More Voice acting in POE2

[giliam1]

Hello,

 

One of the things that has been bothering me with POE1 and Tyranny is the limited amount of voice acting.

I really enjoyed this in baldursgate 2 for instance, where even alot of side-quests have voice acting at least on the most important lines.

 

Having more voice acting really makes the world and the persons come alive, i think this is one of the main things i would want see improved with poe2.

 

For instance: in admeth's den when you meet the giantslayers, stuff gets all theatrical with them being the tough guys of the town.

For me that experience gets cut half because it has no voice acting. that is imo a waste of potential.

 

it's these kind of situations that need more attention, to get more out of the game.

 

Hope you guys will impove on this in POE2!

 

Cheers, 

 

Giliam

 

 

[injurai]

https://www.fig.co/campaigns/deadfire?update=258#updates

 

$2.4m Stretch Goal - Double the V.O.

[algroth]

I don't feel like there was less voiceover in Pillars than there was in any of the IE games, and in that matter I also felt its overall V.O. quality to be very uneven. The major roles for the most part were good, but supporting characters such as Urgeat, several Glanfathans or the Dozens commander were awful, delivered so forcefully and unconvincingly that it genuinely feels like they told some staff members with no acting experience to voice them. Tyranny had less V.O. than Pillars, but it was at the same time much more consistent and thus better overall - I would like this "quality over quantity" approach instead, myself.

Edited September 9, 2017 by algroth

[Sedrefilos]

Full voice acting should be the way, but double is fine.

 

Also, one should check out official announcements first before starting thread that'll push other threads with things still under discussion further down

[Night Stalker]

I think there were a decent amount of voice acting in PoE 1, but I would have liked to see it applied differently, either voicing an entire dialog chain, or none of it at all.

[Wormerine]

I personally didn't have issue with PoE voicework beyond mixing unvoiced narration and voiced lines in a same window. Double VO is very welcome. 

I am not a bit fan of full voiced RPG - I would rather see a more reactive game. As much as I enjoyed Mass Effect or KOTOR games, it is not what I want from PoE and it is not necessarly an improvement, just trading one thing for another.

It has been a while but I am pretty sure Baldur's Gate was very sparse with voiceacting as well. I also would be careful with comparing PoE to BG2 (though in Deadfire case it might be more appropriate) as BG2 was already builing on a sequel and a couple of spin offs.

[Starwars]

VO does very little for me for RPGs in this format. There are rare instances where the actor is good enough, or just has a really distinctive voice, to really add... well, character to a character. But most of the time I find it an awkward fit with the isometric view. I'm not really a fan of the "double VO" thing, especially since I think the VO in both Pillars and Tyranny (Tyranny moreso) was fairly bad for the most part. 

 

At least it can be turned off!

 

Also, I mean... I guess Obsidian are pretty good at this point to plan out their dialogues and stuff but I always thought that the fact that the text and dialogue is "locked down" once the VO is done must be kinda frustrating sometimes.

Edited September 9, 2017 by Starwars

[Juodas Varnas]

I honestly could not care less about voice-acting.

 

The Shadowrun games had literally none and they weren't any worse because of it.

[injurai]

I think VO is nice to flesh out characters. I think the problem with Pillars 1 is that they either needed to have a full conversation use it or not, but instead you got some weird partially VO'd conversations. I just want better quality and better consistency of how it's applied.

 

I think VO is important enough for people that are in it for the characters.

[Fluffle]

For me this is a typical case of  "Be careful what you wish for..."

 

If you wish for a full voice over you can very simply reach that. How? Remove all unvoiced text lines from the game.

 

More or full voice over usually means less text overall in the game. That's how Bioware can afford their full voice over.

Personally, I would hate to see that happening to Pillars.

 

More voice over, yes please, but never at the expense of the quantity of text in the game.

[Sedrefilos]

For me this is a typical case of  "Be careful what you wish for..."

 

If you wish for a full voice over you can very simply reach that. How? Remove all unvoiced text lines from the game.

 

More or full voice over usually means less text overall in the game. That's how Bioware can afford their full voice over.

Personally, I would hate to see that happening to Pillars.

 

More voice over, yes please, but never at the expense of the quantity of text in the game.

Check out Larian's update about deciding to fully voice their game. They had a huge game of hundreds of thousands of written lines and they just said "fakk it - let's voice it" (they even voiced the narrator!). After that I believe the voice = less text mindset is just an excuse. If you want it, you're gonna do it.

[injurai]

Small passionate companies were people live to defy expectations and live for the creation is far different from publicly traded quarterly skimming companies like Bioware. Bioware only cares about creating something that can be impressive in marketing campaigns. Larian has to rely more on enthusiasts, good word of mouth, and healthy post release sales.

[Quillon]

 

For me this is a typical case of  "Be careful what you wish for..."

 

If you wish for a full voice over you can very simply reach that. How? Remove all unvoiced text lines from the game.

 

More or full voice over usually means less text overall in the game. That's how Bioware can afford their full voice over.

Personally, I would hate to see that happening to Pillars.

 

More voice over, yes please, but never at the expense of the quantity of text in the game.

Check out Larian's update about deciding to fully voice their game. They had a huge game of hundreds of thousands of written lines and they just said "fakk it - let's voice it" (they even voiced the narrator!). After that I believe the voice = less text mindset is just an excuse. If you want it, you're gonna do it.

 

 

Its also a matter of trusting your game, if you believe you made something special, more/full VO would only make it better in terms of reception - sales. If Obs is thinking Deadfire will do as good as Pillars 1 but not much better then they won't invest in full/more VO other than the double they already promised for more rich-consistent VO.

 

In Larian's case, DOS1 prolly was too successful/profitable so they could pay for it with less worry, in addition to trusting their game.

[rjshae]

Personally I really like ambient voice-overs; the stuff you overhead while passing people on the street. Voice-overs during dialogue gets tiresome because it takes too long.

[Gromnir]

am not an expert on such stuff, but developers has mentioned the expense o' things such as vo and translation. as such, full vo, for a game with considerable written dialogue, would seem to be a significant expense. one would need to get feedback from the developers, but am expecting the 2x vo stretch goal costs were not actual covered entire by the stretch goal amount.  limited development money means more vo means less o' something else.  so what does one wanna sacrifice to get more vo?

 

our pov: excellent voice acting can make a good game better.  excellent vo won't make a bad game good.  dunno, but would rather have more money spent to ensure deadfire is good.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[injurai]

Feargus said 2x the VO is just them doubling the budget, but wasn't locked down on allocation. It seems to me a good amount of that was covered by figfunds. As far as localization, I don't believe that is of VO, but of text. Which those costs were being attained incrementally and distributed throughout the crowd funding by means of most lucrative regions first. Only the most essential regions were pre-planned with localization.

 

I forget who, but one of the developers has acknowledged the semi-voiced text being jarring. I think it was Adam. Anyways, I don't really want to sacrifice anything for more VO. It seems a lot of the budget will go to just cleanly doing voiced sections, and doing them better. Perhaps a bit more overall is voiced as well. I don't really expect it to be so overkill that something else was suffered in it's place. After all the audio team needs something to work on.

[Tigranes]

Larian is pretty clearly betting the entire company on DOS2 being a multi-million seller - and to be fair DOS1 proved better selling with a broader reach than POE or WL2. They know that for them, once they invest so much into the game, they have to pull out every penny for expensive bells and whistles like full VA because that brings in a lot more sales from people who aren't huge RPG fans.

[Wormerine]

Larian is pretty clearly betting the entire company on DOS2 being a multi-million seller - and to be fair DOS1 proved better selling with a broader reach than POE or WL2. They know that for them, once they invest so much into the game, they have to pull out every penny for expensive bells and whistles like full VA because that brings in a lot more sales from people who aren't huge RPG fans.

Do we know how well DOS did? I think that Feargus said in an interview that PoE sold around a Million copies which seems solid. They do support multiple projects right now, so it seems the success of PoE was used to revive the company rather than pour all of it into a single project. And even though Deadfire is a game I am looking most forward to, I am also looking forward to see what the secret project is.

[rjshae]

 

Larian is pretty clearly betting the entire company on DOS2 being a multi-million seller - and to be fair DOS1 proved better selling with a broader reach than POE or WL2. They know that for them, once they invest so much into the game, they have to pull out every penny for expensive bells and whistles like full VA because that brings in a lot more sales from people who aren't huge RPG fans.

Do we know how well DOS did? I think that Feargus said in an interview that PoE sold around a Million copies which seems solid. They do support multiple projects right now, so it seems the success of PoE was used to revive the company rather than pour all of it into a single project. And even though Deadfire is a game I am looking most forward to, I am also looking forward to see what the secret project is.

 

At least according to SteamSpy, D:OS has ~1.3 million owners vs. a million for PoE. However, D:OS has been out a year longer so that might increase its count a bit.

[Quillon]

 

 

Larian is pretty clearly betting the entire company on DOS2 being a multi-million seller - and to be fair DOS1 proved better selling with a broader reach than POE or WL2. They know that for them, once they invest so much into the game, they have to pull out every penny for expensive bells and whistles like full VA because that brings in a lot more sales from people who aren't huge RPG fans.

Do we know how well DOS did? I think that Feargus said in an interview that PoE sold around a Million copies which seems solid. They do support multiple projects right now, so it seems the success of PoE was used to revive the company rather than pour all of it into a single project. And even though Deadfire is a game I am looking most forward to, I am also looking forward to see what the secret project is.

 

At least according to SteamSpy, D:OS has ~1.3 million owners vs. a million for PoE. However, D:OS has been out a year longer so that might increase its count a bit.

 

 

It also sold 300-400k copies on consoles IIRC.

[ShadySands]

Is that million for Pillars just Steam? IIRC it was also on Origin in addition to GOG. Obviously Steam is going to be the bulk of sales and users because of its market share but I'm curious to see what it sold on the other storefronts.

 

And also curious as to how the console numbers are looking.

[injurai]

Furthermore, do those numbers include code activations? (i.e. the Kickstarters)

[algroth]

While we're on the subject of sales, anyone know how Pillars is selling on consoles?

[ShadySands]

Furthermore, do those numbers include code activations? (i.e. the Kickstarters)

Pretty sure it does

[tid242]

To chime in late to the topic (haven't checked the forums here much lately)..

 

My main problems with VO is probably the same as everyone else's problems.  There's too much VO of annoying voices that I don't like or don't really care about (and would rather just read through the text without waiting for them to say it); and there's not enough VO of the cool voices, and impactful moments that I liked. 

 

Pretty easy fix for this, I'm sure, considering everyone's opinions of what constitutes what above varies significantly. 

 

Personally I would have liked more VO for the "Master Below", and also the convo between Lady Webb and *spoiler* at the end of the second act.  I'm sure it's different for everyone, but these are the two that really stand out for me.    It's a difficult line to balance.

 

cheers, good topic thread for sure.

 

-tid242

Edited September 11, 2017 by tid242