KVVRR
Learned
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2020
- Messages
- 637
It's a shame that genuinely good combat barks seem to be so hard to get right. I understand why, you need a strong understanding of the character you're making them for, a character that is interesting enough for them not to sound generic, a writer good enough to be able to make a few sentences that will not be a pain to listen over and over and over and over again too. It's a juggling act which very few seem to get right, at most just decent which is fair enough. Recently I've been trying Valve's new slop Deadlock and the funny thing is that even if that game is on a closed beta and it looks like ASS the amount of situational, character-based combat barks (for the type of game it is) is really astonishing, varying from really niche situations you'd only see happen once every 10 matches to your run of the mill "haha u r ded now"
Yet they're actually pretty damn good. Having the mafioso mobster say "oh great. a fed" when pinging the enemy in-universe glowie or the character that exclusively speaks in japanese struggle to pronounce the names of english characters gives it a lot of charm... but you never really see that kind of variation with combat barks on RPGs. You get the same 3 to 10 lines repeated at naseum, and most of the time they'll be generic. It's understandable, it's a small detail and the coding must be a nightmare, but it does make me wonder why more care isn't being put into something so many players are going to hear for literal hours while playing. The only recent example I can think of is BG3 having unique lines for having companions do special abilities (everyone having their unique berserker scream; gale complaining about being really shit at sneaking for example) but then again those only happen if you go look for them, not on your regular combat encounter.
Yet they're actually pretty damn good. Having the mafioso mobster say "oh great. a fed" when pinging the enemy in-universe glowie or the character that exclusively speaks in japanese struggle to pronounce the names of english characters gives it a lot of charm... but you never really see that kind of variation with combat barks on RPGs. You get the same 3 to 10 lines repeated at naseum, and most of the time they'll be generic. It's understandable, it's a small detail and the coding must be a nightmare, but it does make me wonder why more care isn't being put into something so many players are going to hear for literal hours while playing. The only recent example I can think of is BG3 having unique lines for having companions do special abilities (everyone having their unique berserker scream; gale complaining about being really shit at sneaking for example) but then again those only happen if you go look for them, not on your regular combat encounter.