I wish the approach used in The Longest Journey would be more common in adventure games. First hire actors that fit the characters. Then cooperate with the actors to write/record dialogue that fits both the actor and the character. There is a couple of problems with that though.
First, it requires more time, so it's more expensive... but it does add a lot to the quality of the game, so I think the cost can be justified even with a low budget.
Second, and more important, is that a lot of adventures these days are released in another language first, then English second. The games then become a lot like dubbed movies, and no matter how good the actors are they don't quite fit the lines and the character. It becomes good enough to work sometimes, but for most games I've played recently where this is an issue, I think I would have preferred to have the original voice acting with subtitles.
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