Resident Evil remains one of Capcom's most successful video game franchises. In a span of 25 years, Resident Evil has grown to be a worldwide phenomenon with multiple games, comic books, novels, and film adaptations. This November, a reboot film called Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City is scheduled to premiere on the big screen, which will focus on the stories of the first two games.
Although the first Resident Evil game is considered the beginning of what would become a global hit, it is also infamous for its cheesy voice acting and dialogue. Most of the game's voice actors have since moved on to other lines of work, but Albert Wesker's original voice actor Pablo Kuntz, who prefers to go by Pablo, spoke to Game ZXC about his experience playing Resident Evil for the first time. He provided some context and explanations why Resident Evil's dialogue and voice acting turned out the way it did.
Resident Evil's Cheesy Voice Acting and Dialogue
Although it has been nearly three decades since the first Resident Evil was made, Pablo said he only discovered his role in the game three years ago. Soon after discovering he was the man who originated the role of Albert Wesker, Pablo immediately saw the countless memes fans have created commenting on how the game's voice acting is over-the-top and unnatural.
While Pablo has embraced his involvement in the first Resident Evil game, he feels some context as to why the voice acting turned out the way it did is important. Before getting the role of Albert Wesker in Resident Evil, Pablo took on some modeling work and television commercials in Japan. According to the voice actor, commercials in Japan usually require actors to overact to get whatever message or product they're selling across. He said directors would usually ask them to overact all the time, and foreigners who engage in this type of work usually end up bringing this specific style of acting to video games too.
Apart from voice acting, Pablo also said the dialogue itself is a massive factor as to why everything sounded cheesy in the first Resident Evil game. Given the original script was written in Japanese and then translated directly to English, certain lines in the dialogue ended up not sounding natural.
"For example, a line Wesker says is, Stop it! Don't open that door!" If it were written like, "Stop. Don't open that door," then I would have read it differently.
Pablo also said that during the recording process of the first Resident Evil game, there wasn't a director to guide the actors as to how they wanted the characters to sound. Additionally, Pablo said, the actors were only given summaries of the character's personalities and traits. There was little-to-no context on what Resident Evil's story was about, which is why most of the actors just read the script just as it was written.
Given a Chance, Pablo Kuntz Wouldn't Change Anything
After researching who Albert Wesker is and what Resident Evil is all about, Pablo said he still wouldn't change anything. The voice actor admitted that while the voice acting and dialogue sounded cheesy, it worked out in the end and complemented both the era and Resident Evil's overall aesthetic. In many ways, Resident Evil's voice acting and dialogue have become a unique quirk that fans have come to love and appreciate. Capcom could have approached it differently, but it is possible that Resident Evil wouldn't be what it is today without lines that became iconic and are memorable even after 25 years.
"The voice acting works for that era, and you learn from it, and you grow from that. I love the support I'm receiving from fans. There is this sense of personal connection, that we are all connected in life. It's a feeling of togetherness that I appreciate and become truly thankful for."