18 réponses à ce sujet

[KDD-0063]

DA2 has a voiced protagonist.
There is one side effect that people don't seem to have talked about: the varieties of PC voices is lost.
It's not a surprise and really, getting multiple people to voice the protagonist dialogues is going to be costly.

In many previous RPG where the protagonist isn't voiced, there are multiple PC voices to choose from. I remember DAO has 6 PC voices to choose from, and both NWN and IWD have more than a dozen. BG2 has like 5 but they are vastly different.

In these games above, you can also preview the voice of your character at character creation and pick your favorite.

While this kind of voice acting is limited to only a number of actions, such as greeting, moving, attacking and a few others, it does give a sense of customization.

So guys, is the varieties of PC voices more important, or is a voiced protagonist more important?

[TsaiMeLemoni]

for me, voiced PC is more important. It almost made no sense to me to have my PC make random remarks while unlocking a chest or if I pressed the attack button more than once while attacking the same enemy, but they were completely voiceless in everything else.

It wasn't a huge deal, but it was jarring how I had PC that selectively engaged in speech. If they were to ever move back to voiceless (which I don't like, but whatever), then I would also like to see them drop the quips during combat/unlocking chests and so forth.

[JasonShepard]

I (literally) just made a post about a voiced protagonist over in the 'human protagonist' thread, so I'll copy a bit of it over here. The gist of it is that not having voicing in DA:O was - in my opinion - one of it's strengths.

JasonShepard wrote...

I found DA:O's lack of a voice actor for the Warden to be a major advantage that added to the customisation of the character - in my mind at least. Rather than have someone else saying the words, all I needed to do was choose to say them and other characters would respond. It made me feel as if I was the Warden, in a way no other game ever has. (Note - I make very little distinction between feeling like I am a character and my ability to customise a character, mainly because I usually play 'as myself', even if it's 'as myself but with a completely different history'.)

I'll admit that the lack of voicing initially pushed me away from DA:O, even if it did become one of my favourite features.

So you can probably count me in the variety of voices camp.

Modifié par JasonShepard, 25 octobre 2012 - 01:16 .

[Thrillian]

I actually have no preference when it comes to voiced protagonist vs. silent, but it kinda got to the point where everytime I heard "Can I get you a ladder..." I felt like throwing my controller though the screen.

So I guess I'm not really for the "PC voices".

[Adanu]

Those are not 'PC voices', those are a set of reactions to simple things. A voiced Protagonist isn't even in the same league as reactive grunts.

[Wulfram]

90 percent of the PC voice choices in previous RPGs were unusably bad anyway. There was always at best only one or two I could vaguely stand, and even then I generally tried my best to ignore them.

[Battlebloodmage]

I love PC voices. It's a whole lot better than having the PC staring into blank space without any expression. I have never been a fan of mute protagonist and hope it never returns. The pseudo choices in DAO are mostly just grunts in battle or 1 or 2 lines. The mute protagonist's main weakness for me is that you are reactive to other NPCs most of the time as opposed to leading the conversation. The thing they could improve upon though is to make the paraphase matches the conversation options better. A lot of the stuffs Hawke and Shepard said are not really what I had in mind when I choose that option.

Modifié par Battlebloodmage, 25 octobre 2012 - 01:59 .

[mickey111]

Seems I'm just old fashioned, but I actually like it when developers spend money on the game as opposed to spending money on people who are so in love with the sound of their own voice that they'd stick their head up their ass to take advantage of the echo.

[Adanu]

mickey111 wrote...

Seems I'm just old fashioned, but I actually like it when developers spend money on the game as opposed to spending money on people who are so in love with the sound of their own voice that they'd stick their head up their ass to take advantage of the echo.

You'll have to clarify this one. What are you talking about?

[mickey111]

That maybe giving full VA to everybody, even bob the merchant, 3 different ways of saying "yes" (polite yes, snarky yes, mean yes) and sometimes even multiple ways of saying one of the 3 yes replies based upon your characters established personality is a bit excessive? And then they have to it all over again with the opposite gender. And then they have to translate all of this into something like 4 other languages. They probably spend more money on voice acting than actually building the game and its maps. 

To give a more relevant response, I'm going to vote for PC multiple voices in DAO style. Far, far less expensive that way, and I would fully expect that to equal another 5-10 hours of gaming.

Modifié par mickey111, 25 octobre 2012 - 02:19 .

[CuriousArtemis]

You know what, you're right. What about movies; talkies are way over-rated! Let's go back to silent films.

LOL

[Adanu]

motomotogirl wrote...

You know what, you're right. What about movies; talkies are way over-rated! Let's go back to silent films.

LOL

As much as I'm for VOiced protagonists... this example is oversimplified and ignorant. Movies and Games are two different mediums, and pretending they're similiar besides being visual is unrealistic.

[MillKill]

Wulfram wrote...

90 percent of the PC voice choices in previous RPGs were unusably bad anyway. There was always at best only one or two I could vaguely stand, and even then I generally tried my best to ignore them.

The high-strung Evangelist from NWN pretty much trumps all other PC voices.  All others were terrible compared to that one.

As for the topic question: silent protagonists only really work when the game is first-person or isometric. When you actually see your character's face in a close-up during conversations, not having a voice makes them look like mute pupets. I'd definitely take Voiced protagonists in this sort of game.

Modifié par MillKill, 25 octobre 2012 - 04:48 .

[CuriousArtemis]

Adanu wrote...

motomotogirl wrote...

You know what, you're right. What about movies; talkies are way over-rated! Let's go back to silent films.

LOL

As much as I'm for VOiced protagonists... this example is oversimplified and ignorant. Movies and Games are two different mediums, and pretending they're similiar besides being visual is unrealistic.

It was an over the top response to the person above me, whose own response was rude and over the top (bizarrely insulting voice actors for no reason whatsoever).

Plus an example can't really be "ignorant." Maybe you mean to call me ignorant?

[Saberchic]

I didn't mind the silent PC, and getting to choose a different voice was something I took to heart when creating one of my wardens. I'll miss it because BW have firmly stated that they're not going back.

[Maria Caliban]

mickey111 wrote...

Seems I'm just old fashioned, but I actually like it when developers spend money on the game as opposed to spending money on people who are so in love with the sound of their own voice that they'd stick their head up their ass to take advantage of the echo.

Translation: People like things I don't and it fills me with frothy rage.

[FINE HERE]

I want my silent protagonist back... I made Hawke look like a psychopath in DA2 by switching personalities every prompt and while funny for a while, it was off-putting and annoying in the end.