Dear Square Enix,

[Tillie]

[deleted-replied to wrong thread]

[Timmyz]

I'd like to direct this threads attention to a little (amazing) game - Star Ocean til the end of time (star ocean 3). This game had the ability to name all characters and was fully voiced. All voiceovers named all characters by the default name that they should be. Even though the subtitles wrote whatever you had named your characters. Not a fan of this method. and borderline impossible in an MMO as there is no default name for Player Characters.

[Kaliesto]

I wouldn't mind if they went back to some old DF content, and voiced them like for example Xande Boss Fight.

It's only a few lines, it shouldn't be too expensive.

[Rofel]

Naaah...

They are already messing with Merlwyb's take on the game because of this.

SE has a lot to fix; including stuff that wasn't eve broke and they tried to "improve" (i.e. Greed only).

We can have a nice story with text.

[AshlikeSnow]

ok so what if SE dubs every cutscene BUT the only way you can get access to said dub is if you SUBSCRIBE to the DUB patch that cost 19.99 every month on top of your normal subscription. BUT in order to get access to the dub sub you need to also pay a one time fee of 49.99.

[Elamys]

Not sure why anybody thinks not voicing your character is cutting corners for this game or that it should be standard. Almost no MMOs voice every cutscene, let alone voice your actual character.

[Trixie_Strider]

I must say I agree with OP. It's Square Enix...people need to stop BSing here. They have the money to do as they please. True that they may not have the money for maybe THIS game.

Probably saving up for their next cash cow but I do believe they have enough money to pay for voice actors.

Please note, that of course I only wish to see quality voice acting for those HYPE AWESOME moments. If everything was voice line

It would lose that Spark I have for when I hear their voices. You know what I mean?

[Darkoray1]

This thread is full of a lot of excuses. Could they do it? yes they could. Would it have its problems? yes it would but nothing they cant work around. Don't throw out the "its expensive crap either" they made $2.5 billion last year so as the OP stated, they ain't short of money. I personally have no issue with the way it is but enough with the excuses.

[Neophyte]

This thread is full of a lot of excuses. Could they do it? yes they could. Would it have its problems? yes it would but nothing they cant work around. Don't throw out the "its expensive crap either" they made $2.5 billion last year so as the OP stated, they ain't short of money. I personally have no issue with the way it is but enough with the excuses.

The operating income of all Square Enix MMOs is about 127,5 Mio. US-Dollar and that mostly because of releases like the FF14 Expansion, but also Dragon Quest and stuff.
Last year (without such releases) it was about 70 Mio. US-Dollar.

In what world do they make 2,5 Billion Us-Dollar with FF14?!

That's almost 14 million people subbing 12 months non-stop for 15 bucks.


Fortnite, generates maybe about 2,5 Mrd. Us-Dollar income a year (currently 250 Mio. $ a month?!)... you know.. Fortnite, the game everyone talks about because they make more money than anyone ever before. I wonder if Epic's players crunsh numbers to evaluate how much Epic "owes" them.

Nintendo made >55 Mrd. US-Dollar income with Pokemon so far... do they owe me a voiced version now, finally?

[WilhelmWhite]

No, I disagree, I do not wish to see more fully voiced cutscenes, let alone the entire main scenario, and that is for one simple reason which is why SE does not already do so (and cost actually is not really a deciding factor despite first impressions).

The reason why not all cutscenes are voiced is because many cutscenes identify the player by name, which is completely impossible to do with a fully voiced cutscene, unless they identify your character in a default manner (which the currently voiced ones already do, identifying your character with generic pronouns or boilerplate terms like 'the adventurer', 'the champion', the 'Warrior of Light' etc). It's no surprise that when SE started to add voice acting to the FF series the player suddenly lost the ability to personalize their party's names, MMOs like FFXIV and FFXI before however it's a necessary component of the game, and thus they couldn't avoid it. Games like Mass Effect and The Old Republic which do have all cutscenes in the game fully voiced usually sacrifice personalization for this reason (requiring the player to have a default name that is what they are actually identified by in cutscenes, regardless of whatever name the player happens to have given them).

So I do not see this changing, and I'm glad, because voice acting in games in general tends to gravitate more towards the good side of "Z-grade bad", and FFXIV is no different.

^This. While voice acted scenes are nice, it's even more nice to see a story NPC addressing me by my name. Hell, there are some games with voice acted scenes where, if your name should come up during the scene, the NPC will literally become silent for a brief moment where your name would be spoken, and then continue with the rest of their dialogue. With FFXIV, voice acted characters will refer to us almost always as "The warrior of light". While that is probably the best option for voice acted NPCs communicating with a custom character, it starts to feel very... generalized and unnecessarily formal.

It works in Skyrim because your character mostly works alone. In the main story the main character doesn't build a strong bond with anyone in particular. It's the opposite in the msq. Your character has a strong bond with the majority of the main cast because you work closely with them. It wouldn't make sense for them to never call you by name. Your character has fought, bled and grieved with those people. How could they not be close enough to drop all titles and use their real name? Exactly this happened in FFX and it bugged the hell out of me for the entire game.

^^^Thank you! After everything we've been through with certain characters, constantly being referred to as "The warrior of light" seems rather silly. Piggybacking off of Penthea, I couldn't agree more. I love Skyrim, and the formality with how you're addressed makes sense in that game. Even the potential followers you can recruit are never emotionally close enough to warrant a first name basis.

I find it amusing how people assume that a given company has more than enough money when they are clueless as to how much things actually cost.

^^^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.