Blacklung
Arbiter
The eXtremism debate is just silly, so I'll let the sarcastic and the clueless wallow in that mud.
The choices seem rather nice though now. Pretty standard for Bioware, but it does seem like there are more consequences tied to what you actually say. No longer does it appear that it's black white neutral with the same response no matter what, which has mostly been the case before hand. The greater addition of charm/intimidate is also quite welcome. This seems hopeful, but then again these are chosen clips released to the public so the verdict is still out.
The voice acting actually seems decent to my ears. Garrus has a very reserved, analytical voice, a bit like a 'Spock' or 'Data' kind of character. The female seems a bit nonchalant, straight forward, as they said she would be. And I think the Shepard voice is quite fitting...at least for the face they've chosen (not sure how it would work on characters with different ethnic descent or a burlier or thinner man). If anything I'm tired of the over-the-top gruff voice acting for every single character these days. Does every action hero need to sound like they've either been smoking 3 packs a day for the past 10 years? I find it annoying, not extreme. A medium baritone, stoic voice seems to work much better. If anything, a baritone voice can be much more scary since the intonation is much more noticable. A deepening to bass shows that the person is certainly more angry, raising to a tenor evokes a more open type of emotion. It works rather well to give a voice a broader range.
Actually the only truly hokey voices I've heard so far have been the admiral and some other non-important NPC. Perhaps Wrex.
Facial expressions are the best I've seen for something with this much dialogue. All the other 'RPGS' that have used this seem to have made vain attempts by switching the faces only when a whole new paragraph is spoken. The characters here show constant switching that fits fairly well with the words being spoken. I'm not sure what else you want right now without full CGI and an unreasonable amount of work and money. This comes pretty damn close to HL2 at least before episode 1 (it seems they were able to put much more effort into Alyx's face in that one). If anything, I'd say Shepard has too much eXtreme wrinkling on his face for waaaaay too long. I suppose that's partially due to the downtime during the choice selection. I'm betting if they had already known exactly when to pull off the lines, the emotions would have come off better. You don't normally see someone hold a emotion so solidly like that in real life because the words they speak are altering they're face and the emotional context at a much faster rate...Unless they have an extremely low IQ.
The combat does seem a little slow for the FPS stuff they've put into it. Furthermore, the NPC's don't seem to grasp the idea of cover that well. Garrus was just standing out of that corner and getting shot up to high heaven...Seemed only the PC was capable of using advanced tactics, the AI having little concept of explosives or other techniques to flush the opponents out.
Lastly, I like the way they did the execution part. The stone cold killer approach seems much more eXtreme and frightening than an over the top 'Punisher' execution. Shepard says his lines convincingly in a stoic, matter of fact way, and pulls the trigger. 'what the first thing you feel when you kill somebody? Recoil.' They don't even show the body get hit or drop. Exactly. What person? Oh yeah, another dead guy who gave me what I needed. Afterall, Shepard has already seen heavy combat in his past, plus the 50 odd guards he killed. Aren't you the same guys who complain about the psychotic bad guy choices in so many other RPG's?
The choices seem rather nice though now. Pretty standard for Bioware, but it does seem like there are more consequences tied to what you actually say. No longer does it appear that it's black white neutral with the same response no matter what, which has mostly been the case before hand. The greater addition of charm/intimidate is also quite welcome. This seems hopeful, but then again these are chosen clips released to the public so the verdict is still out.
The voice acting actually seems decent to my ears. Garrus has a very reserved, analytical voice, a bit like a 'Spock' or 'Data' kind of character. The female seems a bit nonchalant, straight forward, as they said she would be. And I think the Shepard voice is quite fitting...at least for the face they've chosen (not sure how it would work on characters with different ethnic descent or a burlier or thinner man). If anything I'm tired of the over-the-top gruff voice acting for every single character these days. Does every action hero need to sound like they've either been smoking 3 packs a day for the past 10 years? I find it annoying, not extreme. A medium baritone, stoic voice seems to work much better. If anything, a baritone voice can be much more scary since the intonation is much more noticable. A deepening to bass shows that the person is certainly more angry, raising to a tenor evokes a more open type of emotion. It works rather well to give a voice a broader range.
Actually the only truly hokey voices I've heard so far have been the admiral and some other non-important NPC. Perhaps Wrex.
Facial expressions are the best I've seen for something with this much dialogue. All the other 'RPGS' that have used this seem to have made vain attempts by switching the faces only when a whole new paragraph is spoken. The characters here show constant switching that fits fairly well with the words being spoken. I'm not sure what else you want right now without full CGI and an unreasonable amount of work and money. This comes pretty damn close to HL2 at least before episode 1 (it seems they were able to put much more effort into Alyx's face in that one). If anything, I'd say Shepard has too much eXtreme wrinkling on his face for waaaaay too long. I suppose that's partially due to the downtime during the choice selection. I'm betting if they had already known exactly when to pull off the lines, the emotions would have come off better. You don't normally see someone hold a emotion so solidly like that in real life because the words they speak are altering they're face and the emotional context at a much faster rate...Unless they have an extremely low IQ.
The combat does seem a little slow for the FPS stuff they've put into it. Furthermore, the NPC's don't seem to grasp the idea of cover that well. Garrus was just standing out of that corner and getting shot up to high heaven...Seemed only the PC was capable of using advanced tactics, the AI having little concept of explosives or other techniques to flush the opponents out.
Lastly, I like the way they did the execution part. The stone cold killer approach seems much more eXtreme and frightening than an over the top 'Punisher' execution. Shepard says his lines convincingly in a stoic, matter of fact way, and pulls the trigger. 'what the first thing you feel when you kill somebody? Recoil.' They don't even show the body get hit or drop. Exactly. What person? Oh yeah, another dead guy who gave me what I needed. Afterall, Shepard has already seen heavy combat in his past, plus the 50 odd guards he killed. Aren't you the same guys who complain about the psychotic bad guy choices in so many other RPG's?