99 réponses à ce sujet

[Maverick827]

In Soviet Thedas, Codex reads you!

[In Exile]

I can't stand the codex. It is way too slow compared to how fast I read, and distracting when I try to read, so I have to mute it. It is frustrating to have to mute my TV every time I want to read a codex entry. I would be fne (but dissapointed at the resource investment) if the codex was voiced if only they let us mute it.

[Wonderllama4]

The History of the Chantry or the tale of the First Blight would be so much better if they were told orally. Like a storyteller or a bard

[allothernamesweretaken]

Spend the VA money on something else.



Like more dialogue options for the main character.

[Wyndham711]

No, I think reading is much more effective and voicing the codex would be wasted money that could have been used on something much more relevant. How would it even make sense? How does a book read aloud to you? I can understand that in a scifi setting the entries can be some sort of voiced data recordings, but in Dragon Age the codex entries are supposed to be just extracts from scrolls/books.

[Risax]

Wyndham711 wrote...

No, I think reading is much more effective and voicing the codex would be wasted money that could have been used on something much more relevant. How would it even make sense? How does a book read aloud to you? I can understand that in a scifi setting the entries can be some sort of voiced data recordings, but in Dragon Age the codex entries are supposed to be just extracts from scrolls/books.

Maybe Hawke himself reads the codex out loud, I mean he is voiced and all.

[Gambient]

Brockololly wrote...

NO.

VO is expensive as is- unless you want drastically fewer codex entries, man up on your reading skills, my friend.

[Grethus]

I found the voiced codex entries in Mass Effect extremely off-putting, to the extent that I no longer bothered with them after a short time (as said, not wishing to constantly modulate the volume - besides, some light music in the background aids reading...), so I would add my voice to those who would oppose such a thing for Dragon Age.



Contrarily, I enjoyed reading the Dragon Age entries.

[soteria]

Oh, god forbid we attempt to suggest improvements for how the DA lore can work into the expression of the story.

Myself, and apparently a large number of other people, wouldn't consider this an improvement at all. I completely stopped reading the primary codex entries because they were voiced, though I still read the secondary ones, which were not. In my (our) opinion, this would be a huge waste of resources that could be better spent on something like giving us two options for the protagonist's voice, or, well, anything. Letting us turn the voice off would be an improvement, but it wouldn't do anything for the waste of resources on something a lot of us can't stand.

[Wonderllama4]

I don't think all entires should be voiced, only the historical accounts

[Helena Tylena]

slimgrin wrote...

Catt128 wrote...

But ME has non voiced codex entries too.

And far less, I'd wager.

What do you mean, voicing stuff takes away from the budget?

[Vlainstrike]

soteria wrote...

Oh, god forbid we attempt to suggest improvements for how the DA lore can work into the expression of the story.

Myself, and apparently a large number of other people, wouldn't consider this an improvement at all. I completely stopped reading the primary codex entries because they were voiced, though I still read the secondary ones, which were not. In my (our) opinion, this would be a huge waste of resources that could be better spent on something like giving us two options for the protagonist's voice, or, well, anything. Letting us turn the voice off would be an improvement, but it wouldn't do anything for the waste of resources on something a lot of us can't stand.

If devs chose to cut out features every time a couple people said they don't like something there would be no game left to play.

No two players will ever agree completely on what set of features are worthy of investment, which is why a wide variety of customization and optional features are most desireable if the goal is to please the widest audience.

And anyone who thinks voicing the codex would be a huge investment of resources in the grand scheme of things truly is living in a fantasy world.  I seriously doubt Bioware is hurting for resources given the success of several recent titles (Mass Effect, KoTOR, Jade Empire, Neverwinter Nights...not to mention whatever they're going to make off the new Star Wars MMO) - Dragon age alone has sold over 3.2 million copies.

Let's see, new off the shelf DA:O runs 30.00-50.00 (price has dropped since launch), so dragon age sales brought in somewhere in the range of $96,000,000 to $160,000,000 plus whatever they're still making off DLC.  Now obviously a huge chunk of that went to retailers, investors, and production, but still, over $100 million in sales for one game ain't bad if you compare that to something like movie ticket sales for your average CG-heavy summer blockbuster production (ie. Iron Man 2, LoTR, etc...), which would have very similar production costs imo. 

I say all that simply to express that adding a couple more hours of voice talent isn't really going to put a big crunch on Bioware's resources.  I would further submit that adding multiple protaganist voices throughout an entire game with branching story lines and with 3 playable races, both male and female, all with their own origin story would require substantially more resources than having one dude read all the codex entries.

Personally I would have loved voiced protagonists as well, but the amount of work that would require isn't really comparable to voicing the codex.

Modifié par Vlainstrike, 14 juillet 2010 - 03:38 .

[Special_Agent_Goodwrench]

Vlainstrike wrote...

soteria wrote...

Oh, god forbid we attempt to suggest improvements for how the DA lore can work into the expression of the story.

Myself, and apparently a large number of other people, wouldn't consider this an improvement at all. I completely stopped reading the primary codex entries because they were voiced, though I still read the secondary ones, which were not. In my (our) opinion, this would be a huge waste of resources that could be better spent on something like giving us two options for the protagonist's voice, or, well, anything. Letting us turn the voice off would be an improvement, but it wouldn't do anything for the waste of resources on something a lot of us can't stand.

If devs chose to cut out features every time a couple people said they don't like something there would be no game left to play.

No two players will ever agree completely on what set of features are worthy of investment, which is why a wide variety of customization and optional features are most desireable if the goal is to please the widest audience.

And anyone who thinks voicing the codex would be a huge investment of resources in the grand scheme of things truly is living in a fantasy world.  I seriously doubt Bioware is hurting for resources given the success of several recent titles (Mass Effect, KoTOR, Jade Empire, Neverwinter Nights...not to mention whatever they're going to make off the new Star Wars MMO) - Dragon age alone has sold over 3.2 million copies.

Let's see, new off the shelf DA:O runs 30.00-50.00 (price has dropped since launch), so dragon age sales brought in somewhere in the range of $96,000,000 to $160,000,000 plus whatever they're still making off DLC.  Now obviously a huge chunk of that went to retailers, investors, and production, but still, over $100 million in sales for one game ain't bad if you compare that to something like movie ticket sales for your average CG-heavy summer blockbuster production (ie. Iron Man 2, LoTR, etc...), which would have very similar production costs imo. 

I say all that simply to express that adding a couple more hours of voice talent isn't really going to put a big crunch on Bioware's resources.  I would further submit that adding multiple protaganist voices throughout an entire game with branching story lines and with 3 playable races, both male and female, all with their own origin story would require substantially more resources than having one dude read all the codex entries.

Personally I would have loved voiced protagonists as well, but the amount of work that would require isn't really comparable to voicing the codex.

It matters not how many copies did the game sell since there is most likely a set budget the Bioware folks will try to keep up with on DA2. And I really would rather have those coins to be spent on having more dialogue options for Hawke instead of codex.

If they have the money AND used it wisely in all of the needed areas (Hawke, gameplay, companions, bug fixes, etc, etc), then when everything is finished and working like it's supposed to, only then should they consider voiced codex.

[Sneelonz]

Noooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Kalfear]

Wonderllama4 wrote...

I figure, if we're going to take the dialogue wheel from Mass Effect, we might as well take the Codex system too! I admit I don't read a lot of the codex entries from Dragon Age, but I would certainly listen to them if I could. Duncan's VA should be the narrator. or Brother Genitivi, since he writes most of the stuff

This I agree with

Get a nice sagely voice to read all the Codex entries and corrosponding character voice to read letters and such!

Far more immersive and better then Main character voice over!

Sadly (and I hope im wrong for the record) I expect with the move to ME2 style game that the massive background reading there was in DA:O will also suffer  and me cut down or outright removed.
Hope im wrong but at this point in time, this is what im expecting till a dev/writer says 100%, with no spin, just straight forward answer, that the same detail to story and background will be in DA2 that was in DA:O.

[soteria]

And anyone who thinks voicing the codex would be a huge investment of resources in the grand scheme of things truly is living in a fantasy world. I seriously doubt Bioware is hurting for resources given the success of several recent titles (Mass Effect, KoTOR, Jade Empire, Neverwinter Nights...not to mention whatever they're going to make off the new Star Wars MMO) - Dragon age alone has sold over 3.2 million copies.

I didn't say it would be a huge investment. I said it would be a huge waste. The only argument you present here is "why not?" Because it costs money and it doesn't even make sense to have a talking codex in the setting.

[Vlainstrike]

DrunkDeadman wrote...
It matters not how many copies did the game sell since there is most likely a set budget the Bioware folks will try to keep up with on DA2. And I really would rather have those coins to be spent on having more dialogue options for Hawke instead of codex.

If they have the money AND used it wisely in all of the needed areas (Hawke, gameplay, companions, bug fixes, etc, etc), then when everything is finished and working like it's supposed to, only then should they consider voiced codex.

Right... because the size of that budget has nothing to do with how many copies the game is expected to sell. 

Let's take a closer look at what it would really cost Bioware to include the audio codex:

The Screen Actor's Guild union rules state that union members get paid around $760 for a single 4-hour long recording session.  Obviously A-list actors would get way more, but I really don't need Morgan Freeman or Leonard Nimoy to voice the codex; any run-of-the-mill voice actor with a pleasing voice, and perhaps someone with a flair for dramatic british accents on their resume will do. 

Let's be generous and say our guy is even somewhat talented, and has done some work for other games so he makes $1000.00 per 4-hour long recording session rather than the union minimum.  Now keep in mind that there's plenty of non-SAG members getting paid far less for this type of work, but Bioware is an upscale gaming company, so we'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say they only hire union voice talent.. 

So, how long do you suppose it would take a professional to record the entire codex, even allowing for a few multiple takes? Keep in mind a voiced codex is nowhere near as complex in size and scope as an entire character dialogue that spans the entire branching story line and must be acted out properly to mesh with the other actors. This is a solo gig so you don't have to worry about playing off the other actors.

Well... let's see there's approximately 325 codex entries of varying lengths (give or take a few; my game is heavily modded so I have about ~340ish, but 325 is a nice round figure though) . Tbh, I would say you could just toss out the ~40 control entries but I'll include them to be fair.

I timed myself reading the Abomination entry, which is the first entry in the creature section, out loud.  This is one of the longer entries, and I took my time trying to read it dramatically and without rushing and clocked myself at a little over 2 minutes.  Had I read any slower than that I would have sounded like I had a learning disability.

Now, there's a few entries longer than the Abomination entry, and many are shorter, but for argument sake let's say every entry takes at least 3 minutes to record.  That's ~325 entries x 3 minutes each = 975 minutes/60min = 16 hours of voice work.  Now, again for argument sake how about I add an additional 4 hours to that to account for multiple takes, drinking a glass of water, shuffling papers, discussing pronunciation of proper nouns, flirting with the cute chick working the sound board, etc..., and we'll call it 20 hours total.

So, that's 20 hours at a going rate of $1000 per 4-hour session (or $250.00 per hour) = $5,000

Now, you might say $5k is a lot for just one guy for only 20 hours of work, and compared to most of us you'd be right.  My guess is that DA:O's low level QA testers probably didn't make much over $20k for a whole year's worth of work.  

But now consider that you've got a product pulling in over $100,000,000 and suddenly $5k doesn't seem like so much, even if you have over 200 people working on the project (which Bioware did).

Even if you've got those 200 guys making $50k a year (which comes to $10 million a year) you'd still be making some pretty good bank.  Obviously this is a huge over-simplification since some people make more than $50k a year, some make less, some are on the project for 3 days, some are on it for 3 years.  But no matter how you play with the numbers $5k just isn't that much compared to a game that's raked in over $100million, and counting.

People love creating false dilemmas in these scenarios wherin the creation of one feature must absolutely come at the cost of another.  In this case the supposition is that an audio codex would somehow have to come at the expense of some other voiced feature... and yet they managed to pull it off just fine in Mass Effect 1&2.  I don't see what the big problem is... I really don't.

Modifié par Vlainstrike, 14 juillet 2010 - 07:24 .

[Braag]

kyles3 wrote...

DA2 should have e-mails

hahaha, dunno about e-mail...

How about normal mail? A messenger brings you letters to your personal mailbox or something.

[LPPrince]

 I'm not even going to read anything past the first post, simply because the answer is simple-

NO.

ME and ME2's codexes are shrimps compared to DAO's blue whale.

VO's are already expensive. To cover the codex, assuming it will be around the same size as DAO's, would be catastrophic to the budget of the game and the time of the voice actors/actresses.

[Vlainstrike]

soteria wrote...

And anyone who thinks voicing the codex would be a huge investment of resources in the grand scheme of things truly is living in a fantasy world. I seriously doubt Bioware is hurting for resources given the success of several recent titles (Mass Effect, KoTOR, Jade Empire, Neverwinter Nights...not to mention whatever they're going to make off the new Star Wars MMO) - Dragon age alone has sold over 3.2 million copies.

I didn't say it would be a huge investment. I said it would be a huge waste. The only argument you present here is "why not?" Because it costs money and it doesn't even make sense to have a talking codex in the setting.

Ok, fine, so you say it's a huge waste because you and a few other people agree that it's a waste.  Well what about those who disagree? What about those who say the exact opposite, and that their experience would be hugely enhanced by an audio codex?  Their opinion is just as valid as yours.

So what if it costs money?  Every single feature in any game costs money.  And for every feature, in every game, I'm sure you can find a few people who will agree that feature "xxx" was a waste and doesn't make sense, and that they would have done things differently had they been in charge.

My point(s) is that it's not really that expensive to include, and including it doesn't necessarily come at the cost of other functionality, and at least some people do enjoy it. Thus,  if your goal as a game company is to appeal to a wide audience then it follows that having a wider variety of options will attract more people.  Furthermore, an audio codex is one of those things that they could very easily make optional with a "audio codex: off" option.

I would submit that Bioware is a successful enough company that they can afford to include pretty much any feature they want, provided it fits in with their overall vision of what the game should be, and doesn't exceed the ability of technology owned by the majority of the installed userbase (for example, investing in a 3d option is probably not a sound investment because most people don't own a 3d monitor).

Modifié par Vlainstrike, 14 juillet 2010 - 06:48 .

[Vlainstrike]

LPPrince wrote...

 I'm not even going to read anything past the first post, simply because the answer is simple-

NO.

ME and ME2's codexes are shrimps compared to DAO's blue whale.

VO's are already expensive. To cover the codex, assuming it will be around the same size as DAO's, would be catastrophic to the budget of the game and the time of the voice actors/actresses.

"catastrophic to the budget"
exagerate much?
lolz

Modifié par Vlainstrike, 14 juillet 2010 - 06:39 .

[zahra]

I like reading. Stopped liking having things read to me after age 5.

[LPPrince]

Vlainstrike wrote...

LPPrince wrote...

 I'm not even going to read anything past the first post, simply because the answer is simple-

NO.

ME and ME2's codexes are shrimps compared to DAO's blue whale.

VO's are already expensive. To cover the codex, assuming it will be around the same size as DAO's, would be catastrophic to the budget of the game and the time of the voice actors/actresses.

"catastrophic to the budget"
exagerate much?
lolz

I'm not exaggerating any more than the people jumping down Bioware's throat for DA2.