Owlcat's next game is an AAA title that will need full voice acting to compete with BG3

[Infinitron]

Guys, AI voice overs are in a good spot right now, why not just use that for normal text and use the expensive voice actors for the important stuff?
I don't understand this aversion to using new tech toys.

It's a legal issue and bigger devs are still waiting for their lawyers to catch up.

Also ai voice isnt quite there yet. Give it a few more months.

I think at this stage AI voice acting won't necessarily save as much time as one might think, because in a premium title you still need a guy to listen to every second of it to verify that it doesn't sound cringe and adjust things if it does.

 

[ArchAngel]

Is it strange that I've never played a tabletop RPG in my life, but I fucking adore computer RPGs?

No. cRPG only players are well known to be basement dwellers with no friends.

 

[Saark]

There's no unknown territory here. All this time Nintendo has been making 00s-style games with AAA team sizes and beating everyone else while doing it https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/software/index.html

I don't think its reasonable to compare Nintendo that is a franchise and brand worth billions, with multiple 30+ year old franchises that sell like hotcakes no matter how garbage they are, as a comparison to the competition we have between companies and games on the global PC market. Legend of Zelda and Mario are some of the biggest franchises in videogames on the planet, and they can do whatever the fuck they want and still be insanely successful. So can other major brands and franchises with repeat-titles like Bethesda, EA, Blizzard or various jap studios, that keep pushing out crap games but they're getting bought anyway.

Do you honestly think that Owlcat holds even a tenth of the fanbase and sway as these companies or brands do? Because if you do, you're delusional. Tears of the Kingdom was successful because it was a Zelda game. It would've been successful with or without VA. People would've bought it if it suddenly had black Link or if Zelda came out as trans. You think another game in a competing franchise would've been able to do the same if it didnt have close to 40 years of brand and franchise power behind it? Because many have tried and failed. Holding up TotK repeatedly on how AAA games don't need VA isn't the "gotcha" you think it is, when we all know Nintendo can do all kinds of garbage with their IPs and it still gets them massive sales.

When you're trying to break into that level of development, is when you have to make some of these choices, and unfortunately, when looking at how Larian went from a small indie dev to one of the biggest players in the industry, guess what was part of their strategy for doing so? Fully voicing their games. Same as CDPR. Was it the sole reason it was successful? Fuck no. But if you genuinely believe that the normies who never played an RPG before would've played as much of BG3 or The Witcher 3 as they did without some of the design decisions Larian and CDPR did, including full VA/mocapping, then I have some oil to sell you.

 

[Roguey]

There's no unknown territory here. All this time Nintendo has been making 00s-style games with AAA team sizes and beating everyone else while doing it https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/software/index.html

I don't think its reasonable to compare Nintendo that is a franchise and brand worth billions, with multiple 30+ year old franchises that sell like hotcakes no matter how garbage they are, as a comparison to the competition we have between companies and games on the global PC market. Legend of Zelda and Mario are some of the biggest franchises in videogames on the planet, and they can do whatever the fuck they want and still be insanely successful. So can other major brands and franchises with repeat-titles like Bethesda, EA, Blizzard or various jap studios, that keep pushing out crap games but they're getting bought anyway.

Do you honestly think that Owlcat holds even a tenth of the fanbase and sway as these companies or brands do? Because if you do, you're delusional. Tears of the Kingdom was successful because it was a Zelda game. It would've been successful with or without VA. People would've bought it if it suddenly had black Link or if Zelda came out as trans. You think another game in a competing franchise would've been able to do the same if it didnt have close to 40 years of brand and franchise power behind it? Because many have tried and failed. Holding up TotK repeatedly on how AAA games don't need VA isn't the "gotcha" you think it is, when we all know Nintendo can do all kinds of garbage with their IPs and it still gets them massive sales.

When you're trying to break into that level of development, is when you have to make some of these choices, and unfortunately, when looking at how Larian went from a small indie dev to one of the biggest players in the industry, guess what was part of their strategy for doing so? Fully voicing their games. Same as CDPR. Was it the sole reason it was successful? Fuck no. But if you genuinely believe that the normies who never played an RPG before would've played as much of BG3 or The Witcher 3 as they did without some of the design decisions Larian and CDPR did, including full VA/mocapping, then I have some oil to sell you.

Nintendo can and has botched it before https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/software/wiiu.html

Those aren't anywhere near Switch numbers.

 

[ArchAngel]

There's no unknown territory here. All this time Nintendo has been making 00s-style games with AAA team sizes and beating everyone else while doing it https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/software/index.html

I don't think its reasonable to compare Nintendo that is a franchise and brand worth billions, with multiple 30+ year old franchises that sell like hotcakes no matter how garbage they are, as a comparison to the competition we have between companies and games on the global PC market. Legend of Zelda and Mario are some of the biggest franchises in videogames on the planet, and they can do whatever the fuck they want and still be insanely successful. So can other major brands and franchises with repeat-titles like Bethesda, EA, Blizzard or various jap studios, that keep pushing out crap games but they're getting bought anyway.

Do you honestly think that Owlcat holds even a tenth of the fanbase and sway as these companies or brands do? Because if you do, you're delusional. Tears of the Kingdom was successful because it was a Zelda game. It would've been successful with or without VA. People would've bought it if it suddenly had black Link or if Zelda came out as trans. You think another game in a competing franchise would've been able to do the same if it didnt have close to 40 years of brand and franchise power behind it? Because many have tried and failed. Holding up TotK repeatedly on how AAA games don't need VA isn't the "gotcha" you think it is, when we all know Nintendo can do all kinds of garbage with their IPs and it still gets them massive sales.

When you're trying to break into that level of development, is when you have to make some of these choices, and unfortunately, when looking at how Larian went from a small indie dev to one of the biggest players in the industry, guess what was part of their strategy for doing so? Fully voicing their games. Same as CDPR. Was it the sole reason it was successful? Fuck no. But if you genuinely believe that the normies who never played an RPG before would've played as much of BG3 or The Witcher 3 as they did without some of the design decisions Larian and CDPR did, including full VA/mocapping, then I have some oil to sell you.

I wonder how much of Nintendo sales are outside Japan. I would think at least 50% of sales are from Japan. Nobody really even owns a Nintendo outside Japan.
Also you are crazy to think they can race swap characters for Japanese market.
Most Asian countries are biggest racists on the planet and not just vs black people. White people will get randomly stopped by police in Japan.

 

[Infinitron]

A more nuanced take on this is that Nintendo (and other Japanese studios, I suppose) make games in more "abstract impressionist" genres where the mainstream audience can more readily accept a lack of voice acting.

 

[Saark]

Most Asian countries are biggest racists on the planet and not just vs black people. White people will get randomly stopped by police in Japan.

Okay, so it would only sell 10 million instead of 20 million. That'd still be an insane level of success. Obviously they're not that stupid, but my point still stands, that we're now at a point in gaming where many franchises and studios seemingly are too big to fail. It'll be fun to see the next Todd Howard game that will release in 2037 still sell millions.

Owlcat isn't part of that gang, but it seems they want to be. Why, I have no fucking clue, but I guess it's a much less stressful work environment when you don't need each of your games to hit certain milestones in sales to be able to keep paying your employees, and where even scrapping a game 3 times over 6 years isn't a big deal because the last title you sold in the previous century still easily pays for it.

 

[Roguey]

A more nuanced take on this is that Nintendo make games in a more "abstract impressionist" genre where the mainstream audience can more readily accept a lack of voice acting.

If it's near-photorealistic graphics you want there's

These games have hours and hours of cinematics, but there's a lot of stuff that isn't voiced. Still successful, the audience doesn't care that much.

 

[Harthwain]

They could go the route of making voiceover but with very on-point dialogue. Think: Gothic 1. The real issue is that it means severly reduced reactivity (not that Owlcat had much of that, judging by Rogue Trader) and the quality of voiceover is not guaranteed. That said, I think people - including developers - look too much into "the game has voiceover" when appraising its success and not into other elements (Disco Elysium was a huge success and it wasn't fully voiced, for example).

 

[deama]

Guys, AI voice overs are in a good spot right now, why not just use that for normal text and use the expensive voice actors for the important stuff?
I don't understand this aversion to using new tech toys.

It's a legal issue and bigger devs are still waiting for their lawyers to catch up.

Also ai voice isnt quite there yet. Give it a few more months.

I think at this stage AI voice acting won't necessarily save as much time as one might think, because in a premium title you still need a guy to listen to every second of it to verify that it doesn't sound cringe and adjust things if it does.

Yeah but you won't have to pay the voice actor for it, and you'd generally need at least one guy to go through that stuff with some basic voice acting/literacy training I guess, compared to paying a studio.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

My solution for Owlcat - let them only dub romance novels. The romance bluehairs don't care about anything other than the romances, and the rest od playes don't care about things like the dub.

It's like a semiotic division of the player base within the game itself.

 

[Tyranicon]

Guys, AI voice overs are in a good spot right now, why not just use that for normal text and use the expensive voice actors for the important stuff?
I don't understand this aversion to using new tech toys.

It's a legal issue and bigger devs are still waiting for their lawyers to catch up.

Also ai voice isnt quite there yet. Give it a few more months.

I think at this stage AI voice acting won't necessarily save as much time as one might think, because in a premium title you still need a guy to listen to every second of it to verify that it doesn't sound cringe and adjust things if it does.

Oh no, heavily disagree. I've worked with voice actors before and AI voice saves so much time you wouldnt believe.

Look at all these steps you can skip:

1. Finding the right voice actor, negotiating, contracts, rates
2. Finding someone to direct (extra work for the solodev)
3. Explaining context of the dialogue and working with the actor
4. Rewriting lines they can't handle right
5. Dealing with various equipment/personal problems
6. etc

When AI voice is finally ready, it'll be a massive game changer. My games will immediately go from "voicing is too pricy and work-intensive" to "okay, we have VO now."

And devs will realize this across the board, even big ones. Artists complain about AI killing their field, but voice actors are going to experience it the most. There will be so much drama, get your popcorn ready.

FWIW, I still prefer human actors if I had the money and time.

 

[Decado]

A more nuanced take on this is that Nintendo make games in a more "abstract impressionist" genre where the mainstream audience can more readily accept a lack of voice acting.

If it's near-photorealistic graphics you want there's

These games have hours and hours of cinematics, but there's a lot of stuff that isn't voiced. Still successful, the audience doesn't care that much.

I fucking love Yakuza games, they are over the top Japanese soap operas with street fighting. Though the combat in Like a Dragon was way too fucking easy.

 

[Robber Baron]

Owlcat founder breaks down RPG budgets and Larian’s impact on genre: “We can’t invest $200 million to make BG3”​

https://gameworldobserver.com/2024/03/18/rpg-budgets-owlcat-cannot-invest-200-million-to-make-bg3

“We made all our games with partial voiceover, because 1) it’s expensive and 2) it makes the development process extremely difficult. Especially when you have one million words,” Shpilchevskiy said. “Looking at BG3, you understand: it is becoming a must-have feature, which doesn’t guarantee you success, but if you don’t meet that bar, your game is considered one that no longer fits into the right category. So it looks like we will have to do a full voiceover for our next games.”

holy cringe
You can take out cinematics and VA from BG3 and it would still remain a great game with near perfect encounter design and overall quality of content
You can give any Owlcat game AAA presentation and nothing would change about its padded out uneven absolutely MID experience

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

Overall, I see a lot of misrepresentations of what Shpilchevsky said. He didn't say there would necessarily be full VA and cinematics in their future games. He only said that after BG3 this is increasingly expected of AAA/AA games, as a kind of check box on a feature sheet. One that people who are aiming for more budget and niche projects are still free to ignore. Moreover, he explicitly said that they are not going to do an expensive project like BG3.

 

[Mortmal]

A more nuanced take on this is that Nintendo (and other Japanese studios, I suppose) make games in more "abstract impressionist" genres where the mainstream audience can more readily accept a lack of voice acting.

Nintendo can be distinguished from other Japanese developers. Their success is due to a well deserved brand loyalty, excellent gameplay, which is often very innovative, and excellent optimization on their limited and dated hardware. It's also the only name I would recommend for kids.

 

[Serus]

Owlcat and all other AAA (if we count Owlcat as one at this point) developers can go to hell. In fact they should go there as swiftly as possible.

I had to say it.

 

[Morality Games]

Owlcat and all other AAA (if we count Owlcat as one at this point) developers can go to hell. In fact they should go there as swiftly as possible.

I had to say it.

You can call Owlcat a lot of things, but AAA definitely isn't one of them.

 

[Socrates]

Good or even great voice acting amplifies the immersive experience of a CRPG but it in no way is an essential element to it being a good game.

You can call Owlcat a lot of things, but AAA definitely isn't one of them.

This is true. They still have a way to go. They have carried over some sloppiness from their previous games. Overall though I still see them being relevant in the RPG space if they continue to improve their model of design. The difference from say Kingmaker to WoTR is big and I could see that they learned many lessons from Kingmaker.

 

[Deadyawn]

Seeing the cutscenes in Rogue Trader, I wouldn't put much stock in Owlcat's cinematic aspirations.

 

[Roguey]

You can call Owlcat a lot of things, but AAA definitely isn't one of them.

Well they claim the Pathfinders and Rogue Trader were AA games which would make the new thing AAA. Perhaps they all deserve to have an A subtracted.

 

[gurugeorge]

AAA cRPG is an oxymoron, what we have now has more in common with daytime soap operas than cRPGs.

Emphasis on relationships, vocal delivery, realistic cutscenes involving actor movement and camera work…

There's a myopic denial of Larian's focus on core gameplay, honed through three successive titles, in comments like these.

I believe that BioWare failed as a game company because they never cultivated an "identity" in terms of gameplay. Their signature narrative style was all they had and it wasn't enough.

In BG3, the cinematics are still just the cherry on top, even if it's an increasingly large cherry.

Seriously codexers are so blinded by the culture wars and their hatred for "woke" that they completely deny all the amazing things BG3 does.

Luckily nobody takes most of the idiots serious here. Think about it, Larian would probably be bankrupt if they followed the advice of most smooth brains itt.

You keep tilting at windmills here. Most people on the Codex long ago readily acknowledged that BG3 does some things well. It's just a question for some individuals whether the good outweighs the bad.

 

[ArchAngel]

AAA cRPG is an oxymoron, what we have now has more in common with daytime soap operas than cRPGs.

Emphasis on relationships, vocal delivery, realistic cutscenes involving actor movement and camera work…

There's a myopic denial of Larian's focus on core gameplay, honed through three successive titles, in comments like these.

I believe that BioWare failed as a game company because they never cultivated an "identity" in terms of gameplay. Their signature narrative style was all they had and it wasn't enough.

In BG3, the cinematics are still just the cherry on top, even if it's an increasingly large cherry.

Seriously codexers are so blinded by the culture wars and their hatred for "woke" that they completely deny all the amazing things BG3 does.

Luckily nobody takes most of the idiots serious here. Think about it, Larian would probably be bankrupt if they followed the advice of most smooth brains itt.

You keep tilting at windmills here. Most people on the Codex long ago readily acknowledged that BG3 does some things well. It's just a question for some individuals whether the good outweighs the bad.

Yes, it is well at seperating queers from normals.

 

[luj1]

You can take out cinematics and VA from BG3 and it would still remain a great game

Yes?? Yes? HOW? Please do tell. I hate that Biowareiean shit so much.

 

[Saark]

Well they claim the Pathfinders and Rogue Trader were AA games which would make the new thing AAA. Perhaps they all deserve to have an A subtracted.

I think history has taught us that the russian numbers are not to be believed.