Games "must be like Hollywood" is the worst decline in gaming

[Dadd]

Oh, another one of those 'games shan't be movies' threads....

Not his fault you've been on this website for twenty years

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

I warned you about storyfaggotry

 

[Iucounu]

The only good voice acting is when it's sparsely used

Yes, its only purpose should be to create mood and atmosphere. It should not be used as an assistive device for players that can't understand written text.

Full voice acting even detracts from mood and atmosphere, since it's near impossible to achieve consistent top quality with all NPCs throughout the game. This is further aggravated by poor camera angles, such as when NPCs stare right at you while delivering their mediocre lines. Even doing it "well" would just use up limited development resources, that could have been better used elsewhere.

Finally, full voice acting takes agency away from the player. With written text you can choose your own reading pace, skip ahead or re-read as needed. Voice acting can't be sped up or slowed down, at best you can just skip the dialog, so if the important information is at the end you're out of luck.

 

[Gandalf]

It used to be that mainstream games were more like interactive books. The book allows the reader to work mentally. Nowadays, playing games is akin to watching a film. Don't get me wrong, there is still gameplay there, but what we get is primarily fodder for auditory and visual stimuli. It is a kind of brainwashing. We, players, have many things handed to us on a platter, to the detriment of working out our own imagination.

 

[NecroLord]

Morrowind was another great game that struck the balance between voice acting and text based dialogue.
The male Dunmer voice actor is awesome:
"Die, fetcher!"
"You N'wah!"

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

The mistake was cinematic dialogue that started with KotOR and Bloodlines (at the end of the Renaissance era)

Stonekeep and some other CD-decline era games did that way before KotOR.

Yeah, Stonekeep is a game I remember was a huge step in the wrong direction at a time of general incline.

Stonekeep is fully within prevailing trend during era which produced likes of Wing Commander 3 or Megarace.
There wasn't a genre which didn't get touched by curse of Night Trap.

 

[luj1]

Dumb take. Some of the greatest RPGs ever were fully voiced

Risen, Fallout: New Vegas, Witcher 1 and 2, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Breath of the Wild, ELEX, Deus Ex, etc.

lol

 

[JarlFrank]

Games pretending to be movies isn't a good direction of development though.

Games pretending it's still 1988 isn't good direction either.

I mean it's okay for indie productions like Space Wreck and somewhat endearing even. However there it was a stylistic choice. If whole genre followed suit, it woule be arrested development.

The majority of games attempting to be movie-like in their presentation nowadays is arrested development!

 

[Üstad]

It's one of those luj1 threads where he smacks anyone having a wrong opinion

 

[Viata]

Games were already shit before that. It's just the next level of making games worse.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

Reasonable take. Aping the cinematic storytelling style isn't good for games in my opinion. Passive engagement with the narrative is not a good fit for the medium. Never enjoyed experiencing some Hollywood reject's crap screenplay in between vestigial gameplay segments. Increasingly the creative talent at the big budget end of the spectrum doesn't understand that their input is secondary to that of the mechanical designer's. A car's engine versus the aesthetic design of its bodywork as an analogy - only one of those things really matters if you actually like driving.

The voice acting issue is more context dependent. Fully voice acted conversations can work very well with appropriate constraints applied but because of the financial costs involved it’s almost certain that you will lose potential depth in said interactions and/or have to impose a more linear narrative structure. Much like Jarl Frank I have a soft spot for voice acted greetings and taunts combined with text based dialogue but I wouldn't argue it beats out everthing else.

 

[Iucounu]

It used to be that mainstream games were more like interactive books.

Imagine going to a library where every single book was an audiobook, because that's considered an improvement.

 

[Reinhardt]

Of course shit eaters like Lord_Potato will love it

Of course dumb fucks like you would like games to stop developing at a level of gold box series, with no further advances. Fortunately most of us are not as retarded.

nigger, games stopped developing as games. whole genres died with nothing new to replace them. games in other genres became much shorter and dumber.

 

[Vic]

the cinematic opening of BG3 is what contributed a lot to its success by hooking players in with hollywood-style action.

games are now a media mix that constitutes an "entertainment package".

Is it bad? Mh, what it does for sure is open up a wider audience. If you're only interested in the gameplay you can skip all cutscenes and disable voice acting and if the gameplay is good you have exactly what you wanted, no?

 

[Iucounu]

the cinematic opening of BG3 is what contributed a lot to its success by hooking players in with hollywood-style action.

games are now a media mix that constitutes an "entertainment package".

Is it bad? Mh, what it does for sure is open up a wider audience.

From a business perspective it might be good, if the goal is to create a bland mass market product.

If you're only interested in the gameplay you can skip all cutscenes

Often they are unskippable; likely because they are used as a way to introduce the plot, and the game won't make sense without enduring them.

and disable voice acting

Can you do that? I suppose you could turn down all voice audio, resulting in a very silent game, and you'd likely still be stuck with the now silent animations.

and if the gameplay is good you have exactly what you wanted, no?

Gameplay is unlikely to be good if too much resources were allocated elsewhere. In fact I can't think of a single game with both good gameplay and fully voiced dialogs, Mass Effect 2 and 3 might be as good as it gets.

 

[Vic]

In fact I can't think of a single game with both good gameplay and fully voiced dialogs, Mass Effect 2 and 3 might be as good as it gets.

I was specifically thinking about BG3 when I made that post. And also the Fire Emblem series, where I usually skip all cutscenes and just play the maps.

 

[Lemming42]

In fact I can't think of a single game with both good gameplay and fully voiced dialogs, Mass Effect 2 and 3 might be as good as it gets.

Sorry but this is too funny, Mass Effect has some of the worst gameplay ever devised, especially ME2. Even BioWare's other disasterpiece Dragon Age had better game mechanics than ME's bizarre cover shooter stuff.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

In fact I can't think of a single game with both good gameplay and fully voiced dialogs

If we go beyond RPGs Crimson Skies would be a good example of this.

 

[Konjad]

In fact I can't think of a single game with both good gameplay and fully voiced dialogs, Mass Effect 2 and 3 might be as good as it gets.

You seriously think Gothics, Bloodlines, Deus Exes, Fallout New Vegas, Vendetta: Curse of Raven's Cry... even Alpha Protocol, Risens, Elexes and Venetica are all inferior to Mass Effects?!

Fucking newtards, lads, open the oven

 

[Iucounu]

In fact I can't think of a single game with both good gameplay and fully voiced dialogs, Mass Effect 2 and 3 might be as good as it gets.

Sorry but this is too funny, Mass Effect has some of the worst gameplay ever devised, especially ME2.

That's what I'm saying, it's as good as it gets when developers insist on fully voice dialogs (ME1 has worse gameplay than ME2 though).

In fact I can't think of a single game with both good gameplay and fully voiced dialogs, Mass Effect 2 and 3 might be as good as it gets.

You seriously think Gothics, Bloodlines, Deus Exes, Fallout New Vegas, Vendetta: Curse of Raven's Cry... even Alpha Protocol, Risens, Elexes and Venetica are all inferior to Mass Effects?!

I didn't say ME was good.

 

[Lemming42]

That's what I'm saying, it's as good as it gets when developers insist on fully voice dialogs (ME1 has worse gameplay than ME2 though).

Are we talking exclusively about RPGs, or games in general? Like, are you holding Mass Effect up as the peak of all games ever made that have full voice acting? I don't agree either way but I'm just trying to gauge the exact extent of how strongly I disagree.

And are you suggesting that the reason for games which have poor gameplay is that the developers hired voice actors? I mean, there are hundreds of examples of truly awful games prior to 1994/1995 when voice acting started to become more common, and countless examples of excellent games after that point. The whole argument is blowing my mind. Like I was on board with the start of the thread because I thought the point was that it's boring when games try to specifically emulate the type of storytelling seen in movies, but "games are bad because the developers hired voice actors, Mass Effect is the best ever game to have voice acting" is not an endpoint I saw coming, I have to admit.

 

[Iucounu]

That's what I'm saying, it's as good as it gets when developers insist on fully voice dialogs (ME1 has worse gameplay than ME2 though).

Are we talking exclusively about RPGs, or games in general? Like, are you holding Mass Effect up as the peak of all games ever made that have full voice acting? I don't agree either way but I'm just trying to gauge the exact extent of how strongly I disagree.

I wouldn't call it a peak. Admittedly I haven't played many other fully voice acted games (nowadays I avoid them), I recall The Witcher 1 was about the same quality gameplay-wise.

 

[Iucounu]

In fact I can't think of a single game with both good gameplay and fully voiced dialogs

If we go beyond RPGs Crimson Skies would be a good example of this.

That seems to some audio during the game's installation?

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

In fact I can't think of a single game with both good gameplay and fully voiced dialogs

If we go beyond RPGs Crimson Skies would be a good example of this.

That seems to some audio during the game's installation?

Just as an example of similar quality voice acting on missions and briefings.

 

[Vic]

I'm not a fan of voice acting, I prefer to read the text by myself. But the worst degeneracy is people listening to Japanese voice acting without understanding what it even means.