DEVS: Don't waste time with voice acting.

[Jennestia]

Elexia was actually right -- It would cost millions because Yoshida stated they'll have VOs for all supported languages, and hiring talent for each localization isn't cheap -- Hiring someone who is multilingual is also pretty expensive. Considering we're talking about a Japanese developed game, it was pretty obvious she was referring to the cost in yen (SE is Japanese based.)

The cheapest I've seen top talent commissioned for in game/anime production was about ~$110k USD, which is already fairly cheap in regards to basically paying for name, given how long animes can become (how many episodes per seasons, if they're a major or minor role, etc.) Normally with video games though, they use in-house talent, which is cheaper than hiring actors (say, Samuel L Jackson) to do voice overs. I've even done VO work before joining in game development, I wouldn't be paid near as much as a hollywood actor would be paid, the same is true in Japan, an Idol/Popular Seiyuu/Actor/etc tend to be the most paid to do VO work.

[Heat]

i love voice acted cutcenes, i don't like to reed 3 pages to do a quest so i skip it, if you don't like it fine, but some of us do

[Coglin]

Now if we're talking about a animated show or movie with the talent of Mark Hamill, then yes the cost goes up.

You had me till you got to this part........then ya lost me.

[Volsung]

Your concern is misplaced.

Adding resources into voice-acting does not immediately mean taking resources away from from somewhere else. Different people at Square Enix work on different things and so giving the audio-team work to do would not be making things any harder for say, the user interface team.

Financially, we're paying now, so there is an income stream.

And if you don't like the character voices, I see no reason why you wouldn't be able to turn them off in your audio configuration settings - in fact I think the option is already there.

^ pretty much, this

[DeadRiser]

I think they are referring more towards the actual gameplay...

tired of hearing the same "ow", "ough", "Hahahahh wooooo", etc.

I hope they also add more than 3 voices per character.

[Jynx]

I do actually, it varies from company to company but if you're hiring people for long time work (Anime/Cartoon/MMORPG/Video Game) and not hiring small time people, you're going to be spending quite a few millions on VA alone if you not employing fresh out of school VAs or using internal VAs.

Square Enix does do alot of Anime work as well, I'm sure that finding the VA's on payroll is a issue, more or less the time it takes to do it properly.

[Neptune]

I disagree, I think there should be just as much voice acting as FFXIII. It really adds to the experience.

[Yumi_Hibiki]

If they add voices in 4 different languages an option to choose your voice language separate from your game language is a MUST.

[syndori]

Actually, I would love the option to enable the Japanese voices (with the subtitles still in english of course)

[Katt]

You had me till you got to this part........then ya lost me.

He's mostly knowen for the voice as the voice as the Joker for the Batman animated cartoon, and the movies