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Story telling must be voiced

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  • StellosStellos Member UncommonPosts: 1,491

    I am 100% for the voice over concept.  I feel that it will add a more imersive environment.  I hope Bioware can accomplish this task.  I have really high hopes for this game as well. 

  • _Shadowmage_Shadowmage Member Posts: 1,459

    That would make it the first MMO to only offer a English language version. So all those people who dont speak English and want localised versions can all take a jump or cough up the $billion dollars required to translate it into Russian/ Spanish / Chinese etc

    Or maybe it would have voice - then the text pop up underneath localised - so a MMO with subtitles.

  • DimajexDimajex Member Posts: 2

    At the very least I would like to see the core story threads voiced.  I think that if Bioware wants to be serious about having storytelling be one of the "pillars" of this game, they need to meet the expectations of the modern RPG player in that respect.  Sure the majority can be unvoiced, but some camera direction of voice acting go a long way towards building a world.

    As for non-english speaking nations, I think there still needs to be subtitles available regardless if the in-game characters are speaking the language or not.  Who knows, if this game takes off like I hope it does, and they are just swimming in the money like Blizzard, they could do the entire game in a handful of languages with patching.  Oooh.  Better yet, just streamed into the game as they add it and you talk to NPCs.

    Dare I even say that having voice acted NPCs to model mannerisims and acccents off of might even lead to more interesting and widespread role playing on the servers.

  • StellosStellos Member UncommonPosts: 1,491
    Originally posted by Dimajex


    At the very least I would like to see the core story threads voiced.  I think that if Bioware wants to be serious about having storytelling be one of the "pillars" of this game, they need to meet the expectations of the modern RPG player in that respect. 



     

    The core story is all that I am really interested in as far as the voice over concept.  There isn't much reason to put voice over in every little story path that the game takes, this would only cause more problems and delay launch.  But, I definately want to see it in the main story.

  • Bob_BlawblawBob_Blawblaw Member Posts: 1,278
    Originally posted by mefistofelis


    If you put 500 npcs talk for 2,5 minutes each you will spend about 31gigabytes of space (in wave form)that is without compresion and lowering the quality of the sound to mp3 or any other protocol...you can easily drop that space to half  (15gigs) and even more,like 8 to 10gigs and still maintain a good professional level of quality sounds.
    So no,it is not science fiction anymore to create an mmo with full speech dialogues.
    disclaimer:Numbers are not 100% accurate but close enough(90%) i've made a quick calculation any fellow sound engineer feel free to corect the numbers aproximity

     

    http://www.sounddevices.com/calculator/index.html

    I use this audio/time calculator.

  • KainisKainis Member Posts: 436

    While full voice over would be great for many, it by no means should be the make or break of the "immersion" factor. You see, all those nice, fake accents takes money to pay the actors to do them. If an mmo were to pay actors for EVERY quest in the game, that would be hundreds of thousands of dollars, that I would actually prefer to see being worked on bugs, increased content, better customer support, and/ or increase graphics- in that order. Voice overs should always remain just icing on the proverbial cake.

    -----------------------
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  • baphametbaphamet Member RarePosts: 3,311

    if they do it, it should give you the option to install because i bet that game would be 30-40 gig (even more) with every NPC having multiple voice over story threads, the way bioware is trying to do it.

  • AnubisanAnubisan Member UncommonPosts: 1,798

    I expect that the game will be voice-acted. This is one of Bioware's best game features and something that we have all come to expect from their games. I don't think that they would go to all this effort and then NOT do voice acting for their characters.

    I don't even think that it would be as monumental of a task as many expect seeing as how many of the characters in the game will be alien species. Those of you who have played KOTOR no doubt remember how many of the NPCs spoke in alien jibber-jabber with sub-titles that made sense. Using this technique on roughly half of the NPCs would vastly reduce the amount of work Bioware needs to do on the voice acting and would also create the ILLUSION of voice acting for every NPC.

    Whenever they want to be lazy with an unimportant NPC, all they have to do is make it an alien...

  • LocklainLocklain Member Posts: 2,154
    Originally posted by baphamet


    if they do it, it should give you the option to install because i bet that game would be 30-40 gig (even more) with every NPC having multiple voice over story threads, the way bioware is trying to do it.

    Storage is so cheap now, I say go with as much voice as possible.  I don't care if it takes three blu-ray disks to fit the game, I would still like everything voiced.  To be realistic only main quest lines will be voiced at start with a possible addition later on for other quests.

    It's a Jeep thing. . .
    _______
    |___image|
    \_______/
    = image||||||image =
    |X| \*........*/ |X|
    |X|_________|X|
    You wouldn't understand
  • CaldicotCaldicot Member UncommonPosts: 454

    The droids can have full voiceover with a little help from some random text-to-speech program. Easy peasy :)

    If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. - Carl Sagan

  • arakinasarakinas Member Posts: 2

    Full voice isn't that great.  Some people play in areas where the the noise wouldn't be welcome, and other parents like myself would miss a lot of it anyway, since you can't schedule a kids squeel.  Typically I find a lot of voice overs annoying, either due to the voice actors themselves, or the the pace of speech, etc.  I'd much rather not have to hear it in many cases, and the size of sound files not used would be a lot of wasted space.

  • tpoz34tpoz34 Member Posts: 21

    Yea I understand voice over that’s why it’s so much better to buy CD versions of books so someone reads it to me!! I understand the feel that you would be trying to get from voice over! However, if you tell a good story and since your actions affect the type of character you become you won’t mind reading a little, because you just might miss something that is important it’s one thing to do this in an RPG(single player game) where you can save---but as stated from the Devs themselves “there are no second chances you can’t save, the choice you make is final” how big are decisions and how big does it affect you I have no-idea.. However if you’re doing a quest/story line thing and you could have reached a new level or opened a new skill—but because you didn’t read it and just made a decision---I wonder if you would make that same mistake twice?

  • FreddyNoNoseFreddyNoNose Member Posts: 1,558
    Originally posted by loyaltrekie


    Full voiceover = waste of space/time
    Voiceover for critical story components = Yes
    Voiceover for random NPC telling me to kill a rat = No
     



     

    This is the common sense answer!

  • severiusseverius Member UncommonPosts: 1,516

    Voiceover is a nice gimmick, and can SOMETIMES add to the immersion quality of a game.  I, however, do not believe that it is a component that will "make" a game.  On the other hand it is most assuredly a way to "break" the game for damn sure.  How many games have you played where the voice acting was little more than just phoned in?  I know I have played far too many for my tastes.  And a game where you will ostensibly spend hundreds if not thousands of hours in the game world can easily be sunk by an annoying character voice droning on and on.

    I would prefer it if the designers of games spent far more time and money on improving gameplay elements and the engine so that the game will run and be entertaining.

  • Would love to have full voice-over to help with the immersion into the story. It's not a "must" for me, though. I enjoyed previous BioWare games without full voice-over.

    EQ2 I believe has full voice-over, so SW:TOR wouldn't be "the first".

  • NeoGauchoNeoGaucho Member Posts: 19

    Full voice over could be possible.

     

    - Key and critical character story: Quest story tellers, companions, consciousness = special voice actors.

    - Random quests, non critical story = computer generated voice. completely editable with effects!

     

    This is a great feature, but we gamers live in Earth not just english speakin nations, so I am not sure how the Public relations department would handle that in a way that would benefit us english speakers, isnt that a bit too selfish? One thing is knowing how to read english and another is to listen and grasp everything that was just said to you in a natural way.

    Full voice over is great but not practical for a game that I am sure is aiming for a world wide audience.

    GAUCHO
    MMO experience:
    -SWG 3 years
    -WoW 4 years
    Currently playing:
    -Runes of Magic
    -Warhammer Online
    -Mabinogi

  • inzane81inzane81 Member Posts: 2

    Most countries that play MMO's can at least understand English.  And there's always subtitles. As for the public relations department, uuuh, who cares?  There are plenty of English speaking fans who are going to enjoy the game, no need to dumb it down for the smaller percentage.

  • NeoGauchoNeoGaucho Member Posts: 19

    Is not dumbing it down when there is plenty more to focus on, like a solid driven story, and they have already said that there is so much story they are planning to create. Audio is just icing on the cake, but when the cake has a stale taste, I will certainly spit it out.

     

    GAUCHO
    MMO experience:
    -SWG 3 years
    -WoW 4 years
    Currently playing:
    -Runes of Magic
    -Warhammer Online
    -Mabinogi

  • WisebutCruelWisebutCruel Member Posts: 1,089

    Anyone who thinks full voice is mandatory in any game, should spend more time in remedial English class learning to read.

    I have no problem reading a story, so I'm perfectly fine with no voice. In fact, I prefer no voice, as then the voice does not blow my perception of what that character would actually sound like. I also don't enjoy downloading 2 gigs of extra voice files that are unneeded and just waste space and bandwidth.

    Plus, it's fun to laugh at idiots who continually ask "What do i do? Where do I go?" because they are too stupid or lazy to read the text.

  • BarCrowBarCrow Member UncommonPosts: 2,195

    The key is a nice balance. Just enough to keep me immersed. There is nothing worse than a slow talking quest giver that drones on and on for several minutes more than it takes the average person to read. This is not only aggravating and boring...but a waste of data space.  Voice overs for back and forth conversing and replies. Maybe quick quest voice overs..but for longer detailed initial quests...I think text is fine. So many people complain that MMO's are getting dumbed down...Now we are not even required or expected to read?

  • inzane81inzane81 Member Posts: 2
    Originally posted by NeoGaucho


    Is not dumbing it down when there is plenty more to focus on, like a solid driven story, and they have already said that there is so much story they are planning to create. Audio is just icing on the cake, but when the cake has a stale taste, I will certainly spit it out.
     

     

    How would people you don't know or care about perhaps not understanding what a voice actor is saying diminish your own personal enjoyment of said voice actor?

  • NeoGauchoNeoGaucho Member Posts: 19

    I agree with your comment that it SHOULD BE balanced Barcrow, and most of the time you do get some type of voice acting in mmos in some degree or other. But complete voice over an entire collection of stories and then try to serve a large international community where translation will eventually be needed is creating more trouble than you can handle instead of focusing on the task at hand which is delivering a great story. Personally and like many others I read text, I read quests and I immerse myself in it. If I was to treat the game like grinding a character unnaturally fast without even enjoying the story, then I am no longer truly enjoying what star wars has in it for me and I am paying for good intelligent entertainment and fantasy not just a grind to the top level to get bored too fast all too quick like most mmos are nowadays, too fast, too quick, too dumb, too boring and at the end of the game session I am exhausted of a monotonous cycle with absolutly no expectations and a sore eye from looking at the same sorry fools.

    GAUCHO
    MMO experience:
    -SWG 3 years
    -WoW 4 years
    Currently playing:
    -Runes of Magic
    -Warhammer Online
    -Mabinogi

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