a day. There was only 1 on the Steam version of the game when I last checked. So that's not exactly the company you want to be keeping in people's heads; but I'm sure that this is just an unfortunate comparison and Wanted: Dead will prove itself far more memorable in it's gameplay if not it's looks.

But the question of how shoddy this project is never really does seem to rest, and they were highlighted for myself once again after the recent story trailer. If there were any world shaking reveals about the premise of the game hidden in this gameplay snippet, you'll have to forgive me for missing it; but I was too busy staring flabbergasted at the sheer awfulness of the voice over work for the game. I mean we heard a bit of it before in previous trailers, but honestly I just assumed that was placeholder work meant to be replaced by actual professional recordings later. But it's been a year; the game is approaching release; I'm thinking that Soleil really intend to ship the game like this... which would be a... bold move to say the very least.

When we think about the absolute pits of voice acting, there isn't very many steps to go before we land at the original Resident Evil; and whilst this game is obviously nowhere near that legendarily bad all-around performance- (One which easily crosses the Rubicon into 'so bad it's good' territory) this still manages to get nearly everything wrong too. The cheesy action-movie dialogue is a given, that comes with the territory of this style of game; I'd be upset if it wasn't that way. But the actual performance given by someone who both doesn't appear to speak the language their reading in, at least not fluently enough to act in it, and cannot summon an iota of interest in her voice; as the lead! That's a problem. As is the fact that she's only one of the bad voice actors. If their recent trailer is anything to go by, this game is full of them. Oh, and the recordings sound bad, and the trailer is sound-mixed badly so you can't hear the voices clearly. That's about every sin of video game voice acting guys; all we need is several scenes where the dialogue and subtitles don't match and we'll have Yahtzee!

In full honesty, I am actually somewhat glad that the supporting cast appears to be as bad as the main actress, because there's nothing more painful than a cast trying their all to bounce off an actual brick-wall of charisma. But at the same time I do want just a little bit of love and magic in my ears when I play my games. I don't want a Bob Odenkirk level routine where I'm drinking every word like a thirsty man in the Gobi Desert; I just want to be able to immerse myself in the world without frowning everytime a character reads a witty line like they haven't understood a single word that has just come out of their own mouth. Just because your game is an action game that doesn't mean all forms of acting are totally inconsequential to the gameplay experience! Heck, even Cyberrunner had decent VO work. 

But maybe being bad is the plan? Getting my conspiracy space blanket on for a moment, and covering myself from all the electromagnetic disturbance that might trigger my very real condition, perhaps Soleil know that being a laughstock is as much a draw for attention these days as being a masterpiece. Maybe they hope to draw more attention to their work by seeking out a cast that sound like they were picked off the bench fresh from jury duty. I mean sure, I was interested in the game for it's own merits but I'm sure someone out there only watched the trailer for 'Wanted: Dead' because they heard about the zombie voice acting and wanted to listen to it for themselves. In fact, I'm betting my editor has already stopped reading this blog to go watch it just from reading about it here. A story is infectious, even if it's a story about how mediocre of a job your doing in some departments. At the very least this better mean the game knocks it out of the park in gameplay; you know, considering they plundered the budget from the VO department to make it work leaving them with nothing but a couple of dusty buttons and an IOU food stamp.