Voice actor and YouTuber Dottovu joins us on Game8 Connect to venture into video games with great voice acting! Discover who Dottovu is, their top five picks for games with the best voice acting, and why they like them.
Related Video
Game8 Connect - Dottovu
Welcome to Game8 Connect, where we dive into the world of your favorite content creators and explore the person behind the screen! In this article, we spoke with Dottovu and we asked about their choices for the top five video games with great voice acting.
Who is Dottovu?
Dottovu is a Canada-based voice actor and Youtuber who’s both fluent in Korean and English and also practices doing voice acting videos in Japanese. On YouTube, they post content ranging from covers of popular songs, comic dubs, and voiceover demonstrations. Dottovu’s channel currently has more than 337,000 subscribers, and they have been active on YouTube since 2015.
Dottovu told Game8 that they got their first brush with voice acting after coming across "50% Off" a parody abridged series of the swimming sports anime "FREE!"
"I thought, ‘Oh wow, that’s so cool; there are people who, like, have their own version of the anime,’" Dottovu reminisces in a fairly monotone voice, something surprising considering their usual character work. "And then I realized that these people were hobbyist voice actors. I thought, ‘Huh, I wonder where these people are getting their opportunities from?’ and I did some more looking into it and, yeah, now here I am."
On their website, Dottovuu.com, Dottovu says they began voice acting professionally in 2019, when they started acting in different roles across video games, animations, and even audio tracks. More recently, they recently voiced the character "Olive" in "Twofold," and the fox girl Miho in "Please Be Happy" - both of which are visual novels by the game development outfit Studio Élan.
"I’d say [I like to voice] energetic characters because that's pretty different from how I am, " Dottovu says after being asked what kind of characters they enjoy voicing the most. "It’s a lot more interesting to voice a character that’s a lot more energetic and ‘genki.’" “Genki” is the Japanese word for energetic or healthy, but can also be used to have a connotation of someone who is very extroverted, enthusiastic, and positive. "One of the roles would be Miho, from ‘Please Be Happy’ - she’s a pretty energetic, empty-minded kind of character, which I had a lot of fun voicing."
Currently, their most popular voice-over tracks are "Hide and Seek" and "Yandere Boy," both with over 3 million views. In the latter, they practice voicing unsettling lines fit for a young male character whose personality falls under the popular "Yandere" stereotype. A Yandere character is one that is obsessively in love with another character, usually to the point of violent insanity towards either victims of their jealousy or even the object of affection themself.
What is Great Voice Acting to Dottovu?
When it comes to voicing characters, Dottovu says the ability to convey emotion is very important. They talk of their own experiences, where they always first look into the personality of the character they’re voicing before even trying their hand at voicing the character.
“Obviously, if I’m voicing for a project, they are going to give me a general direction as to how they want it to be.” But Dottovu believes that only after workshopping it and analyzing the character’s personality can a voice actor then make themselves stand out. This deep understanding of the character lets them properly emphasize and convey the appropriate emotions through their voice.
"Because that way, it makes the players or viewers invested in the character more," they explain, "if you’re able to sell the character and make it as human as possible."
Another thing that would make a voice actor stand out is range. Because even if a VA could properly convey emotions through their voice, it would be better if they were able to expand their horizons and easily get into different roles.
"If you’re able to do a childish voice, or a much older type of character, you’ll have a lot more characters you’re able to act, rather than be locked into...one type of voice."
"If you can do that one role...great, that’s amazing! But I just think that it would be more impressive if you can go out of your comfort range and hone those other skills, and expand your horizons with your voice acting." Dottovu clearly practices what they preach, as their work consists of characters with varying personalities, genders, and even a rendition of a song as Super Mario Bros’ Toad, infamous for their screechy, yet slightly guttural voice.
However, while it is good to go out of one’s usual range, it is still very important to make sure that one’s voice matches the character they are acting as.
"This is an extreme example, but let’s say it’s a childish character, but the voice is a lot more mature than the character’s appearance," Dottuvu posits. "And maybe the character’s expression is supposed to show some sort of despair, but the lines that the voice actor’s delivering doesn’t have the correct emotion."
With this, we asked Dottovu about the top five video games they’ve played that had great voice acting in them.
Dottovu’s Top 5 Video Games
5. Fire Emblem: Awakening
“I played Fire Emblem: Awakening and I think that was the first time I really came across an English dub and being pleasantly surprised by it.” Dottovu reveals.
"You know how there’s that debate ‘sub versus dub’?" Dottovu references the pseudo-tradition of arguing whether or not using subtitles to watch anime with its original Japanese voices is better than replacing the voices with English or vice versa. This debate, of course, extends to video games as well, with players arguing over whether a certain title’s Japanese voiceover is better than its English counterpart.
"I was more on the ‘sub’ side," they explain. But their opinion on English dubbing would change because of a minor bug in Fire Emblem: Awakening, the 13th Fire Emblem game released on the Nintendo 3DS in 2012.
"Even if I choose the Japanese dub...when you start the game back up, the game would automatically switch back to the English dub," Dottovu says. "So I had no choice but to listen to the English dub, and I remember being pleasantly surprised by how good the voice acting was."
Among their favorite performances was the main character, Chrom, voiced by Matt Mercer, as well as the male voice for the custom unit, Robin, by David Vincent.
"The cutscenes especially...sold me on it." Dottovu names Lucina as another standout performance and says the voices of many of the other side characters “just really fit.”
"That game really made me look into English voice actors," they added. "It was a good time."
4. SOMA
SOMA is a 2015 Sci-Fi Survival Horror classic made by Frictional Games - the same people behind other hit horror classics like the Amnesia and Penumbra series. Dottovu really liked the story and the characters within the game. The writing helped make the characters convincing, but the voice actors certainly added depth to them as well.
“It got me pretty invested [for the ending] and I felt for the characters involved.” They said, tip-toeing around any potential spoilers they might accidentally give for the game.
Dottovu told us that they were particularly drawn in by Catherine Chun, the game’s cold and quiet deuteragonist voiced by Nell Mooney. In the game, Chun essentially acts as mission control for the protagonist, Simon Jarret, as he traverses the Pathos-II Research Facility deep under the North Atlantic.
"[Catherine] is kind of, supposed to be disconnected, and look at everything in an objective way. And that makes her seem distant," Dottovu says. "She just didn’t seem to understand human emotions. Or know how to empathize with others because she was looking at everything in a scientific manner, and how it’s going to benefit everyone in that way."
3. Metal Gear Solid 3 and 4
The Metal Gear Solid franchise is known for its stellar voice acting and one-liners, with David Hayter’s performance as Solid Snake and the legendary mercenary Big Boss, Christopher Randolph’s rendition of Hal "Otacon" Emmerich, and Cam Clarke’s voicing of the antagonist Liquid Snake being the biggest examples.
"[Again,] I think, oftentimes, people used to prefer Japanese voice acting for video games. But Metal Gear Solid, I believe, is something where a lot of people prefer the English [voice acting] in comparison." Dottovu says, indicating that, unlike Fire Emblem: Awakening, there’s no real sub vs dub debate here. They note that the pacing of the voice acting sounds more natural and realistic.
"The Japanese dub is great too," Dottovu coyly says, "but in my heart, I like the English dub."
Out of the MGS series, Dottovu’s favorites are Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots - both games that have achieved near-meme status because of the lengthy, yet compelling dialogue between characters and bosses.
"[The bosses] were interesting in 4 because they’re all kind of screeching, kind of in pain, and it sells their backstory too, once you defeat them," Dottovu says. "And Snake has so much dialogue. Otacon also has so much. It takes up most of the story. But they are able to make it interesting throughout the other thing. Not too monotonous, not too animated, it just sounds natural. And because of that, it makes you more immersed into the story."
2. BioShock Infinite
Dottovu did not consider themselves a fan of shooter games, as their preference leans towards more narrative-driven titles. However, BioShock Infinite managed to surprise them with its compelling tale: a detective's desperate mission to absolve an insurmountable debt by uncovering the whereabouts of a young girl within a city floating in the heavens. It completely challenged their perception of shooter games and first-person titles.
"Initially, I thought maybe [shooter games] would just be ‘pew, pew, die! But it’s a lot more complicated than that, and I think SOMA and BioShock were [some] of those examples," they say.
For Dottovu, what really carried the title were the interactions between Booker DeWitt, the game’s protagonist voiced by Troy Baker (also the voice of ‘Joel’ in The Last of Us franchise), and Elizabeth, the game’s main heroine voiced by Courtnee Draper. They enjoyed how those interactions showed the development of their relationship throughout the narrative. "You can kind of say that they have a connection, and see how they bond."
"That's why the ending, or should I say endings, either makes you go 'aww,' or 'what the heck!?'" Dottovu says. "A lot of times, I don't remember games... [I] just know that [I've] played it before... [but for Bioshock,] I still remember the key points because it was pretty memorable."
1. The Walking Dead Season One
The game that takes the cake for Dottovu when it comes to voice acting is Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead series of episodic adventure games. They said they specifically liked Season 1 - where history teacher-turned-convicted criminal Lee Everett takes a young girl named Clementine into his care in the middle of a dangerous zombie apocalypse.
"Usually, I don’t like kids in video games," Dottovu chuckles at the blunt admission they just made, "because they’re, oftentimes, useless or they’re a hindrance. It’s changed a lot over the years."
"But Clementine was pretty smart and not getting in the way. She’s very wholesome and...the voice acting especially gave her a more innocent sense about her in an apocalyptic world."
Clementine was voiced by Melissa Hutchison, who has performed in other Telltale games as well as titles in both the Fire Emblem and The Last of Us franchises. Meanwhile, Lee Everett was voiced by Dave Fennoy, who also lent his voice in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, Batman: Arkham Knight, and other games.
Dottovu says that other than the dynamic of those two, the pacing and acting in that title really came together. Of particular note are the unpleasant side characters who, according to Dottovu, needed proper voice acting. If not done well, these kinds of unpleasant characters would come across as uncompelling. But when executed effectively - with a good amount of emphasis on their unsavory behavior - it enhances the immersion and investment of players in the story.
"You think, ‘Wow, what a jackass. I hope you get killed!’ And you get a lot more invested into the story that way."
"There are a lot of my favorite moments in it, but I think one of them would be the house where Lee gets invited for a dinner, and the dinner is not quite what he expected it to be," Dottovu again trying to tiptoe around any spoilers. "I think, all around, the pacing and everything meshed well for Season One, especially."
"I honestly think that was the peak in The Walking Dead" Dottovu says.
More About Dottovu
Dottovu has recently updated their character and commercial demo reels and is currently looking for new projects.
When asked if there were any roles they wanted to branch off into, they mentioned wanting to portray "crazy" characters to showcase their range as a voice actor.
"Mentally-unstable [characters], I think those are always fun to do. I’d like to do some crazy laughter. Not just ‘quiet’ crazy characters," Dottovu says, perhaps referencing their relatively more subdued performance in their 2018 clip 'Hide and Seek.' "I wanna be loud ones. Like, the Joker."
As for any tips they would’ve given to themselves back when they started voice acting, Dottovu only has one piece of advice in mind.
"Never give up, and... life will turn out okay," they said. "It’s corny, but it’s said often because it’s true. And I’m pretty sure past me would know that."
Dottovu is always looking for new opportunities to put their voice acting prowess and abilities to good use. Those interested in getting Dottovu to voice their projects can learn more about them via the links below:
Dottovu on YouTube
Dottovu on Twitter
Dottovu's Official Website
