Narrated Flavour Text F.T.W?

[Parkerhdeb]

One thing that surprised and intrigued me in the Baldur's Gate series was all the flavour text you could find if you looked for it. BOOKS! Numerous, immersive, and well written, I always loved finding out more about the world I was adventuring in. 

 

However, due to either a lack of patience or an excess of volume (pun), I could never bring myself to read them all since I would quickly begin to miss the gameplay.

 

One possible solution (that would work for me at least) would be to hire a voice actor with an extremely charismatic and smooth voice to narrate said flavour text. You know that immersive and calm feeling you get when Morgan Freeman talks about pretty much anything? Imagine that but with a voice suitable to a high fantasy setting. AWESOME. I would listen to HOOOUUURS of pretty much anything if it was read by an epic voice.

 

Of course, I understand that paying a voice actor to read all that would be expensive... but hey! If you guys at the P.E team are trying to think of ways to use that Kickstarter money, that's one that I'd be more than okay with!

 

 

 

 

 

 

As for the forum community, let me know what your guys' take on this is! Weather or not it's important enough, would be worth it, etc., or even list some of your favourite narrators / voice actors to "zone-out" to!

[Amberion]

Another idea would be to have a personal library, that you could add books to, and be able to read them anytime you want at your leisure.

Edited March 9, 2013 by Amberion

[PrimeJunta]

I'd rather they spent those resources on just about anything else.

 

The only voice acting I like in this type of game is combat barks and random banter. I always read dialogs and lore text. If there's narration, I just click through to read. In fact one of the (many) things I didn't like about BG is that there was no way to click through to read the texts between chapters; if you didn't want to miss it you had to wait patiently as that guy was reading from the paper while the text scrolled s-l-o-w-l-y up.

[LadyCrimson]

If I love the voice, I can love narration. But I'm also of the mind that there must always be a way to skip past it, if one wants. 

Also, if a flavor text is long, it can be irritating if it drones on and on while you're trying to still adventure, or worse, if it gets cut off because something else in the gameworld wants to interact with you. Happens constantly in Borderlands 2 and it's annoying as heck.

 

I'm happy enough to have lots of lootable books, scrolls, etc. that I can store in some locker to read at my leisure. Or if not lootable per se, that the text gets added to a journal when I click on such "stuff." Unless the game is set in some sci-fi/tech type world, where voice recorders instead of books might be the norm, I tend to find written records a bit more believable, too.

[moridin84]

The reason why they aren't doing much voice acting in the game is because it's expensive. They'd have to reduce the number of lines and it would be difficult to change the lines after they have been done. 

 

The idea of the flavour text being voice acted... is hit much, much harder by those problems.

 

Besides, that stuff is in the game for people who are interested in it, obviously you aren't that person. I'm not either. 

Edited March 9, 2013 by moridin84

[Remmirath]

Personally, I find it a bit annoying when such things are narrated. It takes a good deal longer to listen to somebody read aloud the text than it does to read it yourself, and it always makes me wonder exactly where this voice is supposed to be coming from. It was even one of the (quite numerous) things that bothered me about Mass Effect, even though it did make some sense there.

 

I don't always read through books when I find them lying around in games -- only if they look interesting at the time I pick them up -- but I'd find it obnoxious if somebody started speaking every time I opened one.