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Decline [Poll] Cinematic dialogue in RPGs: Yay or nay?

Cinematic dialogue in RPGs

  • Yay

  • Nay


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Joined
Dec 12, 2013
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Most people enjoy more the feeling of prestige associated with playing something with seemingly high production values than real production values. That's why they like cinematic shit, when in reality it's just a "shot, reverse shot", which is just a bad, lazy cinematography. It's a soap opera level of cinematography. That's why they like voice acting, even if 95% of western voice actors are horrible.
 

xuerebx

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By the way, a lot of you guys sound fucking autistic. Of course, you can speed read faster than an actor can read out every inflection of a textbox. May as well go play with the trannies in Games Done Quick.

I like to enjoy a fucking story, and having a great voice actor encompass a character really adds to it (unless the voice actor is fucking garbage).



I'd throw my remote at the TV if I had to read this. You can't do something like this with a textbox.


To be fair that is pretty fucking awesome, but it's an exception to the norm.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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In games like Divinity: OS2 and Pillars of Eternity 2, which have classic text box isometic dialog but with full voice acting, I switch off the voice acting because it distracts me. I don't want every single inconsequential dialogue to last minutes because I have to wait for the actor to read the lines. And those games have a lot of text, the writers really love being long-winded. When I leave the voice acting on it distracts me from reading and makes me lose focus. With it switched off, I can easily skim through the dialogue at my own pace. It's much, much more comfortable. I don't mind partial voice acting like in Arcanum (only select characters have full VA) or Disco Elysium (only a few lines of some characters are voiced, the rest of their dialogue is text only). BG2 and PST also did it that way back in the day. It helped add personality to the characters but didn't become a boring drag.

In games like New Vegas, Fallout 4 etc, I also usually activate subtitles and skip ahead to the next line rather than waiting for the voice actors to finish. The only exceptions are really well-acted characters with good animations, but that's rare. Usually it's just a talking head crossing his arms or waving his hands occasionally. How "cinematic". I don't have time for that shit.

The perfect system for first person action RPGs would be something like Morrowind's text boxes for all generic NPCs, and important NPCs get fully animated dialogues like in Bloodlines or Mass Effect.
 

Citizen

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The perfect system for first person action RPGs would be something like Morrowind's text boxes for all generic NPCs, and important NPCs get fully animated dialogues like in Bloodlines or Mass Effect.

So Fallout 1-2?
 

NJClaw

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Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture
In games like Divinity: OS2 and Pillars of Eternity 2, which have classic text box isometic dialog but with full voice acting, I switch off the voice acting because it distracts me. I don't want every single inconsequential dialogue to last minutes because I have to wait for the actor to read the lines. And those games have a lot of text, the writers really love being long-winded. When I leave the voice acting on it distracts me from reading and makes me lose focus. With it switched off, I can easily skim through the dialogue at my own pace. It's much, much more comfortable. I don't mind partial voice acting like in Arcanum (only select characters have full VA) or Disco Elysium (only a few lines of some characters are voiced, the rest of their dialogue is text only). BG2 and PST also did it that way back in the day. It helped add personality to the characters but didn't become a boring drag.

In games like New Vegas, Fallout 4 etc, I also usually activate subtitles and skip ahead to the next line rather than waiting for the voice actors to finish. The only exceptions are really well-acted characters with good animations, but that's rare. Usually it's just a talking head crossing his arms or waving his hands occasionally. How "cinematic". I don't have time for that shit.

The perfect system for first person action RPGs would be something like Morrowind's text boxes for all generic NPCs, and important NPCs get fully animated dialogues like in Bloodlines or Mass Effect.
The saddest part about the full voice acting craze is that it ruins the few lines that would be cool to hear. Not only it adds nothing to the experience, but it also subtracts from the general enjoyment of the game. Voice acting in BG2 is enjoyable and it's a welcomed experience every time it pops up, while in Deadfire it's a bore and just forces you to ignore it or outright disable it in the options, so that you miss those few lines that deserve to be heard.
 

normie

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Morrowind has the best dialogue system, improved simply by putting in the work to flesh it out, vary it, make it less generic; it should be a writer's dream

no written sentences on the player's part (beyond some redtext dialog choices) allowing for endless larp, choice of topics allowing to ask anyone about anything and the professionals about matters that pertain to their expertise, choice expanded the more you learn about the world

plebs feel like plebs and provide you with the basic rundown on the situation in the local area, professionals feel like professionals and talk about their shit, it's a really nice system

(Morrowind dialog system with the possibility of keeping a journal you'd have to fill yourself manually would be the peak)
 
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rogueknight333

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Jul 31, 2017
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A major problem with extensive voice-acting is that it makes revising dialogue very difficult. The dialogue needs to be scripted well in advance so it can be sent to the voice actors to be recorded, and thus tends to be more or less set in stone at a relatively early stage of a game's development. If any changes are made to it, the voice actors involved need to be called back, at significant trouble and expense, to re-record. Obviously that is not going to be done very often.

So what if the writers think of some new lines they could add to make conversations more interesting or reactive or funnier or whatever? Very hard to add them in.

After testing, the gameplay ends up being extensively changed so it no longer fits the world lore so well? Hard to change the lore to match.

Among other issues. Wrecking the cost-effectiveness of edits is a strong incentive to make game conversations simpler and more dumbed-down.
 

Morpheus Kitami

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I can only think of a few games improved by having cinematic dialogue. Mass Effect, VtMB (kinda) and Alpha Protocol. The rest of the time its generic RPG dialogue followed by voice actors putting in their usual voices. They just needed to say a few lines and grunt into the microphone a bit, like Neverwinter Nights. This ain't a movie, you don't have the talents for a movie, use your video game talents to make a video game.
 
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Codex Year of the Donut
People who say voice acting adds nothing to video games are pants on head retarded. Try telling me Hanlon's dialogue would be anywhere near the same without voice acting:
 

Ontopoly

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like to enjoy a fucking story, and having a great voice actor encompass a character really adds to it (unless the voice actor is fucking garbage)
Books have the best stories out of any medium or format and don't need voice acting to accomplish it. Voice acting is not a requirement to good story or dialogue.
Sure voice acting can add, but if the studio has to cut out a bunch of text to do it and can't make any changes later on, then I feel like it's taking away more than its adding
 

Mexi

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like to enjoy a fucking story, and having a great voice actor encompass a character really adds to it (unless the voice actor is fucking garbage)
Books have the best stories out of any medium or format and don't need voice acting to accomplish it. Voice acting is not a requirement to good story or dialogue.
Sure voice acting can add, but if the studio has to cut out a bunch of text to do it and can't make any changes later on, then I feel like it's taking away more than its adding
I don't like reading. Most memorable characters have all been voiced. Again, if I had to read this, I'd fucking break everything I own.

 
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I just got done playing Deus Ex HR and let me tell you I hate the cinematic crap in it.

That's not to say it can't be done better. Making things a little tighter and snappier goes a very long way - make the dialogue work appreciate the player's time a little more, shorten the dialogues so the actor can put more into the handful they're given.

I've always been a fan of partial voice or voice for main characters only - the chance of you being able to write, direct and record good voice acting for all 100 or so NPCs is very remote. Do less and do it well.
 
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Drowed

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You guys are missing the point.

I don't think anybody argues that voice acting does not, ever, never, nevereverever add anything to any game. The point is that in most cases, voice acting transits between meh and painful, so they don't add anything to these games. There are exceptions. Shocking, yeah. Some performances in Fallout 1 and 2, Bloodlines, etc are really good. I myself particularly like the voice of Morte in Planescape. And I'll say more: Witcher 3 has great moments and very memorable situations, even if much of Codex hates the game fervently. But again, that's not the point. Because Witcher 3 also has hours and hours of dull dialogues with generic performances that you start skipping without thinking about it.

But for every remarkable scene, you have hours and hours of dialogue with terrible performances in most games. Hell, even good games like Deus EX have dialogues with pitiful performances most of the time. Bloodlines would probably be a recurring example here when we talk about good performances, but even Bloodlines have its bad moments.

And that's because we're not talking about the dialogues in the "new" Assassin's Creed series, or the Bethesda games, or even Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2. The performance in most games is mediocre at its best, and deplorable at its worst. And that's not something that's likely to change by the very nature of games. Possibly the best of the worlds would be games with limited voices, where you can record only the most relevant dialogues, and therefore, invest in good actors for these scenes. But nowadays, 95% of the games go to full VO, and the consequences of that are inevitable.
 

Jvegi

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The dialog in Baldur's Gate 2 Redux mod for DA works surprisingly well. It's cinematic and mostly silent. It's kinda like aliens from Kotor and old language from Jade Empire. I remember people complaining about them back in a day, but you could skip those just fine.

You'd think the long-winded text box conversations wouldn't translate well to a more realistic format, but they do. Cinematic conversations can be cool, we all like Gothic, don't we?
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
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Codex Year of the Donut
You guys are missing the point.

I don't think anybody argues that voice acting does not, ever, never, nevereverever add anything to any game. The point is that in most cases, voice acting transits between meh and painful, so they don't add anything to these games. There are exceptions. Shocking, yeah. Some performances in Fallout 1 and 2, Bloodlines, etc are really good. I myself particularly like the voice of Morte in Planescape. And I'll say more: Witcher 3 has great moments and very memorable situations, even if much of Codex hates the game fervently. But again, that's not the point. Because Witcher 3 also has hours and hours of dull dialogues with generic performances that you start skipping without thinking about it.

But for every remarkable scene, you have hours and hours of dialogue with terrible performances in most games. Hell, even good games like Deus EX have dialogues with pitiful performances most of the time. Bloodlines would probably be a recurring example here when we talk about good performances, but even Bloodlines have its bad moments.

And that's because we're not talking about the dialogues in the "new" Assassin's Creed series, or the Bethesda games, or even Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2. The performance in most games is mediocre at its best, and deplorable at its worst. And that's not something that's likely to change by the very nature of games. Possibly the best of the worlds would be games with limited voices, where you can record only the most relevant dialogues, and therefore, invest in good actors for these scenes. But nowadays, 95% of the games go to full VO, and the consequences of that are inevitable.
Not everything needs to be voice acted(I'm strongly against this FWIW,) but voice acting adds a lot to important characters, especially during key interactions.
Witcher 3 is a great argument as to why sometimes it's good to have a voiced protagonist(which, again, I generally oppose -- mostly for games where the character is a blank slate.) Geralt's English voice actor knocked it out of the park.

Also, the argument that it adds to the budget doesn't really hold water. It's likely one of the cheapest parts of the entire thing if you don't hire SAG VAs. It's a drop in the bucket for any game that's going to be using voice acting to begin with.
 

Butter

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Fallout is the perfect example of how selective voice acting beats ubiquitous voice acting. I guarantee as you read this, you can remember how Gizmo and Vree sound, but those characters wouldn't be half as memorable if every NPC had a voice.
 
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Theoretically there is nothing wrong with them, but only in the sense that an addiction to methamphetamine sometimes isn't a problem. Voted 'nay' because of the secondary effects it illicits.
 

conan_edw

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Pathfinder: Wrath
I don't mind full VA, actually I like it since I'm a slower reader and English isn't my first language. That said, It's still not a priority and I'd hate it if it took something from the game because of the high cost. Cinematic in dialogue? If the budget is enough to produce a high quality ones which is rare then yeah why not. Otherwise, I'd rather they not bother with it and stick with textbox like BG3 which looks really goofy.
 

undecaf

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
No cutscenes and a silent protagonist. That’s the way to go.

I find the obsession of making games ”cinematic” pretty daft in the first place.
 

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