The Pokemon franchise has been around for almost three decades and not once has the Pokemon Company decided to add full voice acting in their games.
For a multimillion dollar IP, this bizarre exclusion of a pretty common gaming feature has baffled players for the last few years. With the recent Centro LEAKS about the next generation of Pokemon with Wind and Wave, there seems to be no mention of any added voice acting apart from the usual new gimmicks that series veterans seem to love.
The latest Pokemon entry, Pokemon Legends Z-A had players complaining about its lack of voice acting. It even goes back from before Z-A, especially in Sword & Shield, where simple concerts to talking to special NPCs make the game pretty barren since players would simply read texts inside speech bubbles.
Discourse surrounding the franchise’s lack of voice acting dates back decades as well, yet the answers remain the same: Game Freak just doesn’t care. Game Freak has been pretty mum about their reasoning, but we could speculate that it’s just not their priority.
After all, the franchise is still selling like hot cakes and Game Freak likely gaslighted themselves that it doesn’t need any ‘major reinvention’ by adding things like voice acting and *cough* better visuals. One other reason why they refuse to add one is probably through cost cutting measures. Voice acting requires a ton of work, with multiple languages and localization. It would probably add more unnecessary stress to Pokemon games if they have one. Plus, there might be a possibility that a problematic voice actor might be a liability for the Pokemon brand when a scandal arises. Maybe Game Freak is just playing things safe? We wouldn’t know.
Of course, we could be talking about multiple reasons why Game Freak just wouldn’t do it. There’s no point.
As someone who’s a casual fan of the series, it’d be nice for a Pokemon game to finally have some feeling of being alive. Voice acting is an essential part of the immersive experience, and the series’ severe lack of dialogue (apart from synthesized Pokemon gibberish) is disappointing. There seems to be no innovation for Game Freak on that end, and they likely understand why a simple feature like this is omitted for years.
Is it the right time for a Pokemon game to have voice acting? Yes. Do Game Freak and Nintendo care? No. Unfortunately, fans wanting voice acting might have to wait until the multimillion dollar IP decides to add one, whenever that is.
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