Dialog mostly voiced?

[LordsWeapon]

Will we have to do a lot of dialog reading like the ole IWD classics or will we be treated to top notch voice acting?

 

God Speed!

[Hormalakh]

Not too much VA. It's too expensive. Will have some though.

[FlintlockJazz]

About the same level as Baldur's Gate and Planescape Torment, enough to set the tone of the character and that's it. VA costs a hell of a lot and restricts the amount of dialogue and reactivity they can write into the dialog, so I'm all for very little or even no voice acting at all.

[Umberlin]

I doubt we'll have anymore than BG/Planescape, but, really, I'd be fine with no voice acting at all.

[Osvir]

It is going to be 100% mostly voiced over like Baldur's Gate.

 

As they aren't hiring any voice actors (or are they?) I am wondering who is going to do the voices. Will Josh, Adam, Chris, Tim all take the helm in front of the microphone and do VO for the game? Who would be who? Will we see green shirt girl doing Cadegund perhaps?

 

I'll say like I said before when this topic popped up. If Obsidian would ask for it (which would have to be done well before any recording even starts) fans could/would provide material I am sure (definitely a Wild Card still!!). All you need is a good recording device and some know how (how to record your voice to not make it all bad) and also know your way around an audio editting software. I used Audacity (freeware) for the BG sound sets I made. Garageband is much more fun though I also have a studio in my living room.

 

I made... 2 sound sets for Baldur's Gate that I managed to make sound as if they were part of the core game (volume just right, a well thought out script as well, no fuzzy sound or any sparks. Clean sounding).

Edited December 1, 2012 by Osvir

[obsidiansquid]

The old school way is best-modern VA seems to be costly and would detract from the core game.

[Solviulnir the Soulbinder]

The way it was done in BG is imho a good compromise between the extremes of full VA and no VA at all. As in those games NPC didn't have any portraits assigned to them the voiced initial lines of dialogue often helped to get the feel of the NPC's character. I'm all for this kind of solution.

 

Come to think of it, even something as simple as: "Wait, I think I know you!" Can be voice acted in so many different ways... to express a pleasant surprise to see an old companion, or to express suspicion of a wealthy man, who lost his purse recently.

[Caranthir]

If everything is voiced, it makes it slow to add new quests / characters or even patch things. I can certainly do without full voice over.

[Dream]

As they aren't hiring any voice actors (or are they?) I am wondering who is going to do the voices. Will Josh, Adam, Chris, Tim all take the helm in front of the microphone and do VO for the game? Who would be who? Will we see green shirt girl doing Cadegund perhaps?

 

God I hope not.

[Agelastos]

No real VO, just random Simlish nonsense to go along with all the text.

"Oh, it's not gibberish. It's the Aedyr(-ish? -ian? -ic?) language."

Problem solved. Everyone loses.

[BBMorti]

Voice acting is so expensive that you get dialogue such as 'I'm hungry' if it is used through a whole game. Depth and complexity goes out the window.

[Umberlin]

No real VO, just random Simlish nonsense to go along with all the text.

"Oh, it's not gibberish. It's the Aedyr(-ish? -ian? -ic?) language."

Problem solved. Everyone loses.

 

Actually I imagine a made up language, properly handled, could be a neat addition. If properly handled. If. I stand by my earlier commentary in the thread though, despite this admission.

[Agelastos]

No real VO, just random Simlish nonsense to go along with all the text.

"Oh, it's not gibberish. It's the Aedyr(-ish? -ian? -ic?) language."

Problem solved. Everyone loses.

 

Actually I imagine a made up language, properly handled, could be a neat addition. If properly handled. If. I stand by my earlier commentary in the thread though, despite this admission.

 

Then they'd have to hire linguists, like Bioware did for The Old Tongue in Jade Empire (which still felt very rudimentary and unnatural, even for an artlang). Not something Obsidian should sink their resources into IMO. Although, I guess they could always crowdsource it...

Edited December 1, 2012 by Agelastos

[Archmage Silver]

It'll be partially voiced à la Icewind Dale and the other IE games, but the rest of the dialog will be text-only. This has been confirmed already.

 

The partial VO will allow the Project Eternity writers to use more artistic freedom and have more flexibility in regards to changes to the dialog during development, because they're not as restrained by the existing VOs and VO budget as they would otherwise be.

[Ywerion]

You know who would I like as Voice Actor? Dwayne Knight as some delicious villain he definitely has a knack for it, just watch him in action, enjoy.

 

[jezz555]

Voice acting really adds a lot to me as far as my comprehension of the story and my willingness to sit through long dialogue segments, not to mention it can give the dialogue a lot more impact and gravitas. I'm not saying break the bank or anything but I'm in favour of as much voice acting as possible

[Death Machine Miyagi]

Voice acting really adds a lot to me as far as my comprehension of the story and my willingness to sit through long dialogue segments, not to mention it can give the dialogue a lot more impact and gravitas. I'm not saying break the bank or anything but I'm in favour of as much voice acting as possible

 

Whereas I am in favor of limiting the voice acting to only very important parts of the plot, if it even needs to be there at all. The trade-off for more voice acting is less dialogue, diminished ability to change dialogue during production, a lack of modability...in short, less choice and less depth.

 

I want more choice and more depth, not less. And if the cost of that is that less voice acting, then I'll pay it happily.

[Umberlin]

No real VO, just random Simlish nonsense to go along with all the text.

"Oh, it's not gibberish. It's the Aedyr(-ish? -ian? -ic?) language."

Problem solved. Everyone loses.

 

Actually I imagine a made up language, properly handled, could be a neat addition. If properly handled. If. I stand by my earlier commentary in the thread though, despite this admission.

 

Then they'd have to hire linguists, like Bioware did for The Old Tongue in Jade Empire (which still felt very rudimentary and unnatural, even for an artlang). Not something Obsidian should sink their resources into IMO. Although, I guess they could always crowdsource it...

 

Honestly, Bioware just lost something along the way, creating a language isn't that hard, it's something I've done several times, over the course of an afternoon. It's not complicated. Then again my majors are all language based, and my masteries fine arts and creative writing, so, then there's that . . . Still, you don't even have to go that far, a gibberish language, as you noted, can fake it readily if it's well done.

 

Again, though, I stick to my original post despite any such notes:

 

I doubt we'll have anymore than BG/Planescape, but, really, I'd be fine with no voice acting at all.

 

I still, to this day, play text heavy, and text only, games that having zero voice acting at all wouldn't even result in the batting of an eyelash. I'm rather fond of such games, actually.

Edited December 1, 2012 by Umberlin

[jezz555]

Whereas I am in favor of limiting the voice acting to only very important parts of the plot, if it even needs to be there at all. The trade-off for more voice acting is less dialogue, diminished ability to change dialogue during production, a lack of modability...in short, less choice and less depth.

 

I want more choice and more depth, not less. And if the cost of that is that less voice acting, then I'll pay it happily.

 

That's not really the case. There might be more choice, as far as the devs changing the dialogue along the way and maybe writing up more options for dialogue, but I don't think you can prove that it will necessarily mean more depth. Part of what makes a line of dialogue memorable or "deep" for me is hearing the power with which it's delivered.One of my all time favourite video game lines of dialogue was the "would you kindly" speech from bio-shock (sort of a spoiler if you haven't played it) that dialogue really stuck in my mind because of the way it was delivered. If it was just a line of dialogue I probably would have just skipped through it without a second glance.

Edited December 1, 2012 by jezz555

[kenup]

Then they'd have to hire linguists, like Bioware did for The Old Tongue in Jade Empire (which still felt very rudimentary and unnatural, even for an artlang). Not something Obsidian should sink their resources into IMO. Although, I guess they could always crowdsource it...

That was the most annoying made up language IMO. Even the aliens in KOTOR where better(compared to Tho Fan, they were still crap otherwise), cause they had variation between species. I'm not an expert on linguistics but, if someone has to make gibberish, at least make sure we don't have to hear the same thing repeated in the span of 60 seconds. It would be better to just have a few lines for the most plot integral/companion NPCs and that's about it.

 

Anyway, I would be fine with no voice acting at all. A good narrator would be awesome though.

Edited December 1, 2012 by kenup

[Osvir]

Voice acting really adds a lot to me as far as my comprehension of the story and my willingness to sit through long dialogue segments, not to mention it can give the dialogue a lot more impact and gravitas. I'm not saying break the bank or anything but I'm in favour of as much voice acting as possible

 

Whereas I am in favor of limiting the voice acting to only very important parts of the plot, if it even needs to be there at all. The trade-off for more voice acting is less dialogue, diminished ability to change dialogue during production, a lack of modability...in short, less choice and less depth.

 

I want more choice and more depth, not less. And if the cost of that is that less voice acting, then I'll pay it happily.

 

Perhaps some simple insignificant grunts could suffice, that you could cycle through. More primitive. A character who's interest you pique could simply just say "Hmm" whilst scratching most modern beard technology. Commoner 1-352 could cycle between 2, "Ooh" or "Aah". I'm laughing so hard right now by the way. Could become one big ball of fail. Still laughable, as it could be seen as a mockup of a voice over (and no dumb memes). That's the trick really, good voice acting requires perfectionism and authenticity. A "Hmm" can be said in thousands of different ways, and that also costs money (are voice actors paid by lines they say or by time in production? ~Depends on contract?).

 

[Coming soon for BGEE (Sound sets)]

Edited December 1, 2012 by Osvir

[Agelastos]

Honestly, Bioware just lost something along the way, creating a language isn't that hard, it's something I've done several times, over the course of an afternoon. It's not complicated. Then again my majors are all language based, and my masteries fine arts and creative writing, so, then there's that . . . Still, you don't even have to go that far, a gibberish language, as you noted, can fake it readily if it's well done.

 

 

Hehe! Well, I guess that depends on how "natural" you want your language to be. Creating a naturalist artlang is very complicated, at least IMO.

I've spent 5+ years working on mine (an artlang loosely based on the reconstructed proto-Indo-European language), and I'm nowhere near finished. I didn't major in linguistics (we don't even have a major/minor system over here), but I did take some courses in Indo-European Studies, have read the Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World from cover to cover (well, more or less ), and have spent plenty of time on the Conlang.org forums. But maybe I'm just a compulsive perfectionist.

 

But, I'm derailing the thread. Sorry!

Edited December 1, 2012 by Agelastos

[LordsWeapon]

Voice acting really adds a lot to me as far as my comprehension of the story and my willingness to sit through long dialogue segments, not to mention it can give the dialogue a lot more impact and gravitas. I'm not saying break the bank or anything but I'm in favour of as much voice acting as possible

 

Well put Jezz! AGREED!

[Ieo]

Whereas I am in favor of limiting the voice acting to only very important parts of the plot, if it even needs to be there at all. The trade-off for more voice acting is less dialogue, diminished ability to change dialogue during production, a lack of modability...in short, less choice and less depth.

 

I want more choice and more depth, not less. And if the cost of that is that less voice acting, then I'll pay it happily.

 

That's not really the case. There might be more choice, as far as the devs changing the dialogue along the way and maybe writing up more options for dialogue, but I don't think you can prove that it will necessarily mean more depth. Part of what makes a line of dialogue memorable or "deep" for me is hearing the power with which it's delivered.One of my all time favourite video game lines of dialogue was the "would you kindly" speech from bio-shock (sort of a spoiler if you haven't played it) that dialogue really stuck in my mind because of the way it was delivered. If it was just a line of dialogue I probably would have just skipped through it without a second glance.

 

You are mixing up "passive listener surrendering personal imagination for third party acting" versus "active reader using personal imagination to interpret dialogic text."

 

In other words, "What medium typically has more 'depth'---a book or a movie?" Obviously, either can be complete subjective crap, but let's say it's the same title. The difference of immersion really pivots on the reader/listener/watcher, then: Either you're dependent on the "delivery" of an external party for your immersion, or you use your own imagination to create the immersion. It's a gradient

 

Quantity does matter when it comes to "depth" (unless we're talking about poetry, but that's a whole other literary genre). Obsidian has reiterated in various interviews and Q&A that in game development, voice acting absolutely takes away development time and money, and that cuts down on the amount of dialogue you can have in a game, period. That also means, by pure numbers, a game with less "word content" is going to have both less breadth (number of factions, NPCs with dialogue, etc.) and depth (number of extending dialogue branches to develop characters, etc.).

 

There is a good compromise in games. The purpose of partially voiced lines like in Baldur's Gate is to provide initial mood and the "vocal pitch" of a character. But it takes far less time and money for the studio to rely on the reader to extrapolate. And little effort on the reader's part--at least, a player who likes to read and is good at it.

 

And ultimately, Project Eternity is a niche game. It's a niche game, a gloves-off old-school CRPG for smart people who like tactical play and intelligent textual content. It's a niche game that required a Kickstarter. For anyone who wants a full/mostly VO-ed "movie game," the current market is full of them. Have at that and leave this one alone.

 

Some reading:

1UP interview: Voice acting has been described as providing "flavor" in Project Eternity, which seems to indicate that most dialogue will take the form of text. How much does this free up your ability to provide meaningful conversation choices, and to flesh out the world and characters? Being able to add or edit dialog at any point must be very different from working on fully-voiced games that require recording sessions and file size considerations.

 

Avellone: Yes, true to the Infinity Engine games, most dialogue will take the form of text. It's a lot easier to iterate and make changes to text that isn't being voice acted, post-processed, and then voice acted and post-processed in a number of other languages as well. Note that this doesn't mean complete freedom -- the text is still going to be translated into French, German, Spanish and hopefully a host of other languages as well, and it does need to be locked down, but it's much easier to make the necessary iterations well into the bug-fixing phase, which is often a lot more difficult when there's voice for everyone (which you often have to wrap up several months before the end of the project, and a LOT can change during that time).

 

"Voice acting in RPGs may be more trouble than it's worth"

Edited December 1, 2012 by Ieo

[Death Machine Miyagi]

Whereas I am in favor of limiting the voice acting to only very important parts of the plot, if it even needs to be there at all. The trade-off for more voice acting is less dialogue, diminished ability to change dialogue during production, a lack of modability...in short, less choice and less depth.

 

I want more choice and more depth, not less. And if the cost of that is that less voice acting, then I'll pay it happily.

 

That's not really the case. There might be more choice, as far as the devs changing the dialogue along the way and maybe writing up more options for dialogue, but I don't think you can prove that it will necessarily mean more depth. Part of what makes a line of dialogue memorable or "deep" for me is hearing the power with which it's delivered.One of my all time favourite video game lines of dialogue was the "would you kindly" speech from bio-shock (sort of a spoiler if you haven't played it) that dialogue really stuck in my mind because of the way it was delivered. If it was just a line of dialogue I probably would have just skipped through it without a second glance.

 

Less choice in an RPG, less dialogue in an RPG, implicitly leads to less depth, or at least the much stronger possibility of it. If you want proof, witness the steady degradation of Bioware since they went to full voice acting. In a fully voiced acted game, you may have three dialogue options, each of which is a variation of the same thing and each of which leads to the exact same response from the NPC. Why? Because getting an NPC to respond to whether your character is an elf, dwarf, halfling, gnome, mage, thief, fighter, evil, good, neutral, hetero, homo, trans, bi, black, white, pink, burnt umber and so on indefinitely is friggin' HARD when you have to hire someone to say it all out loud. The game usually ends up making the dialogue as generic as possible to accommodate whatever you happen to be, while simultaneously narrowing how the dialogue tree (and thus often the quest it relates to) could turn out in order to cut down on how much money they're spending on voice acting.

 

At the same moment, you can kiss post-release mods like Ascension for BG2 goodbye. I think one of the biggest reasons Bioware games post-KOTOR have tended to have only a fraction of the mods available for NWN or BG2 is that, without voice acting, quest mods and NPC mods stick out like a sore thumb in the game proper. Writing new text is easy. Getting a professional voice actor is hard.

 

Now, that doesn't mean you can't have strategic use of voice acting for major events; what would Jon Irenicus have been without David Warner? Nor does it mean a game like Bioshock can't have both voice acting and depth. But if you want a classic RPG, you are far better off with the P:T approach of allowing a dizzying amount of choice, and plenty of room for the game to react to that choice, than the modern Bioware approach of offering three bland choices that all lead to the same outcome. The former is infinitely easier and more cost effective in text than it is through voice acting.