Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Okenido]

Am I the only one not disturbed by the small amount of voice actors?

[cerapa]

Everyone has the same voice, so the voices dont change when you ask the beggars for rumors.

[umiman]

Yeah. One of the things I look very closely at (or in this case, listen very closely for) would be voice acting. I know the costs of giving each and every individual a seperate voice is crazy high, but seriously... Bethseda really loves to cut the corners when it comes to voice immersion.

There's no real reason why they can't get members of their development team to do small snippets of voices or why they can't ask family, etc. It's not like we need A-list voice actors for every peasant and child in the world.

If there are 100 members in the development team and even half of them just said things like, "Hi!" or "How are you doing?", it would already be a vast improvement over what they currently have.

[Cthulhu]

I heard it was because they hired professional stage-actors, and they couldn't make the transition to voice-acting well.  That seems like a Bethesda thing to do.

[Virtz]

Everyone has the same voice, so the voices dont change when you ask the beggars for rumors.

You mean like this? Or was that supposed be read as irony?

There's no real reason why they can't get members of their development team to do small snippets of voices or why they can't ask family, etc. It's not like we need A-list voice actors for every peasant and child in the world.

If there are 100 members in the development team and even half of them just said things like, "Hi!" or "How are you doing?", it would already be a vast improvement over what they currently have.

Not every person's voice is appropriate for a medieval setting (or other pre-modern settings). And that's not considering how terrible they might be at actual voice-acting (as in speaking in the appropriate tone and accent).

However, one professional voice-actor could deliver different sounding performances for different NPCs. There's also the option of using minor voice mutators for various NPCs to make the use of the same voice actor slightly less obvious. Unfortunately, Bethesda has tried neither option, and continues to use the same voice-actors who sound the same in FO3 as they did in Oblivion.

[Dakk]

Everyone has the same voice, so the voices dont change when you ask the beggars for rumors.

You mean like this? Or was that supposed be read as irony?

There's no real reason why they can't get members of their development team to do small snippets of voices or why they can't ask family, etc. It's not like we need A-list voice actors for every peasant and child in the world.

If there are 100 members in the development team and even half of them just said things like, "Hi!" or "How are you doing?", it would already be a vast improvement over what they currently have.

Not every person's voice is appropriate for a medieval setting (or other pre-modern settings). And that's not considering how terrible they might be at actual voice-acting (as in speaking in the appropriate tone and accent).

However, one professional voice-actor could deliver different sounding performances for different NPCs. There's also the option of using minor voice mutators for various NPCs to make the use of the same voice actor slightly less obvious. Unfortunately, Bethesda has tried neither option, and continues to use the same voice-actors who sound the same in FO3 as they did in Oblivion.

How come? As far as i know, human vocal cords haven't gone under a mutation or anything throughout story. Its a matter of making the accent work. What made oblivion suck for me was the fact people living in different regions had similar if not identical voices, that and the imperial guards having all the same STOP, YOU HAVE VIOLATED THE LAW voice.

[Yanlin]

"Of course Lucian. I will blow up Megaton for you. After all you've done for me in the Dark Brotherhood... ANYTHING for you Lucian!"



Also, STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM!

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Wes Johnson - Lucien Lachance / Dremora / Arena Announcer / The Prophet / Pelinal Whitestrake / Sheogorath / Hirrus Clutumnus / Herdir / The Gray Fox / Male Imperials (voice)

Excluding the Zod, Boromir, and Picard, there are eleven voice actors/actresses.

[Shadowlord]

In Oblivion, the characters that comes the closest to having the kind of power Vivec or Dagoth Ur have are Mannimarco, and Mankar Camoran. Neither of them come remotely close to being remotely threatening. You can either cast the uberspell you have by then to instantly vaporize them, or wack them around for fifteen seconds as they ineffectually summon weak monsters and throw fireballs at you.

Mannimarco was ridiculous. I was a vampire (and thus immune to paralysis) and he cast paralyze on me about 8 times in a row as if he just couldn't figure out why it wasn't working... He was pretty much still trying to paralyze me up until the moment he died - which didn't take very long. I was rather dissapointed.

Oh, and when I walked up to him to talk to him, he tried and failed to paralyze me before starting his speech, and then during the speech made a comment about how he had paralyzed me so he could talk to me before stealing my soul... I can only presume that either my character was standing perfectly still just for fun, or that Mannimarco was a moron.

I expected an epic battle against a demigod and got Idiot McStupid WeakElf instead. Surely the real Mannimarco must have been killed long ago, and this must have been some wannabe wimp which took his name...

[Chutney]

Eh, I killed Mannimarco by diving underwater and watching him drown.

POWERFUL, INTELLIGENT WIZARD INDEED!

[Yanlin]

Eh, I killed Mannimarco by diving underwater and watching him drown.

POWERFUL, INTELLIGENT WIZARD INDEED!

It's actually the evil witch. Water soluble.

[Servant Corps]

NO ACTION IN RPGS
NO PLAYER SKILL INVOLVED
ROLL THE DICE, DON'T HAVE FUN
HAVING FUN?  GTFO, THIS IS AN RPG, FUN IS NOT ALLOWED

If you don't enjoy RPGs then don't play them.  Or just be happy game developers have decided to call everything a RPG for some innate quality the term apparently has.

You complain about Fallout 3 and Spore in their respective threads. And you try to give this same advice to Cthulhu?

[Cthulhu]

Technically, just about all video games are RPGs, if you define RPG as a game where you play the role of someone else.

[Sensei]

In Oblivion, the characters that comes the closest to having the kind of power Vivec or Dagoth Ur have are Mannimarco, and Mankar Camoran. Neither of them come remotely close to being remotely threatening. You can either cast the uberspell you have by then to instantly vaporize them, or wack them around for fifteen seconds as they ineffectually summon weak monsters and throw fireballs at you.

Mannimarco was ridiculous. I was a vampire (and thus immune to paralysis) and he cast paralyze on me about 8 times in a row as if he just couldn't figure out why it wasn't working... He was pretty much still trying to paralyze me up until the moment he died - which didn't take very long. I was rather dissapointed.

Oh, and when I walked up to him to talk to him, he tried and failed to paralyze me before starting his speech, and then during the speech made a comment about how he had paralyzed me so he could talk to me before stealing my soul... I can only presume that either my character was standing perfectly still just for fun, or that Mannimarco was a moron.

I expected an epic battle against a demigod and got Idiot McStupid WeakElf instead. Surely the real Mannimarco must have been killed long ago, and this must have been some wannabe wimp which took his name...

Wait, what, he talks to you?

I had a silencing sword and crazy speed/acrobatics, I ninjaraped him and he was dead in three hits...
Also what Chutney said, I did that to like 40 guards once.

Similar to in KOTOR, when I got KO'ed with gas for a plot point, but my GUY WAS WEARING A GAS MASK.

Anyway, back on topic... Doesn't look like the new game is quest based. Or am I just confused?

[umiman]

Makes you wonder doesn't it? It seems that RPGs have to choose either between presentation or content. For example, in Nethack, we can have so much content simply because the presentation is so simple. There's no voice work, no pretty pictures, nothing of that sort, so the devs can put everything they want inside the game.

Sort of like the isometric Fallouts as well, where due to the reliance of text, they can throw in tonnes and tonnes of stuff. I guess the deal breaker would be Planescape: Torment... as it kinda worked with everything being awesome, with ample voicework as well.

I'd like to think that if Fallout 3 or Oblivion didn't have any voicework at all, there would be a whole lot more to do in the games and everything would make a whole lot more sense. They wouldn't have had to worry about voice actors reading their lines and so, could write whatever the heck they want into the plot.