769 réponses à ce sujet

[Sylvius the Mad]

I never said traditional media.  If I must be specific, I studied the production of all modern forms of media.  Radio, television, film, web content, and, yes, video games was also included.  The only two fields that I haven't worked in too extensively are radio and video games, but I do have experience with both.  It's just there are more jobs available for the other fields in my area.

 

You don't seem to be grasping what I'm saying.  Spending resources on what might be heard by some, as opposed to what will be heard by all, and the fact that 2/3 of the recorded dialogue is a huge chunk.  Yes, branching storylines and side quests means that some content may go unseen by some, but the majority of resources should always be spent on things the consumer will see.  Regardless of how you play Mass Effect 1, you will always go to Therum, Noveria, Feros, the Citadel, Virmire, and Ilos.  As a result, the places you are guaranteed to see look far more intricate, detailed, and higher quality than the locales you had the option of not visiting at all.  In fact, most side missions reuse assets because it's more efficient.

 

However, you are right.  I am thinking about this in a way that is far too traditional, because, at least in regards to video game voice over, there's a lot being left up to chance at any given time and that is pretty illogical.  To have the majority of resources spent on things that may not be heard isn't all that smart, but it's a given in video games with branching paths and dialogue.  I mean, there is dialogue that is only accessible if you are female with a certain background.  I still don't see the toggle as being a good idea, but I'll concede your point.

 

That being said, going with a silent protag with voice DLC that comes later, still seems to be the best idea for solving these budgeting issues.

A silent game is harder to sell to a AAA market.  It would make more sense to make a voiced protag and offer a silent DLC.

 

And it's not true that every player goes to Therum, Noveria, Feros, the Citadel, Virmire, and Ilos.  A player who does not finish the game does not see the end.

 

My favourite DAO playthrough never saw the Circle Tower or Denerim, because my Warden was killed in Haven (by Sten).  Not every player finishes the game, or even tries to.  I still have no idea what the main story is in any TES game except Skyrim, and I played them all except Daggerfall.  I played FO3 extensively, but never even tried to follow the main story.  Is that a problem?  Would the game somehow be better is they forced me to follow the story?

 

If I build a path through a park, and some people use the path, but other people just walk on the grass, then my path isn't being used 100% efficiently.  But no one's experience is improved by me building a fence around the path to that people have to use it.  The experience of using the path isn't improved.  The path doesn't cost less to make.  The fence offers no path-specific benefits.  The only possible benefits of the fence are ancillary, but none of those apply here.  There's no cost to EA if I don't finish the game.  There's no cost to EA if I mute the music (which they already let me do - they spend money on the soundtrack, but then they let me turn it off).

[KaiserShep]

Silent PCs don't give speeches because it means everyone just stands. It's not really a speech - it's the player picking huge blocks of text. That works in a game like PST because you're not giving a dramatic speech so much as giving philosophical monologues. But in a supposedly dramatic moment? It's silly.
And even ME1 broke the speeches up. Sadly ME2 went away from that in the SM. Can't recall if ME3 did it (only played that game once).

ME3 actually did break it up, but the segments between prompts are still too long to list the text in its entirety.

[Sylvius the Mad]

See above re: volume.

POEs system was broken because the dialogue was written as if it was meant to be read as a novel, so:

"STOP!" said Garth, shoulders slumped and his tone filled with desperation. "That way is filled with monsters!"

But it had NPC VO, and they read their lines like a screenplay, so:

"STOP! That way is filled with monsters!"

Is what the VO said.

This created a confusing argle-bargle mess where the actual dialogue read out didn't match up with what was written. It was worse than the ME codex narrator that was slow - the stuff said out loud didnt match the actual text box. It was incredibly aversive.

The only way to fix it was to turn off voices completely. It was even stupider than the old BG way of having random lines read out loud and then others on silent.

I really liked that.  That's exactly how I read books; I process the spoken words and the descriptions separately, but simultaneously.  There shouldn't be a pause after "STOP" when Garth says it, but the description of Garth's behaviour is still necessary.  The subtitles were value-added versions of the spoken lines.

 

I thought that was a terrific innovation.

[SKAR]

A silent game is harder to sell to a AAA market. It would make more sense to make a voiced protag and offer a silent DLC.

And it's not true that every player goes to Therum, Noveria, Feros, the Citadel, Virmire, and Ilos. A player who does not finish the game does not see the end.

My favourite DAO playthrough never saw the Circle Tower or Denerim, because my Warden was killed in Haven (by Sten). Not every player finishes the game, or even tries to. I still have no idea what the main story is in any TES game except Skyrim, and I played them all except Daggerfall. I played FO3 extensively, but never even tried to follow the main story. Is that a problem? Would the game somehow be better is they forced me to follow the story?

If I build a path through a park, and some people use the path, but other people just walk on the grass, then my path isn't being used 100% efficiently. But no one's experience is improved by me building a fence around the path to that people have to use it. The experience of using the path isn't improved. The path doesn't cost less to make. The fence offers no path-specific benefits. The only possible benefits of the fence are ancillary, but none of those apply here. There's no cost to EA if I don't finish the game. There's no cost to EA if I mute the music (which they already let me do - they spend money on the soundtrack, but then they let me turn it off).

If Ryder was silent I wouldn't even buy the game. Voice adds more to the character. Who the hell wants to roleplay as a mute?

[RoboticWater]

I really liked that.  That's exactly how I read books; I process the spoken words and the descriptions separately, but simultaneously.  There shouldn't be a pause after "STOP" when Garth says it, but the description of Garth's behaviour is still necessary.  The subtitles were value-added versions of the spoken lines.

 

I thought that was a terrific innovation.

The difficulty comes when trying to read the descriptions while the character is speaking onward. Many people have trouble listening and reading different things simultaneously.

[Cyonan]

Being on a traditional RPG spree as I am and having just finished Baldur's Gate while starting on Pillars of Eternity now, the whole thing where it just reads all the dialogue at once isn't terribly bothering me, but that might be because my mind is just largely disregarding the voice acting while I read the text.

 

BG, and PoE does do this a bit too, does feel kind of weird when it's voice acting only some of the lines. However if I'm listing my gripes about Baldur's Gate, most of that is going to be directed at the combat mechanics of the game =P

 

But those games can also get away with more of this kind of thing because they're done from the isometric view and pausing the game during dialogue. I don't see the characters sitting there pantomiming actions while text goes along the bottom like it would if I just muted voices with Mass Effect's cutscene based dialogue.

 

That would be more jarring to me than anything else mentioned here.

[In Exile]

I really liked that.  That's exactly how I read books; I process the spoken words and the descriptions separately, but simultaneously.  There shouldn't be a pause after "STOP" when Garth says it, but the description of Garth's behaviour is still necessary.  The subtitles were value-added versions of the spoken lines.

 

I thought that was a terrific innovation.

 

That doesn't make sense to me at all - is this how people read books? I don't even understand how it's possible to process written text separately, but simultaneously. 

 

I know I'm a peculiar reader - I don't actually "hear" voices, for lack of a better word, when I read - but I can't even begin to process how this would work. It's just two contradictory inputs - like listening to someone tell me about their day while trying to read an essay about the printing press. 

[In Exile]

Why bother chasing a unicorn?  I can't have all the features I want, so I'm asking for a small low-cost feature which will improve the game for me.

 

Will it make it as good as DAO was?  That's the wrong question.  It's irrelevant.  It's a red herring.  The question is how we can make the voiced protagonist BioWare uses better, and a way we can do that is by adding a volume control.

 

And I am asking for a volume control.  A volume control is exactly what I'm requesting.  One thing someone could do with a volume control is turn the volume to zero, but having a mute toggle rather than a mute toggle is both harder to sell (because it would produce a seemingly less polished result) and would be a less powerful tool for the players (a mute toggle is either on or off - a volume control has settings in between).

 

I'm asking for the volume control.  Yes, I would use it as a mute, but that doesn't mean I'd prefer the mute.  The mute is the lesser feature.  A volume control would be better (and probably cheaper).

 

But the developers aren't making a game for Sylvius - modders might, but developers have to make a game accessible and intuitive for a very general audience, which has particular expectations about the polish and usability of features included in the product. To whit, DA2's recycling of levels. Bioware gambled that people would accept recycled areas so long as they had varied content in them. They were wrong - the recycled areas were taken as a sign of amateurish cheapness. 

 

Differentially muting characters would require testing - it would be costly. And there would be no benefit, as the feature is peculiar, except for the small subset of players who would be happy with this as a stand-in for silent PCs. But that's a small group of players, relative to the opportunity cost - designing any feature that any larger group of players would enjoy. That's my point here. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

If Ryder was silent I wouldn't even buy the game. Voice adds more to the character. Who the hell wants to roleplay as a mute?

No one, as far as I know (though that would be an interesting exercise).

No one is asking for the chance to play as a mute. We're asking for the chance to headcanon the voice without having an actual voice there to get in our way.

[In Exile]

No one, as far as I know (though that would be an interesting exercise).

No one is asking for the chance to play as a mute. We're asking for the chance to headcanon the voice without having an actual voice there to get in our way.

 

I'd actually kind of like to play an RPG designed to be a mute character. The closest I can think of that actually has a mute character is the rank insanity that is Drakengard (or however you spell that name). 

[Sylvius the Mad]

But the developers aren't making a game for Sylvius - modders might, but developers have to make a game accessible and intuitive for a very general audience, which has particular expectations about the polish and usability of features included in the product. To whit, DA2's recycling of levels. Bioware gambled that people would accept recycled areas so long as they had varied content in them. They were wrong - the recycled areas were taken as a sign of amateurish cheapness.

If BioWare made moddable games, I probably wouldn't bother asking for this.

But they don't. That's one of the costs of being mod-unfriendly; they need to endure more requests for optional or niche features.

An unmoddable game needs to accommodate more types of play out of the box than a moddable game does in order to be a game of equivalent quality.

Differentially muting characters would require testing - it would be costly. And there would be no benefit, as the feature is peculiar, except for the small subset of players who would be happy with this as a stand-in for silent PCs. But that's a small group of players, relative to the opportunity cost - designing any feature that any larger group of players would enjoy. That's my point here.

It's not a mute; it's a volume control.

Yes, it would require some testing, just as the volume controls for music and sound effects do.

[Sylvius the Mad]

That doesn't make sense to me at all - is this how people read books? I don't even understand how it's possible to process written text separately, but simultaneously.

I'd likento understand how the line is delivered by the character, but the sentence isn't written that way. To get the content of the sentence as well as experience the line as spoken, I see three options:

1. I could read the sentence twice.

2. I could read the sentence once as written, and then construct the line from memory afterward.

3. I could read the sentence for content and assemble both interpretations on the fly.

This last one appears to be what I do. I don't think I always read the words in a sentence in order; I'm aware of the order (because English syntax is really strict about word order in a way that most other languages aren't), but I think I'm not actually collecting their meaning in that order.

I also find it hard to examine consciously what I'm doing without affecting what I'm doing, so I could be wrong about this. It would be interesting to see where my eyes are looking moment to moment as I read.

I know that sometimes I become aware that I skipped ahead, possibly jumping whole sentences or short paragraphs. When I reach a convenient stopping point, I'll go back to see what I missed (which might be a few pages back by then).

I know I'm a peculiar reader - I don't actually "hear" voices, for lack of a better word, when I read - but I can't even begin to process how this would work. It's just two contradictory inputs - like listening to someone tell me about their day while trying to read an essay about the printing press.

I see it like trying to hear about someone's day (when you do genuinely care about the day), but also in that story trying to listen for clues to a puzzle you're trying to solve but cannot reveal.

Or when listening to witness testimony in court, trying to find new avenues of questioning at the same time as trying to find holes in the testimony itself. Taking one set of inputs and trying to do two things with it at the same time.

[sjsharp2011]

If Ryder was silent I wouldn't even buy the game. Voice adds more to the character. Who the hell wants to roleplay as a mute?

Agreed I think if Bioware endfed up going back I probably wouldn't bother getting MEA either swo I'd say it's unlikely to happen.

[Monk]

Developers don't add broken features as a rule. …

 

How is it a broken feature?

 

 

…Simply differentially muting the PCs voice isn't a feature. …

 

Multiple games, AAA titles, actually have options which only affect the PC's voice. WoW has an option which toggles the Death Knight's "spooky" voice. Saints Row, as well as DAI, has the option to completely change out the voice, which also happens to affect in-game cutscenes and cinematics as well. And one of these voice options, in SR3, was effectively a "silent option": it was a zombie voice which made the NPCs rely on grunts and hand expressions to understand the PC.

 

 

…What happens with the animations? Does the scene go on without any sound at all expect for the paraphrase, a mute protagonist mantomining a reaction? Does the scene skip to the NPC talking? Dialogue now has actions - does the scene just stutter and skip to the next placement?

 

It's not as simple as just a mute button. This is actually unlike say POE where they could have given us the option to mute NPC in dialogue so that their own broken dialogue system worked.

 

I've already said in my reply to Sylvius - developers have to design these features well to include them in the commercial game. This is totally different from an optional mod with different expectations of quality and QA.

 

Now how the voice option affects cutscenes and other cinematics is up to the developer. Since game engines are capable of playable, cinematic quality, these scenes are dynamic. That's why the armor and weapons are those you have equiped for the PC. The only time they likely change this is when certain items effect animation negatively. Where does the voice come in? They can decide to leave in the voice for all the frames, since these scenes aren't dialog scenes. Or, conversely, just momentarily show the PC then immediately continuing on the scene; the silence is kept and with the PC shown, the player can decide what the PC said during their parts in the scene.

[Andrew Lucas]

No one, as far as I know (though that would be an interesting exercise).
No one is asking for the chance to play as a mute. We're asking for the chance to headcanon the voice without having an actual voice there to get in our way.

I don't think you need to headcanon that, Bioware will be giving you the basics of their new character, you're not making one from the scratch.

Honestly, it seems to me you literally want to play god in these games, when you already have minimum control since day one.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I don't think you need to headcanon that, Bioware will be giving you the basics of their new character, you're not making one from the scratch.

Every detail filled in by BioWare needs to be laid out explicitly before character creation. Every detail they don't describe prior to character creation is available for us to headcanon.

Otherwise we're being asked to make decisions about the character (including about his background) without having enough information to be confident that we won't be contradicted.

It would be KotOR2 all over again.

Honestly, it seems to me you literally want to play god in these games, when you already have minimum control since day one.

I want to play one character. I want to play 100% of one character.

[Andrew Lucas]

Every detail filled in by BioWare needs to be laid out explicitly before character creation. Every detail they don't describe prior to character creation is available for us to headcanon.
Otherwise we're being asked to make decisions about the character (including about his background) without having enough information to be confident that we won't be contradicted.
It would be KotOR2 all over again.
I want to play one character. I want to play 100% of one character.

How does a voice change that? It's not like you had the option to choose your voice when you're born, considering you do what you want regarding yourself, unlike Bioware's character.

Well, too bad you won't ever 100% do that. You don't control the narrative, nor fully the character Bioware lends to you.

[Sylvius the Mad]

How does a voice change that? It's not like you had the option to choose your voice when you're born, considering you do what you want regarding yourself, unlike Bioware's character.

It's not the specific voice so much as the performance.

That said, you're drawing a false analogy. I didn't get to chose my voice, and neither does my character get to choose his voice. But that doesn't preclude me from choosing his voice. For all you know, your voice was chosen for you by your player (who exists outside your universe and you cannot perceive, just as my characters cannot perceive me).

Moreover, if I want to play two wildly different characters (something BioWare's silent protagonist RPGs typically allowed), getting to use a different voice each time would make it easier.

Well, too bad you won't ever 100% do that. You don't control the narrative, nor fully the character Bioware lends to you.

My definition of the narrative is very different from yours, and they are both equally valid.

[SagaX]

A silent character would be history related RIDICULOUS ._.

You better mute your TV/PC when the main hero speaks ._.

[Sylvius the Mad]

A silent character would be history related RIDICULOUS ._.
You better mute your TV/PC when the main hero speaks ._.

I'll probably just turn the voice over volume to zero, thereby muting all the characters.