Game News Pillars of Eternity II gets full voice acting

[Roguey]

Didn’t MOTB have full voice? I don’t remember thinking that that hurt the impact with Myrkul.

Cinematic dialogues had fully voiced NPCs, the regular NWN-style dialogue with the small window in the top left corner didn't.

As I recall, some folks thought this way of doing things felt cheap. I'm sure similar complaints were lobbed at the IE games.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Didn’t MOTB have full voice? I don’t remember thinking that that hurt the impact with Myrkul.

Kaelyn the Dove in MotB is one of the best VOs ever, especially in combat. In fact, MotB VO is one of the best of all time.

 

[Shadenuat]

Yeah but MotB had great characters you wanted to listen to. Same with Bloodlines for example. Is there any evidence it will be interesting to listen to PoE2 Moana setting with parrots n pirates? i don't think so

I have little patience for cultural enrichment and mahua hua hua.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Is there any evidence it will be interesting to listen to PoE2 Moana setting with parrots n pirates?

Of course not. Won't touch PoE2 with a ten foot pole. Fuck them.

 

[karoliner]

Plus, I bet at least one of the devs is trying to sleep with Laura Bailey.

I can't say I blame them.

 

[set]

People rolled their eyes at my comment, but srsly, outside of Deus Ex or Bloodlines I can't say I vividly recall any moment in an RPG where the voice acting made the scene for me. Even outside of RPGs...it's what, Metal Gear? A couple cinematic games? Voice acting is a waste of money you use to up the "cinematic feel" / marketing. It's equivalent to spending money on better graphics. It's not like we don't want VO - it's just, there are way better things you could be doing with that money, especially if you're already a niche title. This isn't a telltale game.

Okay, maybe I'm being overly harsh. I definitely remember the Mass Effect and Dragon Age games for their embarrassing dialog. It's more than just two RPGs, but even so. I feel the same way about voice acting being added to Zelda -- the game just works better without it, and people who criticized Nintendo for being 'behind the times' or whatever can go fuck themselves. There's an aesthetic you get from having no voice acting, just like there's an aesthetic to Dwarf Fortress.

Anyway, PoE apparently had voice acting, but I don't even remember it. Guess it was worth the money.

 

[Zombra]

So except for the examples where you vividly remember VA being good, you never remember VA being good? That's hardly a resounding argument.

 

[Nael]

This is wonderful news for those of us who can't read good.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

So except for the examples where you vividly remember VA being good, you never remember VA being good? That's hardly a resounding argument.

or is it

 

[Roguey]

I can't say I blame them.

Huh, looks like another VA where I like the voice much better than the appearance. Too thin and feminine for me.

 

[fantadomat]

I can't say I blame them.

Huh, looks like another VA where I like the voice much better than the appearance. Too thin and feminine for me.

Do you prefer ripped bitches or chubby bitches?

Just looked a few of Laura Bailey's pictures and didn't liked her horse mouth. It looks like the joker. Still wouldn't mind fucking her,nice slim body,exactly my type.

 

[Roguey]

Do you prefer ripped bitches or chubby bitches?

Endomorphs>mesomorphs>good thing other people (e.g. you) like ectomorphs

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Plus, I bet at least one of the devs is trying to sleep with Laura Bailey.

I can't say I blame them.

I can't attest her intelligence from her looks.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Didn’t MOTB have full voice? I don’t remember thinking that that hurt the impact with Myrkul.

Cinematic dialogues had fully voiced NPCs, the regular NWN-style dialogue with the small window in the top left corner didn't.

As I recall, some folks thought this way of doing things felt cheap. I'm sure similar complaints were lobbed at the IE games.

If MOTB had been fully voiced and fully animated, it would have ended up feeling more like KOTOR 2; not sure that would’ve been an improvement. I think it’s apples and oranges comparing either of them to an isometric RPG with no cutscenes, but you’re not losing much by keeping the more boring dialogue unobtrusive.

A lot of this comes down to execution: NWN2 OC voice acting and cutscenes were less than stellar; MOTB’s were great. In general, though, I find voice acting much more pleasant when I also have a moving face to look at. Presumably that’s too expensive or everyone making an isometric game would just copy fallout style talking heads.

 

[Blaine]

Well, shit fire and save matches. I was too busy juicing up on vaccines to enhance my autism for Factorio this weekend, thereby failing to notice this news item and cash in on the first-page Brofist harvest.

The tale of Pillocks of SJWternity II: [INSERT LAZY FANTASY-THEMED COMPOUND WORD HERE] has been a dark and dismal one. Each successive piece of news about the game—including its title—has been worse than the news that preceded it....

...but this has TOTALLY redeemed the game in my eyes! Why, just the other day, I thought to myself: "Self, you know what I really want to see in PoSJW2:ILFTCWH? Full voice acting. That would be choice."

 

[J_C]

I don't know how should I feel about this. I generally liked the VO of Pillars 1, but in games like this it is much faster to read all that text than waiting for spoken dialogue to finish.

 

[Riddler]

It's enough if the NPC introduces himself with voice. After that you can read the rest with his voice in your head without dealing with all the problems caused by full VO, like having to constantly cut it off mid-sentence when you're done reading.

I think you sometimes want key lines voiced beyond the introduction. Think of Ravel for instance.

This happens a bunch in BG2 as well to great effect. One example is when you get the Skinner quest in the bridge district in which I believe two nodes are voiced.

 

[J_C]

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.

Updates on Fig: 45. Last update: 23. February.

And looking back, not posting an update for 1 or 2 months already happened before, so why the fuss? You can bet on that they will release a regular update with the voiceover stuff, but they can reach the biggest audiance the fastest on social media. They would be fools to not use that platform.

The bigger question is that why didn't we hear anything about Wasteland 3 for a much longer time.

 

[AwesomeButton]

<<That feeling when all the major IWD NPCs are fully or almost fully voiced but everyone is too edgy to remember>>

 

[Junmarko]

<<That feeling when all the major IWD NPCs are fully or almost fully voiced but everyone is too edgy to remember>>

Shut-up you're ruining it!

 

[AwesomeButton]

To be fair though, it's easy to picture instances where the VOs will be too much of a good thing. Imagine going to the same shopkeeper and hearing the same introduction line (the first few words of it, before you enter the merchant interface) over and over again.

Or the equivalent of the man with many cheeses in the middle of Neketaka's square, slapped in there with the overt hope to create a meme out of him.

Or all those random conversations people are having in the streets, like in the beta village? Will these overlap? What if your party members start talking to each other randomly while you are hearing dudes on the street? Also, these dudes recycle their conversations as well, mind you. I really don't know what will come out of this.

 

[Blaine]

<<That feeling when all the major IWD NPCs are fully or almost fully voiced but everyone is too edgy to remember>>

IWD is a combat romp with a whole lot less dialogue and a custom-made party utilizing merely functional voice sound bytes that were essentially just SFX. They could as easily have been animal noises.

PoE features a voiced cast of numerous hand-crafted protagonist companions and is supposed to be a dialogue-heavy, full-fledged RPG.

If anything, you're just reinforcing the point you're mocking, because that's exactly what people fear: Heavier VO begets a likelihood to be more like IWD, which was light on the dialogue and C&C and heavy on the combat.

 

[Thonius]

<<That feeling when all the major IWD NPCs are fully or almost fully voiced but everyone is too edgy to remember>>

EXACTLY! No one remembers it! SO why bother?

 

[fobia]

The "counter-arguments" here are a bit construed.

There is the ingame option to turn off the VA. So you don't have to listen to it, if you don't want to. This alone should be enough, but also:
There's no reason to believe that the money that went into VA would've been spent on other features otherwise, so no reason to believe it has a negative influence on the gameplay. And last but not least:
From a marketing point of view, the collaboration with Critical Role and the Full VO was a smart idea, a studio like Obsidian won't survive if it's only audience is people like those on the Codex.

I rest my case.

Also, the latest trend on the codex to dicuss the appearance of literally anybody that is in some way related to a game or its development is fucking weird, just saying.

 

[Infinitron]

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