Get the mics warmed up - 2.0: you're going to need voice acting

[KraggyKor]

As we all know, Bioware invested over $100 million into their MMO, and truly, its great contribution to the MMO genre is the voice acting and its method of group storytelling..

Yes, the voice-acted cutscenes are, to begin with, great (the novelty wears off though) but as SWTOR shows, throwing $100m at a game in which voice-acted CSes are the only notable feature doesn't stop a game being a dud in many other ways.

I don't want SE to do this here, the CSes in XI were fantastic and there wasn't a single vocal utterance, XIV doesn't need it either, the intro sequences are fine but I without them the CSes are pretty okay. Given the horrible up-front costs, not to mention the on-going liability to continue spending such sums on future content, I'd much, much rather SE either spend that money on resources to make even more great (silent) content, or not spend it at all to help ensure the game's future.

[Jinko]

^ FF XI cutscenes were fine yes, but you are talking about a 10 year old game.

FF VII was fine for its time also but does that mean that FF XIII-2 should also only have text boxes for dialog scenes ?

I think Neptune's point is that voice acting in MMO's is starting to become standard so shouldn't SE also go this route if they want to appear like a current generation game.

[Avraym]

I don't know. Voice acting can be hit and miss.

In my opinion some pros and cons:

PROS

• Adds new dimensions to characters
• Brings the game to life with more vivid storytelling
• Characters become more memorable

CONS

• If done tacky, it can make the game come across as very unnapealing/childish.
• Voice acting can really ruin characters. EG: Seymour/Rikku FFX and Vanille from FFXIII
• Substantial increases in file sizes (Although i guess its not such a big deal in todays world)

In my opinion, the english voice acting from Japanese Game Developers is normally more comical than anything else. (Although i did enjoy FFX's)

[AmandaHuggenkiss]

Personally I could care less about voice acting.
What I want are raids, mega monsters and stuff that is hard!
I want something to come out that take us a month to figure out how to kill.

[AngryNixon]

Can the voice acting all be like the Resident Evil voice acting? Because if it is that's pure entertainment gold.

[syntaxlies]

Did you even play SWTOR? because most people skip over the voice actings just to get into the real gameplay, it's a cool feature when you first played it, but it gets old really fast to most of my friends that is playing it right now.

Not everyone is interested in storytelling wall o text/speech , im not sure what the number is but it is pretty low numbers from the community i am playing with.

SW is also 100% voice over. i think people mainly just want the CS voiced over and pretty much everyone watches the CS's

[Jinko]

SW is also 100% voice over. i think people mainly just want the CS voiced over and pretty much everyone watches the CS's

This, I think for some having to read all that text can be a bit of a hassle, especially if its pirate speak.

[syntaxlies]

This, I think for some having to read all that text can be a bit of a hassle, especially if its pirate speak.

omg the mrd quest i had a terrible time reading,lol

[Gramul]

Yeah, main storyline scenes would be fine to me for voice overs, but I don't need to hear every quest giver. And I sure as hell don't want every random NPC talking. One of the most annoying features (of many) that Skyrim has is the nonstop verbal vomiting all around you. No thanks.

I saw a dodo the other day.

Dreadful creatures.

[Lienn]

I care very little about voice acting. The best games i ever played never needed voice acting to be good.

IMO major cutscenes only having voice acting is already good enough...specially assuming they have like 5 ppl only for voice acting...sometimes i felt these CSs like South Park, where most characters have the very same voice.

If they want something cooler, we could speak the auto-translates...this does would not only be cool but also useful since you wouldn't need to read the log to know someone said something...and this also would stimulate the natural usage of auto-translate.

Instead of putting effort on CSs, if i was SE i'd make a sticky here asking players to post the 5 phrases they miss the most at auto-translate, add the most common ones and make all auto-translates spoken. This would take the different languages player interaction to another level.