Dear Obsidian... A Plea for Perfection

[AnjyBelle]

After playing the game once, shortly after release, I checked for mods.

 

Take this as a compliment: I'm only using two.

 

One let's me use portraits, reviving old memories of great games of past years (IWD, BG etc.)

the other lets me scroll a bit more into the scene.

 

When I did this the first time I was really baffled, when I saw all the love you've

invested in this game.  No heaps of pixels, no blurry contours, just pretty and detailed

displays of our characters and their gear.

 

I could go on with the description of more outstanding features, but in the meantime

I guess anything has been mentioned by other forum-participants.

 

There is but one thing which throws me out of my immersion: The female barbarian.

 

Although I like the class in this game, I simply can't play it because of the yell.

She yells with the same "voice" like the male barbarians.

 

This has two counter-productive effects:

 

1) In battles with enemies, who have many barbs themselves (like  certain cultists)

it is impossible to tell, who yells ... and there is quite a lot of yelling.

 

2) I simply can't stand it, when a female uses a male voice. The immersion-thing...

 

Now I ask:

 

Would it REALLY be so bloody expensive and / or costly in terms of labour to let one of your

office-ladies yell into a mike and implement this in the game?

 

If you could do this, I would include the yelling lady in my night prayer.

 

Thanks in advance! 

 

 

 

[Wozzeck]

If you want perfection, you certainly won't get it the way you're suggesting.

[AnjyBelle]

You think, the ladies of OBSIDIAN are unable to yell? Unbelievable!

 

They're from the US, they invented yelling!

 

[Cottonmouth]

Voice acting takes talent and training. Even yelling.

That said, if the voice set of the female Barbarian really uses a male voice, that's very odd and should have been fixed imo.

[AnjyBelle]

Voice acting takes talent and training. Even yelling.

That said, if the voice set of the female Barbarian really uses a male voice, that's very odd and should have been fixed imo.

Believe me:

 

Take the right moment, do the right things, have a microphone ready and EVERY female person would deliver a good yell.

Even those, who are not from the US...

[Flix]

I'm playing a female barbarian now and I also find this kind of disappointing.  It seems like an oversight, but it may be some kind of technical impossibility to change an ability's sound fx based on gender.

[AnjyBelle]

I'm playing a female barbarian now and I also find this kind of disappointing.  It seems like an oversight, but it may be some kind of technical impossibility to change an ability's sound fx based on gender.

Why? If you listen, they all have their "battle sounds", not only based on gender, but even on the chosen voice-set.

[Oralaina]

Well, I don't use any of the voices, because that sort of thing drives me NUTS.  But there does not seem to be any way to get rid of the voice-over for the barb's yell - and yes, it's more than annoying that my female has a male voice yell.  I don't do males.  Never have, never going to.  So either the yell needs to be gender specific, or there needs to be some way for me to turn it off.  Short of muting the entire game of course.

[AnjyBelle]

How different the tastes are

 

I love voice overs, especially the mystic one in this game, because she speaks with a lisp.

[Oralaina]

How different the tastes are

 

I love voice overs, especially the mystic one in this game, because she speaks with a lisp.

 

Eh, the problem is (from my PoV) that I play the entire game with my own party of PC plus 5 customs - and I also play the entire game with roleplay of my own - OUTSIDE the "story" the devs produced.  So voice-overs don't ever fit what I'm doing in my own mind.  Therefore I don't want to hear them.

[Tigranes]

I believe Wozzeck's point is that you can't just get someone to grab a mic, yell, and have it give you a voiceover that isn't annoyingly unprofessional as hell. 

 

That said, yes, it seems a silly oversight and they should have taken care of it when they did have voice actors in the room. 

[Oralaina]

I believe Wozzeck's point is that you can't just get someone to grab a mic, yell, and have it give you a voiceover that isn't annoyingly unprofessional as hell. 

 

That said, yes, it seems a silly oversight and they should have taken care of it when they did have voice actors in the room. 

 

Yeah, that's true. And no way in HELL would I volunteer to provide a VO for a barb fem yell (since I sound like a 2 year old having a tantrum) - but surely there should be someone out there who could provide a clip that would work.

[AnjyBelle]

I can't see the problem...

 

Take ANY song-performance of the currently popular "stars", snip out one second and there: Your barbaric yell.

 

Because it's just a second or even a bit less, there aren't even license costs!

 

Because of the abundance of performances they could even make it for every voice-set.

 

Alternative:

 

Make the backers yell. Those with the best receive a yeller-badge for the forum.

 

Edited September 30, 2015 by AnjyBelle

[Tigranes]

The problem is that that's like saying "hey, this Renoir is missing a little bit of black at the corner, but surely anybody can just pick up a paintbrush and fix that, right?" or "hey, this song we just mixed at the start is missing a laughter track right at the beginning, surely me and my friends can just laugh into the microphone?"

 

A lot of people also say "hey why can't you just do voice acting for the whole game, let the backers do it", and again it's because if you've never recorded anything, you would have zero idea as to the many different ways that would inevitably sound much, much worse than even the current setup. (I don't pretend to know a lot about it, either, only a minimum.) 

 

Again, it's funny and also silly that the bug is there, Obs probably forgot to record that yell or lost the file or something. 

[boffmoffet]

I think right along the same lines would be some audio cues for Ranger animals. Their presence is really minimally felt within the game and I find it hard to really bond with a silent guardian with zero personality. Maybe just a few yips and growls. Doesn't some voice over company somewhere have old D Bradley Baker samples you can license for cheap?

[globalCooldown]

Out of curiosity, what does the barbarian yell sound like pitched-up? If it's decent, that could be a good quick-fix mod.

[Flix]

Doesn't some voice over company somewhere have old D Bradley Baker samples you can license for cheap?

 

That's what I keep thinking.  It's not like you even need to go find some voice actor.  Stock sounds, like a generic female yell, would do just fine.

[AnjyBelle]

Out of curiosity, what does the barbarian yell sound like pitched-up? If it's decent, that could be a good quick-fix mod.

I think, this would work greatly.

[Messier-31]

Female barbarian? Put that woman back to the kitchen, so she can cook dinner, amirite?

 

***wife looking my way***

 

Yes dear, coming dear.

[Oralaina]

 

Out of curiosity, what does the barbarian yell sound like pitched-up? If it's decent, that could be a good quick-fix mod.

I think, this would work greatly.

 

 

Yeah, that could work fine, actually!