Game News Pillars of Eternity II gets full voice acting

[Infinitron]

Tags: Aarik Dorobiala; Justin Bell; Obsidian Entertainment; Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

We've been told that Pillars of Eternity II will have a lot more voice acting than the first game. Today, by way of tweet, we've learned that "a lot" actually means all of the dialogue in the game. Which is...wow. It looks like Divinity: Original Sin 2 has set the standard that all top-tier isometric RPGs will have to meet from now on. I wonder when they decided to do this, and what impact it'll have on the game's writing - now and in the future. Here's the announcement, from the mouth of audio director Justin Bell.

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I'm guessing that this was meant to be announced in the audio team Fig update that Obsidian promised back in February, but apparently that update is in "development hell". Note that according to Josh Sawyer, the full voice acting doesn't include narration of prose, except in the intro, endgame and a small number of important scripted interactions.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Imagine being a professional company with hundreds of thousands of customers and making important announcements to those customers via a self-shotd video by a college fratboy who makes faces and wears a flatcap indoors.

Kickstarter was a mistake, Obsidian should have gone bankrupt so that necessary cleansing can begin.

 

[frajaq]

next step: voiced protagonists

next next step: switch from isometric perspective to first person

 

[Danlok]

I'm glad they ended up doing full voice-over for POE2 because the VO in the first game was great. For example, Durance realizing Magran had betrayed/tried to kill him was much more interesting because of his voice acting.

 

[polo]

Wasted money.

 

[MRY]

I wonder if they are going to separate the dialogue nodes from nodes with narration, because having partially-voiced nodes is really distracting.

 

[LilSassy]

Cool, I'm really looking forward to fewer choices and consequences due to this just like every other game that does full voice acting.

 

[almondblight]

The voice acting in the first game was so bad I had to play with the voices off. Making fully voiced the goal also means a lot less content, because someone can't just think of a quirky side character and throw them in the game, they have to also go through the whole process of getting them voiced. A lot of fully voiced game end up feeling smaller because of it.

 

[Alienman]

Soy face at the end

 

[Junmarko]

A lot of fully voiced game end up feeling smaller because of it.

"Please, forgive them father, for they do not understand." - Swen Christ, Cain 23:34

 

[Glaucon]

I wonder if they are going to separate the dialogue nodes from nodes with narration, because having partially-voiced nodes is really distracting.

maybe they'll have a separate voice narrate all the prose between dialogue

 

[oldmanpaco]

This is what is needed to compete in today's console market. PS4 Game of the Year!

Spoiler

Infinitron rates

in 3 2 1

 

[ToolBawkz]

Imagine being a professional company with hundreds of thousands of customers and making important announcements to those customers via a self-shotd video by a college fratboy who makes faces and wears a flatcap indoors.

Kickstarter was a mistake, Obsidian should have gone bankrupt so that necessary cleansing can begin.

You know I am an old school gamer (c64) in my 40's and have lurked here for a long time and I have finally had enough vodka tonics to sign up because I really hate forum drama shit but I really have to say this guy hit the mail on the head...

I have a 20+ year background in sales management in an industry where I actually have to call on and visit my clients... While I can be a complete savage on my own time, I still need to maintain a certain level of professionalism with my client base.

I have worked for multi billion dollar companies as well as smaller and mid cap companies, but if I ever walked into one of my clients as some fkn weirdo half cuck'd LGBTxyz++ frat boy SJW pushing some agenda on to my clients I would not only lose a client but potentially the long list of retail clients my various brands represent.

This is what the AAA and even the post apocalyse of the gamersgate culture indy devs represent... They are making games with the 1000th of a % represent... and scrutinzing the majority of what made these games intially sucessful.

I come from a gaming generation where none of this shit mattered... You just played games because they were just awesome, and whether the devs or writers were gay or trans or straight or identified as unicorns in their personal life didn't matter and it wasn't relevent...

I saw the HBS article about Battletech (a game I was looking forward to) with that abomination of a design lead Kiva, and it literally made me sick and ashamed as a gamers because of all of the underlying agenda shit they are forcing on us because they are forcing this inclusive agenda to majority that either doesn't give a shit or wants nothing to do with this SJW crap...

Well it's clear this rant is long enough and I had enough vodka tonics. It just pains me the direction the gaming community is heading, especially the RPG genre that I love and grew up with...

 

[MRY]

I wonder if they are going to separate the dialogue nodes from nodes with narration, because having partially-voiced nodes is really distracting.

maybe they'll have a separate voice narrate all the prose between dialogue

Note that according to Josh Sawyer, the full voice acting doesn't include narration of prose, except in the intro, endgame and a small number of important scripted interactions.

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

I feel ashamed for backing this. They are wasting backers' money on useless shit.

 

[Ruzen]

I wished they do some innovation in this though. Like, VO would stop between descriptions but when I click the companions voice could continue.

 

[MicoSelva]

You'd think professional game developers would know better than record a vertical video.



EDIT:
As for the full VA - it is completely unnecessary for this type of game, but is crucial for mainstream and multi-platform success. Swen Vincke knew this too. Hopefully this gives them the financial results they want, but I am skeptical whether they can repeat (or even come close to) D:OS 2 sales levels. RTWP tactical combat is, paradoxically, less mainstream than turn-based.

 

[Forest Dweller]

I wonder if they are going to separate the dialogue nodes from nodes with narration, because having partially-voiced nodes is really distracting.

maybe they'll have a separate voice narrate all the prose between dialogue

Which would be GAY AS FUCK.

If you're going to have full VO, you need to go full Witcher - i.e. with cutscenes where we can see the characters perform their actions. Or else it just doesn't work, at all. It's why I turned off voices in the first game.

This is an utter waste.

And yes, of course it's going to limit their writing output.

Obsidian's just a normal mainstream rpg developer now?

 

[Niklasgunner]

Anyone on RPGcodex critiquing anyones on his looks smh

 

[Flou]

Imagine being a professional company with hundreds of thousands of customers and making important announcements to those customers via a self-shotd video by a college fratboy who makes faces and wears a flatcap indoors.

Welcome to the late 2010's. Social media is a tool most companies use for such announcements.

 

[Semper]

maybe they'll have a separate voice narrate all the prose between dialogue

have you not played the white march? they already showed that they have improved on the dialogue/prose ratio. while in poe there was a lot of prose, and often in between sentences. in the expansion they toned down the amount and changed the rhythm. if at all, prose is now either at the start or the end of a dialogue node, but never (can't really remember) jammed in interrupting the narration. hopefully this is also true for poe2.

 

[Sannom]

I wonder if they are going to separate the dialogue nodes from nodes with narration, because having partially-voiced nodes is really distracting.

They already did that, kinda, for Tyranny. The narration always happens after the dialogue so as to avoid this problem.

 

[Infinitron]

Imagine being a professional company with hundreds of thousands of customers and making important announcements to those customers via a self-shotd video by a college fratboy who makes faces and wears a flatcap indoors.

I wonder how Feargus feels about the fact that his team seems to be avoiding the Fig platform he helped create and they increasingly prefer to do everything via social media and forum posts.

There's no denying it, crowdfunding updates have become second string for this game. Wonder if that's a trend.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Here have some useless voice acting, instead of the Infinity Engine gameplay that you would like. Cause fuck you, that is why.

 

[Suicidal]

I have a feeling that nowadays RPG devs include full voice acting so that the games would be more suitable for Twitch streams. Twitch is a great source of visibility and advertising and nobody wants to stream a game where you have to read a ton of text out loud even if that person enjoys RPGs.