How much $$$ would you like to see spent on voice acting in the sequel?

[Lady Evenstar]

About the same or a little less. They do need to come up with a more comfortable approach so that written descriptions don't fight with voice-acted texts for the player's attention.

[Matt516]

About the same or a little less. They do need to come up with a more comfortable approach so that written descriptions don't fight with voice-acted texts for the player's attention.

 

Yeah - the IE games generally only had the first sentence of a dialogue voiced, or very important moments. I tend to prefer that approach - it lets me get a good idea of how the character sounds and then I can read the rest at my own pace (which is generally faster than spoken) without being distracted. Having VO pop in and out of conversations, bypassing descriptions, etc. is really jarring and takes away from the "reading a book" feel I loved so much in Planescape: Torment. The old dwarf lady conversation in the first town was particularly guilty of this, I thought. It was more of a chore than a joy to go through that dialogue for whatever reason. :/

Edited May 5, 2015 by Matt516

[Dinky Dino]

I thought it was alright. Would have liked all companions to be fully voiced only and leave the rest as is. For that personal touch.

[Jojobobo]

I wouldn't mind more VO than PoE, but I wouldn't want it to take away from other areas of the game significantly. If they have the budget to spalsh out and other areas not take a hit then sure, if not then PoE levels are fine.

[Crucis]

At least 5 people should be euthanised for the good of the game and the project's future.

 

Also, I've said it before and I'm saying it again; if the goal is to convey feels, focus on a more uniform art style (Calisca's portrait still looks like a placeholder, and is essentially just a variation of other, also old-placeholder-art, player portraits) and add more portraits for important NPC:s.

 

 

Raedric, Lady Webb, The Duc, the three representatives on the Animancy hearing, the statue in the Sanatorium and the patient Thaos inhabits, all the heads of the three factions in Defiance Bay, and many others comes immediately to mind. Really should've had their own portraits.

 

 

I'm not sure that I agree with the need for portraits for all those NPC's in the spoilers.

 

I'd say that only one NPC really and truly should have a portrait.  Everyone else is very marginal, mostly because of how rarely they show up "on screen".

 

 

 

Lady Webb.  She's perhaps the single most important, recurring NPC in Act 2 within Defiance Bay.  You report to her fairly often, and is a significant player in the events of Act 2.

 

 

 

Possible secondary NPCs that could be portrait worthy:

 

 

 

The heads of each of the Factions.  You report to them a few times during at 2.

 

Then, the Duc and the 3 faction reps at the hearings.  They only show up once, i.e. at the hearings.  But the hearings are perhaps the single most important event in Act 2, so I suppose that they might warrant portraits.  That said, I'm not sure that they're really worth it.

 

I suppose that one could make a case for Lord Raedric and the Anamfath whom you meet with to gain access to all of Twin Elms.   But just like the Duc and the 3 faction reps, I don't really think that they're worth the cost.

 

I personally only see Lady Webb as an important enough, recurring NPC to be worthy of her own portrait.

 

 

 

[Maximvs]

The answer to the OP's question : As much money as Dragon Age did. With lesser graphics and a known company producing this, I expected more immersion than proper written dialogues. This game could've been twice as good but I guess people at Obsidian are tired. They're good, just tired.

[Sven_]

Voice overs and cinematics are the cancer of the games industry (yes I know this is old stuff).

 

 

 

To put this a bit less polemic, and this coming from someone who digs adventure games that are all about fully voice-overs and scripted cinematics even on tight budget (presentation is total key in most cases), I'd wish far more developers would actually consider before going down certain routes by default (but then most games are funded by people and made for an audience who consider the above stuff not as something great to experience once in a while (I'm looking forward to what The Witcher has on offer as much as the next guy) -- but an absolute must entry requirement before even considering picking anything up).

 

http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/06/voice-acting-in-rpgs-may-be-more-trouble-than-its-worth/

 

 

As for Obsidian doing these kind of games (Pillars) next to their bigger projects, I'd personally like them to scale the voice stuff accordingly to what was experienced in production (see above). And for a game of this ilk, I'd take more branches and more elaborate quest design / last minute changes over the voices any day -- whilst the IE games had appropriate production values for their time for sure, back then Bioware could point out that there was very little cinematics at all and actually be applauded for it, times have changed, haven't they. That wasn't for a lack of technology. Hours of voice overs had spread half a decade before Baldur's Gate shipped (in particular for adventure games), and companies such as Cryo Interactive were frequently rightfully panned for offering more cinematics than actual gaming content.  Still for the more cinematics kind of stuff surely there's going to be Kotor 3 and similar one day anyway, and for that kind of game it's also appropriate considering the source material and how it's being presented in any media.

Edited May 6, 2015 by Sven_

[Bryy]

Voice overs and cinematics are the cancer of the games industry (yes I know this is old stuff).

 

 

You do realize the inherent ridiculousness and invalidity of this image, yes?

[GrinningReaper659]

One other thing I didn't like was the bits of profanity in the game. It just seems out of place. This is a fantasy setting not the boys locker room.

 

People use profanity in the real world regularly. They have done so throughout human history. If the way that people talk is going to be rooted in reality (as it is), then your misguided belief that profanity only occurs in "the boys locker room" shouldn't deter them from including profanity in the game. If you really don't realize that most people use profanity regularly, then you are living a very sheltered life. Adventurers typically aren't posh nobles who don't want to get their hands - or mouths - dirty, so profanity makes a lot of sense. If the nobles in Brackenbury refrain from using profanity in public, that would make sense. Sailors, adventurers, and prostitutes forcefully restricted from using the sorts of words they are sure to use all the time? That just makes no sense.

[Sven_]

 

Voice overs and cinematics are the cancer of the games industry (yes I know this is old stuff).

 

 

 

You do realize the inherent ridiculousness and invalidity of this image, yes?

 

 

 

It's a polemic and it's old. How you react to it depends on what you're taking out of it, I guess.

 

 

 

We don’t want to do a fully voiced game, as that comes with a number of technical hurdles that limit iteration, and that’s one of the things we wanted to do differently with this project… the ability to make a larger range of reactive text (like we did with New Reno in Fallout 2, for example – the only limit to this kind of reactivity is the cost for VO and localization). Limiting the VO also allows for any necessary changes during the final months of a project without the huge costs involved with altering VO and doing pick-ups.

 

And that's just the kind of thing PoE is targeting for. I think it's fun, though in fairness obviously something such as DA2 aims for a completely difference experience first and foremost, though as was acknowledged by DA1's lead who left the company here too, he's aware of strength and limitations of cinematics, voice-overs and stuff also. Still it's not as if it all came from out of completely nowhere either. http://www.lar.net/2011/12/19/the-cost-of-dialogue/#more-100

 

The reason I felt strongly enough about this to post in regards to PoE and similar games isn't that I don't enjoy fully-voiced games full-stop, but because people demand fully voice overs for there games these days no matter what, and often without realizing at what cost it may come (and there is a lot -- games such as Torment wouldn't look the same, and though it's not merely voice-overs, there's probably a reason why after so many years BG2 is still king in terms of content and why the TES series is still playing catch-up to some really old Ultima games in terms of world reactivity, and NPC believability, though it's getting better). That said, the poll so far pretty much reflects the audience PoE has been attracting anyway, which is mainly people who are familiar with games that aren't fully voiced and don't demand them to be such.

Edited May 7, 2015 by Sven_

[Bryy]

Both images are put together as if they are in the same context.

 

One is from the prologue and the other is from the end of the game. One is glitched, the other isn't. Not to mention that both are purposefully picked to skewer the image of "New RPGs". DA2 has voiced dialogue, and that dialogue is much, much more than the three word answers of the wheel.

[RedSocialKnight]

I do feel that some of the voice-acting for minor characters is a little sub-par.

 

All of the companions are well-done -- no criticism of Durance, Sagani et al -- but some NPCs have the sound of a session worker standing in a booth reading a script for the first time as it's recorded, bringing a reasonably professional tone to the lines but without much sense of the setting or character.

 

I don't have a strong opinion on the total amount of voice-acting, but I think that if you can't afford the time of an actor to learn the characters as characters rather than as lines in a script, then the voiceover doesn't really add much.

 

Rather than voting for more or less budget devoted to actors, my vote would be to only spend the money if you're willing to spend enough to have an actor learn the character and their role in the story, rather than simply hiring a booth for an hour and then handing the reader a highlighted script.

 

What that would probably lead to in practise is more recorded lines for a smaller cast.

[Sven_]

Both images are put together as if they are in the same context.

 

One is from the prologue and the other is from the end of the game. One is glitched, the other isn't. Not to mention that both are purposefully picked to skewer the image of "New RPGs". DA2 has voiced dialogue, and that dialogue is much, much more than the three word answers of the wheel.

 

 

Yup, it's set up a particular way to stir you up. It's not meant to have a fair shake on anything. It's meant to illustrate a point in an overly polemic way -- as somebody enjoying a wider range of games I don't merely get a mocking of like all new games out of it, personally, at all. The reason it resonates is that there's some truth behind. For some advantage in technology and presentation has also come with a price tag, and that tag isn't merely about higher hardware requirements or higher development costs. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/experienced-points/7588-Voice-vs-Choice Personally This is acknowledged by developers working on these games as well, and was also a topic of talk during the promotion of PoE.

[Maximvs]

Maybe we could get some asian guys to voice act all that was left out, they sometimes do to animes and games. They even use man voices to dub over anime girls ; I bet Dragon Age fans would love that.

[boffmoffet]

I have to say voice overs are nice in a game like this as a world building tool, but are not crucial to my enjoyment. Soundtrack and well thought out sound design are higher on my priority list in a large role playing game. Knowing what a Vailian accent sound like is nice, but world building for me works better when there is more environments and political/cultural climates through new areas and interactions. 

[luzarius]

In regards to the profanity discussion in this thread, I just want to say I support profanity in games, as much profanity as you can possibly fit in.  Games need to be darker and more sinister IMO.  NO to censorship, and YES to a writers creative freedom.

[ruzen]

I dont belive there is censorship going on in games.

There are just markets and consumers picks whats more appealing to them. Not all the markets wants darker, sinister, gore or erotic in fact. Maybe we could say marketing or PR people stops or changes the decisions what creative team makes. But Its only ment to figuring out whats best for aimed market. As Kojima said in some time "We had to bring more gore and push more buttons as tv-shows and films If we want to compete in entertainment industry" This infact a natural way to be "meta" change. Its not meaning that industry dosent produce much vulgar games at the past (Fallout) , Its about targeting markets, as now kids, teens or young adults know much more about sex, drugs and gore at very early age. That makes the biggest target group in the gaming industry.

The voice acting this type of game is less demending by this market. Since this projects only purpose to bring back "old" infinity engine games feeling, I think Its waste of resources. Imagine a game options menu has "you can turn off the voice acting" do you really think voice acting is important for this kinda audiance?

[Faerunner]

I think the amount of voice-acting is fine as it is. I don't feel too invested in seeing it change.

[luzarius]

I voted for:

 

I would prefer that any future PoE games/expansions be fully voiced, even if this forces Obsidian to limit other features to get the money. (4 votes [2.56%])

 

I demand that you guys send me some kind of methamphetamine for reading all that god damn text since I'm the 3%.... *sigh*.

 

There are some people out there who simply cannot read text that goes beyond precise, logical, efficient statements. Some men out there are devoid of any emotion and need someone to convey that emotion to them through voice acting.

Edited May 7, 2015 by luzarius

[FlintlockJazz]

Both images are put together as if they are in the same context.

 

One is from the prologue and the other is from the end of the game. One is glitched, the other isn't. Not to mention that both are purposefully picked to skewer the image of "New RPGs". DA2 has voiced dialogue, and that dialogue is much, much more than the three word answers of the wheel.

Most of which is the same regardless of which choice you made, it just changes the first sentence you say in that particular part. 

[Matt516]

 

 

Both images are put together as if they are in the same context.

 

One is from the prologue and the other is from the end of the game. One is glitched, the other isn't. Not to mention that both are purposefully picked to skewer the image of "New RPGs". DA2 has voiced dialogue, and that dialogue is much, much more than the three word answers of the wheel.

Most of which is the same regardless of which choice you made, it just changes the first sentence you say in that particular part.

Yeah - there's no denying that there's an inverse relationship between amount of voice acting and variety in dialogue. That tradeoff may be worth it for some people and some games, but it's definitely a tradeoff.