Voice Acting & Quest Replay

This is more or less me thinking out loud.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post1963501

This got me thinking. Is there any reason why voice acting can't be added after the fact to areas that not as critical to a patch/story? It could add potential replay value without having as much of an impact on rapidly developing new content.

You could also be more picky about the quality of the voice acting. The quality of the voice acting and lip syncing is something I feel 1.0 still has over 2.x. There are probably people who disagree, and they are welcome to do so!

This leads to my next thought, (dangerous, I know!,)

will we ever be able to re-initiate completed quests?

Reading the Unending Journey is certainly fun. If you haven't watched the last cut scene in the Praetorium (under the "Duty" list, not "Main Scenario Quest") while wearing a Howling Spirit or Wailing Spirit, you should. Sadly, the Unending Journey doesn't give the same experience as actually going back through the quest again and you can't see your friends/party members in cut scenes through The Unending Journey.

Further potential could come in the the form of level syncing your current gear down to meet level requirements if they need to be imposed, and using the glamour system to do something silly as you replay your favorite content. Maybe once we are able to take our chocobos with us through more content, we could see them in a cut scene! Of course you wouldn't be able to double dip the original quest rewards, but perhaps a small amount of gil/exp/seals/whatever could be given for your time (if at all).

So what does quest replay have to do with voice acting? Well, if you were going to add voice acting after the fact, you would want players to be able to access that content in its entirety! Right?

I'm sure quest replay would be tough on the devs, because it would mean making sure replaying a completed quest, doesn't break anything else!

That is it for this rant.

Money.

Voice acting costs a lot of money. For the sheer quantity of text in a game like this, it would cost phenomenal quantities of money. That's why the Japanese vocal cast are all ridiculously famous voice actors and the localized versions were done by B-list anime dub regulars.