Voice-Over important to you?

zagemogga · April 2013

I remember from EQ2, where there was massive voiceover in the game. Nearly any quest had a custom actor talking.
Now? There are a few selected 'old' NPC and questgivers (like Zazaa the Retonga woman) who kept their voiceover, new zones have no voice whatsoever.

I heard Lucan D'Lere talking to the crowd during an execution in Freeport (Christopher Lee and awesome).

In the beginning there is so much voiceover in Neverwinter and I love the voice of certain characters. Keep up the good work! Every time I notice voiceover, I let the NPC finish before I move on....

jezathforum · April 2013

Same, its not wasted effort on the dev part thats for sure! Love the voice overs atm and hope for more of them in later zones.

I thought it was just because of beta and they wanted to make the file smaller that we dident have voice overs in later zones.

Also I thought it was a bug but alot of cutscenes for vbosses etc are eerily silent

devoteoftempus · April 2013

It great for the first time through but get olds quick, SWTOR is a prime example. At least we don't have to deal with cutscenes. I would like to see some actual voiceover work in the dungeons and not just at NPC questgivers. Quests are a bit lacking imo. DDO is the opposite which I much prefer, they utilized DM narration in the quest which adds to the immersion of the game imo.

llelowyn13 · April 2013

That kid from the tutorial sounds like Yakko to me. Wouldn't surprise me if Rob Paulsen lent his voice to this game.

libertine17 · April 2013

I really enjoyed the VO in SWTOR and would prefer to have it in any games I play from now on, it adds a lot of characterization that pure text cannot match.

kilo418 · April 2013

I love voice-over in "story" quests, as it adds emotion and depth to the story. But for you basic kill 10 rats quests, I can do without.

ambisinisterr · April 2013

I personally love voice-overs and would love them to be expanded into every single official quest.

zebular · April 2013

Voice-overs are extremely important to me in any RPG, especially an MMORPG. It adds so much to the immersion, when done right and with good voice actors. We live in a day and age where one can control their computer with their voice. No longer are we users of a text & image only internet. Our games should follow suit and appeal to us not only on a visual, ambient and musical level but also on a voice level as well.

philbe63 · April 2013

I enjoyed the voice-overs in Neverwinter but I also enjoyed the fact that I could simply cut them off if I wanted. There's something satisfying by just getting to say (figuratively) 'Ahhhhh Shaddup!'

Now what I really loved was the music. The music in the game is awesome.

dollahz · April 2013

I generally hate reading quests, So it is nice to have the NPC read the quest out loud while running to the kill area. I just wish it didn't cut off after u get a certain distance away. Would be nice to have that option.

ambisinisterr · April 2013

There is a command to turn off the NPC Voice-Overs on command but I agree it should be distance based.

Like you I don't mind hearing it but if I am a mile away it's about time for it to quiet down haha.

kilo418 · April 2013

yeah, hearing the voice as I actually begin the quest is really cool

zagemogga · April 2013

devoteoftempus wrote: »

It great for the first time through but get olds quick, SWTOR is a prime example. At least we don't have to deal with cutscenes. I would like to see some actual voiceover work in the dungeons and not just at NPC questgivers. Quests are a bit lacking imo. DDO is the opposite which I much prefer, they utilized DM narration in the quest which adds to the immersion of the game imo.

Why not have both?
They don't need to be all professional actors, I remember games where NPC had names of developers. They could use developers for voice overs as well

The only disadvantage is the size of the client. Every video/audio cannot be easily compressed and the quest needs to be set in stone and finished before voice over is implemented.
If the quest would change later on, the voice over wouldn't fit any more and they would need to remove it or update the audio with the new quest.

ryger5 · April 2013

Not that fond of voice overs, mostly because it doesn't scale well. In other words, if you insist all major quests/content have customer voice over work, it tends to make the development of new content costly and time consuming. See SWTOR for a game that is just too expensive to keep updated with vibrant content and when it is updated costs EA a small fortune.

I think the trend in games is to customize the experience and make it as unique as possible. That the days of everyone playing "Captain ePeen" with the same voice, with everyone running the same "epic" story line are slowly fading.

If SWTOR taught us anything it is that giant, epic, single-story MMOs are too expensive, that fans rip through the content as fast as possible (see my earlier comments about nerd culture hating tension) and then complain for more. It doesn't scale, it's old-school design and I think, the best video games in the years ahead will break the mold and embrace new exciting ways to bring us very unique, custom experiences.

I don't want to live out some vision and voice of an actor and a writer. I want to create my own way.

RPers have known this secret for decades and only now do I think does the gaming industry realize that there's a deep appetite for it.

ranncore · April 2013

zagemogga wrote: »

They could use developers for voice overs as well

They've already said that some of the voices are in fact done by developers, which I think is kinda cool

Anyways VO isn't really important to me at all (I just end up muting them) but they're important enough to a large enough demographic that I can see why they chose to implement them. Not like they really bother me either.

zingarbage · April 2013

I prefer it too having to read the text, but I wouldn't let it decide if I played a game or not.

unah1 · April 2013

In all seriousness though, I love the voiceovers.... just not the very first one that sounds like Brian Blessed >_>

baka777 · April 2013

I think VO's are better served in single-player games. I'm not against VO's, but I don't think the development time/cost is necessarily worth it (see: SWTOR's budget). If you can add them quickly & cheaply, then fine. If not, then don't bother & deploy your resources on improving/polishing game systems. Many players skip though VO work as fast as they can, in an effort to level more efficiently (especially when repeating content).

jezathforum · April 2013

I agree with the ddo comment that the DM voice over really added to immersion

reilz1981 · April 2013

voice and music and sound set the tone the atmosphere and the FEELING there needs to be much more of it i would gladly download 12 gig client update if it had those 3 in it

Voice-Over important to you?

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