[Request] No full voice-over.

[undi]

Dearest Obsidian:

 

Whatever decisions you may take designing the game, be they more or less popular, the thing you must keep up with is not doing a full voiceover for the game.

 

Some important sentences for important NPCs, like in Planescape: Torment are enought to make the player read the rest of the conversation with the right voice in mind.

 

An alternative may be to record some random nonsense babbling with different emotions for each character, to show it's predisposition towards you.

 

Not having a full voiceover lets you, developers, way more resources (both time and money) to spend on making the game objectively better. You can make:

 

- Way more conversation choices.

- More flexibility on making adaptative changes on text (depending on less important things like your sex or name, or more important things like factions, friendships, quests done/failed).

- More valuable text with more different characters.

- Forget about complains about having only 6 voice actors for 500 npcs (the Oblivion Effect), having spent on that half your money, development time, effort and most of the release delay.

- Late moment changes

 

So, whatever you may choose to do for Project: Eternity, the thing that MUST NOT be even remotely contemplated is having a full voiceover.

 

Maybe you guys already had this in mind, nevertheless I just wanted to be sure.

 

Thanks for the attention,

A caring fan.

 

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As a reference: http://www.reddit.co...wards_for_rpgs/

Edited October 20, 2012 by undi

[Luridis]

I believe they explained already in several interviews that they intend to make extensive use of dialogue. And, far too much to ever make voice overs even remotely affordable on the crowdfunding budget.

[Sensuki]

The dialogue writing will not be compromised at all by VO limitations. They will write it all first and then voice what they can, I assume.

[Arkeus]

I am pretty sure thye will only voice key scenes of main villains, if even that.

[Ieo]

Eh, it's been known for a long while now (dev interviews) that they're doing BG-style partial VO. The rest is text. Like it should be.

[sparklecat]

It's ok buddy, they've already promised they're not gonna ruin the game with full VO!

[TheLastMalkieri]

Yeah, text only seems best here; more money for gameplay mechanics and script, and I tend to just read the text ahead of the voice acting in most games (which is sad because the voice acting is often good!).

[xvart]

One of the things that I did not like with the voice acting in Neverwinter Nights 2 was that it was so slow. I understand that you do not expect a dragon to speak as fast as an insurance seller but all of them. Everything was clear to understand always but I read much faster and found my self waiting for the speech to end (because I did not want to cut them).

 

Also I really like that feeling when you encounter someone (NPC) that has a voice/sound. That made them more important and the encounters/interactions more memorable.

[Sensuki]

To be honest i'm hoping it's closer to Baldur's Gate than Icewind Dale level of VO, but we'll see how we go.

[AstralWanderer]

I'd support "BG-style" VO also. The only improvement I would suggest is having more generic phrases recorded for each NPC, for greater variety in "non-voiced" dialogue.

 

Another benefit of partial-VO is that it makes expansions and mods easier - the first NWN2 expansion (Mask of the Betrayer) brought in 2 NPCs from the original NWN2 campaign (Jerro and Bishop) and neither worked well IMHO (Jerro was completely silent while Bishop had a different voice).

[jivex5k]

Oh god...

You mention babbling noises?

Nothing makes me cringe more than nonsensical babble to fill emotion. Think of the Sims...my god..I wanted to chop off my ears.

BG2 got voice over balance perfect. Do that!

[mstark]

Loving that they're going with the BG style VO. Not just because I loved that game, but now that I'm replaying it, using voice just to initiate a conversation is just perfect. After that you can concentrate on reading dialogue options.

 

I really do like the fully VO'd Irenicus cut scenes, though. Immersion where immersion's due.

Edited October 22, 2012 by mstark

[Burn Everything & Sing]

"Minsc and Boo stand ready (squeaksqueak!)"

 

or

 

"This quest is vain!..."

 

and one of faves.....

 

"Ooooooh!.... shiny ones..."

Edited October 30, 2012 by Burn Everything & Sing

[rjshae]

"Ooooooh!.... shiny ones..."

For the love of all things merciful, please, please don't ever do another Cespenar voice-over. Just reading the words makes my eyes burn...

[Exile2k4]

I agree with the OP - while hypothetically I can imagine the 'perfect' game having excellently voiced dialogue all the way through, I just don't think it's practical for PE. I actually don't think it's practical to do it well even for a high budget RPG (I felt like it was a weak point in Skyrim). I think it's natural to judge voice acting by the standards you see in films/TV, but those mediums have such a comparitively small amount of dailogue to get 'right' compared to a fully voiced computer game, and your interaction with it is completely different.

 

I realise this is probably a minority view, but I'd even be quite happy if they ditched the small number of characters/lines they normally voice in these games. To me, that just highlights the lack of voice work in the rest of the game.

[Tamerlane]

"Ooooooh!.... shiny ones..."

For the love of all things merciful, please, please don't ever do another Cespenar voice-over. Just reading the words makes my eyes burn...

So... that's a no to Adam Brennecke's goblin voice?

[rjshae]

"Ooooooh!.... shiny ones..."

For the love of all things merciful, please, please don't ever do another Cespenar voice-over. Just reading the words makes my eyes burn...

So... that's a no to Adam Brennecke's goblin voice?

In all seriousness, I think it was mostly a problem of repetition. Like listening to the same advert entirely too many times.