Thread: DEV REQUEST: Complete voice acting in 4.0 and beyond

I rather money be spent on making our characters less static in cut scenes than wasted on voice acting which probably costs way more than that and what ever resources they seem to have problems allocating to this game lately because of SE.

Originally Posted by Nalien

I wish the games industry would stop trying to voice everything...

I mean, it's a great way to add to immersion, but the cost is usually pretty ridiculous... When I look at something like Fallout 4 or Final Fantasy XIII, I can't help but wonder if there would be a better game if every line didn't have to be voiced... Bethesda in particular, seems to have gone for a "Voicing all this costs a lot, lets write less dialog", and that says nothing about the modding scene... Plenty of mods are great, but I'll be damned if the amateur voice work (or utter lack of) doesn't end up killing them for me, even the well done amateur voice overs fans create are fairly jarring alongside the original ones. Then you've got other mods, can I make a mod that significantly changes the main quest? Lets say I want to tell Preston to get lost, can't do that unless I have just text dialog, a bad impression, or hire Jon Gentry (plus the MCs two voice actors) myself...

Really wish the budget put aside for getting voice actors could instead be spent on making a better game, it's a nice thing to have, but the cost quickly spirals if you support multiple languages... That's not to say silence is any better, pre-voice acting games did a fairly good job of giving sound to dialog without voicing everything. Nintendo actually does this fairly well (and when they actually do voice work we get Other M, I rest my case...), Wind Waker and Twilight Princess come to mind, neither voiced their cutscenes, what they did was effectively the same as how we pick our characters voices in character creation here. Heck, Midna had an utterly gibberish language that didn't need to facilitate a Japanese/English/German/French dub, same for Gravity Rush/Daze. That works a lot better IMO, probably why the developers opted to give the dragons their own language in Heavensward.

Since the problem with FFXIII is that the different team didn't have a good communication, I don't think it would have changed much.

I would prefer they put the money in developing the game more, making it less static and actually implementing things like a glamour log.

The non-JP voice acting is horrible anyway and even the JP is not that great in some cases. Really, use the money in making the game better instead of adding useless fluff.

all major cut scenes that have high production in it are voiced

[ESC] > Skip Cutscene

They could take away the whole text and CS and I wouldnt be able to tell.

Ewww, no. I can read very quickly. I don't like voiced cutscenes because it requires me to sit still and listen (I'm too anal retentive to just cut someone off mid-speech, even though I've just finished reading their faux-Shakespearean braying, and I'm only waiting for them to play catch up.) Save the VO for the big moments. Fully voiced everything doesn't really add anything to anything.

I'm all for voice acting in cutscenes, but keep in mind that the dialogue is always being tweaked/fixed (sometimes right up until launch of a patch).
The addition of voice acted lines for ALL dialogue would increase development times, costs, etc. Costs we can mitigate in some way, be it a more costlier sub, etc. But development times are not an easy thing mitigate. MMO's that are multi-lingual, take a fair amount of time per development cycle, especially if they are doing simultaneously releases in each language, which is how SE does things with XIV.

Realistically, I think its best not to implement VA for all dialogue. I dont want to wait 6months to a year per patch for the same amount of content we normally see....

This would double the length of time of patches, and due to voice contracts we would most likely have voices changing every few patches.

Lets not forget people were jarred with the Heavensward voices for a few characters.

That said I would be all for a voiced MSQ. But honestly...I think MMORPGS need to stay away from fully voiced content as it tends to draw out development time, cycle actors at an alarming rate, increase costs, take resources away from new content, and in the worse case recycle actors.

Look at WOW, who wasn't voiced by Chris Metzen?
If you ever log onto ESO you will die of laughter when you realize they had maybe 6 voice actors.
I've met Dark Elves who share the exact same voice with Argonians, and Nords.
I also met a family that had the exact same voices. All the females were identical, all the males were identical.
Talk about taking after your parents huh?

Originally Posted by Defias

Lets not forget people were jarred with the Heavensward voices for a few characters.

I seriously thought Merylwyb was going to put on a dress and invite us to tea.

(Or reveal herself as Morrigan from Dragon Age.)

Originally Posted by Galgarion

Ewww, no. I can read very quickly. I don't like voiced cutscenes because it requires me to sit still and listen (I'm too anal retentive to just cut someone off mid-speech, even though I've just finished reading their faux-Shakespearean braying, and I'm only waiting for them to play catch up.) Fully voiced everything doesn't really add anything to anything.

Glad someone said it.
This recent trend to voice EVERYTHING just because it's possible in games annoys me so much x.X
Voices (if they are fitting!) can help immersion, but only from time to time. I'm fortunate enought to play with JP voices without understanding everything, so it doesn't hurt me as much to cut someone off mid-speech (I only wait for a breathing pause; cutting it off mid-word is unbearable to me too). I dropped many RPGs already because I spent so much time sitting around waiting for people to finish their slow-ass speeches..I neither need nor want that in my FFXIV.