130 réponses à ce sujet

[Rorschachinstein]

Tommyspa wrote...

Rorschachinstein wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...

Rorschachinstein wrote...

Voiced protagonist makes the game casually friendly.

I know, right? Just look at all the 'casual' games that make extensive use of voice acting. Like... Bejeweled... and... Plants vs Zombies.

Yeah, cause unvoiced games like Call of Duty and Uncharted are played by nobody.

Those are not "casual" games.

8 million sales for MW3. It's doing something right.

[Maria Caliban]

75 million sales for Bejeweled.

Let's put it this way:
If you imagine that the audience for a game is pubescent boys who scream slurs into their X-Box headset whenever they lose, then that game is not casual.

If you imagine that the audience for a game is tired housewives, grandparents with 15 year old computers, and children, then the game is likely casual.

Modifié par Maria Caliban, 26 mars 2012 - 08:34 .

[HanErlik]

Voiced Protagonists kill the depth of the game. To prove it:

1) Install Planescape Torment
2) Play Planescape Torment
3) Install DA2
4) Play DA2
5) Abandon your all hope for Video Game Industrry

[Maria Caliban]

That's the sort of rigorous 'proof' that leads people to think aliens created Stonehenge.

[HanErlik]

Of course, picking red, purple or blue lines provides a much deeper RPG experience than having twenty, long dialogue options.

[A Crusty Knight Of Colour]

I lol'd. Then I realised that the OP and thread participants are completely serious in their arguments. Then I lol'd again. Bonus points for the casual and Bejeweled side argument.

BSNs gonna BSN, I guess.

Modifié par CrustyBot, 26 mars 2012 - 09:03 .

[philippe willaume]

batlin wrote...

Dragon Age Origins? Silent protagonist, great story.

Dragon Age II? Voiced protagonist, mediocre story.

Discuss.

Hello
The voiced protagonist really has only an indirect relation on the story. If the story is good it works just as well (the witcher serie)
DA:2 story is really let down by act III and how it is resolved but the story in itself had great potential.
Up to the end of the act II DA2 was quite good story wise. I would say, the writing and the presentation of DA:2 ending are more responsible than the voiced protagonist.
DA:0 story was really well written and realised so it ends up by far being the better story.


That being said regardless of who he/she is the voice actor is not likely to please all the audience so.
I am not sure if on its own it is enough to mar the pleasure but it definitely filling own of the “I am not too happy about that slot”.  And there is only so many “I am not too happy about that slots” that any players have for any given game.

I am not sure what the voiced protagonist adds to the game play out weight the cost in development resources.
In any case a voiced protagonist can’t make a poor story good but it can make a good story not such a pleasant experience.
 
phil

Modifié par philippe willaume, 26 mars 2012 - 09:33 .

[Shadow of Light Dragon]

Oh, batlin...don't you have anything better to do than troll the DA and ME non-registered forums to stir controversial topics?

[Yrkoon]

philippe willaume wrote...

Hello
The voiced protagonist really has only an indirect relation on the story.

Agreed.


I'll take this a step further and argue that  a Voiced Protagonist doesn't have any bearing on the story at all.  It might have an effect on  the player's emmersion, depending on the player, but  it's pretty much unrelated to story quality.

And the question posed here is way too  general  for decent discussion.  It's like asking  "what's the better story medium, books or movies?"

Modifié par Yrkoon, 26 mars 2012 - 11:41 .

[LeBurns]

 There are a lot of games I liked with silent PC's.  The Half Life series, BG and DAO, all the TES games, Portal games.

But I will admit I liked the ME games also, up till the end.

For me I am heavily into role-playing and I can really get into the role if the PC is silent.  In fact I can't get into the role at all if the PC speaks.  It isn't that I can't be entertained, nor enjoy the banter, but it is someone elses banter, not mine and role-playing immersion is broken.

[Meris]

Yrkoon wrote...

I'll take this a step further and argue that  a Voiced Protagonist doesn't have any bearing on the story at all.  It might have an effect on  the player's emmersion, depending on the player, but  it's pretty much unrelated to story quality.

How the protagonist is presented is very important, since it acts as your avatar to interact and shape the story. I'm not going to say that every flaw in DA2's story is because of voice over (as it certainly isn't true), but my experience was made unbearable because of it.

[batlin]

A lot of people ITT seem to be forgetting the "necessarily" part of the topic title....

Modifié par batlin, 26 mars 2012 - 01:09 .

[Chaos Lord Malek]

HanErlik wrote...

Voiced Protagonists kill the depth of the game. To prove it:

1) Install Planescape Torment
2) Play Planescape Torment
3) Install DA2
4) Play DA2
5) Abandon your all hope for Video Game Industrry

Actually voiced protagonist for game like Planescape Torment would be good. Because you have set character, and then you don`t have problem with genderes, names, etc... You can have named character that perfectly fits into the story, voiced and still got lots of options - like Geralt from Witcher 2.

[Meris]

Chaos Lord Malek wrote...

HanErlik wrote...

Voiced Protagonists kill the depth of the game. To prove it:

1) Install Planescape Torment
2) Play Planescape Torment
3) Install DA2
4) Play DA2
5) Abandon your all hope for Video Game Industrry

Actually voiced protagonist for game like Planescape Torment would be good. Because you have set character, and then you don`t have problem with genderes, names, etc... You can have named character that perfectly fits into the story, voiced and still got lots of options - like Geralt from Witcher 2.

Not necessarily. Though the Nameless One is a more set protagonist than the Warden or Charname, I wonder if voice acting wouldn't severely limit your dialogue options. The same way NPC voice acting did for player agency in general.

Modifié par Meris, 26 mars 2012 - 02:28 .

[Joy Divison]

Maria Caliban wrote...

That's the sort of rigorous 'proof' that leads people to think aliens created Stonehenge.

...Didn't they?

.

.

.

[LobselVith8]

batlin wrote...

Dragon Age Origins? Silent protagonist, great story.

Dragon Age II? Voiced protagonist, mediocre story.

Discuss.

I think the flaws with Dragon Age II extend beyond the bad paraphrasing with Hawke. There was a lack of significant choice, Laidlaw's claim that Kirkwall would be shaped around Hawke's choices turned out not to be true, there was no genuine rise to power with our protagonist, Hawke was overly passive in the main game and in the two story DLCs that were released, the two main factions were little more than caricatures rather than characters (in sharp contrast to the factions in New Vegas and Skyrim where your opponents weren't simply villified for being your antagonist), the enviornment was static and lifeless, and there was the issue of the recycled areas (and sometimes, even villains).

The dichotomy between silent and voiced protagonists will have disagreement among some people, but I think the Fallout series and the Elder Scrolls games have shown that a silent protagonist can achieve success with people. And I find the horrible paraphrasing with Dragon Age II as one of the reasons to avoid Dragon Age III, since Gaider has addressed that they will continue with the paraphrasing in the next game.

[tranxhdr]

I don't know about you guys but I really dig the voiced protagonist in DA2. I wished DA1 had it and even Skyrim for that matter. This is one of the reasons why I also like Swtor. It just gives more life and realism to the game. Plus I think it's pretty cool to see your own character chatting during convo scenes. It doesn't break the lore/story, what's the problem?

[AngryFrozenWater]

Sutekh wrote...

batlin wrote...

Dragon Age Origins? Silent protagonist, great story.

Dragon Age II? Voiced protagonist, mediocre story.

Discuss.

Not even discussing the respective quality of the stories (but, please, don't mix up story and execution, because DA2 story, I liked), what does it have to do with the Voiced or Silent PC?

Voice acting is more expensive and it also takes up more disk space. The questions are then whether or not the dev team gets a higher budget (voice acting can be rather expensive) and whether or not there is enough disk space available (optical disks have limits). That does not mean that this could hurt the story, but required compromises could lead for an example to less dialogue or maybe a simplification of the story or just a smaller game. So, yes, voice acting can have an impact on the quality of the story.

[Meris]

tranxhdr wrote...

I don't know about you guys but I really dig the voiced protagonist in DA2. I wished DA1 had it and even Skyrim for that matter. This is one of the reasons why I also like Swtor. It just gives more life and realism to the game. Plus I think it's pretty cool to see your own character chatting during convo scenes. It doesn't break the lore/story, what's the problem?

My biggest issues with voice over are that A) It comes with paraphrases and auto-dialogue and Its spending money in the wrong place, instead of focusing on increasing player agency. A last complaint is that the different protagonists have different dialogue, with a silent one choosing from actions and then allowing you to interprete them on your own and a voiced one likely 'telling you' why he chose to spare a given baddie.

[Siansonea]

I prefer voiced protagonists. Regardless of the technical issues, I would rather have a voiced protagonist than an unnaturally silent protagonist. I do not play "me" in games, I'd rather the characters talk to each other than somehow have the player character be some avatar for myself in the game world. And before all the old-school gamers start telling me how little imagination I have, I play tabletop RPGs. I shape my characters COMPLETELY in those games, and I speak for them and determine everything they say. If you really want to use your imagination, to have "immersion" and have unlimited player choice, PLAY TABLETOP PEN AND PAPER RPGS. But thinking that you're somehow more imaginative because you like to speak the lines in your head rather than hear them in the game is absurd. Voiced protagonists enhance the cinematic nature of games for me, and I like that. But I get my unlimited choice and immersion fix at the gaming table.

Modifié par Siansonea II, 26 mars 2012 - 03:26 .

[rolson00]

I prefer silent myself but it comes down to what sort of story BW wants to tell if the hero can be any race then silent fits if just one then voiced makes more sense

[Plaintiff]

Rorschachinstein wrote...

Tommyspa wrote...

Rorschachinstein wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...

Rorschachinstein wrote...

Voiced protagonist makes the game casually friendly.

I know, right? Just look at all the 'casual' games that make extensive use of voice acting. Like... Bejeweled... and... Plants vs Zombies.

Yeah, cause unvoiced games like Call of Duty and Uncharted are played by nobody.

Those are not "casual" games.

8 million sales for MW3. It's doing something right.

None of that has anything to do with whether or not a game is "casual".

[Sutekh]

AngryFrozenWater wrote...

Sutekh wrote...
Not even discussing the respective quality of the stories (but, please, don't mix up story and execution, because DA2 story, I liked), what does it have to do with the Voiced or Silent PC?

Voice acting is more expensive and it also takes up more disk space. The questions are then whether or not the dev team gets a higher budget (voice acting can be rather expensive) and whether or not there is enough disk space available (optical disks have limits). That does not mean that this could hurt the story, but required compromises could lead for an example to less dialogue or maybe a simplification of the story or just a smaller game. So, yes, voice acting can have an impact on the quality of the story.

Again, don't confuse execution with the story itself.

And I could argue that having a good, performant graphic engine is taking resources from the storytelling as well. That putting time and resources in concepts does too. That creating diverse, nice armors and weapons are taking resources and disk space (after all, they do impact the possibility of playing multiple races). Or being able to equip your companions to your liking. Cosmetics against substance. To take it to the extreme (meaning I'm hyperboling, so bear with me), you could say that for a game to only focus on the storytelling, you'd have to go text-only.

Now, if we're indeed talking about the quality of storytelling, I'm among those for whom VA adds to it (a lot, sometimes), while I admit it is not absolutely necessary. It all boils down to preferences and perception.

Also,

Meris wrote...
A last complaint is that the different protagonists have different dialogue, with a silent one choosing from actions and then allowing you to interprete them on your own and a voiced one likely 'telling you' why he chose to spare a given baddie.

Give me one single example in DA2 where Hawke explained to you why he made such or such choice ("he" being actually "you"). Arguing that you can't give the tone you want is perfectly fine, but I fail to see how voice prevents you from having any motivation you want.

[Pasquale1234]

AngryFrozenWater wrote...

Sutekh wrote...

batlin wrote...

Dragon Age Origins? Silent protagonist, great story.

Dragon Age II? Voiced protagonist, mediocre story.

Discuss.

Not even discussing the respective quality of the stories (but, please, don't mix up story and execution, because DA2 story, I liked), what does it have to do with the Voiced or Silent PC?

Voice acting is more expensive and it also takes up more disk space. The questions are then whether or not the dev team gets a higher budget (voice acting can be rather expensive) and whether or not there is enough disk space available (optical disks have limits). That does not mean that this could hurt the story, but required compromises could lead for an example to less dialogue or maybe a simplification of the story or just a smaller game. So, yes, voice acting can have an impact on the quality of the story.

It can also make it more difficult and expensive to fine-tune or tweak dialogue later in the dev cycle.  It is much easier to change some text in a file than it is to re-record and replace dialogue that has already been recorded.

[LobselVith8]

tranxhdr wrote...

I don't know about you guys but I really dig the voiced protagonist in DA2. I wished DA1 had it and even Skyrim for that matter. This is one of the reasons why I also like Swtor. It just gives more life and realism to the game. Plus I think it's pretty cool to see your own character chatting during convo scenes. It doesn't break the lore/story, what's the problem?

Having our protagonist speak lines of dialogue that are completely different than the specific lines of dialogue we chose for him (or her) to speak, and having the protagonist speak automatically without any imput from us, breaks immersion in the story for some of us. The fact that Origins, New Vegas, and Skyrim provided the player with a silent protagonist is something that appealed to quite a few fans. It's preferrable to the terrible paraphrasing that marred Dragon Age II.