if i wanted to read i would get a book not a video game

Just turn down the voice volume, turn on the subtitles and voila - problem solved. A text game again. You can click through the text as fast as you need.

I prefer reading text. Half the time the actors get the inflection wrong, because they're just standing in a studio reading lines at a mike without context, and I just find myself feeling sorry for the writer who's dialogue is being butchered. The only actor I can think of who got her entire performance note perfect was Felicia Day in Fallout: NV. I couldn't fault her VA, so well done her.

If there's reams of exposition, as there was in some the NV DLCs, reading it would have been a lot more interesting than watching/listening to a strangely lip-synced 3d model relating it. Bioware gets around the dullness with a cinematic cutscene approach, which is better than watching a static Ed-E channeling Ulysses ramblings for what felt like days. Bethesda gets around the problem by just limiting the dialogue to a couple of lines.

Written text also helps with re-playability, because you really don't want to hear a ton of dialogue twice, or more, but you can just skim over some text.

Because subtitles equals good writing?

My opinion is this-

In 2011, the days of text dialogue are gone. And should be. A more major immersion-killing holdover from the cro-magnon days of gaming would be hard to come up with.

Why is it immersion killing? Aside from the fact that things like audible words (Dragon shouts) are a key element in the game and the player and Dragons can be heard, um, using their voices? And because a part of the MQ revolves around, you know, using the Power of the Voice? Only because of this:

Everything else has a high-quality sound. Wolves, spiders. Water. Trolls. Dogs. All of those things make sounds. This isn't Bard's Tale from the '80s. Sound is an immersive quality. If you disagree, well, you're mistaken. Sight and sound are the two of the three senses you can use to play a video game, the third being touch if you have a FF control. Why should people be mutes in Skyrim? Everything else makes sounds. But NPCs can't? That's a step backwards in immersive environments. Robbing NPCs of voices also further whittle down their character, as they stare blankly at you, mouths closed, and text pops up. Or did you feel their jaws should be flapping as the text appears? That's even worse.

I also can't understand the idea of "constraints of voice acting". You do realize that the text dialogue is scripted, and voice acting is also scripted. If you want to discuss how scripting for dialogue could be better then sure I'm with you- it can be better in Skyrim. But at the same time, people complain about the voice acting in Skyrim because it's "bad". Not only is that an opinion, it's a very debatable one because I'd say that more than half of the people on this forum that say it's "bad" are using the term "bad" to describe something with a generic blanket negative.

The idea of having voiceless NPCs when the rest of the world makes sounds you'd expect them to make is illogical and limiting. It hampers suspension of disbelief, and it is in my opinion a low-buck, path of least resistance stand-in for the real thing.

fireflyry said:


of course not. But by the same token, having a game designed as text dialogue also doesn't equal good writing. A script writer is needed in both cases. Why can a game with voice actors not benefit from good script writing just as much as a game that was designed for text-only? There is nothing intrinsic about text that equals good writing

I prefer text as well it normally makes most characters more interesting.

Not this [censored] again...

*sigh*

No, it's not better, not it doesn't add more, you still need to write all these texts, no it doesn't make it more immersive in fact quite the opposite (do you talk to people face to face in text boxes?), no it doesn't remove the repetitive voices (the exact same text from different characters will feel different? How?) It doesn't add replayability as you still going to read the exact same text, you just going to skip it like you would with voiced ones.

Voiced dialog are in fact more memorable, have more character, more immersive, doesn't break the flow, CAN BE USED ANYWHERE not just scripted dialog trees.


Okay, that is just a stupid statement to make...

How is a book closer to a video game?

Because books also have audial visual parts like video games?
Because you play video games on paper?
Because video game is made only out of text?

No, video games are closer to movies, they are an audial, visual medium with added interactive functions. You cannot have visual or audial cues in text, you cannot describe tone, accent, grimace without outright telling you.
No, reading "X said it with lowered voice" is not AT ALL the same as actually hearing X saying something with a lowered voice.

in other words:
NO BOOKS ARE NOT BETTER!

I'm curious as to your post.

Do you feel that in this game, the voices are computer generated?

I ask because you seem to feel they are computer generated, and it will take decades to produce a technology that can duplicate a real human voice. Aside from the fact that DVDs and CDs and Blu-rays make shelves groan under their weight at stores and they capture human voices quite well, in the 1980s I was using recorded voices to teach me proper inflection and pronunciation in a foreign language.

Then too, children respond to their parents very well when they are on cell phones. I cannot understand your position

You obviously haven't read a good book.

You obviously haven't seen a good movie/heard a good audio book.

I sure have, and it still doesn't beat a good book.

Voice acting requires voice actors, it requires lip syncing, it requires more animations and there is a limit as to how much can be done.
Text-based dialogue does not need voice actors or lip syncing, less money and resources are spent and more time is given to write more dialogue.

Say they have a voice actor doing a dialogue for one character, then when he's done with the voice acting the writers realize that there is a dialogue branch that could have been great to have but since the voice actor is now paid and done his part he is off to do other stuff and they might not be able to rehire him or cannot afford it because it goes over the budget.

With a text-based system they can at any point just edit in more dialogue options or edit a flawed dialogue response, they could even patch the dialogue in, or use the DLC's to flesh out the characters of the main game.
But with voice actors and more animations a lot more money and resources must be spent.

That is how voice acting limits the dialogue.
Oh and not to mention that since there are so many characters in the game and they only have a certain budget a lot of characters will sound alike.


But to remain impartial, voice acting makes for greater "imm?rsi?n" and it looks and sounds a lot better than just text does.
Problem with voice acting is bad voice acting, either the actor's voice, accent, how the line is read compared to the context ofthe situation or the line itself.
But with good voice acting a game feels a lot more... Polished, I suppose.

So using voice actors sacrifices how complex and vast a dialogue system can be if the game has like 200 characters to talk to, but it also makes for a much better gameplay experience visually.

I look at it this way:
It's either great visuals or great gameplay, do you want a game to be great visually? (it does not mean you're a graphics [censored]) Or do you want it to focus on the gameplay and sacrifice certain aspects?
I choose the latter.

I choose the

I have to be honest, I absolutely need voice acting. It's one of the things I love most about games!
I couldn't get into Morrowind because of the dryness of interacting with blocks of text with hyperlinks in them, rather than hearing a person talk.

Belittling somebody to drive down the value of their opinion and make your own seem more important is not an effective tactic in debate. If you can't back up your own standpoint with persuasive argument, then you have no point.

I own a small library of books. Selections from King, Kipling, Ambrose, Stevenson, Homer, Dumas, Tolkien, Mauldin, Shirer, White...the list goes on.

I strongly believe that in an audio/visual format, voice acting is not only required to prevent a further loss of suspension of disbelief, but is undeniably superior to text dialogue. Do I need to read a 'good book', in your opinion too? Tell me, where would films like 'The French Connection' be, if the actors didn't say a word? Films went to 'talkies' for a reason- it was a better audience experience.

The only thing that I disliked in Morrowind relating to dialogues is that everyone was a Human Encyclopedia, always telling me the exactly same correct information about the same topics. Few NPCs said their opinions instead of being a encyclopedia. :confused:

Everyone in Vivec City knows the exactly same things about the St. Olms Canton. :tongue:
But overall, it was good.

Also, how can people complain about repeated dialogue when everyone on Morrowind said "Speak Citizen" or "Speak Traveler"? :laugh:

That's one of the big things I enjoyed about Mankar Camoran's speeches in Oblivion. Brilliantly written, really gave insight into the delusions that Camoran held as truth.

I am better than you, therefore my opinion is truth.

Show me where the market indicates this? I prefer the SP over a VP any day, but more importantly, not seeing my PC because none of it is me. I have a wonderful enough imagination. Let the rest of the NPCs do the talking because they are written for the relevant game story and plots. Case in point for market, Dragon Age : Origins sold nearly 5m copies across the three platforms, most of them on the 360. It was a heavy text choice game with an SP. Then a different route was taken to attempt to attract the action crowd with Dragon Age 2, by adding less personal conversations, more cinematics, over the top unrealistic combat and a VP. Comparatively in sales, it is a near flop, not even having sold 2m total across the three platforms. Funny enough, most of the critics were console gamers.

Now Beth continues on the path of the SP with text, and this game is a blockbuster for an RPG, getting close to 7m sold in five weeks. You add a VP with the cinematics that have to go with it, you take away gameplay and story content, while adding development cost.

That's fine, but still, the idea is that Voice Acting introduces a constraint. It removes a constraint. Text is a shackle. Look at Skyrim-

Sure, VA took resources. But do you honestly feel that the VA was implemented in the most effective way? You're putting forth the idea that Skyrim's effort in VA is the best that can ever be achieved, so text would be better. Clearly, Skyrim's effort could have been much, much more efficiently implemented for the same size of data, by choosing a better approach of how the VA data was used, and when, and where.

I didn't say "I don;t see how VA limits the dialogue'. But as a concept, it does not. Again, scripting is needed in both cases.

You look at this very 'black and white'. It must be one or the other. Things could not be done differently or better. This is how it must be, because Skyrim couldn't achieve better. Sicne the VA leaves something to be desired, then text is the answer to solve the problem

I don't believe that the Wile E. Coyote approach to trying a thing once and then abandoning it if it's flawed is an effective problem-solving technique

A good motto for you would be "Superbia par vox."

I have my dialogue text turned on and will likely keep it that way for this first play-through. I didn't have it on at first but then on the PS3 for the second game I put it on and that's the only way I knew that in the opening sequence at the chopping block, It said his name in front of the dialogue. Not sure if that's a spoiler but just in case. Other than that, I prefer the spoken word. I get sleepy if I have to read too much text...one of the reasons I can't get through Morrowind. I sure wish that game was spoken word.

:tes:

I prefer text as well since it does not limit the amount of dialogues, lore, story and the like so drastically. Planescape Torment is a great example of what can be done without the added costs of voice acting.

Yes, book vs film is a good anology. The text heavy rpgs like the baldurs gate series, planescape torment, morrowind, some final fantasies are textbook examples of immersive rpgs without voice over...rpgs should go back to imaginative storytelling, not realistic presentation.

The sounds of other NPCs, creatures and even the ambient sounds have been in games going on 20+ years now, that is nothing new. You're adding those in as if they are being excluded in text only game, what most are meaning is for the player character being a silent protagonist, that is all. No voice actor can make my own imagined inflections and tonality, nor make what I think should be the imagined expressions I would use in the context of the text I read. Otherwise, they're made by the writer and actor that more than naught, don't reflect me and many times, they don't fit the emotion and expression to the context of the conversation in the games I would feel I would apply. Also, in another post after this, you mention:



I agree, it certainly does add more to movies since the inclusion of sound and color. But, movies are not interactive either, so they are not relevant. Even if they were, it still wouldn't be reflecting me and what I think I would be doing with the interactions.

"But it removes narration", he says while glaring in your eyes. "In previous games, there weren't just the spoken words." he pauses, gazing in abstraction; you aren't sure, whether he tries to remember how it was back then or if he just tries to find the right words. "Facial animation still lags behind" he finally continues, "body language even more so. And without that we're just talking to puppets." He pauses shortly, then adds. "Looked at it that way, text based dialogue added much more soul and drama to a conversation, than crudely animated faces and bored voice actors ever can." Crossing his arms, the old man stares at you with a gaze that doesn't tolerate any back talk.