Question: Will there be complete Voice Acting?q

[PrimeJunta]

VO hurts the flow of the game?

 

Please.

Since you asked...

 

A game is something where you control the flow: do something, something happens. The same is true for reading. VO on the other hand forces its pace on you. So you get repeatedly kicked out of the natural flow that you control into something controlled by the game. Same as cutscenes. I don't like either, except in very small doses e.g. between chapters. Which is why I always switch on subtitles and ignore/skip through the VO.

 

So yeah, VO hurts the flow of the game.

[Jitawa]

I think VO can add a lot, but partial works pretty well.  When I think back on games like Baldur's Gate 2, the elements that were actually voiced by Viconia were sufficient for me to get a good sense of the tone of her dialog and I could hear her in my "head-voice" for most of the non-voiced material.  Same with pretty much all the characters.  I think we generally care more about voice with characters we might be forming relationships with in some way (Mazzy, Minsc, etc.) than having the innkeepers' lines on local gossip fully-voiced.

 

BG2 had David f'ing Warner as Jon Irenicus, which was great "get" for a video game role imho, but also somewhat expensive I imagine.  If you compare the amount of speaking he had to the amount of speaking the Illusive man has in Mass Effect 2 though, there's no real contest.  The exposure he had in BG2 was sufficient to establish the character very well.

 

I hope the "limited" VO extends to the level of BG2, but ultimately I just think it's nice to get it to an area where the character's "voice" can be well-established.

[Cyseal]

In Baldur's gate , Planescape and Icewind dale games, along witty wtriting, I adore deep tone voiceovers (male and female). Do you know are there deep tone and nice voice colours actors in POE?

Edited March 24, 2015 by Cyseal

[Kinthalis]

The game features a tremendous amount of writing and dialogue.

 

It's just not feasible to have full voice acting for all of it without ending up with a huge voice acting budget requirement, not to mention a long delay between finalizing content and the game being ready (you can't start voice acting until all or most of the dialogue is set in stone after all!).

 

What you typically end up with is a narrative that features less characters, less elements, less options - basically you end up with dragon Age:Inquisition. Where sidequest consists of "pick up x number of flowers", and even where the main narrative thread, the only one with any sort of interesting meat on it, is fairly linear, and is lacking in player agency.

[Bryy]

"Partial voice acting", though a small thing, was one of the elements of the Kickstarter pitch that got me the most excited for PE.

I know that it's "in" to not like VO, but a game without VO seriously limits its immersion.

[endruwiggin]

Planescape:Torment had trizillion lines of text with only very few narrated (hello morty!). Didn't bother any of us

[Tamerlane]

 

"Partial voice acting", though a small thing, was one of the elements of the Kickstarter pitch that got me the most excited for PE.

I know that it's "in" to not like VO, but a game without VO seriously limits its immersion.

 

Well this is an old quote.

 

But personally, I find the opposite. Whatever immersion is gained from full VO goes out the window when I get impatient with the time they add to the cutscenes and everyone starts to

 

talk-

 

li-

 

thi-

[DCParry]

Personally, I actually prefer no voice acting to partial. I just find sudden switches between voiced and not voiced jarring, and I have a special, silent hatred for the often random and nonsensical greetings of Baldur's Gate (except for Minsc's ones). Thankfully, my strange idiosyncrasy isn't really a problem, thanks to the wonders of the mute button.

 

"Would you like a ladder..."

[DCParry]

And yet FONV was fully voiced and was a fantastic game, writing and story.

 

I do agree with ya that most games that do full voice usuallybhit the mark and/or stiffle and limit dialogue and such. But a very few games....FONV is the only one that comes to mind....okay 1 game was fully voiced and was able to writing and story and roleplaying options very well.

 

But USUALLY a game severally limits roleplaying and options and whatnot by veing fully voiced.

 

New Vegas was not fully voiced. 

[Voss]

 

Ok.... Good RPGs will come back somtime.. Im sure

I just have to wait once more

 

Part of the reason they aren't going for full voice acting isn't just budget. It's that full voice acting limits both how much content you can add and your ability to change content down the road, not to mention making things a pain for modders. 

 

 

More than that, full voice acting requires the story and dialogues to be cut down to mere snippets of what they would otherwise be.   You can't tell a full story with complex dialogue if everything has to be reduced to voice acting.   It is exactly like a book to movie conversion.  It might be a better visual spectacle*, but you have to sacrifice depth and complexity to get it. 

 

*though I often disagree with that.  Watching modern movies, I find the action sequences dreadfully dull/lifeless and I tune out completely for 20 minutes at time, only to give up completely when the story doesn't pick back up and the whole thing rushes to the next hollow action sequence filled with cheesy effects. 

 

 

@Tuckey, yeah, that too.  I find full voice a waste, because I inevitably get fed up with waiting for the actors to plod through the lines, as I'm already ahead of the 2.5 sentences of dialogue they put on screen before the actors work their way to their second breath. 

 

 

Also, ridiculous necro.  But I'm amused by the idea that people babbling makes immersion.

Edited March 25, 2015 by Voss