Hyrule Warriors: Age Of Imprisonment Voice Actors Officially Revealed

Such a talented voice cast!

@Dom_31 Having played the game in English, the dub was fine. The direction was NOT abysmal.

Of special note, SungWon Cho SHINES as Calamo the Korok.

I would say that the game has a heavy dose of voice acting; in-battle scenario are usually just text boxes or a few resuable voice catches like "hurry!" or "how do you like that!", but this game has a a LOT of cutscenes and all of them are filled with dialogue. This is where TotK's missing story went; they're able to flesh it out because of the more linear narrative nature of Musou games.

Besides every moment Calamo is on screen talking, I'd also specially note the dialogues between Zelda and Sonia as feeling very real and human; they managed to set it up enough with these scenes to make me feel sad when Sonia dies as we know she would having played TotK.

That dialogue was not distracting in the least to me.

But of course, YMMV; I enjoyed the dubs on BotW & TotK, and if you think those were fumbled you're probably not going to like this one as it fits smoothly into the voicing of the other Switch games in the series.

@Dom_31 Hard agree. Nintendo's english voice department has always been mediocre(with some exceptions) but it's taken a serious nosedive in quality during the Switch era. Sometimes it's just bad direction(Zelda, Bananza) and other times it's just bad casting(Mario). Or both.

@marandahir Just want to second what you set about Calamo, really good job there.

I found it quite jarring when the game moved from in-game scenes with voice acting to text boxes. Not a fan of that constant inconsistency. Also, particular in battle reading text boxes is just structurally at odds with the game's design, as you have so much input to deal with visually that a great deal is bound to get lost.

If anything I would have liked it to be the other way round, talking battle when I have no time to read and text boxes in cut scenes when I have nothing but time to read. I'm used to cutscens with little to no talking in Zelda games.

That is on Nintendo so, not the Voice Actors of course

Seeing all these people being happy about being cast in a Zelda game is genuinely quite heart warming especially during times where mass layoffs are a thing. I'm happy for all these people! I've been playing this game quite a bit over the weekend and it's really fun.

I cannot believe Sungwon Cho would steal this opportunity from a person of Chlorophyll. So much for casting authentically!

When will Plant actors be properly represented in media? Tsk tsk! XD

(I'm just making a joke folks. Overall, I'm really enjoying rhe voice cast).

@Dom_31 I don't remember which one it was, but I think i saw not too long a go a game that reached an interesting compromise for localization: when you played with the japanese voices, instead of english localized script, the subtitles would change to be a more faithful adaptation of what was actually being said.

I wish more games would do that. I know a little bit of japanese and I remember rrally being annoyed when playing Fire Emblem Engage with Japanese voices and constantly seeing discrepancies between what was writen and what was being said.

I will always play my video games and watch anime with English dub on. I don't care how bad or good it is.

The voice acting is fine but I still feel that a dubbing studio like Side UK would had been a better choice since having Americans try to attempt UK accents is still jarring to me and sounds unnatural.

@ottoecamn Ninja Gaiden 4 does that, if that’s the game you were thinking of

Zelda's English voice acting really gets on my nerves. It's so over the top and pathetic-sounding. Nothing against Patricia Summersett though, as she's only doing what's being asked of her.

Zelda Notes on the Switch 2 Editions of BotW and TotK could have been a great feature, but I'll never get around to using it based on the voice acting direction going on in these games recently.

@OwenGamer22 yeah! That's the one.

No disrespect to anyone but the pool of American English voice acting seems very small and stale. If you play any amount of Asian import games you start hearing the same voices over and over.

I can switch to a new game and immedeatly clock the same voices from the last game I played often delivering a similar if not exact same performance because I guess a lot of these VA's get type cast.

One of the best desicions Xenoblade Chronicles did was use a different British cast for their voice over and it was such a breath of fresh air that made it stand out to me. Final Fantasy Tactics also has an outstanding english VA.

I expect I'll be hearing many of these yet again when Fire Emblem comes out next year.

@ottoecamn : Even with my extremely limited knowledge of Japanese, I noticed the many, many embellishments in the English text when compared with what I was hearing of the Japanese. All I want is a faithful adaptation of the original dialogue, even if some may deem it "bland".

@SillyG I agree. And, like, I'm from Brazil so english isn't my first language, I grew up with Brazilian dubs of American shows. I recognize that when you're making a dub, sometimes paraphrasing and adaptations are needed (specially since different languages are structured differently and what can be said in 2 words in onr language might take 5 in another). But even then, in every DVD and Blu Ray i can remember, if I turned on the subtitles, I'd get a faithful translation of the original english text and not a transcript of the dubbed script.

It can be very frustrating to play with japanese voices and have subtitles that aren't even remotely close to what's actually being said (again, Fire Emblem Engage was particularly awful in that regard.)

@N00BiSH I want to disagree with this, but the more I think about it, you're kinda right. I think the biggest standouts for me were Kid Icarus Uprising, Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3. I don't mind, though as long as they get the point across, especially when it produces epic memes like "I'm your mama?", "Haya Papaya", and "handling a man's turtle".

Also, Jenny Kidd as young Pauline was fine for me.

@batmanbud2 Kidd's Pauline was great - better than I thought it'd be - but I felt some of her line reads were slightly off. A tad too overacted in a few areas, specifically the cutscenes.

@N00BiSH yeah, I can see that. Still, girl's got PIPES. I'm still in awe after that end credit song.

@marandahir I felt like BotW was the sketchier dub since it was the first time ZELDA had voice acting, but it did have potential. But Tears of the Kingdom was a huge step up in that regard, especially Matt Mercer as Ganondorf (I also liked that the characters had more to say here). But yes, I'd say this one is a continuous step up in quality.

I recognize a few voice actors here. Other than Patricia Summersett and Matt Mercer, I also recognize Cherami Leigh, Allegra Clark, and Brittany Cox (the latter two voice Beidou and Fischl in Genshin Impact, respectively; they join Cristina Vee, who voices Bennett and Xingqiu in Genshin, as well as Tulin in TOTK, plus Sean Chiplock, who voices Diluc in Genshin and Revali in BOTW and HWAOC).

I also recognize SungWon Cho (a.k.a., ProZD, and also Abby Saja from the smash hit film KPop Demon Hunters); I find it hilarious that he's voicing a Korok, of all things. He's so known for his deep, baritone voice, that to hear him sound like he inhaled a balloon full of helium comes as a bit of a shock. But I think it would have been funnier if they had used his natural voice for Calamo, to make it even more shocking and hilarious to the player that a Korok could have a deep voice. Here's hoping he will be in more Nintendo productions, and maybe even get a role in Genshin Impact one day! And if Abby Saja is still alive in KPop Demon Hunters, let's hope he gets more lines in the event that he returns for the recently-announced sequel!

@Tasuki weapon degradation isn't in HW

Everyone has done a great job! Even some of the clunkier lines are still delivered pretty, well, and I love seeing how excited the VAs are to be a part of this game! It's super fun thus far. My only problem is that every time Sonia speaks, all I can hear is Hekla! 😂

@N00BiSH interesting... I felt like Pauline was great in Bananza! There were one or two awkward lines, but given that there are (probably) around 500 or so lines, that's not bad at all!

@CaleBoi25 you might wanna scroll up a little bit to where I said I thought Jenny Kidd did a great job as Pauline

@N00BiSH ah, I only saw the one where you said you didn't care for Banaza's voice acting. I honestly just skim over the comments, so I missed your second one lol.

Zelda’s voice never sounds natural … it sounds like she is forcing the voice to try to sound sweet and innocent… which doesn’t work

@CaleBoi25 I agree that Pauline’s voice acting was a highlight

The voice direction in this game in general was fine, I have no idea what someone earlier was talking about with it being "not ABYSMAL".

I'm kinda at the point where I have to ask. "What about it was so bad exactly?"

@Yoshi3 True, i go listen her interview voice and rainbow six siege ( ASH ) voice more natural than Zelda

For anyone on the fence wanting to get it for playing in LATAM Spanish, it's still there. (There wasn't any LA Spanish trailer for the game anywhere, I was worried it was removed after being in AoC).

Joe Zieja is always a good addition to any cast. I love his YouTube channel!

Having said that, I might opt for Japanese voice-overs for this one, as I've been learning Japanese on Duolingo and the best way to further my training is to listen to Japanese voices to get a better feeling for the language.

@Ralek85

I also agree about that sudden shift. When Quino spoke in Chapter 1 Scenario 1 I thought he was just a rando NPC and that it was a sign that they had full voice acting. After all, I had just controlled Zelda walking even if it wasn't a fight, and it had all been voice acted until then! And then the full voiced cutscenes stretched on for a long time. But when finally I had control of Zelda again in Chapter 1 Scenario 2, it was all text boxes and no voices. I feel like this was more painful than in other games because it had set me up to think that it was full voice acting. And because I was playing Skyrim Anniversary Edition last month, it felt even more jarring/not up to the competititon. In Skyrim AE, it's all full voice acting (save a few new characters who have generic little lines but communicate in letters and notes because they couldn't record new lines for the new official plugins).

Also, I've found I've missed critical story beats because I wasn't paying attention to the text boxes and forgot to hit start just before the boss fight / end of stage to review the battle log.

I've actually replayed entire scenarios three times through just to catch the dialogue I missed because even when redoing it for the dialogue I've found myself missing the dialogue. And even when I remember to read the log, the dialogue boxes almost always fall into my gamer's blindspot as I'm so focused on the Musou mechanics and finding Koroks and completing Aside Quests and Temporary Missions, etc.