Add full voice-over

Comments: 13

• 02 Apr, '22
  Metzli

  Honestly something like this I would be willing to pay for as a DLC. The game is 40$ base anyway, so paying an extra 5$ or something to add in full voiceovers would be fine with me. I know this is an expensive feature to develop. I also know a lot of the community has strong opinions on this type of DLC though.....so maybe I am alone in this.

• 02 Apr, '22
  Sven

  Whilst I can relate to this, some of my fav games of all time are fully voiced (and benefit hugely from it): WolfEye as a studio specifically formed to focus on other stuff than "cosmetics". I'd prefer them to focus on those areas they've been focusing on since.
  
  You should watch the post mortem of Pillars Of Eternity Deadfire, itself far from an AAA game, to get an idea of how much an extra burden this places on the budget, the designers, as well as the general planning as well as design of a game. It's on Youtube, and it's a vid called "Josh Sawyer - Breaking the Mold RPG Evolution".

• 03 Apr, '22
  misantronic

  I‘m well aware of those problems while developing a game. For me, I don‘t have much fun reading dialogs on a computer-screen and ofter enough I stop playing the game (as I did with Pillars of eternity)
  I think a nice way to compensate is the jibberish-talk when reading a dialog. The game has that but only a few moments at the start of a dialog.

• 04 Apr, '22
  Sven

  How does the gibberish address your concerns though? It's gibberish. You still have to read the text.
  
  Compared to Pillars Of Eternity (or even Planescape:Torment), there isn't all that much text though anyway.
  
  Personally I don't think they'll go down that route, certainly not post-release, though it may also depend on how well the game does. Original Sin for instance saw full voice-overs much later on, even though Larian's Swen was critical of doing voice-overs too. :-)
  
  As also outlined by Obisidian's Sawyer in the aforementioned Deadfire Post Mortem, the expectation for full voice overs is now real (as even moderately budgetet games now have done it). I think this has the potential to pretty harmful to indie devs, who oft simply don't have the budget to even consider this at all.
  
  Maybe I'm exaggerating, but in the future this may mean that the entire market may split in two: games with VO and those without (which will give tons of devs a really hard time).

• 04 Apr, '22
  misantronic

  Again, I maybe far far away from what most people like, but I need some sort of „entertainment“ while actually reading the text. Best is if its actually voiced, gibberish is ok but just silence while reading kills my motivation to keep going.
  Divinity Original Sin II is probably my favorite game of all time and I‘m so incredibly thankful that they were able to add full VO. still: I see that this is a problem and I‘m ok with (indie) devs leaving it out, but then it may no be the game that I will play / enjoy.
  
  I was just thinking, maybe starting something like a separate campaign (e.g. at kickstarter) just for VO might help, although I‘m not sure if the majority of people even want it.

• 09 Apr, '22
  TheToaster770

  The extra burden Sawyer outlined in his talk was because of implementing full voice-over from the start. Having full voice acting from the start means that everything gets locked in a lot sooner and can't be iterated on as much. Disco Elysium demonstrates a way of handling adding in voice acting later, with the profits from sales of the game being put to implementing full voice acting *post-launch,* reducing the strain on development because the story's already done.
  
  Personally, I prefer consistency with the voice acting in any given game. If I'm in a dialogue, I want it either fully voice acted or not voice acted at all. If characters are barking, I want either all of it to be voice acted or none of it. If companions are barking, I want either all of it voice acted or none. This puts me in a situation of wanting Pathfinder: Kingmaker, a game Sawyer mentions in his talk, to have *less* voice acting. If dialogues and companions were fully voiced, but random barks weren't that'd be fine

• 10 Apr, '22
  Yossarian

  One thing I sometimes do with voiceovers in games (even if the VOs are great, well-acted) is I enable subtitles, and then just read subtitles, and skip the VO dialog. I wonder how many other gamers do that? This is sorta a risk/reward for the devs. Do they expend the time, resources, energy to add VOs when maybe half or more players do not even listen to it? This is just a question, maybe put this in as a poll to see what most people do. For me, I like the way the conversations are in bite-sized text that can be quickly read, while not having to wait through long cut scenes (unless the dialog or story is very compelling, and well-acted, I typically skip).

• 11 Apr, '22
  github @lofcz

  Doing VO at least via something like ReplicaStudios would be sooo nice. AI is taking a great leaps everyday and it's actually pretty good for VO now. Costwise this would be almost zero for VO itself (still extra time for programmers or w/e would be adding this in)

• 11 Apr, '22
  misantronic

  ReplicaStudios sounds amazing! And the coast is rather managable. I would put it in there and make it optional as some people will not like it. But I think it would be perfect for smaller games.

• 13 Apr, '22
  github @lofcz

  I'm not here to advertise/advocate for RS but they ask 300$ for 100h credit which can be turned into 5-10h of a decent VO (in my experience from a small indie project). So the cost for the tool itself is negligible.

• 15 Apr, '22
  Srdjan

  Sven, Disco Elysium also added full voice over MUCH later on.

• 01 May, '22
  Cat H.

  I would definitely pay DLC cash for additional voice over. It is immersive. Especially if the voice-over is thoughts and interactions of the playable characters.

• 29 Jun, '22
  Majber

  I would like it only as paid DLC, for small studio voices are REALLY expensive to make