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

[Mamba]

most people skip over the voice actings just to get into the real gameplay

Please don't generalize...
I love all the cutscenes...

And like I said in the other thread, my English is only me 3rd language and unfortunately I dont speak French, German or Japanese either.
Imagine reading a wall of text written in a different language from your mothertongue, then add a pirate twist to it. Or in 11 that STUPID TARUWARU language!!!
Yeah, it would take me 20 minutes to read through a cutscene if I wanted to keep up with the storyline.
I LOVE the voice acting, it makes my life so much easier and I can actually keep up with stuff and people don't have to wait around for the token foreigner.

I think we should have voice acting in all quests that have some kind of a story line, like for example all the job quests. I dont care so much about leve quests or some "oh no, go fetch me 3 mole meats so I can cook food!" quests, but anything that takes a bit more time to comprehend would be very nice to have (at least optional) voiced over.

OR... if not, please Square Enix, can you translate this game in either Finnish or Swedish for me so I can follow all the storylines.

[Neptune]

Nice find Rowyne. Serves to illustrate the level of talent procured for this game. The opening Limsa Lominsa scene is so good. If they could just get those voice actors to do readings every week until 2.0 I think that would go a long ways.

Yeah, the first sentence was just for TLDR purpose, giving my thoughts as concise as possible. Although, I didn't really mean 'forbid it' if I've given off that sense. More like, 'dialog serves its purpose in text for all the minor roles'.



Do you mean story telling with full voice acting? If so, then in short, maybe. It would be as much as I would enjoy a movie adaption of a book. Meaning it depends on who they've casted and the direction's portrayal of the work. Could be awful, or could be good.

Or if you're talking non-voiced scenes, like the scenes where main characters like Yda appear up in text instead of speech, yes it was awkward. However, I already had in mind what she sound like from her speech previously, thus there was already established context for me to infer off of.

I was even some what attached to minor characters with no story roles, such as retainers. They still have a personality that clearly is reflected by carefully chosen words. Such as shyness, ambitious, or elegance. Sadly, this does not become apparent until you actually pick them.

Or if you want me to refer to a text-only quest line,
(spoilers warning)

The THM class quest line, (below)

It pits you against a fellow THM in training, upon the first meeting with this character, you can already sense what kind of character she is by her actions and philosophy. Her personality clashes with your character's is clearly depicted without the need of voice. (well what SE makes out your character to be) You were made to hate that character, and I did.

However, as I mentioned, voicing story based characters would inherently give them more life when carefully casted by a director. But when applying it to a scale where everyone is voiced, minor characters get the short end of the stick. Where it might even break the player's immersion* in the game with poor acting, such as the examples given, where text alone would have still kept it intact.

Or in a worst case scenario; ever read a book or played a character where you've inherently gave the character a voice in your head, then went to see a movie or tv show adaption of it, and it breaks your vision of the character? This happens because of variance in how people interpret the work, and allows movies of the same story be directed differently.

A funny worst case scenario;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPxY8lpYAUM

*About immersion, voice only plays a small role. The sound, the environment, the music, the characters, all those sum up the full picture. Such as why does the club Afterlife in Mass Effect 2 give off a stronger impact than the bar in Dragon Age 2 where you meet Isabela? They both had similar elements, but where did Dragon Age 2 fall short? For me it was the visual design of the bar itself.

Overall, great contribution to the discussion. Are you trying to say that minor character in Skyrim broke the sense of immersion because of the careless attitude behind the voice. I agree that it doesn't sound very moody, but it's not that much of a stretch that random woman #2591 in Skyrim would really sound like that. In any case, Skyrim is a terrible example of quality voice acting. For one thing, you have the same 3 gd males voice acting nearly every character in the game. It's impossible for 3 people to represent all the different sides with enough variety, unless it's South Park. FFXIV already has a lot more voice actors than Skyrim, and they're all damn good.

[Physic]

Voice acting has pluses and minuses, and honestly for this game especially, full voice acting would be a bad idea. The money is better spent on the actual game.
And in a multi lingual game you have another huge buget limit.
Also we havent seen how bioware plans to continue to support the game as it grows, while having to include new VA into every content they add in the future.

Its really just not worth the cost in resources for this game. The massive amounts of time and money it would cost, dont equal how much value they would get out of the same money put into game/world/pvp/item/graphics development.

[MariyaShidou]

For those who thought VA won't affect content development

http://www.vg247.com/2012/01/17/next...-through-2013/

“We have people working on content that won’t be showing up in the game until 2013,” he said.

“We have writers already finishing off content for that, so I can already play through stuff from 2013 content – just not with voiceovers.

Do you want 2.0 to be similarly delayed to 2019?

[Lucifer]

ToR sucks though...

[Mamba]

For those who thought VA won't affect content development

http://www.vg247.com/2012/01/17/next...-through-2013/


Do you want 2.0 to be similarly delayed to 2019?

TBH... I don't mind waiting a bit longer to get a finished product.
If I wanted to read walls for text, I would buy a book.

[Jinko]

I'm quite sure people don't buy a video game because of voice acting. SWTOR is the exception because they had to resell KOTOR somehow.

So you are saying they needed to get people interested in KOTOR 2.0 ..

Just like SE will have to get people reinterest in FFXIV 2.0.

Voice acting doesn't make an MMO. You'll find this to be the case in the coming months with SWTOR crashes and burns like every single other 'WoW killer' before it.

Depends what you are comparing it to, if you are comparing it to the success of WoW then you are deluded to begin with.

No matter how bad it gets it will never get as bad as this games lack of success.

[Babydoll]

Lol when I first saw this thread (it cut off the last part with the words voice acting) I thought it was a request for se to give us some kinda voice chat feature haha. Totally off topic >.>

On topic: I don't care what they decide as long as 2.0 comes out relatively on time heh

[Jennestia]

Those people buy books, not video games.

Yet I can promise you people would complain if everything you did had a voice tied to it, including hovering over UI elements.

[SnickleWhiskers]

I don't see them doing this for things like instances that tells a major chunk of story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmDOLVlkntQ THis is her speech (0:00-1:20) before she's engaged talking to her room filled with minions. Would I love to see something like this? Sure but i don't see it happening.