Full Voice Acting in RPGS

[metadigital]

Yeah, I'd rather they spent extra resources on getting the main voices right (re-recording, re-editing, re-casting) than giving the complete ensemble of extras one of the ten actors' voices.

[Guest Fishboot]

I like voice acting and wish that every character were voice acted; However, full voice acting intoduces too many gameplay and resource limitations. On the other hand, partial VO has the unwelcome limitation of dividing the game into "important characters" and "mooks" - you could not, for example, have a character that seems unimportant in a partial VO game who later emergers as an important character - that janitor who ends up being the murderer will never surprise you in a partial VO game. So there are tradeoffs, and I'm not willing to excoriate either choice.

[Walsingham]

Good point, Fishboot, but couldn't you in fact exploit that by having some really key people not voiced at first, thus throwing off the players?

[roshan]

What's with all the extra "i"?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

...I wasi wondering thatii too. i

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My keyboiaird is buiisted.

[roshan]

Good point, Fishboot, but couldn't you in fact exploit that by having some really key people not voiced at first, thus throwing off the players?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Thats a goiioid poiint..... It woiiuild be coioil if soiimeoine yoiui were talking toi all aloing and didnt suispect a thing aboiuit woiiuild suiddenly cackle with lauighter and voiice oiuit his plan foir doiminatioin.

[roshan]

Part voice acting is justified. But voice acting for every muppet in a city? You're kidding, right? Keep the budget and planning for the key persons. Party NPCs and really funky bad guys.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I agree.

 

Im noit even the least bit interested in finding oiuit what the randoimi street peoiple soiuind like. Keep voiice acting foir the characters whoi the player might actuially want toi hear oiuit loiuid.

[Guest Fishboot]

Good point, Fishboot, but couldn't you in fact exploit that by having some really key people not voiced at first, thus throwing off the players?

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Honestly, I would feel like the "storyteller" was cheating. Although, I can't think of single character in a partial VO RPG that was ever done that way, oddly enough, so I think it would be an unprecedented choice.

[Lord Tingeling]

I don't mind full voice acting at all. If the choice is between full voice acting and bearable gameplay, however, I know what I would choose.

 

Still, seeing as the above hardly ever happens, it's kind of a moot point, anyway.

[GhostofAnakin]

Full voice acting, for me, brings full immersion into the atmosphere of the game. It makes the characters actually feel alive. I compare video games to movies, not books. And thus, I can't imagine watching a movie where I had to read all subtitles with no speech at all.

[metadigital]

Not a big fan of foreign films then, GoA? Pity, the French make some brilliant ones, for example.

[Calax]

GOA's BACK! OH NOES!

 

anyway, perhaps they should do it like FFX did. They VOed only the main SCENES not the every time you talked to sombody.

[EnderAndrew]

Full voice acting, for me, brings full immersion into the atmosphere of the game.  It makes the characters actually feel alive.  I compare video games to movies, not books.  And thus, I can't imagine watching a movie where I had to read all subtitles with no speech at all.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think bad voice acting kills immersion more than having to read text.

[boldarblood]

What's with all the extra "i"?

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...I wasi wondering thatii too. i

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

My keyboiaird is buiisted.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

There's no reason you can't copy/paste what your about to post into a word document and let it do a spell check for you. Also if you use Firefox there are plugins that will spell check for you.

 

Or go spend a couple dollars on a cheap keyboard.

[Gabrielle]

Not a big fan of foreign films then, GoA? Pity, the French make some brilliant ones, for example.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Maybe porn. "

[metadigital]

Not a big fan of foreign films then, GoA? Pity, the French make some brilliant ones, for example.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Maybe porn. "

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

They dub pr0n, though, so there is no reading involved. Still, it seems that a lot of people don't even read books, let alone subtitles in a film.

[Gabrielle]

Not a big fan of foreign films then, GoA? Pity, the French make some brilliant ones, for example.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Maybe porn. "

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

They dub pr0n, though, so there is no reading involved. Still, it seems that a lot of people don't even read books, let alone subtitles in a film.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sounds like the french.

[mkreku]

For me, having only the key characters in a game fully voiced, makes those characters tend to stick out too much. It feels like walking through a world of mutes and then suddenly happen upon someone who can talk. Sure, it might make the characters memorable, but is that really a good thing? Wouldn't it be cooler if you remembered the character because of its fantastic dialogue lines or its fascinating personality, instead of only remembering it because it was the only creature with a voice in a world of mutes?

[metadigital]

In a perfect world, yes. If we have to choose (why? ) between well written and deep plots, stories and dialogue, and voice acting, then it's a lay-down Mis

[Meshugger]

I love full voice acting. There's no reason for a game to not have it, no matter if the game has a lot of dialogue or not. Voice actors aren't paid by the word, they're paid by the hour they spend in the recording studio. Spend a few extra dollars and make those extra dialogue lines fully voiced too. Just as I see 3D graphics as the next natural step for more complete immersion in a game, I see all spoken dialogue as the next step in the sound department. The only real problem I see with full voice acting is that it's much harder for developers to change (or add) dialogue late in the production, because it would demand the voice cast to come in again for those extra lines. And that might cost a bit.

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^^Agreed

[213374U]

I was going to say that I really don't care for full VA that much, but then I remembered Bloodlines.

 

'Nuff said.

[Gabrielle]

I was going to say that I really don't care for full VA that much, but then I remembered Bloodlines.

 

'Nuff said.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Bloodlines was done quite well. Too bad they couldn't do a generic voice for the replies of your male/female character.

[Squidget]

In my opinion, VO is a valuable addition to an RPG game. It allows for more things to be said with less actual dialog, which allows for more dialog in total.

 

Consider, for example, the difference in meaning and feeling among these sentences:

 

WHAT the hell are we going to do?!

 

What the HELL are we going to do?!

 

What the hell ARE we going to do?!

 

What the hell are WE going to do?!

 

What the hell are we going to DO?!

 

The meaning is different in each one, but it's controlled by emphasis, not words. Sure, there's text means of indicating emphasis, but they break down when it comes to sentences where the emphasis isn't so obvious to begin with.

 

So in that respect, VO adds a lot, and it adds this equally whether you're dealing with Joe Nobody or a major NPC.

 

I also agree with those posters who have said that it can be jarring to have one NPC or one line voice acted and another silent. It just feels a lot more artificial to me.

 

Finally - I wouldn't worry about VO heavily cutting into writing time. Two entirely different departments, and the limitations on dialog are almost always writer-based rather than VO-based. A writer can only create so much dialog for a given character, and a voice actor can speak written dialog faster than a writer can write new dialog, in most cases.

 

Now, there are some things that VO interferes with - most notably, the sort of line that requires a minor change. Mentioning the PC's name is the obvious factor of note, but there are others to think of as well.

 

"Greetings good Fighter, can you help me find my cat?"

 

"Greetings good Rogue, can you help me find my cat?"

 

"Greetings good Mage, can you help me find my cat?"

 

{Repeat for 11 classes.}

 

In non-voice-acted dialog this is a simple {Class} command, while in voice-acted dialog this requires 11 different lines all individuall voice-acted, which takes up more space on the CD.

 

Regardless, in most cases I think VO seriously adds to the game, most notably those games which pursue atmosphere. The atmosphere of a game like Eternal Darkness is incredible, but it wouldn't be nearly as impressive without the awesome voice-acting that goes with it.

[EnderAndrew]

I say hire a good voice actor for the really important dialogue, and then use text for everyone else. It allows you to write lengthier dialogue for the minor PCs without recording endless dialogue in the studio.

[Squidget]

I say hire a good voice actor for the really important dialogue, and then use text for everyone else.  It allows you to write lengthier dialogue for the minor PCs without recording endless dialogue in the studio.

 

What makes you think this is the case? Remember, in game development most dialog gets written, looked over, snipped down, looked over again, ect. The less important stuff gets cut.

 

This makes writing dialog a lengthy process - considerably more so than recording a few lines of dialog with an actor you already have. The limitations on dialog in recent are generally writing-based rather than VO-based.

 

But hey, don't take my word for it...ask a dev!

 

As I've said elsewhere, full VO has little to no impact on the length of the game nor the amount of writing (which are, you'll note, related but still seperate things). There are other reasons why games are getting shorter, only a few of which we can actually control.

 

So use of VO will inevitably lead to simpler dialogue. It will also lead to less dialogue and less forks through a conversation, as VO is much more expensive than the cost involved in typing extra words.

 

This is not necessarily true. It was not true in KotOR, for instance, and for a very good reason. Would you believe that KotOR had a first draft? It was a completely written game at one point, with the shortest dialogue we could possibly get away with because we were under a very draconian word count limit due to the cost of VO. It was also terrible. Awful. If a character had more than one line it, out of necessity, both introduced itself and gave it's quest by the time the second line was done. When you have a 10,000-word limit on a chapter, though, there's not much wiggle room.

 

And the Powers That Be acknowledged the problem. That version of KotOR was scrapped and we started over... with complete carte blanche to write dialogues as long as we felt were necessary. I think it showed in KotOR's writing and we're doing DA the same way. Indeed, we're actually going out of our way to make extra paths the standard.

 

And while we can't do character names, we *do* intend to do such references as he/she and him/her, only sparingly. As you can imagine, doing one of those requires two seperate lines, but when you have another line for an elf and one for a nobleman and one for a barbarian and... well, you get the picture... then it doesn't seem like such a big deal.

 

In short, I would agree that VO can be a huge limiting factor on the writing... but only when it is done cheaply. If the Powers That Be are willing to put the writing first and the VO second there really shouldn't be a problem (beyond having no NPC ever actually say the player's name, which is a bit of a trick to get around... but they didn't do it in KotOR, either, and I don't think it was actually missed.)

It should also be noted that less VO does not equate to more writing/more story. Us writers do not work on VO, so it's not as if having less VO means more time for us to write.

 

 

 

So yeah, I don't think that Full VO is hugely limiting to writing, and as least some devs and successful companies seem to agree.

 

I will say that Full VO makes things a lot more difficult for anyone attempting to mod the game. Just ask Team Gizka.

[Dhruin]

This is an academic debate because full VO is now expected and standard for any major project. Smaller ones have to cope as best they can and will probably suffer accordingly in the market.

 

It's certainly true that VO doesn't necessarily restrict the writing for many (most?) projects but it can. My best links are lost with the old Iplay boards and I don't have the time to find alternative sources, but here's MCA on the dialogue in Jefferson:

The dialogues in Jefferson were extremely complex -- not in terms of sheer displayed text, but in terms of the number of nodes, node texts and replies that made the dialogues up. Dialogues varied according to a huge amount of tracked information: ability scores, skill scores, deity, race, (and sometimes skin color, hair color, and hairstyle), positive and negative reputation with six factions, and the positive and negative reps with each of those six factions' two sub-factions... and also the positive and negative reps in regions. Oh, and then the sixteen or so epithets.

 

Sawyer pointed out that this level of detail wasn't achievable with full VO. It isn't a problem for BioWare, because they simply wouldn't produce an RPG designed like this. And to be honest, noone else will either...but I wish they would, so full VO is a hindrance in that sense.

 

On the matter of t he player character - definitely not. I hate playing a pre-voiced character that doesn't sound at all like I imagine.