I've been thinking about this for a while...i can't be the only one who prefers text over voice acting, rihgt?
I feel like voice acting reduced the amount of text in the game, and dialogues are differently structured compared to games with no voice acting, which tend to have a more narrative style. Also I get impatient waiting for the npcs to finish so i can read on.
In my opinion Immersion is a function of good storytelling and, with regards to video games, possibly atmospheric graphics(meaning: more the artistic side of it). I think game studios should consider doing more text-heavy rpgs again so that talented writers can tell the story without the constraints of voice acting.

Your opinions?

I do miss it sometimes for sure....good voice acting is immersive in it's own way though, and It also requires good writing, just in a more compressed way.

I think it's probably safe to assume that the days of text based RPG's are done, minus small niche titles. As technology improves, I expect that dialogue options can return to some of the sophistication you got with text based conversation, only now it will be voice acted!

I'm of the opinion that as technology progresses then it will get better. When colour and talkies were first introduced to film it was a bit garish and the actors weren't used to it, but as everyone involved got more practise we ended up with gems like Big Momma's House 2.
Give it time and there will be enough space for better dialogue, and better written to suit the form I think.


Flamer disclaimer: Big Momma's House 2 was a joke.

Just wait for the quest mods, they will contain walls of text for you to enjoy :tes:

Rofl gave me a good chuckle.

Was about to agree with you too... :sadvaultboy:

I don't understand the hostility towards VA but then... the voice actor who sounds like Ahhnuld is actually one of the things i like about the game.

Hopefully computer voices will get to a point they can sound like a human

I for one like the voice actors, I think they add depth and some emotion. I hope that as games and tech progresses, computer voices will as well. This would allow written text in abundance, as the program would speak with human dialects, not sounding like HAL. I have Siri, and it's good, but still doesn't sound quite human. NPC's in the world would also be able to say my characters name correctly, instead of referring to me as a dark elf, or he / she.

Regards
Kilominium

You want the world to end?

I would like to see a mix of both text and voice acting. Significant npc'd related to MQ be voiced and have some recorded greetings and some background conversations and stuff you can over hear so you're not just walking through a crowd that's silent.

However going back to text in most other conversations would allow for more content, more choices that have real impact and even would allow for an AI to react to you and generate contextual conversation. The main reason the world of Skyrim can't really change much as the game progresses is mostly due to the many limits associated with all voiced dialogue. Also some of the less important npc's are voiced so poorly any advantage given to voice acting over text is completely eliminated, nothing ruins immersion like hearing the non acting loser who voices the mage in dragonreach.

I prefer text only because using an entirely voiced system in a game limits the other content and makes the story line less fleshed out.

Skyrim is prime example of this. You get much more information from the books in the game than you do from a series of NPCs talking to you. Morrowind had a good system, I think. Entirely text, with a few lines of speech to add atmosphere. Or Fallout 1 and 2 where only certain NPCs had entirely voiced over dialogue.

I mean, I would like to have my cake and eat it too, but until there's a way to fit every piece of content players (and no doubt the developers themselves) want, I'd rather go back to all text with only a few spoken lines.

I prefer text for the sole reason that I can read faster than most NPCs can talk.

I also tend to have found better quality scripting in text based games but I assume/hope that will improve with time.

I do love the VA but text has tech-advantages in that less space is reserved for hundreds of lines which can be reserved for...other things. Like you said dialog structure is the first things that comes to mind. Right now most quests leave much to be desired because of this. I also really dislike random NPC's spouting the same lines over and over. I like their little chats from NPC to NPC but repetitive lines become annoying. I just wish they would be more quiet unless I ask them something!
Started replaying Morrowind this week and I thought it would be awful to readjust to text but I didn't bother me at all.

I believe that voice acting adds drama to a game, something which cannot be conveyed in text.

Yeah, so do I sometimes. I'm like "yeah yeah yeah, yada yada yada, can ya hurry it up a bit?!".

I would prefer all the voice acting to be done by Morgan Freeman.

Ever played Bloodlines?

Don't blame VA for the fact that Bethesda hires a handful of "famous" voice actors as part of hype machine instead of a lot of mediocre ones to actually make the game better.

Hatsune Miku will solve all the problem!

I did like the way in morrowind, not only could they give you an awful lot of information, lore, quest details, etc. But if you were in a hurry you could just skim through the text and pick out the important parts, (then check your journal later where ACTUAL information would be written down), instead of being forced to listen to every word.

I am now used to voice acting. After Oblivion, I tried playing Morrowind, but I just could not handle it that there was so little spoken voices.

the human voice is more complex than just making a computer sound like a human, then there is all that emotional crap which is almost impossible to duplicate that's why a baby will always respond better to a motherish voice rather than a normal voice, how can we duplicate something that we don't even notice, especially to put it all into a dialogue, that's too much work, maybe another 30--40 years.

If you mean Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, yes.

It's a great game, but it is not a huge open world sandbox with tons of content. It's easy to squeeze in hours of voiced dialogue when the scope of the game is so small. :shakehead:

Mass Effect has more story line squeezed into it, as well, being entirely voiced; however it's very linear and not nearly as large as an Elder Scrolls game.

I wouldn't want text it in new games, games have evolved way beyond that. Actually that is one of the things puts me off Zelda now, I want it to catch up with the times. It's not the text that annoys me, it's those dam noises. But I can play old games with no VO acting. My favorite game ever is FFVIII, I get lost when playing that game, I think a VO would take away what that game means to me.

I hate how limited dialogue options have become due to voice acting. I miss the depth text-only dialogue offered.

The whole thing is circumstantial. Mass Effect and similar dialog heavy games proved that text isn't necessary to create an immersive experience, and Morrowind proved that text based dialog can add intricate stories and quests while leaving room for additional gameplay features and mechanics. It's not really that one is better than the other, but how they're executed. Skyrim did a decent job in this regard. The voiced dialog isn't stellar, but its enough to keep you interested and immersed in the story and not much was sacrificed.