Honestly, I think this argument that suggests that the voiceacting is "bad" and you should just read and "use your imagination" is as foolish as the argument that the best way to play a game is is to draw the maps in a notebook.
If it's like that, and I should use my imagination to create the voices, use pen and paper to draw my maps... Then, why not just use my imagination to the graphics too, and call 4 or 5 friends and start a Gurps session? I mean, taking this argument to its logical conclusion, this is exactly what it's suggesting. But if I wanted to play a tabletop session, I would do that. Obviously, if I'm playing a eletronic game, I want to enjoy all the things that this type of game can offer me: graphics, sounds, voices, narration, quest logs, maps, etc. It's amazing to think that I need to say this: a book is a book; it's obvious that the character seen in a movie is different from it, because it's an adaptation. They are different media and you're judging something that is being adapted from one to the other - if we're talking about games (a media that has sound and the possibility of using voices), a closer comparison would be to say that "the ideal films were the silent films", because you could "imagine the voice of the characters on it". I'm not advocating here for the "dumbing down", quest compass, floating golden exclamations on the NPC's heads or any of this retarded shit, I'm just saying there are good things that digital/eletronic games can offer, and voices are one of them. There has to be a gigantic distortion and mental gymnastics to get someone to suggest otherwise.
THAT SAID,
Of course that, in the scale of priorities, VO should be near the end. What we had in Fallout was already fully satisfactory to me, with voices only in the most relevant dialogues. Ideally, yeah, I do think the game being fully voiced is something positive (if the voice acting is good - but the same can be said for any other characteristic). But I don't think that it's valid to sacrifice anything else to accomplish this. And the reaction I'm seeing from the "fans" of the game to the fact that it wouldn't be fully voiced is disgusting and retarded.
If it's like that, and I should use my imagination to create the voices, use pen and paper to draw my maps... Then, why not just use my imagination to the graphics too, and call 4 or 5 friends and start a Gurps session? I mean, taking this argument to its logical conclusion, this is exactly what it's suggesting. But if I wanted to play a tabletop session, I would do that. Obviously, if I'm playing a eletronic game, I want to enjoy all the things that this type of game can offer me: graphics, sounds, voices, narration, quest logs, maps, etc. It's amazing to think that I need to say this: a book is a book; it's obvious that the character seen in a movie is different from it, because it's an adaptation. They are different media and you're judging something that is being adapted from one to the other - if we're talking about games (a media that has sound and the possibility of using voices), a closer comparison would be to say that "the ideal films were the silent films", because you could "imagine the voice of the characters on it". I'm not advocating here for the "dumbing down", quest compass, floating golden exclamations on the NPC's heads or any of this retarded shit, I'm just saying there are good things that digital/eletronic games can offer, and voices are one of them. There has to be a gigantic distortion and mental gymnastics to get someone to suggest otherwise.
THAT SAID,
Of course that, in the scale of priorities, VO should be near the end. What we had in Fallout was already fully satisfactory to me, with voices only in the most relevant dialogues. Ideally, yeah, I do think the game being fully voiced is something positive (if the voice acting is good - but the same can be said for any other characteristic). But I don't think that it's valid to sacrifice anything else to accomplish this. And the reaction I'm seeing from the "fans" of the game to the fact that it wouldn't be fully voiced is disgusting and retarded.
