Fully Voiced MMO

[chocomaid]

*assuming that a company has surplus amounts of backing, enough time and resources to pull this off, this is a what-if it happens scenario*

Along with the personal character's voice choices we have now (which can be added and improved on), how would a fully voiced mmo affect a player? This can include storyline based quests, main or side, ally or foe, and of course your character. Wouldn't it be nice if a humanoid or any other types of enemy (that can speak) were to speak as you are fighting them, as you would in a fight, legendary or not.

Taking it a step futher, what if chat, broken or not were also transformed to vocal projections. Of course this will be hard to implement thus "future" is an important point in the matter. "Why not just use voice chat like TS/RC?" might also pop up in this discussion, why not have the best of both worlds? Plus you can create many different voices and project that voice that you like if personal privacy is an important aspect to you, yet still want to have a "vocal" experience.

NPCs would be more memorable (in my opinion) and less likely to be forgotten if there is a distinct connection between you and him/her, which might be the vocal interaction. "Oh yea, that hyper active NPC was Ermegarde!"

Parties and friends can communicate in some other way and you can limit that amount you hear. For example, shutting out voices outside parties if you wanted to focus on your party alone.

As to not inconvenience some players, specific parts can be turned off individually, or all of it all in all. Blocked players will also not be heard through this and you can add specific players to not be heard too. Maybe you can just lower the external voices' volume too as opposed to turning it off altogether as to experience an "alive ambience". The voices might get repetitive to some people but again, it can be turned off.

I personally would enjoy a fully voiced MMO in the future, especially random NPCs and enemy fights. It'll be just badass if all those text and shouts Ifrit does mid-fight were actually voices and other relatively memorable enemies/allies/npcs like Diabolos, Hildibrand, or that god forsaken naturalist you are trying to escort in Mor Dhona.

[Estellios]

The Old Republic was fully voiced and I didn't think that factor was all that amazing, to be honest. Thinking about it now, I think the writing and such was pretty dry, which might have been a factor. I much prefer my player character to not actually talk either when it's a character that I make myself rather than a defined character like typical FF main characters, but that's just a personal preference.

One thing that is neat though is that since everything isn't fully voiced, the sections that are voiced stand out a bit more. I was pleasantly surprised at there being voice acting in the Gilgamesh fight, for example.

That said, I do wish that more cutscenes were voice-acted, particularly the main story ones. The new 2.2 storyline has a lot of voice acting in its cutscenes though, at least compared to the main story, so I was pretty happy about it.

A lot of this is just going to be down to personal taste, really.

[Gextiv]

Boss fights for Dungeons, raids, etc., should be voiced by standard, in my opinion. The rest of the games doesn't need to be voiced, I rather resources be put into.. MAYBE IMPLEMENTING FANTASIA IN MOGSTATION!

[TomTom1968]

^^ imagine Titan talking to you all the time..using the the same sentences again and again on your 100 attempts to bring him down. Not sure if I find that so attractive.

[Seif]

We're already running out of npc quests on levels 1-49.

To think how few quests we'd have and how slow their developement would be if they were voiced...

I'd choose more quests every time. VII-IX have great storytelling and even those don't need voices.

[nugglets]

What bugs me about the voice acting is that there is way more Japanese voice acting than English. I don't understand any Japanese that isn't related to food, but I still switched to Japanese voices to cut the awkward silences to a minimum.

[TheRogueX]

What bugs me about the voice acting is that there is way more Japanese voice acting than English. I don't understand any Japanese that isn't related to food, but I still switched to Japanese voices to cut the awkward silences to a minimum.

If you switch to Japanese, are more of the cut scenes in the inn room log voiced, then? That might be interesting to go back and see.

[nugglets]

If you switch to Japanese, are more of the cut scenes in the inn room log voiced, then? That might be interesting to go back and see.

Yes, they are. I play with a few Japanese characters and was talking about how disappointing the 2.1 cut scenes being mostly unvoiced was. When they acted like I was crazy, I switched to Japanese and a LOT more stuff is voice acted.

[TomTom1968]

Wow, didn't know that. Reminds me of White Knight chronicles where Japanese players got everything and NA and Europe only a piece of the cake for a higher price. Very odd philosophy. I remember Yoshi stating that because of the short development cycles it is impossible to have voice overs and translations to the corresponding languages. I thought this included everybody but obviously not, only the rest of the World outside of Japan.

[Spellbinder]

Yes, they are. I play with a few Japanese characters and was talking about how disappointing the 2.1 cut scenes being mostly unvoiced was. When they acted like I was crazy, I switched to Japanese and a LOT more stuff is voice acted.

Care to give an example?