The Outer Worlds Pre-Release Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Kyl Von Kull]

Sidenote 2: full voice over ended RPGs

I couldn't have agreed more, that's more and more my observation as well. Full voiceover was a mistake and almost nothing good came out of it.

How can anyone say this when Bloodlines exists? These photorealistic first person games would feel extremely bizarre without full voice acting. It's an unnecessary waste of money in an isometric game with a lot of text, but that's a whole different thing.

Given that future isometric RPGs are likely to be made by small studios with more limited budgets, I doubt they'll keep trying to do full VO. Deadfire only did it because Feargus is foolish and full of hubris. And I guess Sawyer didn't care enough to fight back against management's bad decisions.

 

[Popiel]

How can anyone say this when Bloodlines exists? These photorealistic first person games would feel extremely bizarre without full voice acting. It's an unnecessary waste of money in an isometric game with a lot of text, but that's a whole different thing.

Given that future isometric RPGs are likely to be made by small studios with more limited budgets, I doubt they'll keep trying to do full VO. Deadfire only did it because Feargus is foolish and full of hubris. And I guess Sawyer didn't care enough to fight back against management's bad decisions.

You had noticed almost in there did you? What's one Bloodlines to everything else?

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

You had noticed almost in there did you? What's one Bloodlines to everything else?

Deus Ex, every Piranha Bytes Game, New Vegas, I'd argue KOTOR 2.

Let me turn it around: what games with full VO would've been better without it? Other than Deadfire, I'm stumped. When you're playing a first person or third person over-the-shoulder ARPG, it's really immersion breaking to have unvoiced dialogue.

The problem is that there's a lot more money to be made in FPP/TPP action RPGs, so that's what gets funded. Full VO was a side effect of that. You're mistaking the symptom for the disease.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with voiced NPCs.
Voiced protagonists are shit.

 

[Popiel]

Deus Ex, every Piranha Bytes Game, New Vegas, I'd argue KOTOR 2.

I'd argue all of these are below Bloodlines in quality, especially Piranha Bytes games (wtf are those even doing here). New Vegas has gems (Auberjonois as House for example), Bloodlines is consistent quality. I could list some other cRPGs with at least good at times voice acting (Witcher games come to mind, and Mass Effect also do have good performances in there sometimes).

Both D:OS games would improve vastly without full voice over, the same with DA:O and other DA games. Thing is, I think that designing games in a way that you need full VO not to break immersion, FPP/TPP model like you said, was a mistake in itself, and no, that's not confusing peaches with apples, full VO style seeps into other types of cRPGs as you fully know. It's a trend, and a bad one.

 

[Butter]

Morrowind worked perfectly well, and wasn't immersion-breaking, with only sparse VO.

 

[AwesomeButton]

photorealistic first person games

Yeah, especially the faces

Face and voice look like they are from different videos ppl.

 

[luj1]

Voice acting is a waste of developer money, time and energy. Only neo-gamer hipster cucks require it because they have poor imagination.

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

Baldur's Gate had perfect balance of voice acting, with narrator voice lines and most critical npcs voiced in reasonable way plus most imporant story lines voiced in really epic way, it is perfect balance between reading and hearing an interesting story. To have whole game voiced is a huge risk to give some low quality voices to pretty interesting but not crucial NPC's, nothing kills climate more. Part of why older crpgs are so brilliant is not everything is given on a plate and huge ammount of data leave large room for Your imagination. And imagination is where this genre really rules, both in games or books. Modern crpgs kills most of climate by delivering all details both what you can hear and see without leaving any place for imagination. It kills a lot of magic in many titles becouse it is really rare to perfectly match video, music, sounds and have final effect that is beauty and that fit to the story told.

 

[Zombra]

Let me turn it around: what games with full VO would've been better without it?

All of them ... with voice synth.

I know some people are going to flip their shit ... BBBUT THE UNCANNY VALLEY! Think about it, though. We've been fine with uncanny graphics for all these years. If sound had had a parallel evolution we wouldn't even have noticed. I have awesome memories of the Talking Moose (look it up) and the villain from Impossible Mission (look it up), yet I can count the number of truly memorable video game voices on one maimed hand.

Voiced protagonists are shit.

Agree ... but again voice synthesis would solve the problem. Imagine designing your character's voice, right down to accents, specific inflections and tics, the same way you can choose your hair length and exact eye color now. The Commodore SID chip was allowing this kind of simple voice design 35 years ago (check out the different customers in Space Taxi for example). Then games skipped ahead straight to voice acting and abandoned creative sound tech. Sprinted down a dead end.

Voice acting is the FMV of sound.

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

Wish for Bing Bang Theory crpg and have playthrough with protagonist with Stephen Hawking voice . It will be epic.

 

[Strange Fellow]

yet I can count the number of truly memorable video game voices on one maimed hand.

Really? Your standards must be a lot higher than mine, I can think of lots.

 

[Quillon]

I want to make it clear for those who still don't get it - I'm not surprised to see unimaginative combat in a first person RPG. I'm annoyed at how Obsidian got to do their own thing, their own FPS/RPG, with better tech than the shitty Gamebryo, and the best they could do, the limit of their ambition was to make it like the nuFallouts. They refused to ask more of themselves, because apparently doing just enough is fine.

They planned a smaller game to begin with according to their budget, even then they cut stuff apparently like vacuumed areas, it should have been crazy for them to explore more than straight shooter + melee gameplay when even we/most of us didn't expect them to do that well so they went ahead and done that and overwhelming majority thinks combat is good. What else can they do with the fp action gameplay anyway, besides adding more recoil? Apparently they chose not to add space magic/ME biotics or what was in Bioshock; magical left hand(?) which I appreciate because FUCK MAGIC and they probably didn't wanna deal with designing levels for PC wearing a jumping jet yet, which is prolly for the sequel :D

I don't care about their current excuse for this half-baked game, I care about what's on the table. So their project went out of scope, how does that make things better or their gameplay more fun.

If you don't care about their excuse why are you citing what tech they are using and implying they chose to limit their ambitions without any constraints? When Leonard said he wanted a budget from MS "within reason" for the sequel, I also complained that he should be more ambitious, try new stuff, be more cutting edge, push the envelope etc like CDPR cos in that scenario he chooses to limit their own ambitions where with this they had constraints they needed to abide by and not turn it into a development mess; blaming the publisher and releasing a buggy game etc.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Geez. Obsidian clearly didn't had budget for making something cut edge for this one, so i think this is far from a ''chose to limit their ambitions'' and perhaps only got the money to make because a shit ton of the premise is being a Fallout in space.

They want to play safe for their new IP and want to appel for certain market , i can't blame them. It's easy to fucked up and blow up a new IP to never recover. I would say let them play safe to the first game and if it's sell well enough , a second entry with Micro's budget to have everything that they want to have , if they don't go beyond the basic , Obsidian will have no excuse..

 

[AwesomeButton]

If you don't care about their excuse why are you citing what tech they are using and implying they chose to limit their ambitions without any constraints?

Hello! This is Reading Comprehension with me, AwesomeButton!

Citing the advantages they have today compared to the conditions they were working under while developing FNV has nothing to do with the point that their excuses do not change the qualities of what's ultimately presented to the players. I can't imagine how can such a connection be made.

I'll repeat what I said some pages ago:
1. Given a bigger budget, more development time, better tech, original IP, and Tim/Leonard as leads, my expectation was to see something much more brave and "breaking the formula" than what was produced in 18 months, under Bethesda supervision, with Gamebryo, and under Josh.
2. Whatever their excuse, and they've had many different excuses over the years, I will not pat them on the back and say "At least you tired", just because they are Obsidian. They are not entitled to anything from players.

And a final thought - I want to emphasize again, for any half-literates and strawman-makers - that I am not expecting a perfect game. If Arcanum or VTMB came out today, they would have provoked the same interest and imagination as they did in the year they came out. What I was hoping for was a game that can hold a candle to them in terms of originality. Everything seen so far points to the opposite.

See us next time, sadly, in Reading Comprehension with AwesomeButton!

 

[Quillon]

1. you: I expected much more from them cos of this advantages.
2. me: Well, they didn't have the luxury to do that cos of this.
3. you: I don't care about their excuses.
4. me: Why are you citing their advantages then?
5. you: [go to 1]

 

[luj1]

... my expectation was to see something much more brave and "breaking the formula" than what was produced in 18 months...

I dunno how could you have expected that.

Their goal from day one was a massive, consolidated target audience for their "retirement project". They literally said in an interview mainstream success was their goal.

1. Given a bigger budget...

Budget has nothing to do with it. It's about what they want and where they're at in their careers as developers.

 

[razvedchiki]

So
Is this game good guise?

 

[krilcebre]

Areas look pretty open to me, based on what I've seen so far.

 

[Butter]

My guess is it'll be decent. Not great like we were hoping, but decent. Writing will probably be better than in Deadfire.

 

[razvedchiki]

Yes the beloved by all codexers WRITING.
What about gameplay mechanics?

 

[Quillon]

... my expectation was to see something much more brave and "breaking the formula" than what was produced in 18 months...

I dunno how could you have expected that.

Their goal from day one was a massive, consolidated target audience for their "retirement project". They literally said in an interview mainstream success was their goal.

1. Given a bigger budget...

Budget has nothing to do with it. It's about what they want and where they're at in their careers as developers.

Obs' first KS had way better chance for them to "break the formula", they could literally propose anything and get the funding for it, f.i. if they proposed a spiritual successor to NV there instead of IE crap they'd have raised 10+ mil instead of 4 but they went for the safest option. With TOW they have a publisher even tho they say PD lets them to do whatever they want, PD probably isn't an idiot to blindly give them money, they wouldn't have agreed to any pitch from Obsidian. Tho they've agreed to that Ancestors game, its at least twice as small, made with 30 devs.

 

[Butter]

Yes the beloved by all codexers WRITING.
What about gameplay mechanics?

We've already seen hours upon hours of folks wandering around and shooting things. We've had perks and flaws described to us. We've seen lockpicking and stealthing and conversing. I don't know what you think there is left to unearth.

 

[Wesp5]

Thing is, I think that designing games in a way that you need full VO not to break immersion, FPP/TPP model like you said, was a mistake in itself, and no, that's not confusing peaches with apples, full VO style seeps into other types of cRPGs as you fully know.

Moving small figures around on a board when playing unvoiced isometric RPGs is something completely different to full immersion voiced FPV RPG/FPS hybrids! Both have their audiences and for me the latter is what I want to play. And especially with weak facial animations and NPC models as shown in the TOW videos as of today, voice-overs are very important to make those characters feel alive and not some kind of plastic puppets...

 

[AwesomeButton]

1. you: I expected much more from them cos of this advantages.
2. me: Well, they didn't have the luxury to do that cos of this.
3. you: I don't care about their excuses.
4. me: Why are you citing their advantages then?
5. you: [go to 1]

What is so hard to understand here for you? They have the floor completely to themselves and they produce something that looks very much unremarkable.

I don't care about fanboys coming up with reasons why Obsidian deliver sth unremarkable in this particular instance.