Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

Didn't we just have Anthony Davis (or was it Brother None?) tell us in the other thread that VA was major part of driving up AAA budgets?

 

It is, but Roguey isn't completely off either - in part the "disagreement" here is because he calls DKS an AAA, when with a budget of about 6.5M it isn't even close to being an AAA production, in this industry you start talking AAA at 25 million plus, and that's kind of "budget AAA".

It's expensive in good part because of the kind of people you hire and the way you structure VA. It is possible to do VA, even full VA, at a relatively low % of the budget (WL2 certainly spent very little on its limited VA), but kind of in the same way it is possibly to do a movie with the acting cost being a low % of the budget, as in: big-budget productions aren't interested in running things that way, the money you invest there is as much PR as it is production.

 

Interesting then, that Bloodlines is at least somewhat viewed as one the best voiced video games of our time (disregarding the several Brian Mitsoda's you can also find in that game). Strike of luck, brilliant direction or cheap but good actors?

I guess you wouldn't necessarily know much about that specifically.

 

Yeah no idea on that one.

But think of it in the way Hollywood thinks about it; you don't hire Will Smith or Tom Cruise or Robert Downey jr because you think they're good actors, you hire them because you think they put butts in seats, and they eat up a significant chunk of your budget for the priviledge. I suspect videogame VA, despite a majority of work being done by professional voice actors, spends most of its budget just to be able to say "Liam Neeson is your dad, isn't that amazing?!" And that's not even starting on what Beyond: Two Souls is doing. But then again Quantic Dream always just kind of existed in a universe all to themselves. It's definitely less about quality and more about having a showy cast, like the Mass Effect games, and that takes money. The well-known professional videogame VAs probably aren't too cheap either.

 

Ask you boss how much VA cost in Sacrifice. The best VA i have seen in a game.

 

https://twitter.com/jesawyer

 

Full VA is going to cost you more than just money, as it forces you into design pattern that is detrimental to quality of the final product. All that just for the opportunity to hear a bunch of uninspired and insignificant lines from a random bystander. VA is great when you can use it as a character defining tool, when actor can show his best performance because there's actually a character to act. I guess that might be one of the reasons VtMB voice acting was above competition - because lively and colorful characters contribute to lively and colorful VA. But I'm not convinced there's any value in giving voice to every random shmuk in your game, even if you have money to burn.

 

Looks like there is no level scaling applied to abilities or spells in Eternity at this stage (and probably won't be).

What do you guys think about this? The overall power curve between characters will be a lot flatter (not necessarily a bad thing IMO) but it should make it 'easier' to take on content above your EPL and content below will not be a complete cakewalk.

 

Low power curve is generally a good thing. So I'd say it's probably a good thing.

 

We don't need celebrities in PoE. I'm pretty sure Obsidian won't spend their budget in names.

 

a lot of actors are with unions such as the Screen Actor's Guild.

http://www.voiceoverresourceguide.com/la/08union.html

That drives the price up.

That includes *all* takes of every line.

 

dammit. a tiny bit higher resolution and we'd have plot details

 

The name of the character appears to be Nytha or Nythe.

 

Damn, now that's a lot of money. I mean, Japanese voice actors get significantly smaller salary.

 

Yeah and one of the conditions of membership to the SAG is that you are not allowed to work for non-SAG sanctioned jobs, or you'll risk losing your membership.

 

For fuck's sake people filmed that homeless guy with awesome voice. I bet there's a shitload of people who would spit of SAG.

 

I fucking want to play this game so bad...

 

Unions are a great thing most of the time.

As he said, that has more to do with celebrities driving up the costs. Plus really detailed cinematic dialogues which are the real money sink. Feargie Ferg even said that open-world fully voice acted games like New Vegas are a lot cheaper to make than linear cinematic corridor shooters like Alpha Protocol/Mass Effect.

Bloodlines's VA was handled by Womb, which is full of talented people. They also did AP. I'm mostly positive its total also wasn't more than seven figures.

http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/646220062

http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/1159946500

 

I trust Josh Sawyer, the project director who has also written for RPGs, when he says "in eleven years of making CRPGs, full voice over/lack of full voice over has honestly never factored into how I have written dialogue, structured a quest, etc. I have also never had someone come to me with a writing problem involving full voice over or lack thereof."

Things he is not: a liar.

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/11iox8/we_are_chris_avellone_tim_cain_and_josh_sawyer/c6mt0lq

 

Uh-oh Roguey, how are you going to explain those two quotes away?

 

I didn't notice much of a difference between the reactivity of New Vegas and Fallout 2.

I don't think so, considering he preferred that style of dialogue back during the Icewind Dale days when full voice acting wasn't the norm. Remember that he hated Baldur's Gate 2's writing style.

J-Saw rocking the boat during the publisher days:
http://new.spring.me/#!/JESawyer/q/453362352

http://new.spring.me/#!/JESawyer/q/617425667

http://new.spring.me/#!/JESawyer/q/227085560752136942