lol, I

remember the computer voice in Mechwarrior 2 in the mainstream was pretty

nice, circa 1995... but Mechwarrior 4's voice was total pants. Ah

well...

Edit:
I'd also just add that synthesised voices are the price

you have to pay for the game to be able to read absolutely anything, not

just what the game designer records. It would be ideal for multiplayer games

if the player name had to be read. It also probably takes up less space,

depends on what sort of speech requirements exist.

Methinks you are thinking of Sryth, Brian me old mate.

"---- We will

take this worold!!!"

Nooo!

Etc etc.

Anyway, if it was an rpg

I'm guessing it'd have to use artificial speech for the menues, just to

make things easier, the same way Galaxy ranger does. I don't particularly

mind artificial speech if it doesn't spoil the situation, in Galaxy Ranger

for example, it seems fine to me that robot tanks and such read messages in

robot voices ---- well their robots!
On the other hand I was really

disappointed with Sarah from Pcs games. I'm used to Steven Fry's

wonderfull reading of Harry potter, and suddenly to be confronted by Dobby

who sound like an eldily Dallek was just wrong!

As reguards main stream

games, we should probably remember that a good number are developed in

Japan, a country that employs thousands of professional voice actors for

animation pruposes, but just as when Anime is dubbed into English, the

professional Japanese are usually replaced by budget American (or sometimes

English), actors.
If you want to heer bad acting, try Mega Man X 4 on the

Playstation, okay evil baddies are supposed to laugh a lot --- but a laugh

that goes on for a solid ten seconds?

Well anyway I seem to be going off

on a random tangent so I'll stop.

Actually Jade, the speach in SOD isn't artificial. It's David G himself.

They just altered his voice for the EVA. Well the altered it both on the

main menu and in the actual game. On the main menu they just added a slight

echo effect, but for the EVA they sped it up and either added some sort of

flange to it or just dubbed it a whole bunch of times. Now that emergency

announcement may be artificially generated (I'm not sure), but the rest of

it's actually human speach, just extremely modified.

Except that the emergency alert is a female voice, so unless Phil has the

power to become female at will (I don't think I want to think about that),

it's not him.

You can do inumerable sick and disturbing things to your voice given the

right software. As reguards the immergencey announcement, It sounds to me

like a sample from somewhere or other (the amount of Sf films with such

announcements is beyond calculation), but in the end, it's the effect that

counts, so sample or modification it's stil cool.

As reguards an Rpg,

I'd be slightly disappointed if the charactors had synth voices, but i'd

probably have to learn to live with it.

Does it really sound female? wow! Never noticed...