Dear Square Enix,

[NephthysVasudan]

^^^I have to agree with this as well. Voice acting is not cheap at all, and unless people are somehow able to obtain intricate details of SE's expense reports, "Lol SE has money" isn't much of an argument.

Yeah...I just hope that kind of foolishness isn't contagious...because its getting far worse than I'd like to admit. People do not think past their fish bowl viewpoint anymore.

[Aluja89]

No wonder SE gets away with cutting corners when there are so many apologists around.

I agree OP.

[Nabril]

No wonder SE gets away with cutting corners when there are so many apologists around.

I agree OP.

Are you okay with the voices changing every year or so? Voice actors aren't going to stick around all the time and so if they started now and dubbed all the old MSQs, they would have to redo all of the current quests that do have voices or they wouldn't match. Then, if they did new voice quests and couldn't get the same actors, the voices would change again.

So yeah, keep calling us apologists because we point out what should be obvious to everyone.

[Aluja89]

Are you okay with the voices changing every year or so? Voice actors aren't going to stick around all the time and so if they started now and dubbed all the old MSQs, they would have to redo all of the current quests that do have voices or they wouldn't match. Then, if they did new voice quests and couldn't get the same actors, the voices would change again.

So yeah, keep calling us apologists because we point out what should be obvious to everyone.

You want to talk about what's obvious? Most recordings are done ahead of time, do you honestly believe the patch MSQs aren't written well before the expansion's launch?

What's obvious is, that they're cutting corners, making up excuses and everyone eats it up.

[Vaer]

Not really money although that is a big part of it. More like the amount of time (single player games can take as long as they want) that it would take to voice every single line and QA it in 4 different languages while writing the script for a game that releases content every 3 months.

The other games have barely any text, maybe a couple word sentences here and there. FFXIV says something that can be said in 1 sentence in 3 paragraphs.

I don't mind if they add more voice overs but I understand why they don't.

[ElHeggunte]

No wonder SE gets away with cutting corners when there are so many apologists around.

I agree OP.

Being rational makes you an apologist, does it?

[Aluja89]

Being rational makes you an apologist, does it?

What rationality? All I'm seeing are excuses they have no way of knowing.

Money? It's Square Enix lol.

Writing/localizing issues because of a name? Right, like they have no way around this.

[Maeka]

What rationality? All I'm seeing are excuses they have no way of knowing.

Money? It's Square Enix lol.

Writing/localizing issues because of a name? Right, like they have no way around this.

All of these were already addressed:

Voice acting is crazy expensive and would add loads onto the amount of funding the game needs. These resources could be spent on doing things like developing more dungeons, trials, and other content which would have a far greater impact on your gameplay than a few lines of dialogue being voiced.

Using pronouns and generic terms such as "you" "champion" etc was already explained above, it removes personalization. Mass Effect actually got annoying at times where you were forced to use the last name Shepard and your first name doesn't once come up in the game (I wonder why it's even there).

And in WoW.... every world quest.

CHAMPION! CHAMPION! CHAMPION! CHAMPION! got old after awhile. As much as I think Khadgar is a cool guy, I just grit my teeth when he yells out "Champion!" and proceeds to tell me he wants me to do something. It gets old. Fast.

[Eloah]

Another thread about this, really? T.T

Enkidoh is right, praise Hydaelyn for her genius.

Anyway, while money is an issue, there are other factors that play into voicing a game. And what she said is true, you'd lose personalization if everything was voiced. But someone did have an idea on how to fix that...

Fixing the name addressing is easy in my opinion. change <playername> to <you> and equivalent words and i don't see any problem with that, why should you?

But honestly, if you think about this statement, would that really work.

For one thing, the personalization is out the window; the second when a pronoun like "you" is used it creates a second person perspective, which is basically addressing you the player, not you the character, which takes you out of the environment. Additionally, You is also used once the subject is know or inferred; "Hey Tom. Can you hand me that book?" "Attention students, if you would kindly form two straight lines, please" see? Another thing, is that the term you, depending on the sentence structure, can become very insulting when used over a long period of time; it's like someone calling you buddy or pal over and over, you begin to question if they know your name or not. I know this is a game, but it'll still happen just might take longer. Lastly, while it is understandable to think this way, this is an English Forum, so it stands to reason that many of us think in English, our thought processes regarding the pronoun "you" might be vastly different from the other 3 languages; no language has a 1:1 ratio.

Plus if you'll notice a lot more bosses are being voiced now.

Also, there are many great games that have little to no voices. The Legend of Zelda anyone, which is like, the #1 franchise in video games, and only recently used full voices.

[Tillie]

[deleted-replied to wrong thread]