Good Old Games

[Hell Kitty]

I don't know, maybe it was the smaller amount of lines that allowed tighter direction, but VA seems a lot more appropriately done in older games.

 

Heh, another bit of hype for GK was that it had so many lines of dialogue it was like x amount of feature films rolled into one.

 

I can't agree that voice acting was done better then than now. Like I mentioned many of the voice actors from back then are the same ones that are working today. A couple of old examples won't counter a couple new ones. Oh, and PST had a few celebs of it's own.

 

Bethesda gets a lot of flack for using big names like Liam Neeson and Patrick Stewart (who first voiced a game character in the early 90s), but they actually do a good job.

 

I think it's a valid point that having celebrities voice your game adds needless costs for absolutely no discernible quality gain.

 

It's part of the advertising and hype. The time and resources Bioware put into the bazillion promotional videos for ME2, for example, don't alter the quality of the game itself, but you can be sure it's worth it to Bioware considering they've apparently sold two million units in the first week alone.

 

Typical of the excellent quality level of unknown voice artists.

 

I wouldn't say excellent quality is typical of unknown voice actors. If you're excellent you don't remain unknown. Jennifer Hale certainly has a lot of fans amongst gamers. Anime voice actors have huge followings.

 

Anyway, I'm now going to have to join gog and buy GK as I can't find my old CD copy.

Edited January 30, 2010 by Hell Kitty

[Tigranes]

The fact that we have the same voice actors, or that we had celebs back then and celebs now too, don't disprove the suggestion that older VAs tended to be better. To be precise, I'd rather suggest that the number of games that had excellent, appropriate VA throughout the entire product is higher in older games, than newer games in the period of significantly larger production teams, budgets and the new business models.

 

Indeed, the celeb thing is not a big deal here. I'd agree that Liam Neeson did a decent/good job in FO3. The fact is, maybe because FO3 had so many more lines than GK (which is why GK having a lot of lines for its time doesn't matter so much here), you could encounter characters with some odd, subpar or irksome voice acting, whereas in GK the quality is much more consistent. Same with Dragon Age. Risen.

 

Coming back to Planescape: Torment, again you wonder whether the VA quality would have been so consistent if they were pressured by the market to fully voice everybody, even if they cut the wordcount in half. I don't think it's a question of celebrities (my bad, it was just a side mention for me) or whatnot. The issues are more likely;

 

(a) time/money investment in VA may not be proportionate at the moment; i.e. even though you got a lot more money and manpower going into a game, just how much more attention is being paid to VA? According to stories of just how expensive it gets and how often it has to be done in limited takes, maybe not quite enough.

(b) the market expectation of fully voiced games, which puts an unrealistic demand on (a) - did Oblivion really need all those nasal shopkeepers and short-tongued elves? In fact, if we had to endure the same kind of VA in, say, Ultima VII, would our opinion of the game change a lot? If Oblivion had Patrick Stewart and few other key voices only, wouldn't we be judging its VA as consistently good quality?

 

[Humodour]

edit: after 3 hours, arcanum is at 10%. woohoo!

 

I lol at New Zealand broadband speeds. :D

[RPGmasterBoo]

Finished GK, time for Myst: Masterpiece Edition.

[RPGmasterBoo]

I think the first half is nearly always better than the second half of these kind of games though, this fixation with cult / voodoo stuff means after some very fun detectiving and adventuring you're shunted off to random African caves or mystical places at the end.

 

Its supposed to up the tempo and suspense. I like the first half better as well though.

 

Hope you checked out both of the endings. My score was 332 out of 340-something.

Edited January 30, 2010 by RPGmasterBoo

[HoonDing]

People that loved GK should give Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars & the sequel Smoking Mirror try.

 

Also, Rolf Saxon is one of my favourite adventure game voice actors, along with Sarah Hamilton.

[RPGmasterBoo]

Broken Sword 2 was my first PC game, and was my favorite game of all time for years, until the disappointment that was BS3.

 

Its a great game, a sorta GK lite.

[HoonDing]

I kinda liked BS3, but the box puzzles dragged it down a lot, although the other environmental puzzles were done well... and the interplay with Nico reminded me of the team path of Fate of Atlantis. But the final part of the game was too surreal even for a BS game.

 

I never got around playing BS4.

[RPGmasterBoo]

Me neither, they killed the desire in me after BS3, even though BS4 is supposedly better.

 

Revolutions other games: Lure of the Temptress and Beneath a Steel Sky are available for free download off GoG. Machinarium draws heavily from BSS.

 

Their adventure stealth hybrid, In Cold Blood is also available on GoG, though I heard it was meh.

Edited January 30, 2010 by RPGmasterBoo

[jaguars4ever]

I'm real happy for you Broken Sword, and Imma let you finish, but Severance: Blade of Darkness is the best PC sword fighting game of ALL TIME!

[RPGmasterBoo]

I fail to see the relevance.

[Hell Kitty]

The fact that we have the same voice actors, or that we had celebs back then and celebs now too, don't disprove the suggestion that older VAs tended to be better.

 

That was in response to this claim: You wonder why if we had such good VA back then, why we've got all these celeb voices now oand they sound worse.

 

Yes we had good VA back then, and we have the same good VA now. We had celeb voices back then and we have them now. No, they don't sound worse.

 

I think the issue is less the amount of lines as the amount of characters. For example if game A has 10 characters voiced by 10 actors, but game B has 100 characters voiced by 10 actors, then game A has every character with a unique voice while game B has the same few voices for a huge cast, which can lessen the experience even if the level of talent remains the same. If Patrick Stewart was to do the voices of 25 different characters in the same game, it'd be horrible for the player because even if he gives a brilliant performance for each one, it's still 25 different characters that all sound like Patrick Stewart.

 

I think if we were to compare a bunch of old adventures games with a bunch of new adventure games, all with a small cast of characters with, we'd find the quality of voice acting pretty much the same. RPGs from Bioware and Bethesda that feature a huge number of fully voiced NPCs don't have anything directly comparable in older games. If we were to take the voiced lines in BG2 and compare them only to the main characters in ME2 (and perhaps only their most important lines), I don't think there would be a whole lot of difference in quality. If we include all the different NPCs in ME2 who all sound the same, then you're definitely going to water down the overall experience.

 

Overall though, I don't think the best voice over work of old games is any better than the best voice over work in new games.

 

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by appropriate. What an individual player feels is appropriate isn't necessarily what is appropriate. A lot of people complained about the voice actor for Leliana in Dragon Age because they thought she put on a silly fake French accent, not realising the accent was authentic. Did Tim Curry do an authentic New Orleans accent in GK? I don't know, I thought he did a good job but you can be sure there are folks who think it was the worst attempt ever.

[Gorgon]

Wasen't the 'Italian' elf assassin from Orlay as well.

[Guest Slinky]

People that loved GK should give Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars & the sequel Smoking Mirror try.

 

Also, Rolf Saxon is one of my favourite adventure game voice actors, along with Sarah Hamilton.

I did play Broken Sword 2 years ago. If I recall correctly I liked the game, but the puzzles were sometimes unbelievably illogical. I still remember one where you had to take something from a cat in so mind boggling way that I almost stopped playing.

[HoonDing]

I did play Broken Sword 2 years ago. If I recall correctly I liked the game, but the puzzles were sometimes unbelievably illogical. I still remember one where you had to take something from a cat in so mind boggling way that I almost stopped playing.

Yeh, I vaguely recall something about combining a fish & a rope and attaching it to a tree or something.

 

Still, one it comes it MacGyver like puzzles, nothing beats Secret Files: Tunguska & NiBiRu. In the latter, there was even a case of combining a pack of dynamite with a rat in order to open a door.

[Ausir]

I think the issue is less the amount of lines as the amount of characters. For example if game A has 10 characters voiced by 10 actors, but game B has 100 characters voiced by 10 actors, then game A has every character with a unique voice while game B has the same few voices for a huge cast, which can lessen the experience even if the level of talent remains the same. If Patrick Stewart was to do the voices of 25 different characters in the same game, it'd be horrible for the player because even if he gives a brilliant performance for each one, it's still 25 different characters that all sound like Patrick Stewart.

 

The key is to hire not necessarily celebs, but talented voice actors, like Charlie Adler or Jim Cummings. The latter voiced Set, Gizmo and the Master in Fallout 1, each with a very different voice. These guys often have an awesome range of voices.

[Guest Slinky]

I couldn't wait and I went and bought Gabriel Knight from GOG. The first thing I noticed was that it's missing the graphic novel which works as a prologue for the story.

 

You can get it here.

 

Second thing I noticed was that I had static white noise during game, so I had to stab the dosboxGK.conf -file anyway. All the settings in there were the defaults dosbox has, so I found myself stabbing the settings and testing the game just as I have done with the stand alone dosbox. I know dosbox is pretty intimidating to configure yourself, that's why the net is full of frontends for it, but would it been a big endeavor from GOG to make a quick setup for the game where you can choose full screen/windowed and resolution and such? I could ask the same from the dosbox coders though.

 

Anyway, still a great game.

Edited January 31, 2010 by Slinky

[RPGmasterBoo]

Alt tab out of the game and it will revert to windowed mode.

Edited January 31, 2010 by RPGmasterBoo

[Guest Slinky]

Sure, but you can't change the window size/resolution that way can you? Just a teeny weeny quick setup during first launch is all I ask.

[Tigranes]

Go to dosbox.conf in the GK folder not dosbox folder, set fullscreen=0.

[Guest Slinky]

I know how to fiddle around with the .conf file damnit

 

The point of my rant was that many people don't, so somesort of easy setup would be nice for them.

[Purkake]

DOSBox isn't for the faint of heart. If you know what you're doing, you mess around with it, if you don't you leave it alone.

[Guest Slinky]

DOSBox isn't for the faint of heart. If you know what you're doing, you mess around with it, if you don't you leave it alone.

Interesting opinion, laws of the jungle huh?

 

I really do not think that something so simple as setting windowed mode on with desired resolution should be that hard to new people. I'm not talking about setting CPU cycles here or something similar.

[Purkake]

I think it's also in the DOSBox readme that alt+enter switches between fullscreen and windowed mode.

 

That's not too hard, is it?

[RPGmasterBoo]

Don't be an ass Purkake, the GoG team could have included it. Its no big deal, but it would have been nice.