There are certain things in a video game or other properties that can easily cripple a project if you’re not careful. In the case of video games, if you have bad visuals, it won’t matter how incredible all the other stuff is, as that’s what people will remember. If you have good visuals but bad gameplay, that won’t help you either, as you need a balance of both, and we can all think of games from 2023 that didn’t have a good balance of elements. But in the case of Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections, its flaw came with some of its voice acting.
Last week, fans were playing the title and noticed that certain voice lines for specific cutscenes within the game, which were voiced by the official voice actors from the anime, weren’t lining up properly or sounded incredibly weird. So when they posted clips of Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections being really bad and tagged some of the voice actors, the VO’s made it clear that this wasn’t what they performed, and they weren’t sure what happened. Even the voice of Naruto herself admitted that:
This was backed up by a recent tweet by the voice actor for Kawaki, who stated in a message that when voice actors are given lines for a video game, they don’t go through the same process as the anime dubbing. They’re often given “no context” for certain things, and then the voice directors don’t always take the best cuts:
So why is this such a big deal? Well, it’s a many-levels kind of situation. First, when it comes to quality, it makes the game look bad. Just from the Naruto line, it looks bad because it doesn’t feel like it “fits the scene,” nor does it sound like Naruto!
Second, it’s insulting the voice actors because regardless of it being for a video game or an anime, they’re giving their all to do the best they can for those voices so that they can make the game or anime better and for the character to be beloved.
Just like we can all think of video games with poor balancing in their elements, we can also think of games that had terrible voice acting, and you’re left wondering what the heck happened and who approved of this stuff.
Hopefully, these voice actors will get better treatment in future titles; they deserve it.
