406 réponses à ce sujet

[AlexXIV]

jontepwn wrote...

Dark Specie wrote...

Meh, I don't really care whether my PC is voiced or not...

But still, I prefer a silent PC for practical reasons - if they do a voiced PC, they have to put alot of resources in it - resources that could be better used elsewhere, and the game'll likely be shorter/smaller/more linear as a result of having a voiced PC as well

Correct me if I'm wrong but The Witcher had a voiced protagonist and that game had plenty of dialog choices and story events, and wasn't it a pretty long game?

I don't know why witcher players generally don't notice this, but the Witchers often talks without asking the player if it's ok. One 'option' to click isn't much of an option. Neither is multiple options which all make him say the same thing. Also the Witcher is voiced pretty much unemotional. Like he doesn't really care about anything.

Modifié par AlexXIV, 30 janvier 2011 - 09:50 .

[TheMadCat]

jontepwn wrote...

Silent protagonist was all well and good in Dragon Age: Origins, but it made me having an emotional connection with my character almost non-existant. He/she would just stand there with a vacant stare on his/her face. Having a voice and showing emotions greatly enhances the experience and the emotional connection from the player. The one drawback would be less customization and choice about appearance and race and stuff like that. But clearly having a voiced character is the best approach for BioWare.

That's a problem with design, not with the unvoiced character. Flipping it to a locked first-person perspective during conversations alleviates the whole unemotional bit since you won't actually see your character and makes the conversation feel more personal rather then you simply watching two characters talk. 

[Atakuma]

jontepwn wrote...

Dark Specie wrote...

Meh, I don't really care whether my PC is voiced or not...

But still, I prefer a silent PC for practical reasons - if they do a voiced PC, they have to put alot of resources in it - resources that could be better used elsewhere, and the game'll likely be shorter/smaller/more linear as a result of having a voiced PC as well

Correct me if I'm wrong but The Witcher had a voiced protagonist and that game had plenty of dialog choices and story events, and wasn't it a pretty long game?

It wasn't really. I only squeezed 20 hours out of it.

Modifié par Atakuma, 30 janvier 2011 - 09:51 .

[Dark Specie]

jontepwn wrote...
Correct me if I'm wrong but The Witcher had a voiced protagonist and that game had plenty of dialog choices and story events, and wasn't it a pretty long game?

Hmm?

Oh, sure, at least as far as I'm aware. But that sort of thing also takes a lot of money and resources, which not every company may want to (or is able to) shell out. I've forgotten how long it took for the guys who made The Witcher to make it, but the fact that there's four years between the first and second The Witcher games may be saying something...

[Icinix]

Personally I couldn't care less. I love the voiced hero and I love the non-voiced hero...



..although what would be really awesome..if you could have a microphone and speak the responses off the screen that you wanted to make....



..but then I'd start thinking about be able to yell at Leliana to take out the emissary and things like that...then I'd get all giddy about the much promised future of voice control that still isn't here yet....

[Aidoru Kami]

I much prefer the non-voiced characters... it makes it feel more like my character. And apparently having a voice also means you can't have a decent dialogue system.

[ErichHartmann]

TheMadCat wrote...

That's a problem with design, not with the unvoiced character. Flipping it to a locked first-person perspective during conversations alleviates the whole unemotional bit since you won't actually see your character and makes the conversation feel more personal rather then you simply watching two characters talk. 

I hated forced first person conversations in Oblivion and Fallout.  Glad Bethesda thinks so too with Skyrim.

[lostspline]

Faust1979 wrote...
the mute hero is a relic of the past. 

No.  It's only a "relic" if you want all future games to have pre-defined protagonists (i.e., set race, etc.).

The unvoiced hero is a required element in games with a lot of character creation choices.  For example, Skyrim will not have a voiced hero for good reason.  In Skyrim, there are ten different races and two genders.  At the minimum, this would require all player character lines to be voiced by twenty different voice actors.  That is way too costly.

[Dark Specie]

AlexXIV wrote...
I don't know why witcher players generally don't notice this, but the Witchers often talks without asking the player if it's ok. One 'option' to click isn't much of an option. Neither is multiple options which all make him say the same thing. Also the Witcher is voiced pretty much unemotional. Like he doesn't really care about anything.

There's that too. *sigh*. The more PC voice-acting there is, the more risk that it'll become a bit of a blend between a movie and a game....

But as for the "unemotional" part, isn't that to be expected? At least, I thought witchers were sort of being supposed to be a bit like that?

Ah well... Pity that we don't have many voice actors here int he west of the quality that the japanese have...

[Ryllen Laerth Kriel]

The Witcher is a good game, but Geralt is a fairly pre-defined character. Sure there are alot of responses in some parts of the game and having different paths is nice but Geralt will always be Geralt. Voiced protagonists limit player creativity but expand developer creativity.



I have a pretty active imagination so I prefer to create my character's own voice in my head. With all the visual customization in games these days, I like to think my characters don't have to sound a particular way. I wish there was a mute function just for protagonists in most voiced games then I could turn on the subtitles. Turning off all the sound sucks.

[TheMadCat]

ErichHartmann wrote...
I hated forced first person conversations in Oblivion and Fallout.  Glad Bethesda thinks so too with Skyrim.

Why'd you hate it thought? Was it because of the actual perspective or was it because Bethesda did a horrible job witht he dialogue, character animations, lip syncing, and essentially created the unrealistic and unemotional state with the voiced characters that we got with the unvoiced in Origins. If the characters acted more alive, the world din't grind to a complete halt, and the conversations felt more natural and real don't you think it would have been better then what we got in Oblivion and Fallout?

Modifié par TheMadCat, 30 janvier 2011 - 10:00 .

[Khayness]

Tell that to Bethesda.

Mute hero in first person narrative got a helluva lot more immersion potential if it's done well than the nowdays popular "let's make it a movie" approach trend.

Valve might be a bit weird example as they don't make RPGs, but they really know their craft. DMoM&M would be a better one, but still far from an RPG.

Edit: Here is the first mission from Dark Messiah, the fun begins around 1 minute. The game has really immersive moments, and the combat can be aswell if you are a warrior going toe to toe with the mooks.

Modifié par Khayness, 30 janvier 2011 - 11:09 .

[HyperLimited]

Oh sure, leaving behind the mute hero is fine, so long as in the event we have a character creator like in Origins again, dialogue has been recorded for EVERY different voice set that we can choose for our PC.

If they can invest the time and resources to cram that into my game (like SWTOR's fully voiced characters), then hell, I'll say goodbye to the mute hero.

[SudsyPatriarch]

I just reinstalled Baldurs Gate after a few years absence.

And in fact, it made me realize that i wish Dragon Age wouldnt have any voice actors at all =D

[slimgrin]

The strongest argument against the voiced hero is that it represents money and resources that could be allotted elsewhere. This has been brought up time and again and it's a valid point.

The movie argument is another valid point, and an annoying trend in modern games that I think will only grow. I can do without fancy cutscenes. It's gameplay that matters.

Modifié par slimgrin, 30 janvier 2011 - 10:17 .

[DamnThoseDisplayNames]

I just reinstalled Baldurs Gate after a few years absence.

Infinity games did voice acting pretty smart. Even if they did that only because they were loose on money, but idea of careful applying really decent voice acting for starting lines and continue it with muted lines worked really well for me. So well, that I can remember some lines as quotes, a large amount of them, actually.

[Atakuma]

slimgrin wrote...

The strongest argument against the voiced hero is money and resources that could be allotted elsewhere. This has been brought up time and again and I think it's a valid point.

And the counter to that point is, that if they never intended to have a voiced PC, then those recources wouldn't exist in the first place. I think both points are plausible, but we really just don't know.

[lv12medic]

It all depends on what a developer actually wants their game to do in regards to a player character. Bioware is going a lot for the cinematic movie like experience, at least in regards to conversations and cut scenes, so a voiced character fits that design idea a lot better than a mute one. It doesn't mean a mute character is a pointless old relic though.

[Morroian]

SudsyPatriarch wrote...

I just reinstalled Baldurs Gate after a few years absence.
And in fact, it made me realize that i wish Dragon Age wouldnt have any voice actors at all =D

Its been said before but if you don't have a VO then it should be done something like BG rather than having everyone else but the player character speak.

[D.Kain]

For me the mute hero will become a relic of the past with the first RPG that makes atleast 10 different voices.

[Dark Specie]

Atakuma wrote...
And the counter to that point is, that if they never intended to have a voiced PC, then those recources wouldn't exist in the first place. I think both points are plausible, but we really just don't know.

Well, it may depend on how "big" a game they want to make in the first place - a game the size of Baldur's Gate 2 or Dragon Age Origins (1) would (IMO) obviously be too costly, but a smaller game, the size of Mass Effect or Jade Empire (which doesn't have a voiced PC, I know) or Alpha Protocol - sure!

[Khayness]

DamnThoseDisplayNames wrote...

Infinity games did voice acting pretty smart. Even if they did that only because they were loose on money, but idea of careful applying really decent voice acting for starting lines and continue it with muted lines worked really well for me. So well, that I can remember some lines as quotes, a large amount of them, actually.

Yeah, you will remember 90% of the boss lines 'till the end of your life. Especially PS:T, that game is hammy as hell.

[caradoc2000]

We have mute swans, so why not mute hawkes?

[PrinceOfFallout13]

slimgrin wrote...

The strongest argument against the voiced hero is that it represents money and resources that could be allotted elsewhere. This has been brought up time and again and it's a valid point.

The movie argument is another valid point, and an annoying trend in modern games that I think will only grow. I can do without fancy cutscenes. It's gameplay that matters.

thats why i hate every mmo and fps i like cutscenes i like to be rewarded with awesome cutscenes after spending hours doing crappy quests i like to see my character do dante like moves thats why i like cutscenes and will always support heavy cutscene games

[tmp7704]

Faust1979 wrote...

 It's 2011 a mute hero was fine in the 80s and 90s when games and hardware didn't have a lot of power.

Oddly enough it was in the 80s and 90s when people were saying that spiffy, new all-multimedia experience is the way to go and all games need to jump on that bandwagon or die. See how well that prediction worked out.