Print

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

Yes, both of them.

Yes, Planescape: Torment. (Planescape did have voice acting, just not full voice acting.)

Yes, Baldur's Gate.

Unsure.

No, neither of them would've been considerably better games.

I have not played either of them.

Don't care. / View poll.

[Pathos]

After watching this SW:TOR Bioware interview, the main director claimed that "full voice acting in RPGs has changed the way he views games". Honest to god, these people are the main people in computer games? It changed the way he viewed the games? Reeeeeally?!

Full voice acting really isn't that important to me, personally, I'm quite happy to read reams of text to get the plotline instead of listening to a voice actor. It also lengthens the development time and increases production costs considerably, unless you have like three actors doing slightly different voices, which is hilarious.

I want to know what you all think, before I rant completely, though.

So, what do you all think?

[Cthulhu]

Vidjyagaems aren't known for Oscar-class acting, and RPGs tend to vary between Sylvester Stallone and the guy from Troll 2 in quality.

So no.  Voice acting is not good for RPGs.  Text is better.  I can read faster than you can act, and I can get into the gameplay faster while still getting the plot.

[Josephus]

If the full voice-acting in Baldur's Gate was Irenicus-level, then... pretty kickass. But otherwise, I don't see a big difference.

I mean, remember Fallout 3? The voice-acting shouldn't just be there, it should also have quality (which FO3's voice-acting... lacked to a degree.)

[DJ]

Voices in my head sound better than voice actors.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

The voice acting that was there really enhanced Those games because it was actually good.  Full voice acting just lowers the overall quality of the voice acting in the game.  Not to mention the cost increase, even if they get Steve Blum to play five seperate characters plus several generic reused voice clips, and in that case five seperate characters plus several generic clips have the same voice.

Still, both those games would have been worse without any voice acting.

[Duke 2.0]

 If it is done well voice acting is a very nice to have thing, immersing you into the game more. But this only helps when you are dealing with a situation where text would not work just as well. I don't want to hear the voice of the bored shopkeeper describe the stats of the various guns I'm buying, just use text there. On the contrary when my nemesis calls me out and taunts me he had better be voice acting as if he is doing the acrobatic stunts he uses to avoid me.

 Basically if text can fulfill the role then there is no real point to voice acting. But there are some places in games where text won't cut it, where good voice acting makes it ten times better.

[fenrif]

I find with most games I end up reading the text and by the time I've finished the voice actor is only just finishing the first sentence, so I skip it. Unless it's an FMV I have no time for it.

[Jay]

Just Cause 2's voice acting made it considerably better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTmyLsSWksM

For an RPG?
Nawww.

[CJ1145]

No, those games are good as they are. But some games *coughOldRepublic* could substantially benefit from the immersion that full-voicing might bring, especially if they're already known for at least decent voice acting.

[Hawkfrost]

I don't like it in games where you use a custom name.
'Cause then the dialog always tries to not say your name, ever. They just say something like "Adventurer", or "Chosen One", or "Dunmer ".

[ein]

That's why text is superior.
You can have a custom name with people actually saying it.

[Gunner-Chan]

Text. Always. Not because of any issues with acting. Just that making speaking roles means having to limit things because there needs to be voices for ANY kind of dialog. So it becomes a limiter.

[Akura]

I don't like it in games where you use a custom name.
'Cause then the dialog always tries to not say your name, ever. They just say something like "Adventurer", or "Chosen One", or "Dunmer ".

I found this hilarious in FFX and FFX-2. Because Tidus was the only character you could name, they never, never said his name. Ever. In FFX-2, you don't rename Tidus, but the character bios list him as "????".

They do say his name in Kingdom Hearts, though.

[Jreengus]

This reminds me of this article. Personally I'm in the same boat as fenrif, are you guys still saying the first few words? I'm done already and I don't want to have to listen to you! Skip!

I found Mass Effect to be very annoying because the skip and select option button were the same so I'd end up accidentally selecting a chat option whilst trying to skip a line.

[Guillaume777]

This guy has another take on voice acting: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/7588-Experienced-Points-Voice-vs-Choice

Basically, voice acting makes it too expensive to have lot of text in a game.

EDIT: Jreengus beat me to it