Full voiceovers ruin text-heavy RPGs for me

[Nekot-The-Brave]

Voice acting is a way to bring in players who wouldn't normally play a game. It's intimidating for many to read a wall of text, so if it is read for them, it allows for easier accessibility. Now I don't really mind either way, personally, but I understand why developers think that it's important to have now a days.

 

[Bad Sector]

Heh, that reminds me of many YouTube Let's Plays where some dork will slowly read the in-game text.

What else are they supposed to do when reading that text though? Just pausing there in silence is boring and most likely their reading speed wont be the same as the viewers' reading speed anyway.

 

[Silly Germans]

PoE II fails on multiple fronts with its full voice over. The text isn't written as a dialogue between people. It is in stark contrast to how people normally talk to each other and the voice over really makes this problem stand out. Take games like Gothic I/II, The Witcher 1-3, even Mass Effect's or Dragon Age. There you have text that is written more or less as a conversation with voice over in mind and the full voice over works well enough. Another problem is that the voice actors are also extremely bland; add the boring purple prose to that and you end up with full voice over that doesn't add anything to the game.

What I mind reading are boring walls of text. But these boring walls of text don't get better if you read them out loud in a slow and mellow voice.

 

[J_C]

Complaining about this is literally retarded when you can just turn off the voiced audio. For me, I heavily prefer games to be fully voiced, minus the player-character, it's more engrossing and less tiring than having to read pages upon pages of dialog when I'm just trying to play a fucking game. It's way more immersive as well; I mean, you don't read conversations when you chat with someone in real life, you hear them.

Yeah, it's great for an average conversation to last for 5 minutes, instead of reading the text in 1 minute.

 

[octavius]

Heh, that reminds me of many YouTube Let's Plays where some dork will slowly read the in-game text.

What else are they supposed to do when reading that text though? Just pausing there in silence is boring and most likely their reading speed wont be the same as the viewers' reading speed anyway.

Often the text is just fluff, and if the viewer really wants to read it it's very easy to pause the video.

 

[Luckmann]

... just turn off the voiced audio.

You're a special kind of illiterate, aren't you?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

maybe you guys just suck at video games and therefore need to ruin them for the rest of us by turning them into shitty books written by teen fiction authors?

 

[JarlFrank]

Just imagine that during a movie or play you would realize that you would rather be reading the script.

Just imagine that during a leisurely session of reading a book, some dork stands behind you and reads out every line of dialogue while you're trying to read at your own pace.

That's what full VO in isometric RPGs feels like.

If you want to read a book maybe you should do that instead of playing video games

If you want to listen to a podcast maybe you should do that instead of playing video games

 

[JarlFrank]

I mean, you don't read conversations when you chat with someone in real life, you hear them.

Are you one of those people who have no inner voice?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Just imagine that during a movie or play you would realize that you would rather be reading the script.

Just imagine that during a leisurely session of reading a book, some dork stands behind you and reads out every line of dialogue while you're trying to read at your own pace.

That's what full VO in isometric RPGs feels like.

If you want to read a book maybe you should do that instead of playing video games

If you want to listen to a podcast maybe you should do that instead of playing video games

sure, I play videogames to actually play games instead of reading garbage written by teenfic writers

 

[JarlFrank]

maybe you guys just suck at video games and therefore need to ruin them for the rest of us by turning them into shitty books written by teen fiction authors?

Nobody is arguing for games pushing walls of text on you.

What people are arguing is that full voice acting is bad because it makes dialogue more tedious and take longer. A wall of written text can easily be skimmed through, but when you hear a voice babbling all the tme while you do it, it's distracting and takes you longer.

 

[JarlFrank]

Just imagine that during a movie or play you would realize that you would rather be reading the script.

Just imagine that during a leisurely session of reading a book, some dork stands behind you and reads out every line of dialogue while you're trying to read at your own pace.

That's what full VO in isometric RPGs feels like.

If you want to read a book maybe you should do that instead of playing video games

If you want to listen to a podcast maybe you should do that instead of playing video games

sure, I play videogames to actually play games instead of reading garbage written by teenfic writers

Then why do you support full VA which makes dialogues harder to skim efficiently, and therefore a greater time-drain?

 

[Luckmann]

Just imagine that during a movie or play you would realize that you would rather be reading the script.

Just imagine that during a leisurely session of reading a book, some dork stands behind you and reads out every line of dialogue while you're trying to read at your own pace.

That's what full VO in isometric RPGs feels like.

If you want to read a book maybe you should do that instead of playing video games

If you want to listen to a podcast maybe you should do that instead of playing video games

sure, I play videogames to actually play games instead of reading garbage written by teenfic writers

Then why would you want to listen to podcasts of garbage written by teenfic writers?

 

[V_K]

If you want to read a book maybe you should do that instead of playing video games

If you want to listen to a podcast maybe you should do that instead of playing video games

sure, I play videogames to actually play games instead of reading garbage written by teenfic writers

It's so strange that people on a forum about RPGs see characters in a story as a non-entity bag of stats and skills rather than a character just like your in-universe character.

Looks like someone's fallen victim to a dissociative identity disorder

 

[NJClaw]

Anyone else experienced similar thing?

I remember enjoying immensely every voiced line in Baldur's Gate 2 (regardless of the quality of the acting itself), because it helped to establish key characters. Minsc is a kind dumb-dumb, Jaheira is the strong, independent woman, Aerie is weak, shy, and scared. You could infer that from the dialogue itself, but with voiced dialogue you were able to immediately understand everything even as a retarded 8 years old kid.

Once you already introduced the character, voiced lines serve a purpose only in key dialogues, like the final monologue of the big bad evil guy, or a key point in the development of a companion. Everything other than that is a waste of money which can be detrimental to the overall enjoyment of the game.

 

[Bad Sector]

Often the text is just fluff, and if the viewer really wants to read it it's very easy to pause the video.

But the YouTuber is also playing the game and they have to read the text since it very often has hints for what to do or what the story is all about and it is *really* annoying when you watch someone play a game and get lost or completely misunderstand something because they missed hints/plot elements that were explicitly explained to them by the game in a part they didn't pay any attention to.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Just imagine that during a movie or play you would realize that you would rather be reading the script.

Just imagine that during a leisurely session of reading a book, some dork stands behind you and reads out every line of dialogue while you're trying to read at your own pace.

That's what full VO in isometric RPGs feels like.

If you want to read a book maybe you should do that instead of playing video games

If you want to listen to a podcast maybe you should do that instead of playing video games

sure, I play videogames to actually play games instead of reading garbage written by teenfic writers

Then why would you want to listen to podcasts of garbage written by teenfic writers?

I happen to be a prestigious fan of garbage teenfic

 

[Xeon]

I like voice acting since I can do stuff while they talk, tho it was pretty shit in PoE2, whomever thought they should voice the filler text as well or whatever should be fired, it made it way too long.

One thing that can be nice in voiced games beside skipping filler text, is an option for auto dialogue skip or whatever so I don't have to press to continue the dialogue every now and then, otherwise I'll just get bored and outright skip everything.

 

[V_K]

I miss the times when computer had too little memory to have too much text. No problems with VO either.

 

[warcrimes666]

While I read at least 10x faster than average, the primary issue for me is the horrendous amount of resources necessary to make such a thing good and the fact that changes can't be made later in development due to the strict structures necessary to include it.

Most recently, for me, is wasteland 3. It shocked me a bit that it was 40 gigs. Then i realized every single word VO'd and with some decent actors. That is a huge outlay and heavy constriction on creative development. Without the filler, it would be 7-10 gigs max and if even a fraction of those millions of dollars went to a decent author or perhaps even better, a decent editor (or god forbid, some more programmers), the end result would be far far more exceptional. Ultimately, it's forgettable which is anathema to any creator.

Further, processing information by auditory stimulation uses different parts of the brain than visually processing through reading and no actor can replace one's own imagination. Walls of text aren't necessary, while authors with life (and writing) experience are necessary. Many people today continue to praise betrayal at krondor because Feist was quite involved in the production, as far as I can remember. I can't think offhand of another game since that worked so closely with a decent to good author and not just slapping a name on it.

Too many developers today have movie envy and want to be the next grand theft auto in popularity and full VO is a big part of that nonsense motivation. With text too often left to interns in the first place, full vo can work in many other genres but is completely unnecessary in rpgs and a factual harbinger of decline.

 

[Nano]

maybe you guys just suck at video games and therefore need to ruin them for the rest of us by turning them into shitty books written by teen fiction authors?

So you hate the writing, but you want it to be voiced? I'm confused.

 

[Tim the Bore]

I like voice acting since I can do stuff while they talk, tho it was pretty shit in PoE2, whomever thought they should voice the filler text as well or whatever should be fired, it made it way too long.

 

[luj1]

Rusty just has goldfish attention span, show him some explosions quickly

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Rusty just has goldfish attention span, show him some explosions quickly

what kind of faggot hates explosions?
I'm starting to question the heterosexuality of this site

 

[Nano]

I'm a faggot and I enjoy explosions just fine.