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[Column] Elder Scrolls Online: Voice and Choice

2

Comments

  • NanfoodleNanfoodle Member LegendaryPosts: 10,610
    Originally posted by Saerain
    Originally posted by Nanfoodle
    As long as its not over done like SWToR I am happy to hear this. I did enjoy VO in SWToR and would have liked ited it more if it was more impacting what you decided. 

    How do you ‘overdo’ voice acting? Do you mean that it was very hammy?

     

    No, where even simple quests have long drawn out VO and its not even for the sense of story. If there is going to be VO make sure its worth listening to, story, lore or something funny. 

  • ThomasN7ThomasN7 87.18.7.148Member CommonPosts: 6,690
    I'm getting that deja-vu feeling here. This is going to be a bumpy ride folks. Make sure you have the Rolaids or Tums near by.
    30
  • DenambrenDenambren Member UncommonPosts: 399

    a) report that the jedi padawans are in love and have them expelled from the order (light side points)

     

    b) say nothing about their relationship (neutral)

     

    c) try to conceal their relationship so that they are not kicked out of the order (dark side points)

     

     
  • GravargGravarg Member UncommonPosts: 3,424

    I think Zenimax will learn from Bioware's mistakes.  Hopefully, they'll make the choices you make actually mean something.  In SWTOR it doesn't matter if I kill every NPC, torture every companion, or degrade every superior on my Sith Assassin, cuz "as a Sith, I'm better than everyone" :)  The game pretty much played out the same no matter what.  One thing I liked in Skyrim, was if you got enough bounty, NPCs would send people after you.  I also liked stealing stuff from guards, and trying to not get caught :D

     

    My best hope is that ESO will be a crafting paradise.  There hasn't been a great "Crafters' game" in a long time.  I can remember in the early years of MMOs, in Ashen Empires mainly. Spending my time in town peddling my wares that I crafted, and leveled up from crafting.  I'm a crafter at heart, and it's always one of the things I enjoy most in any MMO I've ever played.

  • IncomparableIncomparable Member UncommonPosts: 1,138
    That also means a lot of development will go into presentation. I hope they are very efficient at vo work and even still only limit vo where it does fit and still develop other aspects of the game as an Mmo. However it being eso, maybe not compromising the single player quality is the most important but also developing the engine to handle Mmo development in the future.

    “Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble”

  • ArglebargleArglebargle Member EpicPosts: 3,381
    Originally posted by jtcgs

    "Voice acting has been a major element of The Elder Scrolls series for quite some time now."

    So has the ability to chose and even change your faction at will andhave any  race/faction combination, not be locked into closed zones, have content that levels with you so it stays 100% viable and you werent funneled into some far off PvP lands behind an invisible wall that magically kept the enemy from entering your lands even though you are at war.

    Sure isnt stopping them from not doing those TES staples and instead spending how many thousands of man hours on voice that should be used to make sure the game has depth, something every single other MMOs with full voiceovers LACKED in.

    You slipped that knife right in between the ribs quite nicely! 

     

    While fully voiced games can help with immersion, I'm not sure the expense is worth the trouble it brings.   It certainly makes added or changing content way less flexible.   Even more so in MMO type games.

    If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.

  • JetrpgJetrpg Member UncommonPosts: 2,347
    Wrong direction , money and man power in worthless areas. Bad call, mauyeb ok if ther are no vut sceens ie voice acting while actually doing things. Otherwise no point to it.

    "Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ..." - Thomas Paine

  • maddog15amaddog15a Member UncommonPosts: 83

    So not only have they split up their content with heavy Faction restrictions but now their doing voice acting, which continues to show it slows down content development.

    So how long exactly are content updates for this game going to be 1 year, 2 years, 5?

  • CarnsterCarnster Member Posts: 1
    As a confirmed Altaholic the VO in quests gets old really quickly. Like someone else said, story and lore-mongers will always take the time to read and get involved in what they're doing. After all, Elder Scrolls games have always come with a whole raft of reading material in-game. Most mmo players are just going to skip VO like they do for walls of text. It's a hard one to know what to do to get the balance just right. What Elder Scrolls games have in their favour is that VO quest-givers in previous games have been balanced pretty well, avoiding becoming repetative and siding on the side of just long enough to be deep but not too long to be distracting. Whether the regular MMO junkies see it the same way, we'll have to see.
  • smurfmasterxsmurfmasterx Member Posts: 9

    Ugh, voice acting.  We have movies for that.  And any mmo with voice acting very quickly becomes redundant once you reach end game, which generally takes a few months.  Then you're stuck hearing the same old crap for  years (if you stick around that long).

     

    Plus, as someone else had mentioned, it's a heavy weight on the resourses of the game.  

     

    I want to beleive in this game, but really I can see already its going to cater to the noob: i.e handholding, insulting anyone with a brain by using the MMO template of quest markers, and linear "go hear then go there" gameplay.  

     

    Gamers usually don't know what they want.  What they all secretly desire is a game that isn't pretty much everyone wearing the same gear (with only very minor differences) so that nobody cries during pvp.  They don't really want cutscenes or actors or any of that crap.  What they really want is tier raiding, to have oportunities to actually advance your character beyond "slightly better" than others so that you can absolutely own people in pvp (because you actually put in time and work to gain the power) and to not see a quest marker for the rest of their lives.  In other words: dificulty and complexity, not simplicity and equality, which make for very boring, very marxist style gameplay.  

     

    "MMO's shouldn't be Black Ops II with swords."

     
     
  • daltaniousdaltanious Member UncommonPosts: 2,381
    Originally posted by Nanfoodle
    As long as its not over done like SWToR I am happy to hear this. I did enjoy VO in SWToR and would have liked ited it more if it was more impacting what you decided. 

    I was just happy as it was, no game had more fun vo or twists in story ... but, hey, there is always room for improvement. :-))

    About impacting ... not sure if it is possible at all but for personal story.

  • SponJSponJ Member Posts: 1

    @smurfmasterx

    I agree that some gamers have a hidden desire to return to the days of "difficulty and complexity."

    You might want to check out "Camelot Unchained."

    It's still just a bunch of concepts, but if it gets funding from Kickstarter next month, it might be the complex, challenging MMO that you're looking for.

     

    Anyways, back to the topic of voice acting in ESO, as long as it doesn't have exorbitant amounts of voice acting like SW:TOR (e.g. a few lines of dialogue per quest, as opposed to several branching options per sentence), it could work fine.

    Dealing with choice, from what I've heard, it will utilize "phazing" technology, so if you decide to save a group of people, they will stay saved in your world and might even help you in the future. But if youir friend didn't save them, they wouldn't show up to him.

    Which sounds cool to me.

  • DauzqulDauzqul Member RarePosts: 1,982

    "Moral Choices". Comeon, guys! It amazes me how easily people fall for this kind of stuff. The exact same thing was said about SWTOR.

    There is always going to be a choice among the "moral" selection that will offer your character a better reward, item stat or faction point.

    What does VO really mean? It means that we will all be following the same "legacy" storyline and that our characters will speak for us.

     

  • FARGIN_WARFARGIN_WAR Member Posts: 166
    As long as the moral choices are more complex than "good, evil, ambiguous", and provided the voice acting is merely there to add flavor and not try to turn most of the game into a goddamned mini-screenplay instead of, a game, I don't see a problem.

    image

    If you don’t do stupid things while you’re young, you’ll have nothing to smile about when you’re old.

  • DraemosDraemos Member UncommonPosts: 1,521
    I can't play non voice acted MMOs anymore, so it seems like a solid move to me.
     
    The moral choices nonsense is just developer spin and it will inevitably be meaningless window dressing, so I wouldn't get worked up about that.  
  • DauzqulDauzqul Member RarePosts: 1,982
    Originally posted by Draemos
    I can't play non voice acted MMOs anymore, so it seems like a solid move to me.
     
    The moral choices nonsense is just developer spin and it will inevitably be meaningless window dressing, so I wouldn't get worked up about that.  

    I don't mind fully voiced gameplay. But we learned that it can be extremely expensive via SWTOR. Every game has a budget. I'd rather most of it be used towards gameplay, e.g., crafting, social tools, combat, progression, gigantic worlds, etc.

  • Sal1Sal1 Member UncommonPosts: 430
    Originally posted by Dauzqul
    Originally posted by Draemos
    I can't play non voice acted MMOs anymore, so it seems like a solid move to me.
     
    The moral choices nonsense is just developer spin and it will inevitably be meaningless window dressing, so I wouldn't get worked up about that.  

    I don't mind fully voiced gameplay. But we learned that it can be extremely expensive via SWTOR. Every game has a budget. I'd rather most of it be used towards gameplay, e.g., crafting, social tools, combat, progression, gigantic worlds, etc.

    I agree with what Dauzqul wrote. 

    Zenimax plans for a segmented and portioned game world with lots of voice overs? I don't know what they are smoking by going with this route.

  • MaelwyddMaelwydd Member Posts: 1,123

    Voice overs are fine. They can add a lot of characterisation and depth to a game. But if it is over used then it will be a waste of resources. I am quite happy for main quests to have VO and for voices to be given to give the world a little life but I think giving every quest a VO is pointless.

    To compare 2 recent games with VO work. SWTOR had too much VO work and a lot of wasted time and money spent on it. TSW was a good balance.

    Have Vo work but use it where you need to make a good point, for important missions and story stuff, but not for collecting 10 rat tails.

  • xysmachine78xysmachine78 Member Posts: 3

    If there's money budgeted for voice acting, then I say go for it. It's not like these voice actors get paid millions to do it... probably a few thousand. A drop in the budget for Bethesda. 

    If anything I'm more concerned about the security of the game and not having to worry about some @ssh@t overseas trying to hack into my account every single day.

  • 1dragonspell1dragonspell Member UncommonPosts: 5
    Well I for one can hardly wait for the BETA This might get me away from GW2 I Hope :-) 
  • OnisDEOnisDE Member UncommonPosts: 47

    Static recordings of actors tacked onto puppets sucks. Innovate! why not implement some of these high end text to speech systems that have emotions, accents, etc... Give npc's a real brain and plugin a purpose. NPC's with free though perofrming real life actions, truely interacting with each other and cooperating to accomplish tasks, combined with the ability to say what they want?!? Unscripted but guided. That's where Mythic should have spent all that cash. Coming up with these kinds of engines setting writers free to create atomsphere and conditions and purpose, allowing the sub plots to write themselves! A world with real day and night cycles, weather systems and animals that  have an effect on the environment and structures.

    Player to Player driven quests! Player 1 finds an NPC rebuilding his flood damaged cabin. NPC asks player 1 to help get him some wood for the repairs and he'll give him some coin(and of course you'll get xp for completing as well). Player 1 heads out to gather wood. Along comes Player 2 and the NPC asks hime to help Player 1. And guess what?! You cant send a /tell. The only way you can communicate in game is the way youy do in real life. /yell HEY Player 1 where are you?  And guess what , since your using a text to speech engine, customizable voices!  So here I am Player 1 gathering wood and I hear in the distance HEY Player 1 where are you? The NPC tells Player 2, Player 1 went south, and that's it, no magically appear lines to follow. Now thats immersive. Truely next gen, truely immersive.

  • murphmaster01murphmaster01 Member Posts: 1

    If it was any other company I would be worried.

    Bethesda already has a very large roster of voice actors just from the previous games. No hunting new talent needed aside from important characters. Many of these actors already know thier voices (nord bard 1 and windhelm gaurd 3 will be in skyrim and eso, garuntee it) as well so that helps. Now if they were creating a completely new world then it could be difficult.

    Also bethesda has deep deep pockets. That can front the bill no problem, probably an entire team just to making questing and talking to npc's immersive and enjoyable. That team has no bearing on game developement when you have enough money. Seriously people have some ****ing faith.

  • I don't understand why people moan and groan about "lore-mongerers" or voice acting and then continue to fail in-game because they overlooked the "WHY" of what they're doing. If you don't invest the time to learn WHY or HOW you should complete an objective you'll fail almost every time. Good luck in life with that attitude.

     

    When it comes down to it, the reason any game has NPCs who talk to you is to give the gamer a WHY and HOW the objective should be completed. I've watched numerous people fail miserably on let's plays due to their general disregard for communication in-game. 

    If you skip over all the dialogue and then fail, that's on you, Chief. Sure, its all about execution but if you have no information as to the why, you're gonna have a bad time.

  • RyowulfRyowulf Member UncommonPosts: 664
    Originally posted by Maelwydd

    Voice overs are fine. They can add a lot of characterisation and depth to a game. But if it is over used then it will be a waste of resources. I am quite happy for main quests to have VO and for voices to be given to give the world a little life but I think giving every quest a VO is pointless.

    To compare 2 recent games with VO work. SWTOR had too much VO work and a lot of wasted time and money spent on it. TSW was a good balance.

    Have Vo work but use it where you need to make a good point, for important missions and story stuff, but not for collecting 10 rat tails.

    TSW has a crappy cgen and combat animations/sounds.  This is a good example of spending money on VO while short-changing other parts of the game.  Lots of times in beta we were told cgen was just a place holder and they'd have a better one before launch.  So why didn't it? Because they ran out of money and time. Where did some of that money good? VOs.

     

    I like a fully voiced mmo as much as anyone, but if I am going to be spending hours looking at my character and watching it fight, I'd rather those features be fully developed.

    So I noticed someone mentioned "bethesda has deep deep pockets" in the posts above. Here is the problem with that, SWTOR.

    The more money you spend on an mmo the more successful it has to be, "500k subs to break even".   SWTor sold a ton of boxes and other mmos would have been happy with their sub numbers, but because soooo much money was spent and expectations were so high for the IP it failed to climb out of the pit it had dug itself in.

  • Originally posted by OnisDE

    Static recordings of actors tacked onto puppets sucks. Innovate! why not implement some of these high end text to speech systems that have emotions, accents, etc... Give npc's a real brain and plugin a purpose. NPC's with free though perofrming real life actions, truely interacting with each other and cooperating to accomplish tasks, combined with the ability to say what they want?!? Unscripted but guided. That's where Mythic should have spent all that cash. Coming up with these kinds of engines setting writers free to create atomsphere and conditions and purpose, allowing the sub plots to write themselves! A world with real day and night cycles, weather systems and animals that  have an effect on the environment and structures.

    Player to Player driven quests! Player 1 finds an NPC rebuilding his flood damaged cabin. NPC asks player 1 to help get him some wood for the repairs and he'll give him some coin(and of course you'll get xp for completing as well). Player 1 heads out to gather wood. Along comes Player 2 and the NPC asks hime to help Player 1. And guess what?! You cant send a /tell. The only way you can communicate in game is the way youy do in real life. /yell HEY Player 1 where are you?  And guess what , since your using a text to speech engine, customizable voices!  So here I am Player 1 gathering wood and I hear in the distance HEY Player 1 where are you? The NPC tells Player 2, Player 1 went south, and that's it, no magically appear lines to follow. Now thats immersive. Truely next gen, truely immersive.

    Ah, see.  I don't care much about VO.  What I care most about, is the world changing.  I mean, EVERYONE does quest 1... then quest 2, and later, Still killing Malfigor the Dreaded.....

    why?  Have unique quests.  Have UNIQUE people, that once killed, don't respawn.  Have player driven markets, rather then NPC's you can sell anything to, and not an AH, cause those are dumb, but literally have PC's in town, peddling wares.  A tomb gets raided?  Then that Tome is raided.... no respawned treasure, no ability to raid it later.. it is done.  Later, when quests are done... then it will shift focus to the actual war that is going on.  Allow raids into Daggerfall, or raids into the Summerset Isle.  What if the Queen of the Aldmeri dies?  A player will need to take over the position, maybe a vote for it.... allow STORY to go.  I want ROLEPLAYING.  I want the Title of MMORPG back.  

    THIS is what I would love to see, and would spend loads of money on.  A game where players can build new cities, war's can be declared, familys can be raised and broken, taitors to a cause have to actually SPEAK with players in charge, and betray their own kind.... 

    To me, TES is a RPG adventure game.  I always Roleplayed my character, from Arena to Skyrim.  So I agree with the above.  A game SHOULD be alive, and ever changing.

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