Cracked demonstrates the problem with story-driven career modes

Well, one of the problems, anyway: the voice acting isn't always outstanding, to put it mildly. Cracked's look back at NBA 2K15 demonstrates this superbly; "catastrophically beautiful" indeed.

If there's one thing I can say about the story in NBA 2K16, it's that the production values were improved and the acting was better (as much as the script allowed, anyway). I'd forgotten how bad some of those mentor scenes were in NBA 2K15, but Dion Waiters and Eric Gordon were absolutely amazing:

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There's a recurring theme in these voiceovers: There were no second takes. Every stutter and pause by an NBA player trying to read dialogue written by an AI that was fed a spambot's word vomit made it into the final cut of the game.

Whatever they do in NBA 2K17, I hope they at least avoid going back to what they did in NBA 2K15. It's hilarious unintentional comedy of course - seriously, those were the best takes? - but it'll make MyCAREER even more painful if we have to sit through that again.

Holy shit I forgot how bad some of those voices were. I remember playing MyCareer for two seasons before I felt like I'd seen all the cutscenes and then just did MyLeague for the rest of the year.

Dion's is the worst. Literally sounds hammered and the audio is completely out of sync with your guy cutting him off.

Wow Dion sounds like Chauncey Billups reading off of that card in the Better Basketball commercial

JR Smith was pretty abysmal as well, he had a couple of decent scenes but this one is terrible.

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Probably the best voice actor was Channing Frye.

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You think that's bad? I remember Markieff Morris... Dude doesn't know what a vowel is.

Don't forget Al Jefferson. It sounds like he can't read

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They should have the players react naturally to the different scenarios or at least give them an idea of what they want them to say. Kinda like pro wrestling promos

They should have the players react naturally to the different scenarios or at least give them an idea of what they want them to say. Kinda like pro wrestling promos in the Attitude Era

Fixed.

I agree though, it might've sounded more natural. But you know, if those were the best takes they got from them...

Pretty sure some NBA players didn't take the same classes I did in college.................