Poll: Is It About Time Game Freak Added Voice Acting To Pokémon?

Yes, it was time 10 years ago

Atleast a grunt. It's insane to me that these games still sell like hotcakes when it seems like plenty parts of it are so dang lazy or not invested into. I mean it's working so I guess I can only fault them so much.

I personally think that they should just stop making those awful cutscenes that were clearly developed with voice acting in mind. I have no doubt that I would find voice acting to be really annoying and probably poorly done, although I'll admittedly still take it over the nonsense that they currently do.

It's the biggest media franchise. There is absolutely zero reason for them not to include voice acting. I don't have the recent games (aside from Arceus) but I've seen some of the cutscenes. They're absolutely ridiculous without voice acting, it's intensely grating, and it takes you out of the immersion.

They should either include voice acting, or go back to what they're actually good at, making these games with sprite art instead of 3D. Lack of voice acting won't be as bad there.

Man I wish Nintendo would subject Pokémon games to their usual quality control because they really need it.

My choice was "That would be cool, but I'm not losing sleep over it". Mostly because I really like the Pokémon games, even without the voicing. But voicing would make it better 😃.

For me, Pokémon games are at their best when the story takes a back seat to playing. JRPGs in general love talking your ear off, there’s always way too much dialogue, and most of it doesn’t add much of anything. Cutscenes take you out of the experience and make you sit through (or skip through) a bunch of generic dialogue.

If I wanted to watch a movie, I’d be watching a movie, not playing a game.

It’s 2025 and Pokemon is the most profitable franchise in existence. There’s zero excuse for this, especially when the anime manages to be fully voice acted.
I don’t even care if they only voice the cutscenes. Those at the bare minimum should be voiced. I’d even accept an Animal Crossing style audio for dialogue. It just needs to be something other than a complete void of sound.

Game Freak should focus on making their games cheaper.

It is about time that Game Freak added a lot to Pokemon really.

“Pokémon games have never, at least to our knowledge, had voice-over work. At least not the mainline games or direct spin-offs.”

What is New Pokémon Snap then?

I think all you youngin' need to read. That's how I did it. That's how my pappy did it.

I'm fine with them finally doing some voice-over for future Pokémon games, I'm fine without them. It's not the end of the world for me if no voice overs.

Well like, yea, would be cool sure

They should at the very least be able to do something along the lines of the Zelda games, Fire Emblem Awakening level, or even Professor Layton (all cutscenes voiced, and then a handful of important dialogue). Give the user to change the language or turn it off, since the English voice actors can be hit or miss. There's no excuses at this point.

I like it the way it is. Even so, I am sure I would like a good voice-over too.

@Markiemania95 Also, what are the 3 Pokémon Stadium and Pokémon Battle Revolution then?
Given the kind of game it will be, I'm also expecting Pokémon Champions to have an announcer/battle narrator.

With that said, whose call it is to have voices in Pokémon games?

For me it has to be in cutscenes. I don't mind not having VA for the NPCs that you walk up too to chat with or venders/poke centre. Sidequest are a maybe, I can give or take on those.

The reason it is not done now is because they release the game in 9 languages simultaneously worldwide.

Remember back in the DS era the games weren't even released same day worldwide. Japanese first, then localization took months.

If they're going to put proper lipsyncing in their cutscenes then they can at spring for VAs.

Or alternatively, they can keep with the current approach but do what old silent films did and include a caption that interrupts the scene

@HammerGalladeBro Ah, I never played those games, but true. I think Pokken also had some voice acting iirc.

...New Pokemon Snap did it...come on GameFreak, just do it already. Although honestly the main Pokemon games have other issues that need to be dealt with first anyways.

Or just let Bandai Namco make a main game. lol

They can barely find the budget to make the game look and run well, let's get them to fix that first, then the gameplay and then we can ask for voice acting

Let us not forget that in Pokemon Legends Arceus, the player would grunt when rolling or getting mauled by an Ursaring. This is all the voice acting we will ever get at this rate. All the while, the flipping gacha game has voice acted dialogue.

Jokes aside, I hope that if Game Freak does ever decide to implement voice acting, I hope they do it right. A lot of games with voice acting have this weird thing of making it sound like passerby conversation is constantly directed toward the player even when it isn't supposed to be. Hopefully a BOTW style of mumbling most of the time with full voice acting for cutscenes would be used in this fantastical future where Pokemon has proper voice acting.

Side Note: It really goes to show how necessary the voice acting is for these cutscenes that in the linked video, I instinctively tried to increase the volume on my computer LMAO

@MojoMonkey98 ... and some good developers too.

Well, you've read their dialog, you've seen their graphics and their "coding". Do you trust them to get voice actors that won't make your ears cringe blood? I feel like it would just end up being two or three old underpaid Indian men that barely speak English getting one chance to nail each line for every character. Or Ai, but like mid-90's "Ai" from those crappy computer toys that read out each letter as your kid types them. It's up to y'all though, I'm officially done with the series.

⁽ⁿᵍˡ ⁱ'ᵈ ᵖˡᵃʸ ᵗʰⁱˢ⁾

I wish they would have never went 3d, and I feel like Gamefreak feels the same. Black and White 1/2 was the best Pokemon ever looked, and we would probably have HD-2d Pokemon instead of GameCube graphics and we wouldn't have to worry about if they should have voice actors or not.

@Yosher GameFreak has said Nintendo has no say over the Pokémon games development as they're independent from them and as I understand it The Pokémon Company sets the budget. It's because of that weird three way ownership Nintendo, GameFreak and The Pokémon Company have. Nintendo is basically just the distributor.

The game has lip syncing. It should have voice acting. Even if we go by the “the quality is bad because TPC has strict merchandise deadlines” argument Voice Acting is something they can do alongside development of the game.

I've said this before but Nah, people should read more.
That said, a couple of grunts probably couldn't hurt. Given how broad the age range is i think reading is even more important especially for children.

Edit I want to add a bit more, I have to be honest but one thing I'm glad of, when there isn't voice acting is that I don't have to hear an American accent and their pronunciation of words. It's not a knock to Americans, its just quite tiresome at times especially as I'm young enough, that my accent has already been influenced by such media. I also remember when I was very little my mom would play pokemon with me, help me read it and create voices for the characters it was a lot of fun.

Each game is multi million selling. The budget should reflect this. The Pokemon should have voice-overs like they do in the anime and there shoukd be fulll voice acting.

With regards to the pokemon, once they have copied snd pasted the voicevers from the anime, they would not need to do this again.

I feel Nintendo are just taking the piss now. We have a machine as poweful as a PS4 Pro in your hand and there is yet to be 1st party game which shows of the capabilities of the system.

I'd rather they added graphics.

There is literally no reason in 2025 for any game to not have full voice over.

It's past time for voice acting, especially during cut scenes.

Sword and Shield would have benefited from it. Piers literally sings in cutscenes, but we get a brief mic squeal and then silence. At best it leaves the games feeling lacking, at worst it ruins any sense of immersion.

I think something like what BotW/TotK did (full voice acted cutscenes, grunting everywhere else) would be perfect. They've even done this before in Pokemon spinoffs (New Pokemon Snap for example)

@SBandy1 Same. I was going to say, people absolutely lose their ***** over the poor graphics, technical issues, bland in-game environments, etc., and now want to add a whole new thing on top of that?? It's like why my dad resisted buying a car with power windows for so long, because he said it was just another thing to go wrong and have to get fixed at great expense. Maybe we table the voice acting for now and focus on bringing everything else up to par.

@cylemmulo A lot of people will buy anything Pokemon related which is why Gamefreak does the bare minimum, if that. Scarlet and Violet were plagued with technical issues but still sold a crazy amount of copies. Some folks refuse to demand better when it comes to this franchise.

A bloody gacha game has more voice acting than the mainline games. Come on Game Freak. You're no longer an indie studio. Stop acting like one.

@AllBLK From a recent leak, the budget for Z-A was in the range of $13 Million. I'm 99% sure that Palworld has a bigger budget. Heck, even the upcoming Gen 10 has a budget of $20 Million.

I honestly don't think Pokemon needs or would especially benefit from voice acting. But then I thought the same about Zelda and they just about made that work. Ultimately it seems more like a luxury than a necessity for Nintendo games to have voice acting. One of Nintendo's biggest strengths has always been how universal their IPs are and how they resonate the world over. Adding fifty different dubs for their games runs the risk of taking time and resources away from what's actually important in them.

It is about time that every game does this.

Personally I’d be good with the Zelda style. It is a bit awkward to have characters make no sound whatsoever, especially when all the pokemon make noises? Gamefreak gonna gamefreak lol

My biggest problem with Pokémon Violet was not having important cutscenes voice acted, and only having text appear on screen for a brief second during gameplay when exploring the final area of the game with your friends; I had to constantly save a video clip just to see what they said because I wasn't reading it as quickly as the game expected me to. Having a character in the late game speak in corrupted text was a good touch, but I still feel like this would have been better with voice acting. This is a multi-billion dollar company we're talking about, yeah? Why the heck can't they put more resources towards these games that always sell ridiculously well?

No.

First they need to add portuguese and arabic languages into the games.

We are talking about almost 1 billion speakers.

The Pokémon Company International used brazilian footage to tell us the games would be localized into latin spanish, but in Brazil people speaks portuguese.

Then, no. It is not time to voice acting. Pokémon games NEEDS to be more acessible in more languages.

And PLEASE, PLEASE, do not force us into imperial system. Let us choose the METRIC system. Makes 0 sense to measure a pokémon in body parts.

It’s Pokémon, they have the money to do full voice-over with hollywood artists and script, state-of-the-art visuals and creative gameplay. They just choose not to do so because the minimum effort sells a lot already.

@Yozora146_ This is such an ignorant argument. I've worked in schools in the past. Making kids read video games isn't going to magically solve the literacy crisis. It's just going to make kids not play video games. Adding voice acting is a basic accessibility feature in addition to being a quality of life feature the franchise needs.

It's been time for absolutely ages, especially if they're going to keep doing drawn-out cutscenes of just characters yammering about nothing. Not everything needs to be voiced but at least some key scenes should be and there should be some grunts here and there, the games feel so cheap trying to do these cinematic segments while being totally silent the whole time.

@RenanKJ Bingo. Literally nothing will change until they see a drastic drop off in sales and they have to look at what needs fixing and in their eyes nothing is broken if they still sell record numbers time and time again. It’s really just that simple.

@ElRoberico if anything is going to motivate a kid that struggles to read it's going to be them feeling left out because all the other kids are obsessed with something that requires reading. Accessibility doesn't mean coddling, the highest earning franchise in the world obviously isn't struggling in the accessibility department. Motivate the illiterate.

Voice acting should have been added when the Switch released the first Pokemon. At the very least, Sword and shield should have had it. It’s so stupid, cheap and lazy that they didn’t add. Imagine watching the anime without voice acting. I play the game on mute because it’s a dealbreaker having silence

@Olliemar28 No voice work? Black and White 2 has a couple tracks that would disagree with you.
I wonder if he doesn't know about Dogars, and I guess he hasn't given Elesa what she needs. Also the Village Bridge and Ghetsis.
Though I suppose of those, Village Bridge is pushing the most towards actual acting and not simple voice effects.
(Dogars is the Japanese name for Koffing, but that only became a meme for English speakers because that track was first heard in its Japanese version and it sounds like it really blew up upon its Japanese release. I'm not surprised they went for an indirect localization, probably to have to record for multiple languages but also because directly following the pattern for its English name... probably would have a lot more... questionable... result.)

I'd definitely prefer if there were some voice acting. I didn't care back in 3DS era but nowadays it just looks silly. You start a new game, the first bit of dialogue comes and... nothing. Not a single sound. There's this void that needs filling.

You get used to it pretty fast but the initial shock leaves bad impression.

Not to important I rather have better graphics. But wouldn't we all on that one.

Yes to both questions, it's long overdue for Pokemon to have voice acting. For me it just feels weird to have a cutscene with no voices especially when you compare it to other big JRPG franchises.

@SpaceboyScreams And if they legitimately have a learning disability they're going to feel that way regardless. It goes beyond motivation. That's borderline disability shaming.

And normal graphics, yes.
Pokémon games easily makes so much money. It's not a problem for them to add fully-voiced dialogues.

It's baffling to me they didn't have VA when they started releasing Pokemon on Switch. I wouldn't need everything to have voice but at least the cut scenes.

If they aren't going to put in the work to make the game LOOK like a current Gen game, then they absolutely should use full voice acting!

@ElRoberico Don't assume I'm American your ignorance there is blatant before you dismiss a so called argument. People in general should read more, as its more engaging for the brain. And it terms of "accessibility" that would be a screen reader in this case not VA. But if we're going to be critical about it then arguably the pokemon series has got to be up for the worse in terms of accessibility. But this article isn't about accessibility. Generally the lack of VA in games is usually because the player is supposed to give those characters a voice.

This is a brave poll. @MamaSymphonia is about to tell us the dangerous effects voice acting has on reading.

The games have needed voice acting for a while now. Full voices during cutscenes and small voice lines during gameplay.

@Suketoudara Considering Nintendo does own the franchise partially, I'm just hoping that one day they get sick of the cut corners and demand better. Not sure how much that would help, but I feel it's sorely needed. It's definitely one of the least polished Nintendo exclusive franchises right now.

@ElRoberico you borderline have a sensitivity issue if you think I'm shaming the disabled. there are obviously dozens of disabilities that make gaming harder for people and jumping down a developers throat for not catering to every single one is wild, nobody is going to invest in a team of voice actors for thousands of lines of dialog just to help the hard of reading when there are free apps on your phone that read text out loud. Any 6 year old can work their way through a Pokemon game without asking their parents too many questions anyways. If we want to yell at them about accessibility let's start with the price.

They can and should do so much better for Pokemon. It's a franchise that should be one of the best looking games on a Nintendo console. Look at how well other developers do cell shaded graphics. They could easily recreate the anime. Pokemon Company had more then enough money to put in the games. They can create their own engine if they wanted to.

I know the games bring in the least money compared from everything Pokemon, but they are at the very start of every new gen.

It's been time since at least Sword/Shield, it's ridiculous that not even the animated cutscenes feature voice acting.

It’s the least they can do, ridiculous that with all the money they have and make and we don’t get VA, snap & the mobile games have Va, after playing less sellers like Xenoblade and Fire emblem it’s kinda silly to have no VA, the voices in the Pokémon cartoons is also top notch no reason not too. I have hopes for gen 10 but from a business point they don’t need it

we will all still buy the slop so we are part of the problem

I'm always torn by these sort of questions when it comes to RPGs (which I consider Pokemon to be). In the 90s you read the dialogue and it was like an interactive novel where the characters became your own depending on how you heard their voices in your head. Voice acting makes these games more cinematic and by extension more immersive as a world, but in the end it leaves less to the imagination and requires less from the player.

I really don't want every single line to be voiced, but those lip-synced cutscenes definitely do look odd without any voiceover.

@Res462 this especially fits well with Pokemon, which was always better as a more pick up and play experience.

I miss the simple days of just becoming the champion rather than having to fight interdimensional aliens or whatever.

But….but…but….Pokemon is such a huge franchise, the amount of languages and translations, on top with VA would be a lot of work.

Their production timeline is like a year or something ridiculous. Wouldn’t this further affect the quality of the games? More pop in’s and identical floral lady trainers?

I mean the Pokémon company isn’t sitting on trillions like the top tech companies. They are only the most profitable media company.

@springer17 Much of the stories do go into the animé and lore. I doubt GameFreak can just ignore them and not put them into the games.

@SpaceboyScreams With respect to VAs, they use VAs for most of the same characters in the animé series. Why not just hire them to do the games too? Those two things are likely in production at the same time.

I could care less really if they added voice acting. I was just talking to my brother about this last night that maybe make it like Zelda with some sounds when they talk but more than that I don't really want. It's just gonna be the same played out voice actors from every game and anime anyway.

It's been clear it's been needed for the last few games, but I really think Legends Z-A stands out the most. Cut scenes feel empty. And surely it wouldn't be that hard to find people to voice-act for it.

While I would enjoy it if the whole thing had voice acting (perhaps that you could toggle on and off) at the very minium we need voice acting for cut scenes. I'm truly guessing Gen 10 will have it. It's time

Not a Pokemon guy myself, but in general I feel like Any Game with 3D Animated Cutscenes that Involve Dialogue (TM) should have at least a little "Gu-ah-h," "OK!" "Oh-h..." etc. noise to convey the feeling of the scene. It's really jarring without that lol

Kids don't read enough as it is these days lol. Don't encourage it with voice acting!

@Yosher It's not going to happen. Nintendo doesn't have control over Game Freak. When will people get this?

They’re so cheapskate by not adding voice. According to the recent leak this game cost $13 million to produce. It sells for $60 on the eshop and it’s expected to sell 20 million copies which is $1200 million of revenue ($1.2 billion) It’s ridiculous that there’s no voice acting. Profits to the extreme

@breach187
That’s the problem they’ve made so much bank on this franchise despite the obvious amount of inconsistencies between core aspects of it like the Pokemon cries, they had the chance as early back as the DS days to finally solidify what they sound like across all parts of the brand but they chose not to and that informs a lot about how they operate.

I mean, pokemon themselves have been voiced pretty much since Game Boy.😛 As for the human cast voicework, it would certainly be welcome, and the more the better, but I fail to see it as a dealbreaker, perhaps because I mostly grew up without it myself.

Trying to put voice acting into the game would cost more as how many language would have to be installed on Pokémon? If they had common language others would find a complaint to make again. This is what Pokémon is known for and why make it more costly?? Enjoy the game all those extras might increase or distract from gameplay.

It looks like your typical mobile slop game now with its voiceless mouth moving stuff. Laughable in 2025 for one of the largest game companies around.

The problem isn't the lack of voice-acting. SNES RPGs don't suffer from lack of voice-acting. The problem is that everything else in the story sequences are trying to be cinematic/movie-like, so the lack of voices sticks out like a sore thumb. This started to be a problem in Zelda around the time of Twilight Princess too.

If they're worried about translating it into a bunch of languages, just do what plenty of other games do and keep the voice acting Japanese (or make up a language).

Voice acting would be fine, as long as there's an option to disable for those who don't like it. Some games goes overboard with them with no way in disabling it (looking at you, Inti Creates).

Perhaps some form of Lylat style gibberish?

Or all the words are just "human" each said in a different language.

Yes. They should have had it in since Sword and Shield.

I'm sorry they are making these cutscenes and character expressions without any voices just makes the scenes feel so awkward..

Take meeting Mable in the office or catching Emma sleeping. VAing would have made scene feel even more alive.

The next game most definitely has to have it

Do Pokémon even talk?

this was overdue 10 years ago

Remove it from the Zelda franchise and put it in Pokemon.

They have to urgently add Brazilian Portuguese first

Z-A feels awkward without voice acting... the scenes set it up like they would be speaking and then don't... Heck even just if the did only Japanese voice acting it'd be better...

But this is the Pokemon company we are talking about they could easy fully voice their games in multiple languages... they sell well enough for it.

Heck even indie developers can do voice acting... Pokemon certainly has the budget for it...

@chriswashere313 Who says they need to have a voice track for each text language? It's fairly common for games to support less voice languages than text languages. For example, all the Fire Emblem and Xenoblade games on Switch only have Japanese and English voice options and many additional languages for text. That would be a perfectly acceptable starting point for Pokemon.

@SpaceboyScreams You joke, but that's basically what we got with the atrocious English dub for Pokken Tournament! As someone who prefers English dubbed games and anime, this is one of the few games that made me Switch to Japanese due to how bad the English dub was.

Maybe not quite Chaos Wars bad, but close.

I feel at least the cutscenes should have voice acting. I dont mind reading during normal gameplay but the cutscenes feel weird without it.

1 billion at least in revenue for the last 5 games each they have the money to make these games with more quality

You play the most niche, obscure JRPG release and it has voice acting for all major cutscenes. You play the latest release from the most prolific multimedia franchise and all characters are dead silent as the animations practically beg for voiced dialogue

It's not just time, it's way past time they added it!

If they must add voice acting, I hope they limit it to "hurgh", "hnngh" and some other grunts at the beginning of the text box to bring the best possible immersion.

Because I grew up by 3rd party games standard, I would like to see next Pokemon games have FULL voice acting like other RPG games such as Final Fantasy Kingdom Hearts, etc.
Here is example when Pokemon Scarlet / Violet got voice acting.

Where's the option "No, voice acting would be an actual detriment?" Because that's the correct choice.

Only if they also offer one in every language the game supports in text and also with a "no voice" option. (some games have those)

and if they do then only for major quests / cut scenes. Not for every dialog. That gets old realy quick.

So far the lack of voice acting is my biggest complaint. Since I’m not totally convinced that it’s a great game in itself, voice acting would have helped immensely with the story telling. Heck, even Marvelous nailed the voice acting in SOS: Grand Bazaar. Japanese and English voice acting should be standard in Pokémon games going forward in my opinion.

I was thinking maybe voice acting would make it so they can't just pump games out but yeah that'd also be good

Why do people always have to mess with a good thing? Voice acting in Nintendo exclusives (and in things aimed at kids in general) is usually awful. I'd much rather imagine a character's voice and tone myself than listen to the equivalent of a parent reading a picture book to their two year old.

@Hams96 Pokémon Snap was not a GameFreak game. GF clearly doesn't want voice acting in their games. Only reason it's not in there, and only reason it might never be. And actually looking at any other Nintendo game. Most now have voice acting in some form now.

So Nintendo would be for it. But, to me, they are not the kind of publisher that forces their studio's or their partners into a certain technology or game element just becuase they want it. And I don't really want that to change either.

Maybe if another studio did another remake (Gen 5) it would be fitting to "test" adding VA.

@SilvercatMoonpaw nice shoot! 🎯

@Anti-Matter much more better reminds me the anime

@Anti-Matter Nah.. those don't sound good at all. No emotion in the voices, like they're reading a script.

Yes it requires voice acting. But that would require some effort, which the games sell like hot cakes for minimal effort.

@topsekret Oh my. I had to switch to German for BotW and TotK even though I don't speak a lick of it, it was the only language where I could stomach their voices.

Yeah, I'm enjoying the game and all, but the fact that it has these cool-looking scenes with characters doing dynamic poses and animations with no voices whatsoever really takes the wind out of my sails. They needed to fix this years ago.

If they’re going to go through all that effort to lip sync the cutscenes then yeah we need voice acting. I’m fine with the main text bubbles not having it but the cutscenes being silent is so jarring

@ShadLink
But at least some voice acting better than no voice acting.
Again, I grew up by 3rd party games standard.

Not just about time. It's way past time.

@Dee123 It not happening doesn't mean I don't want it to happen.

Be careful what you wish for. If we get VA for a Pokémon game, I have feeling the dubbed would be VERY bad...

Honestly, I'm pretty alright without every character in every modern video game trying to yap at me. However, it struck me as unusual that they didn't even get voice actors for the /cutscenes/ for the Switch games. That's would be the happy medium for me.

Ok Gamefreak. Your fans have spoken. Now its time to react. You can get different voices for the anime if need be. No one will be upset at you.

Well Digimon did it

I generally don't enjoy voice acting, so it isn't something I would want. But if the option to turn it off was there, I would be fine either way.

It would be cool i guess, havent played much pokemon. I played one on the switch and I think it was a remake of a gameboy or ds game, the whole sound design was boring. I think I would like the legends series but havent tried any of them as of yet. In my opinion the games all kinds look samey, and maybe voice acting would help differentiate one from another.

There's no way they don't have the money.

Everyone who's like "buh buh I hate voice acting and I'd set it to a language I don't understand or turn it off" can kindly be quiet.

@Shade_Koopa Most dubs are good, especially in 2025. Only hardcore sub-only elitists disagree.

@axelhander Still be wary. I can only image who the would get to dub Pokémon games if it suddenly became a thing.

Just do full voice acting like in Detective Pikachu Returns - both human and Pokemon voices. Would be phenomenal.

@Res462 100% agree. It's crazy how much dialogue there is in some of these games. What happened to subtlety? They explain everything now. Plenty of filler too.

Provided that Nintendo hires professional voice actors, I am absolutely on board with full voice acting. While I do get their stance on how they want the on-screen avatar to be the insert for the player, speaking as a writer, I assert that it is equally acceptable to have all characters, even the playable ones, to have full voice acting. That way, we can connect with the characters on a deeper emotional level, understanding their thoughts, their desires, their insecurities, etc. This is not only applicable to Pokémon, but also other Nintendo games, such as Mario, Zelda, Metroid, and more. They just need to hire professional voice actors to really drive it home.

I want to say yes but it would likely mean for the English dub we'd get the same 10 American voice actors who appear to star in every Asian import video game.

It's not even that they are bad but if you play a lot of games from the Far East you hear them all the time. Ah yes here's the 'Smooth confident woman' voice actor and then the guy who always voices middle aged men.

Xenoblade Chronicles using British voice actors was such a breath of fresh air and gave the game some of its own identity. New blood is desperately needed in English VA.

Game Freak is already late in regard to add voice action on Pokemon games, it really baffle me, that since gen 8, Pokemon Company/Game Freak is putting a heavy emphasis on story, and yet despite these well animated cinematic, it lack soul, voice acting would add so much, think how much impactfull will be the cinematic of Arden cinematic with his Masbotiff will be with voice acting

@Shade_Koopa Fair.

@Yosher To be fair to Nintendo, Pokemon is basically a separate entity, though obviously Nintendo has a big share in the Pokemon Company. Also, I'd love it if Gamefreak released a new 2D topdown Pokemon. To me something like FireRed looked (and still looks) gorgeous.

Pokemon continues to be pretty peak product as far as abandoned early-access single-dev indie games go. The problem is that they continue to ask AAA prices - or more to the point, that people are paying AAA prices for whatever reason.

At $6 or even $7 this would be totally fine ... decent value even.

Personally, I wouldn't mind voice acting, for the cut scenes.

@graviton Well the tv show kinda has to have it. For the games they're looking at every penny they don't have to spend very carefully. They never spent a dime on VA for the mainline games before and never had an issue with sales so I don't see them being charitable to the fans who simply kinda want it but will still buy it without it anyways.

Zelda got voice acting, Dragon Quest, aka the most conservative franchise ever, got voice acting - even Octopath Travelers, where the characters are sprites, has voice acting.

Voice acting has been standard in JRPGs for more than a decade. There are no excuses for one of the biggest franchises in gaming not having it.

The bit that got me, was the empty hands when passing things. It made some scenes contextually quite strange - there's a scene where a character could, understandably, be giving nothing sarcastically. Hard to tell if that's the case, or if they're just not animating anything in the hands, when the focus of the camera is on the hand with nothing in it moving as if to pass something!
I think they need to go less hard on cutscenes, and keep them as is (with better use of shot choice to have hands out of shot if they're going to be empty etc when supposedly exchanging things), or keep them as they are and use better shots/animate objects, and add some voice acting. It's been strange since gen 7 how intense they are on long cut scenes, without adding some of the aspects that make them work well in other games.

There are some characters who, without voice acting, it's genuinely hard to read emotionally. Are they sarcastic? Angry? Joking? Upset? Who knows!

Aside from that, and some timing issues with how the battle system worked (which I actually really like now I'm used to it), I'm loving the game though.

I can see the headlines now...
Before launch:
"Next mainline Pokemon to finally have voice acting!"

After launch:
"Fans mad at new Pokemon game bug that causes cutscene VO to play in all the wrong places"

They have enough to fix first.

Audio in cutscenes and grunts in in-game dialogue. And a japanese audio option!

The fact that this is a question shows how low the bar is for Pokemon.

@SpaceboyScreams I understand that the video games aren’t the money makers. But If you play till the end of ZA, they zoomed in on a character speaking. It was the oddest thing ever to not hear any VA as the characters mouth move in such an intense moment.

Imagine how big the video games can be if they tried even once to make an actual AAA game. It’s an untapped market. Look at Palworld etc.

@graviton Oh trust me I agree 100%. I'm just harshing on them because they've shown such little competence in any area of development, either from being rushed or lazy or disrespectful to the consumer or all 3, but I'd still love to see them actually try.

@SpaceboyScreams The more I think about it, I am coming to the conclusion how GameFreak and TPC approach these video games is just lazy and min/maxing profits.

All the Pokemon 3D assets and animations are created by Creatures. They are literally copied and pasted into ZA. It’s always odd to watch a group of the same pokemon breed move in sync out in the wild, like a swarm of mega Pokémon’s flying like drones/robots.

So this really leave the game design, programming, story and game specific designs GF actually do. The game isn’t half bad but it does look like a AA game.

@Galaxy2IsTheGOAT
Yes.
Pokemon can talk in Mystery Dungeon.
The human characters talk in anime.