71 réponses à ce sujet

[In Exile]

Gotta think the loss of some of these things are as a result of the game being fully voiced.
How much would a conversation cost in real terms between the Inquisitor and a random NPC?
$10k or more?
Writing the lines
Voice actor hire
recording studio hirer
Different language VA's
translators.
post production.
+ other all the costs I'm not aware of.

I'm playing through BG2, and when it was text, they could have fun random encounters, like the group of kids in Umar hills, My barbarian bhaalspawn bought them the grog they asked for, but not the swords. Hey I'm RPing a barbarian, not a responsible adult! Even to my Barbarian grog + swords seemed like a bad idea.

If a classic RPG like Planescape Torment had to be fully voiced, it never would have got off the ground with all the dialogue it has.

I'm not convinced that this is just about VO. A game like Shadowrun is isometric and without VO and it doesn't really have such moments.

[In Exile]

Voiceover has been a terrible idea, overall. Even for the NPCs. A partial VO for NPCs is nice because it helps establish their personalities (NWN did this well), but there's no need for the bulk of the dialogue to be voiced at all.

I disagree. The worst of all implementation is partial VO. There's no consistency of voice. The game uses a dialogue system that allows for ambiguity (just text, no identifiers of mood or expression) and then randomly introduces a possibly incongruent voice into the mix. No, I think the only coherent options are either full VO or pure text.

[AlanC9]

The problem is that we've seen a really, really well done tactical turn based game done - the reboot of XCOM - and it sold fewer copies than freakin' Duke Nukem Forever.

Yikes. I thought it did better than that. (I'm replaying the original right now, FWIW.)

[Il Divo]

Yikes. I thought it did better than that. (I'm replaying the original right now, FWIW.)

 

I just got through reinstalling Enemy Within a few hours ago. If true, this is makes me a sad gamer. I would pay double price for either a sequel or an additional expansion. I loved XCOM. 

[hoechlbear]

That's the thing about DAI though. They minimized the dialogue with NPCs in every way possible. I mean someone tells you their husband was killed because he had a shovel in his hand and was mistaken by a mage holding a staff and all you say is a generic "goodbye". lol It's just sad to be honest. DAI is full of wonderful design decisions. /sarcasm

[In Exile]

Yikes. I thought it did better than that. (I'm replaying the original right now, FWIW.)

I just got through reinstalling Enemy Within a few hours ago. If true, this is makes me a sad gamer. I would pay double price for either a sequel or an additional expansion. I loved XCOM. 

 

XCOM - while the turn-based combat was good - suffered from some very serious structural problems in terms of actually being accessible to any meaningful number of new gamers, namely, the way they handled the actual building up of XCOM difficulty wise. If you played on anything other than say, easy or normal, you needed a very serious and specific gameplan to tackle the XCOM organizational side of things. 

 

So the game wound up really being two games, with totally separate difficulty curves and required skills, that had all of its difficulty turn on one slider. Which led to either the tactical combat being too easy or to the player never getting to enjoy it without a degree of investment into the map that kind of works against new gamers. 

[Nomen Mendax]

Voiceover has been a terrible idea, overall. Even for the NPCs. A partial VO for NPCs is nice because it helps establish their personalities (NWN did this well), but there's no need for the bulk of the dialogue to be voiced at all.

I'm with Sylvius on this. In particular in DAI I have no desire to have all of the background information provided by NPCs to be voiced, I also suspect it must also be very dull for the voice actors. And unfortunately I agree that BW are not going to move away from fully voiced.

 

Also disappointed that XCom didn't do well as it's a great game. Anyone know how Divinity Original Sin did?

[Sylvius the Mad]

I disagree. The worst of all implementation is partial VO. There's no consistency of voice. The game uses a dialogue system that allows for ambiguity (just text, no identifiers of mood or expression) and then randomly introduces a possibly incongruent voice into the mix. No, I think the only coherent options are either full VO or pure text.

I'd introduce the NPCs with voices, and then not have them later.

But no voice works for me, as well.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Anyone know how Divinity Original Sin did?

I don't know how it did, but just today a 24-year-old woman spontaneously recommended it to me, so its appeal might be wider than expected.

[Sidney]

Yikes. I thought it did better than that. (I'm replaying the original right now, FWIW.)

 

Yeah it was a "success" but apparently successful is relative to what they thought it would do.  I was terrified of the reboot but they came through and did a good job with it. I am replaying TFTD and now recalling why i hate cruise ship terror missions.

[Nefla]

Didn't ME3 (pre-EC) try this already? IIRC it didn't go over well.

Try what?

[Darkly Tranquil]

Anyone know how Divinity Original Sin did?

Last I heard (which was about a month ago), it had done 600,000 copies (IIRC), which the developers said they were very pleased with. They have announced an expansion for it and plans for two more games with the same engine.

[Nomen Mendax]

Last I heard (which was about a month ago), it had done 600,000 copies (IIRC), which the developers said they were very pleased with. They have announced an expansion for it and plans for two more games with the same engine.

Cool, thanks for the info.

[Elhanan]

XCOM - while the turn-based combat was good - suffered from some very serious structural problems in terms of actually being accessible to any meaningful number of new gamers, namely, the way they handled the actual building up of XCOM difficulty wise. If you played on anything other than say, easy or normal, you needed a very serious and specific gameplan to tackle the XCOM organizational side of things. 
 
So the game wound up really being two games, with totally separate difficulty curves and required skills, that had all of its difficulty turn on one slider. Which led to either the tactical combat being too easy or to the player never getting to enjoy it without a degree of investment into the map that kind of works against new gamers.

Disliked the Difficulty slider; preferred adding the Long War mod. However, it has some qualities that are annoying as well.

[AlanC9]

Try what?

 

Tried having less displayed reactivity. That's what you were suggesting with "DA:I's "reactivity" mainly consists of text telling you that something happened so...yes? ," right? Pre-EC there weren't any ending slides.

[In Exile]

I'd introduce the NPCs with voices, and then not have them later.

But no voice works for me, as well.

One thing I realised I like doing in Shadowrun is to reason that based on different racial backgrounds my PCs hear voices differently. In Dragonfall one companion is a female troll. I like to reason that for a human PC or elven PC her voice is deeper and more intimidating; the same being different for a troll or orc PC. No idea if that's supported in the lore but it has been a good source of RP for me.

[Sylvius the Mad]

One thing I realised I like doing in Shadowrun is to reason that based on different racial backgrounds my PCs hear voices differently. In Dragonfall one companion is a female troll. I like to reason that for a human PC or elven PC her voice is deeper and more intimidating; the same being different for a troll or orc PC. No idea if that's supported in the lore but it has been a good source of RP for me.

I hadn't considered that. That's a good point.

I no longer support partial VO. No VO is better.

[Nefla]

Tried having less displayed reactivity. That's what you were suggesting with "DA:I's "reactivity" mainly consists of text telling you that something happened so...yes? ," right? Pre-EC there weren't any ending slides.

Pre-EC was also poorly written, confusing, and vague which was much more of a problem IMO than being shoehorned into one ending (not that I found post-EC to be amazing either but at least it clarified). I don't mind there being only one ending if it's done well and fits the tone of the story (though I prefer two endings like most of BW's previous games), what I really want is to shape who my character is along the way, how they treat others, who they are as a person, how they react to things. Shoehorning a character into one small personality is much more frustrating to me (which is why I almost never play fixed protagonist games). DA:I wasn't reactive for the most part IMO but also didn't let you shape your character very far beyond a narrow, neutral/good preset.

 

As far as side quests go, I don't need side quests to impact the world at large, just to be entertaining and give me role playing opportunities and DA:I sidequests did neither for me.

[In Exile]

Pre-EC was also poorly written, confusing, and vague which was much more of a problem IMO than being shoehorned into one ending (not that I found post-EC to be amazing either but at least it clarified). I don't mind there being only one ending if it's done well and fits the tone of the story (though I prefer two endings like most of BW's previous games), what I really want is to shape who my character is along the way, how they treat others, who they are as a person, how they react to things. Shoehorning a character into one small personality is much more frustrating to me (which is why I almost never play fixed protagonist games). DA:I wasn't reactive for the most part IMO but also didn't let you shape your character very far beyond a narrow, neutral/good preset.

As far as side quests go, I don't need side quests to impact the world at large, just to be entertaining and give me role playing opportunities and DA:I sidequests did neither for me.

While I generally agree DAI did do one thing very right: it allowed the PC to be expressive with emotions and views. "What do you think about...?" and "How do you feel about ...?" were well implemented.

[In Exile]

I hadn't considered that. That's a good point.

I no longer support partial VO. No VO is better.

The playstyle didn't occur to me until Shadowrun but I think it has merit. I realised that non-VO is valuable because you can subjectify the experience essentialists - the dialogue can be fluid because you can interpret both sides of the conversation through a subjective lens in a way for which VO doesn't allow.

[MyKingdomCold]

What about the option to trick the person and tell them you've done something when you really haven't?  Maybe with some persuasion or something? are there any games that allow you to do this?  For example, the elf in Redcliffe who asks you to place flowers at his wife's grave site?  What if we were able to tell him that we did it even though we actually didn't?

[Sylvius the Mad]

The playstyle didn't occur to me until Shadowrun but I think it has merit. I realised that non-VO is valuable because you can subjectify the experience essentialists - the dialogue can be fluid because you can interpret both sides of the conversation through a subjective lens in a way for which VO doesn't allow.

I've been doing that with NPC intent for years.  I just had never thought to change the actual voice.