I love this game so far, they made some smart changes and the driving feels better than ever. Plenty of content and cars, and its BEAUTIFUL. I could drive around for hours. But every single time I do just about anything I feel like im subjected to some groan-inducing monologue by one of these cardboard cutouts dipped in sugar. Its as if the entire game takes place in one of those pre-ride videos they play at Disney World. Anyone else loving the game but slowly losing their sanity? Also the game called me Gregory which I havent been called since grade school and my pride is hurt haha.

People still call me Gregory. I don't mind it any more.

Is it the men from Top Gear? I don't mind Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond is annoying and I absolutely cannot stand James May.

I feel your torment, it's atrocious. Some are worse than others but overall it's pretty painful to listen to.

Ya, the first time they dropped 'Christopher' I made a 'wot?' face and looked around the room in a panic. They're spying on us o_O

They're not good but they don't bother me. I ignore most of what they say anyways

Cherio lad wait until you meet the local bobby!

Yeah it's freaking terrible like Frat dudes on British LSD.

@the_greg

Also no Grand tour folks ( aka the new top gear) and James May is the most bearable of the tree at least that guy know's his cars.

I can't see anything topping some of the writing and voice acting in NBA 2K18, the MyPlayer mode specifically. B-Fresh drove me up a wall, DJ too, but B-Fresh was just awful.

The voice acting seems completely inoffensive to me, but then again I'm not British so maybe I'm not picking up on the subtleties of bad accents.

I did the same thing, my first name isn't in the game but my surname is so it defaulted to that. The game just names drops you in such a non nonchalant way, i was confused if i had heard it correctly then wondered where they pulled that data from.

i like the voice acting, it's campy and matches the tone of the game pretty well. Also instead of Anna why didn't they use Cortana, good brand synergy there.

That is crazy. The VA is completely fine.

My assumption could be off, however I just assumed they hired actual British people for the voice acting.

It's pretty terrible but the game is awesome so I don't really care.

I'm not a fan of the the VA or anything but it doesn't stick out as being egregiously terrible by video game standards.

I...totally...can't move my body...

I'm from England and it's not that they dont sound british, in fact that LA streamer sounds like a british woman doing an american accent which is a bit weird. (i've only done one race with her, it could be she was just having an off day) The problem is the voice acting doesnt even feel like acting, it seems like they just got some people from the studio (they're located in the UK) and said "could you read a few lines?" "sure! i'm done adding this dumb horn sound effect, why not?!" which isnt the worst thing, this is racing game, it doesnt need great acting. I dont find anyone in this game anywhere near as grating as Tracer, who sounds like a troll. (whether the voice actress is english or not irrelevant)

Yeah it's bad I agree. It's the extremely cheesy tone of the dialogue that bugs me the most, and that they are in your ear far too often. But the countryside and the driving are so good it's easily swept away.

I Just wish you could mute it. I listen to podcast while playing. Also, I'm constanly having to turn the radio off when getting in event cars, cause the game option only let's you lower it to 1, not off.

Side question. Have you guys found anyway to exit out of online races after an event, without first loading into the next one? It's weird that you can't.

No. It's not great. It's passable. Goofy at best and awkward at worst. But the worst? Ever? You must understand how legitimately out of touch that makes you sound. Have you only ever played one game before, and it was Hellblade? How high are your standards?

The flossing is mediocre, at best.

I think they're pulling the name from your Xbox live profile.

I'd never played a Forza game, never entered my name yet they figured out that I'm Jason. It freaked me the fuck out at first

At worst I think the voice acting is kinda boring. I think Horizon 3 had more character even if it was a bit silly.

That being said I still enjoy Kiera. She has some good funny lines. More so in 3 though.

I’m not from UK, so any possibly terrible accents haven’t bothered me, but it’s pretty boring in general and there’s something about the cutscenes, that together with the mediocre VA makes them really jarring, like they were pulled from 10 year old game. Probably extra-jarring due to having played some big AAA titles this year with excellent character animations.

But it’s a racing game, so whatever.

I'm confused.

I started the game and during the "create your driver" part, it clearly asked me what I want the game to call me, and presented me with hundreds of potential names.

Why are people surprised that the game knows your name after you tell it your name? Or am I missing something?

As for the voice acting...it's fine. It's just British radio-level patter.

You take that back.

I wish things were different.

Because many people (including me) didnt give it their name, it just plucked it from somewhere. (presumably your email linked to your XBL account)

You're right about the voice acting, which is why I dont listen to the radio.

@the_nubster said:

I didnt mean to upset anyone, but this is truly the first game I've ever been embarassed to play in front of my wife haha. I take this back to the PS2 Ninja turtles game where EVERY TIME YOU HIT ATTACK THEY SCREAM "SLICE AND DICE". Of course there are narrative based games with wooden delivery of poorly written lines, but this one holds you hostage for the first few hours with this incessant sugary drivel. Best racing game I think I've ever played though, go subscribe to game pass if you haven't already and check it out people!

That's strange. I didn't have a choice to skip the driver creation part. It just appeared after the intro event and forced me to select my driver model and audio commentary name.

That award goes to Borderlands 2 for me. I was living with my mum at the time, and she made a point to come downstairs and very pointedly ask, "What are you doing?"

If you want some awful, embarrassing video game dialogue, try playing Borderlands 2 with other people around, especially Tiny Tina.

(P.S. I was exaggerating for comic effect, I'm not actually upset with you.)

@the_nubster: ooof I do hate all spoken words in Borderlands, I must have blocked some of that out. Endless poorly written gratingly voiced exposition, contributing nothing to the game. I'll tie them up in my mental hate list haha.

You can change the name they call you in one of the menus. I'm currently going by "Count Driftula" since my preferred name isn't one of the options.

I'm with you. May is the best of the 3.

@brownsfantb: i was happy to discover that, I am no longer Gregory, but Saussage

It's like picking your favourite Kardashian.

@gtb08: If you think this is the worst you must not have played Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

@haneybd87: I did, it's the press conference tone here that gets me especially. I bought the game stop acting like I m living in one of rockstars gameplay outline videos ya dig

I actually wish they were more obnoxious, they just seem bland. It's moreso the writing than the acting, IMHO.

@soulcake: ... where might one acquire this “British LSD.”

The VO work in Forza isn't great, but it's definitely not the worst, if you want to hear the absolute worst VO ever, than look no furhter than Star Ocean 4. Here's to examples for everyone not particularly in love with their eardrums.

Only narrative focused game I ever played on perma-mute (after about the half-way point, with my sanity completely gone already).

Kourtney.

I think I'm in agreement there. I'd say Kim, but that's like saying Pikachu is your favourite Pokemon, or Tom Brady is your favourite quarterback.

I got 90 seconds into the intro sequence last night and then my youngest woke up from a bad dream and that was the end of Forza time. I'll be interested to see if I can put up with the voice acting as that is one of the things I know I'm particularly touchy about. I gave up on Dirt 3 because hearing the same three or four stock phrases at the end of every race was slowly driving me barmy, it's also why I haven't got into a lot of other more sim-y racers that try to build a career mode with acted-out cut scenes and disembodied voices when you're in the menus or racing.

I'm much more of a Forza Motorsport fan, and I'd even go so far as to say that the chummy American dude that occasionally chimes in over the menus of 7 is intrusive and unnecessary. It's been funny hearing @jeff return to the themes of the 'Dryness' of racing games (in the Horizon review podcast) and how Gran Turismo used to sit at one end of the scale and FM managed to do much of the same things but bring a little life to the whole experience. He now says that Horizon has taken up that torch and that recent FMs have begun to get a little 'dry'. Having skipped FM5 & 6 and recently playing a tonne of 7 (which I am massively enjoying and nearly ignored Horizon to just keep playing that) I actually feel the opposite and feel like Turn10 are now trying a bit too hard to shoe horn some character into a format that I actually feel works quite well when it's detached and down-played.

You do at least know what you're getting with Horizon and I am looking forward to giving this one a go (easy to say that as I'm using my 2 week Game Pass trial to play it for free!), the last one I played was Horizon 1 but I fell off that fairly rapidly - partially because of the voice-acting admittedly, but also because I didn't like the way they'd arcade'd up the Forza handling model.

Side note about the accents - I feel like a lot of British accents you hear in games sound fake even when you know the voice actor is British, does anybody else think that? Is it just a part of the actors trying to be really clear and so maybe over-accentuating things?

I played a few hours of this today. It's fine. It's not great and I think the game would be better without it, but it certainly sounds like the actors are doing more than just reading their lines with a boring tone in their voice. If this is the actual worst you've ever heard, then your ears were clearly never graced with some of the best voice acting the 90's and early 2000's had to offer. Some examples have already been posted, if you don't believe me go watch them, and if you still think Forza Horizon 4 has the worst voice acting in video games then I just don't know what to say to you.

What I am bothered by is how the game insists on using a name for me. I do not like it when a computer unexpectedly calls me by name and I would much, much rather the game continue to use the same non-specific "you" that previous ones did. I know where the computer got my name from and that it's not really a big deal, but it's still really creepy.