Question: Will there be complete Voice Acting?q

[PrimeJunta]

I like a good sandbox game as much as the next guy, but that's a subgenre, not a measure of excellence.

[Sensuki]

It was the age of decline.

[redneckdevil]

I hate full voice acting unless done right and usually thats only ingames where u have a set main chatacter like the witcher.

I do like partial voice acting because it helps me get the local flavor when im reading. Like in morrowind it was alot of reading but u had that partial voice acting to where u could imagine the voices as u was reading it. Flame me all u want but i loved the dunmer and nord voices in that game.

with no voice acting at all i have no problem with either. If i had to pick between partial or none, thats a tough choice. Like in morrowind i loved hearing the dunmers voice because it was a bit different and if its a different voice i would say id want partial, but if theres no different types of voices for races and cultures and whatnot id rather have no voice acting at all.

like many have posted, when u go full voice acting u limit urself in what u can accomplish in dialogue becauee of time, space, and motivation......

well ill take it back, FONV was amazing and id dare say the most recent actual rpg that was amazing in story and writing and did full voice acting...

[Azrael Ultima]

I.... I don't get it.

 

It's not always a question of finances. There's no theoretical super-rpg that would come with independence+money. Sometimes the design is just different.

 

I would strongly argue Zahnfee's argument that a good game needs to have/or even wants to have a *free-world* for example.

Finances heavily restrict which design options(not to mention how many at once) are available to you. It's always also a question of finances.

[Malekith]

 

I.... I don't get it.

 

It's not always a question of finances. There's no theoretical super-rpg that would come with independence+money. Sometimes the design is just different.

 

I would strongly argue Zahnfee's argument that a good game needs to have/or even wants to have a *free-world* for example.

Finances heavily restrict which design options(not to mention how many at once) are available to you. It's always also a question of finances.

 

The point is even if you have unlimited money and all options are open to you, fully voiced free-world  isn't the best design direction, just one direction among many

[archangel979]

 

 

I.... I don't get it.

 

It's not always a question of finances. There's no theoretical super-rpg that would come with independence+money. Sometimes the design is just different.

 

I would strongly argue Zahnfee's argument that a good game needs to have/or even wants to have a *free-world* for example.

Finances heavily restrict which design options(not to mention how many at once) are available to you. It's always also a question of finances.

 

The point is even if you have unlimited money and all options are open to you, fully voiced free-world  isn't the best design direction, just one direction among many

 

If you have unlimited money than that is the best design decision lol. You can fill that world with best stories, quests, reactivity, have NPCs all be voiced by talented voice or movie actors, everything that modern sandbox games like Skyrim don't have but fools still come on these boards and boast how they are better. 

You can hire an army of good developers and good team managers and have it done in reasonable time. 

 

You should not have said unlimited money lol. You also didn't say that the sales of such game should be more than the cost :D

Edited September 11, 2014 by archangel979

[Malekith]

 

 

 

I.... I don't get it.

 

It's not always a question of finances. There's no theoretical super-rpg that would come with independence+money. Sometimes the design is just different.

 

I would strongly argue Zahnfee's argument that a good game needs to have/or even wants to have a *free-world* for example.

Finances heavily restrict which design options(not to mention how many at once) are available to you. It's always also a question of finances.

 

The point is even if you have unlimited money and all options are open to you, fully voiced free-world  isn't the best design direction, just one direction among many

 

If you have unlimited money than that is the best design decision lol. You can fill that world with best stories, quests, reactivity, have NPCs all be voiced by talented voice or movie actors, everything that modern sandbox games like Skyrim don't have but fools still come on these boards and boast how they are better. 

You can hire an army of good developers and good team managers and have it done in reasonable time. 

 

You should not have said unlimited money lol. You also didn't say that the sales of such game should be more than the cost :D

 

PS:T story couldn't be told as effectively in an open World game, it would screw the pacing too much. And sure as hell i wouldn't want all those walls of text( i love text) voiced, it would be tedious and i can read them way faster than the actor can voice them. And i can't imagine a voice actor voicing a novel's worth of text and managing to keep his voice fresh and passionate and not sound bored.

[archangel979]

 

 

 

 

I.... I don't get it.

 

It's not always a question of finances. There's no theoretical super-rpg that would come with independence+money. Sometimes the design is just different.

 

I would strongly argue Zahnfee's argument that a good game needs to have/or even wants to have a *free-world* for example.

Finances heavily restrict which design options(not to mention how many at once) are available to you. It's always also a question of finances.

 

The point is even if you have unlimited money and all options are open to you, fully voiced free-world  isn't the best design direction, just one direction among many

 

If you have unlimited money than that is the best design decision lol. You can fill that world with best stories, quests, reactivity, have NPCs all be voiced by talented voice or movie actors, everything that modern sandbox games like Skyrim don't have but fools still come on these boards and boast how they are better. 

You can hire an army of good developers and good team managers and have it done in reasonable time. 

 

You should not have said unlimited money lol. You also didn't say that the sales of such game should be more than the cost :D

 

PS:T story couldn't be told as effectively in an open World game, it would screw the pacing too much. And sure as hell i wouldn't want all those walls of text( i love text) voiced, it would be tedious and i can read them way faster than the actor can voice them. And i can't imagine a voice actor voicing a novel's worth of text and managing to keep his voice fresh and passionate and not sound bored.

 

Wall of text was because half of it was descriptions. With unlimited money you could pay for next gen graphics and those descriptions would play in front of your while the well paid professional actor would not falter in his job or would be replaced by another better one. You have unlimited money and don't care to scrap what first one did so far. Open world filled with PST level of story and conversations would be epic. Of course you would still have access to text and you could choose to read while in options you can turn on option to have voice sound off during conversations. It would not be a problem with unlimited money.

[TheTeaMustFlow]

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.

[C2B]

 

 

 

 

 

I.... I don't get it.

It's not always a question of finances. There's no theoretical super-rpg that would come with independence+money. Sometimes the design is just different.

I would strongly argue Zahnfee's argument that a good game needs to have/or even wants to have a *free-world* for example.

 

Finances heavily restrict which design options(not to mention how many at once) are available to you. It's always also a question of finances.

The point is even if you have unlimited money and all options are open to you, fully voiced free-world isn't the best design direction, just one direction among many

If you have unlimited money than that is the best design decision lol. You can fill that world with best stories, quests, reactivity, have NPCs all be voiced by talented voice or movie actors, everything that modern sandbox games like Skyrim don't have but fools still come on these boards and boast how they are better.

You can hire an army of good developers and good team managers and have it done in reasonable time.

 

You should not have said unlimited money lol. You also didn't say that the sales of such game should be more than the cost :D

PS:T story couldn't be told as effectively in an open World game, it would screw the pacing too much. And sure as hell i wouldn't want all those walls of text( i love text) voiced, it would be tedious and i can read them way faster than the actor can voice them. And i can't imagine a voice actor voicing a novel's worth of text and managing to keep his voice fresh and passionate and not sound bored.

Wall of text was because half of it was descriptions. With unlimited money you could pay for next gen graphics and those descriptions would play in front of your while the well paid professional actor would not falter in his job or would be replaced by another better one. You have unlimited money and don't care to scrap what first one did so far. Open world filled with PST level of story and conversations would be epic. Of course you would still have acces

 

s to text and you could choose to read while in options you can turn on option to have voice sound off during conversations. It would not be a problem with unlimited money.

Except those descriptions are a big part of what makes pst pst. Changing that stuff makes it have a different effect on the player.

 

All of the arguments you bring up actually have a completly different effect. That isn't just 100% replacable like you seem to think. And how you tell the story, how you approach narrative design or design in general, that changes in an open world automatically.

Edited September 11, 2014 by C2B

[archangel979]

It changes different to how you imagine because whoever would make it would not have limitations of current developers. They could build it better from ground up. You are also mistaking people that build games like that today for average gamer and comparing this to design of PST that was not for average gamer. 

If you wanted to make a Open World game but with PST quality not for average gamer and had unlimited money you could do it easily. 

[Silent Winter]

If you wanted to make a Open World game but with PST quality not for average gamer and had unlimited money you could do it easily. 

(bolding by me) - the point was originally about whether open world is always the better design choice, not whether it was possible with more money.

Different games use different styles, open-world is one style but not the only one that makes for a great game.  Full voice-acting is one style but not the only one that makes for a great game.  These are subjective things, sure.  Unlimited money doesn't make open-world and fully voice-acted an automatically superior game.  It merely makes it possible to do those things.

Having a tightly focussed narrative in a linear dungeon-crawler can be a great, fun game.  Changing that to an open-world option-heavy environment, merely changes the game-type, it doesn't automatically make it superior.  It all depends on what the game is trying to be.

[Malekith]

 

 

 

PS:T story couldn't be told as effectively in an open World game, it would screw the pacing too much. And sure as hell i wouldn't want all those walls of text( i love text) voiced, it would be tedious and i can read them way faster than the actor can voice them. And i can't imagine a voice actor voicing a novel's worth of text and managing to keep his voice fresh and passionate and not sound bored.

 

Wall of text was because half of it was descriptions.

And i loved every single one of them. I prefer books to movies as well.

With unlimited money you could pay for next gen graphics and those descriptions would play in front of your

And have the game in third person/first person view? No ****ing way, get out of here. Or do you propose to have the game swich to tp from isometric every dialogue? That would be jarring

while the well paid professional actor would not falter in his job or would be replaced by another better one. You have unlimited money and don't care to scrap what first one did so far.

True

Open world filled with PST level of story and conversations would be epic.

It doesn't work like that. Every story has unique demands. What you want is open world with PS:T level of individual stories/writing That is achievable. But the spesific story/theme/pacing of many stpries can't be told in an open world format. PS:T couln't.

Too much player freedom messes with that. For some narratives the events have to unfold in a sertain order, and the way the player came to these events also matters

 

Edited September 11, 2014 by Malekith

[archangel979]

You don't get it guys, and I tire of explaining stuff to you. Lets keep it at that.

[C2B]

You don't get it guys, and I tire of explaining stuff to you. Lets keep it at that.

That goes your way too. (Also get off that horse)

 

In fact Chris Avellone himself would disagree with you. He actually complained about how a 3D environment and voice acting made things different. Showing things is not the same as reading them in descriptive text. It does not have the same effect on the player. Its not the same experience.

 

The charachter Christine in Dead Money is based out of Chris frustration about it.

Edited September 11, 2014 by C2B

[redneckdevil]

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.

[huang]

I'm so happy that game devs now are brave enough again to release games with TEXT without voice acting. As powerful and great VA can be, it's just not ideal for everything. It started with the vanishing of names. Obviously if it's text only they can only add a variable that will display the player customized character name. It's also with games that want to have a deeper, more complex story, longer texts are necessary and if they would be all voice acted, it would take ages for it to be read properly pronounced. No, this really only works without voices. Also, just imagine how big these games would have to be with all these massive audio files. And how expensive this would have to be. This last part alone makes it a no go for these smaller KS projects. The classic IE games in particular showed how unncessary completely voiced texts are for this type of game. Never, while playing BG2, did I miss additional voices. Being into a certain amount of text is a requirement for this type of RPG.

[constantine]

This is bait, isn't it?

OP is just trying to be a master ruseman, right?

 

 

Finally somebody said it

[Fatback]

Don't touch me I'm very important.

[Meagloth]

Full voice acting would be a disaster, In my opinion. Aside from the money that could have been spent, say, making more characters or areas, It would slow down the game to much. I much prefer the first few lines(or the more important ones) voiced to get an idea of who this guy is and how he's treating me. Then I can speed through the unimportant/boring stuff. Kill the goblins, bring back the princess and collect the reward. Got it.

Also, the character name cannot be voiced, but it CAN be put into the text. Seeing my name in the game(especially when it's my real name) is very immersive. Having characters intended to be close friends and such refer to me as "you there" or some way around my actual name really breaks immersion for me.

It's just not necessary. I can read. I don't have to have some actor read me every word, especially if it's just some little side quest or peasants babbling that I just need to get done.

[Marceror]

Don't touch me I'm very super important.

Fixed.

Edited September 15, 2014 by Marceror

[Marceror]

I always loved Baldur's Gate 2 Chapters 2 and 3 immensely. And found chapters 4 - 7 (or however many there were) to be far less interesting.

 

Why? 2 - 3 were so open ended. You could play them a million different ways. I generally always tried to complete every quest possible before going to Spellhold. From that point forward, the game became very linear, and that extended into the expansion. Due to the story, it made sense, since you were literally fighting from your life from that point forward.

 

That said, I can sort of see Josh's point. It would probably be better to have few side quests in a single area, and make it so there is a fair amount of exploration possible during the later stages of the game as well -- of course, as long as the game isn't giving you this take care of the main quest right away or the world is going to explode sort of pressure.

 

If the game is going to give you things to explore, it should make sense in the context of the narrative that you would be willing to take that time.

[WillyPete]

You can almost tell who was around playing Baldur's Gate when it first came out and who wasn't by the comments...  One big reason why full voice acting was omitted from the IE games is that they simply couldn't fit it all on the disks.  I think Baldur's Gate had four or five and BGII had four.  The IE games handled it perfectly though.  They gave you just enough to give the game flavor and characters identity.  We all know what iconic Minsc sounds like and or course boo's squeak!

 

Full voice acting is unnecessary and in some ways would hurt the flow of the game.  I doubt PoE will have anywhere near the same amount of partial voice acting BGII has, but as long as it's enough to give the game flavor is all that matters!  I don't think we will be disappointed.

[Bryy]

VO hurts the flow of the game?

 

Please.

[redneckdevil]

While i do believe text is better for flexiblilty than VO in writing and adding on material and what not, i dont believe VO is necessarily a bad thing either. Yes it can be detrimental to the players immersion and interfere with a players fun or roleplay if the actor is crappy, writing is terrible, options are limited, tone or dialect is bad, etc etc but the same can be said of text as well if options are limited, writing is bad and/or doesnt fit, etc etc.

when done well, both text and VA can be great and enhance the quality of the game and the players reaction just like how both if done bad can degrade the quality of the game and the players reaction as well.

Text though i will agree does have some bonuses against VA.

1. Its more easy in being flexible. Say base game is done and alreaey have the VA for it but an dlc/expansion comes along and interacts with a part of the base game, its easier with text to have npcs react, talk, be integrated in the base game with text than with VA because with text u coukd just rewrite or add in some texts and be done while with VA u have to rehire the same actor and bring them in for the lines. Etc etc.

2. Imagination. When reading the text the npc has the voice of whatever we chose for said person while with VA we are already shown what the npc sounds like. Without VA a npc over the course of many gamers will have several different voices thanks to imagination but with VA everybody gets the same voice. Now im not saying this is always best because there are times i was introduced to a new sound of voice instead of the limited selection in my head. So im just listing this as overall.

3. Price. Its cheaper to add a few writen lines than to pay someone to voice those lines.

 

Now since i stated where text is better, as far as execution both ways IF done well can enhance the players gameplay experience.