I'll be honest; I find the voiceovers in PoE to be distracting, especially with descriptions of the character's actions or gestures interspersed.  One of the things I liked about the IE games was their minimal approach to VO (even if it was due to budgetary constraints.) 

 

In the IE games, an NPC would voice the first line or so of a dialog (and occasionally the last.)  This allowed you to get the tone, but then read the rest at your own pace, and when their was a voiceover, it often had the effect of feeling more meaningful and memorable.

 

So, how about implementing an "IE style voiceovers" option in a coming patch?  I can't think I'm alone in thinking that this would be a great feature.

Edited May 16, 201510 yr by Pineapple Ferguson

Agreed

Go to sound. Take voice slider all the way down.

Some I would, some I wouldn't. Sagani is a pain in the hindquarters. No emotion, giving the impression of simply reading text from a sheet. Durance, Aloth, Eder, Pallegina, Hirawias - all good. But GM is another major pain. Her voiced lines seem just badly written. Kana's a mixed bag actually.

 

As for the NPC population, it's also a mixed bag.

Edited May 16, 201510 yr by abaris

Go to sound. Take voice slider all the way down.

Is that what that does?  The way it's phrased in the tooltip (determines how often NPCs will play their voice cues) I just assumed it affected selection/action sounds, not dialog VO.

 

I'll give it a try.

 

 

Edit: yeah, I think I was right about that.  All that slider does is determine how frequently they will speak when you select them or direct them to perform an action.  It doesn't seem to have any affect on dialog speech.

Edited May 16, 201510 yr by Pineapple Ferguson

Thats odd. I assumed it would.

Some I would, some I wouldn't. Sagani is a pain in the hindquarters. No emotion, giving the impression of simply reading text from a sheet. Durance, Aloth, Eder, Pallegina, Hirawias - all good. But GM is another major pain. Her voiced lines seem just badly written. Kana's a mixed bag actually.

 

As for the NPC population, it's also a mixed bag.

 

I particularly like Pallegina's voice.  There's definitely an exotic nature to her accent that makes her a lot more appealing.

 

OTOH, while I don't mind the tone and timbre of Sagaini's voice, for someone who supposedly comes from a very isolated island culture, she has no accent whatsoever.  She could come from anywhere in the Dyrwood (if one assumes that the Dyrwoodan accent is a somewhat generic American accent, that is).

 

One voice that I liked and wished wasn't wasted on so minor a part was that of Calisca, in the tutorial.  While her accent was relatively Dyrwoodan, her voice was a little more, I don't know .... husky (?) than most of the other female voices used in the game, and that, IMO, gave it a more unique character.

 

For what it's worth, if someone told me that the same voice actress did Sagani and Calisca, I wouldn't be shocked.  That said, Sagani would have sounded a little better if her voice had sounded a lot more like Calisca's.

 

Go to sound. Take voice slider all the way down.

Is that what that does?  The way it's phrased in the tooltip (determines how often NPCs will play their voice cues) I just assumed it affected selection/action sounds, not dialog VO.

 

I'll give it a try.

 

 

Edit: yeah, I think I was right about that.  All that slider does is determine how frequently they will speak when you select them or direct them to perform an action.  It doesn't seem to have any affect on dialog speech.

 

You had the wrong slider then.

 

You can disable all VO with the olume slider in Sound menu - I did it and it works perfectly

 

 

Go to sound. Take voice slider all the way down.

Is that what that does?  The way it's phrased in the tooltip (determines how often NPCs will play their voice cues) I just assumed it affected selection/action sounds, not dialog VO.

 

I'll give it a try.

 

 

Edit: yeah, I think I was right about that.  All that slider does is determine how frequently they will speak when you select them or direct them to perform an action.  It doesn't seem to have any affect on dialog speech.

 

You had the wrong slider then.

 

You can disable all VO with the olume slider in Sound menu - I did it and it works perfectly

 

 

I don't want to disable *all* VO.  I just want it to be less intrusive and more like IE.