A closer look
Resident Evil's notoriously terrible voice acting, featuring legendary lines like "you were almost a Jill sandwich," was the result of recording localized English dialogue with cheap, non-union actors in a single afternoon. The Japanese developers had little grasp of English nuances and simply accepted whatever awful, stilted line readings the random expats they hired managed to mumble into the microphone. Instead of ruining the terrifying atmosphere of the survival horror pioneer, this hilariously bad dialogue elevated the game to cult, B-movie status and made the terrifying zombie mansion bizarrely endearing. It shows that in the early days of 3D gaming, you could get away with dialogue that sounds like it was written by an alien trying to mimic human speech, as long as the dog jumping through the window made the player soil their pants. Modern triple-A studios now spend millions on motion-capture technology and Hollywood actors, yet they consistently fail to produce anything as instantly memorable as an emotionless mercenary pointing out a master of unlocking
