Nintendo has been slow to adopt voice acting in its games, to say the least. In fact, the process is still ongoing, as most of its major franchises are doing without it, or very little of it. Link is still mute, and Mario yelps, and the inhabitants of their worlds continue to express themselves in speech bubbles. After experiments with the Super Metroid intro (which contained a brief clip voiced by one of their employees) and fully voice acted cheese in StarFox 64, someone at Nintendo must have said “If we’re going to do things on the cheap, we might as well not do them at all”. And then the voice acting stopped.

Nintendo has since produced fully voiced games such as Eternal Darkness and certain Rareware titles, and the quality was on par with contemporary games, but one must wonder if the fact that these games were made by western studios, staffed with directors and producers who spoke the language natively, led to this success.

The most recent Nintendo title with voice acting before Kid Icarus Uprising, Metroid Other: M, was not generally well-received by fans or critics alike, and seemed to support my fear that Nintendo would not put the resources necessary into voice acting to make the endeavor worthwhile. Nintendo is notoriously cheap when it comes to certain presentation elements that some fans clamor for: sure, you can count on them for hiding away load times or making games with a clean, polished look, but hiring an orchestra for the soundtrack of a game? Unthinkable! So it only makes sense that the same Nintendo that doesn’t want to pay musicians would not especially want to spring for decent voice actors and voice directors.

Kid Icarus Uprising challenges that idea, however: the people who dislike the banter between Palutena and Pit are definitely the minority. By and large have praised it, and so have Negative Worlders, definitely.

Is Kid Icarus Uprising evidence that Nintendo finally “gets it”, heralding a new era for Nintendo’s games, one finally in line with the values of contemporary AAA blockbusters, with Hollywood talent and orchestral music (because KIU has that too)?

I’d like to think so, but I am afraid it is way too early for the people who wanted Nintendo to “get with the times” to cry victory yet. I think a lot of the success of Kid Icarus Uprising’s cinematic presentation hinges almost entirely on the game’s tone and design.

The tone, yes : the game is a comedy. The hero Pit and the invisible goddess helping him, Palutena, constantly exchange quips with their tongues firmly planted in their cheeks, breaking the fourth wall continually by making references to the original game on the NES. References not to the events in the game, but the video game itself. The dialog is actually clever and well-written, which should surprise no one who has played the Mario & Luigi or the Paper Mario series: Nintendo of America's Treehouse (their localization team) know how to write comedy.

That comedy is delivered with all of the energy and irreverence you'd find in a well-made Saturday morning cartoon. Now I will not argue that comedy is easier than tragedy for an actor as I've too often seen good jokes made flat due to poor delivery. That said, it may be a bit easier for the audience to understand what the actor is going for: exuberance sounds exactly what it sounds like, there is no confusion possible. Whereas the actress aiming to give Samus an emotionless or detached voice in Metroid: Other M can easily be thought of simply being monotone or doing a poor job.

The game's design also plays a huge part in the success of the voice acting: timing and pacing are very important when trying to keep dialog lively and interesting. But how can you ensure that your dialog will flow well when players might decide to go off exploring on their own, ignoring the creator's desire to keep the quips coming and the banter smooth? You put the player on-rails, of course! Half of the game is actually an on-rails shooter, after all, and is arguably the most robust mode in the game.

But even when the game gives you control over your own feet about midway through each level, they still heavily restrict what you can do and where you can go. A lot of time is spent in corridors, just one narrow path that you must walk down on. Sometimes, you might have a bigger room that you will quickly have seen every inch of, and then there is no other way to go but forward. The game even blocks you if you try to retrace your steps! All of this ensures that it never takes long before the next bit of dialog is triggered, and keeps the story and the jokes flowing.

Now my point isn't that you can't have good voice-acting in a more open game, obviously that is not true. But I do think that you cannot achieve the same effect. Personally, I've only seen this kind of banter that never skips a beat between the protagonist and his sidekick in two other games: Uncharted, and Batman: The Brave and the Bold. And both are also very linear experiences that constantly push you forward with their design. Have the same actors and the same writers as Kid Icarus work on the next Zelda, with its NPCs that you can visit and revisit and have repeat the same thing over and over again, and I assure you it will not impress you nearly as much. ESPECIALLY if the game still requires you to press A to trigger the next line of dialog.

So in conclusion, Nintendo has hit the voice acting ball out of the park with Kid Icarus Uprising, however I would not take it as a sign that Nintendo will nail that aspect of presentation consistently from now on. KIU happens to be particularly well-suited for memorable dialog that flows naturally, so much so that it may very well have been designed around it. It is definitely a good omen for parents tired of having to read the text in Mario games to their preschoolers, but Zelda fans hoping that their favorite franchise will get the same treatment may have to brace themselves for a few more Other M-like efforts yet.

And if nothing else, we've got at least one FANTASTIC cinematic game from Nintendo now, and that is something I didn't think could ever happen. This is crow I'm eating with a huge smile on my face.