Lack of voice acting and the solution.

[Bryy]

This sounds like utter hell to incorporate. No offense. Much more complicated than simply replacing a few stock phrases. It's one of those good ideas on paper.

[Redwulf]

Voice acting, for goodness!

[Jonthrei]

I, too, want 80GB games full of crappy acting over bad mics.

[Nukenin]

I don't have a problem with the commingled dialogue and descriptive text (not even really the pacing of the voice, though there may be exceptions in my future).  But different people read things differently, so I can understand how it would be discomfiting.

 

Since a lack of full VO is a gamebreaker for some, I will break out a Commodore 64 running S.A.M. (Software Automatic Mouth) and laboriously and meticulously craft digitized enunciations of each and every line of dialogue.

 

Since that will take a while, what I'm actually going to do is wait until time travel is invented, then jump back in time to 1982, hand my past self a transcript of all the game's dialogue, and tell him to get cracking with his Commodore 64 and S.A.M. and a cassette tape recorder…

 

***

 

Hey!  Nukenin here.  Okay, minor snafu.  Time travel was invented, I was able to jump back to 1982, and hand it off to my past self.  I figured three years would be enough, so I jumped forward to 1985, and my bastidge past self had taken the transcript and turned it into a major Broadway musical.  I was like, "fine, whatever, I'll just use the cast recording" but remember when I typed "musical"?  EVERYTHING WAS A GOSH-DARNED SONG!  With, like, singing.

 

But it was "soon to be a major motion picture" starring Rutger Hauer and Matthew Broderick, and I was like, "fine, whatever, I'll just lift the VO from the movie dialogue".  But when I was at the film studio trying to break into the sound editor's office, I got arrested and thrown into jail for a few months.  Then I realized Pillars of Eternity the movie had replaced Ladyhawke in this timeline.  So it had a really not-that-great soundtrack with electric guitars and stuff, and I'd pretty much doomed myself to not getting hold of the master recordings to try to get clean dialogue.

 

Once I got out of jail I was able to borrow my alternate timeline self's identity and buy a Commodore Amiga (always wanted one!) and then I learned that Lord British himself had put Ultima on hiatus to create Pillars of Eternity, so I bought a copy.

 

Three things:

1. OMG the cloth map.
2. No voice.  
3. Turn-based combat and the mechanics were more in line with Ultima (no surprise)

Anyway, I took a few months to beat the game, but then I learned that my alternate timeline self had made off with my time machine and gone into this timeline's future and stolen the code and resources for Pillars of Eternity II and III.  And from some other timeline he got hold of the Dreamcast III.  (OMG what a sweet machine, not something we'd see in this timeline at all, and rather weird seeing it run on old-style CRT monitors, like 640x480 tops.)

 

So for the DC3 they were going to revisit Pillars of Eternity (the first one) and it was going to have full voice, so I squealed a bit, but then learned that in this timeline, the de facto Pillars of Eternity was Lord British's take, and they were basically mining the two sequels for lore and story and then mashing it all together to produce entirely different takes on it all.

 

I never got to see it, though, because my alternate timeline self had also absconded with some drone technology and advanced A.I. research, and the bastidge turned that whole timeline into a SkyNet-infested hell, skulls and all.

 

I was able to escape using some found time traveling tech cribbed from whatever had been stolen from me, but it didn't let that beautiful cloth map come back with me.  In fact, I was stark nekked.

 

And then I found my old laptop, sitting here on April 1, open to this post composition window.

 

I figure, hey, get this weirdness off my chest, folks will assume it's a joke, and hey, I tried to get full V.O.

 

I wonder what happened to my immediate past self from this timeline?  Time travel is hard.

 

p.s. the ending for Pillars of Eternity II is kinda weak, PoE III redeems it somewhat, but then, well, I really shouldn't spoil what happens next…

 

 

[lyin321]

 I actually /cheered when it became apparent that there is no full VO - now we can hopefully get alot of Companions from modders without them having to worry about VA and such.

 Not that the existing companions are not great...ok that was a little lie:)....but they are so few and thus so far apart! I am always having problems at the start of the game, because my party is either very small or non existant (if my char is particularly picky) , as I refuse to get the 'pets' you can build yourself in the inns.

[santanzchild]

I'm a thespian extraordinaire

 

 

Is that a LBGT joke!!one211!??@!

[Zwiebelchen]

Am I the only one who regards this joke ... kind of like an awesome idea?

 

I'm a member of the "never underestimate your fanbase" crowd. The current team that brings us the german localization mod is doing an awesome job already (much higher quality than the "professional" translation we got) and I'm actually one of those guys that has a studio-level microphone at home.

 

I'm pretty sure if there was a feature like this that we would get some quality fan stuff pretty soon (along with possible hilarious submissions that have viral potential)...

 

 

The amount of required server-overhead, however, would be enormous. Audio files are huge.

Edited April 2, 2015 by Zwiebelchen

[Hellraiser789]

 

I'm a thespian extraordinaire

 

 

Is that a LBGT joke!!one211!??@!

 

 

Isnt that the line Silke (the woman whos with Garrick in BG1) uses when she first talks to you? Thats what i thought it was referring to...funny who I still remember that line to this day (IIRC, could be wrong of course)

 

*Edit: Yup found it: 

• "Greetings mercenaries, I am Silke, thespian extraordinaire"

Edited April 2, 2015 by Hellraiser789

[santanzchild]

The amount of voice acting in the game now borders on just right to a little to much IE games where always reading games they do not need full voice overs and honestly it would detract from the experience.

 

edit: I am incompetent and cant spell or proof read...

Edited April 2, 2015 by santanzchild

[Zwiebelchen]

I'd love to see fanmods with weird/funny voiceacting, though...

 

Men voicing women is a classic. ^^

Edited April 2, 2015 by Zwiebelchen

[Odd Hermit]

What about a paint module to draw every npc portrait ? I did the caravan chief from the beginning :

 

 

 

 

Haha

 

I tried, started out serious and quickly went into lazy/modern art mode

 

 

[Mirandel]

So much hostility, why? All OP suggested is to make modders life easier. As nobody forces anyone to use custom portraits in game, same way nobody would force anyone to use audio files. There are people out there who love Voice Acting as a hobby (check Nexus). Should a feature like that be implemented in the game (any game) we would get tons of audio mods for different characters. All for those who WANT to install them.

Why is it bad?

[Ramireza]

Brilliant Idea! And add a function where everybody could rate the best voices and a button called "add highrest ranked voicesets to all characters".

[PrimeJunta]

I would upvote everyone with a Polish accent.

 

Just because.

[HungryHungryOuroboros]

 

I know this is a troll thread, but I wish this game had less VO.

Not joking. The writing is way better than most of the voice acting, and it's hard to read the stage direction stuff when the talking blasts past it.

I agree about the awkward mingling of stage directions and voice-acted dialogue. Perhaps it just that I've not figured out the ideal time to read the stage directions, but it seems pointless to position them at a point where the player is trying to listen to other text.

 

I scan the spoken words as they're said(not really "reading" so much as following along with where in the text the voice is) and read the stage direction between voiced lines.  The game must have been designed pretty well for my reading speed, because I usually find enough space between lines to read the stage direction.

[Tigranes]

Am I the only one who regards this joke ... kind of like an awesome idea?

 

I'm a member of the "never underestimate your fanbase" crowd. The current team that brings us the german localization mod is doing an awesome job already (much higher quality than the "professional" translation we got) and I'm actually one of those guys that has a studio-level microphone at home.

 

I'm pretty sure if there was a feature like this that we would get some quality fan stuff pretty soon (along with possible hilarious submissions that have viral potential)...

 

 

The amount of required server-overhead, however, would be enormous. Audio files are huge.

 

The technical quality of the recording would be the least of the problems, really.

[Scion Kai]

I much prefer tons of dialog to read with little VO to limiting the dialog to accommodate full VO. I think a feature like this would eat up a ton of development time and would not be as simple as suggested here.

 

I much prefer tons of new content and expanding on some excellent systems they started working on here over more voice acting. After 1.03 the game is finally working well for me and I am loving the chance to explore again.

 

Before VO I'd like to see expanding the stronghold system, bounty system, environment progression (I would love to see places like Gilded Vale change as the story progresses), crafting system, and pretty much every other aspect of the game first

[TCJ]

So much hostility, why? All OP suggested is to make modders life easier. As nobody forces anyone to use custom portraits in game, same way nobody would force anyone to use audio files. There are people out there who love Voice Acting as a hobby (check Nexus). Should a feature like that be implemented in the game (any game) we would get tons of audio mods for different characters. All for those who WANT to install them.

Why is it bad?

 

I can't speak for others, but when I saw this thread and the date it was posted on, I was fairly certain it was a joke.   Sure, I could be wrong... but I could also be right.

[Horrorscope]

Honestly I really like the OP's idea. What would happen is the community would create voice mods for us and we could dabble with it. They build the facility, we take it from there. Sort of how a write as you read method vs wall o text, with a speed slider to fit all players preferences. I think the op's suggestion is a good RPG industry one.

[gmot9]

I would actually prefer to have no voice acting whatsoever. I prefer the voices in my own head when I read what the characters say. I find it quicker and more immersive. But I'm okay with the what's been voiced in Pillars, since its generally well done. Nothing worse than crappy voice acting - like Skyrim where it seems like 5 actors were hired to voice the entire world.

[VioNectro]

The lack of voice acting could of been easily rectified with a simple in game recording feature.

 

Simple Basic In Game Recording Feature

 

1. You enable "recording" mode and this enables a button next to each of the npc's dialogue.

2. You click this recording button and it allows you to record your voice as you read the NPC's dialogue.

3. When you're finished it names the wav file to the same ID of the dialogue.

4. You click "share voice pack" and all of the voice files you create get uploaded to a voice pack repository organized by individual NPC.

5. Players can rank each voice pack to see which is the best for NPC's and then download the voice pack to their game.

 

Eventually every NPC in game gets high quality voice acting due to the nature of the ranking system.

 

Voice acting problem solved.

The only problem I foresee about this is if the majority of game owners are trolls and up vote the rick roll voice pack :D

 

Heh other than that this is a great idea if the game gets some sort of steam workshop integration, but that would become a problem for the non steam owners.