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Extensive Character Creation. Voices?
Vespura
Member Posts: 71
So they're claiming to have extensive character creation. In order to do this, I would think that they would need quite a few voices for your character, considering the fact that they will be talking in the game, so it's only logical to have a variety of voices. I would assume 5 or 10 or so voices per race. Otherwise, let's say you make a human: You make a really brutal looking character, but let's assume the standard human voice is sort of a young-hero-like voice. That just is not going to fit your character. Is there any confirmation or information on this? I can't seem to find anything. Sure, it's going to cost a bit, but if you want to have dialogue, this is a necessity.
Comments
2 voices per race.
1 male, 1 female. Thats it.
and do ALL the cutscenes 10-20 times for each race (per language)? There IS a budget to this game you know...
anyways, I understand the desire for more than one voice option, but in the end, the costs outweigh the demand for such a feature. If demand goes up, it is possible that they could retroactively add the option to change your voice, but I doubt it.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
yupp, agreed....
they need several voice options along with the variety of customization
i dont think a char would like to hear himself speaking like an asura.....
that is why their are different voices for each race...number crunch
2 voices per race, one male, one female..5 races thats ten voices, since you can play any class with any race thats 10 options for each class...for everyone...
Its funny how in GW1 I don't consider any of my character's voices the same even though they are.
This is not a game.
However, like I said, what if you made a really dark and brutal looking human? A young heroic voice just is not going to suit that character well.
yes, that is totally fine..... ive seen games where some different races ahve the same voices..... *cough* eth *cough mathosian *cough* high elf *cough* kelari i almost choked here.....
and other games as well like EQ2
While I cannot deny that your logic is sound I, too, must admit that the OP has a valid point. If only it were like EQ2 where you had a few voice options because your character never said more than grunts and a few unused emotes. If there is going to be extensive chatter coming from your toon then it just would not be reasonable to expect a lot of voice options. Perhaps they could have found some middle ground where your toon rarely ever spoke and when rolling you selected the "attitude" of your character (such as Angry, Sissy, Sultry, Adorable, High-strung Evangelist) and then proceed to gather a few people to voice very select sections of speech that would only play given the scenario and which "attitude" you selected.
Example 1: (You and your group of jedi pals are out in the woods of Endor hunting and slaughtering mercilessly the local Ewok population. You stumble upon an unsuspecting group of the freaks picking berries. You can opt to give a battle cry to send your cohorts into a blood frenzy for the slaying about to unfold. For your toon you have selected "High-strung Evangelist" and your character erupts with "Attack! I sAaAaAy attack!!!")
Example 2: (You and your group of Jawa pals are chillin out maxin, relaxin all cool at the local cantina. Suddenly a young jedi wanna be sits down and orders some blue milk. He sits down on your favorite stool which you had only left for a moment to relieve yourself. Upon your return you express conscern with your jawa palls and one of them tap him on the shoulder to tell him what he did was a faux pas, after all he took your chair without asking them if it was available. He ignores them so they get his attention again and let him know that they specifically don't like him either. He tells the jawa with a smug sense of self satisfaction that 'He'll be careful.' The jawa tells him "Utini!! (roughly translated means: "you'll be dead.") Next thing you know, sh** hits the fan and this old guy comes out of nowhere and lobs off your jawa pal's arm. For your toon you have selected "High-strung Evangelist" and your character erupts with "You are soooooooooooooo gonna feel some wrath!")
Thats the wiki for Guild Wars 1 and if you didn't notice it said suggestions.
Thats the wiki for Guild Wars 1 and if you didn't notice it said suggestions.
Yeah, I just noticed before you pointed it out.There may still be some option for voice customization, even if they only recorded the 10 voice tracks. There has been a long series of advances in voice modulation technology, it wouldn't bee too far-fetched for there to be at least one slider that could control the pitch of the voice. It wouldn't be an ideal solution (since the altered VO tends to sound funny at the end ranges of most pitch-control sliders in most games), but it would at least be something.
Yeah, maybe voice customization would come with an auto-tune button. XD
I'm in the middle on this one. Multiple voice selections would really help to differentiate characters from one another, especially when there will be such wide customization options available. But the realist in me asks how they can afford that. The budget is big, but it's not unlimited, and voice talent (talent, not some guy off the street) costs money. Maybe it can be modulated somewhat, but I've never heard a modulated voice that hasn't sounded canned. It's usually more of a distraction than it is immersive.
I'm going to have to sit on the fence until I hear what my characters sound like.
I agree with the OP. There should be multiple voices to choose from. If they are able to do it, then they should.
I'd love different voices to choose from, but at the same time when I think about how much dialog our character will be using in this game, having even two voices would be a huge undertaking.
Still with how much they've put into making your hero/story unique, it would be cool to do at least 3 voices for your character and instead of recording the same dialog with different voice actors, use the same voice actor and have different dialog and attitudes based on the personality type picked by the player during character creation. (Think the section where you pick how your characer deals with issues: "Charm" "Ferocity" Etc.)
The problem from that becomes the cutscenes where the character speaks with anyone. The dialog has to fit, but the writers could make it work. Different versions of the same thing basically. Same info with a different attitude slant.
That would make adding different voices easy and show different attitudes that a character can have in the main story.
Again - more work for the writers. More voice recording. More budget. And would it do that much for the game overall? I'll let you decide.
I don't think multiple voices for your character is necessary because I really don't think it's possible to do voice acting right in a game like this.
In a game like Uncharted 2, they had the actors not only doing their voices together, but also acting out the scenes together with motion capture. And there's only a handful of actors (like 7 major characters or so) in a single player game. To me, that's how you do it right.
In a game like GW2, it's just not going to sound authentic no matter what they do. Because of all the branching story and minor characters, they're going to have to record the voices separately. That's going to make things sound a little off, because the actors can't respond to each other or improvise better sounding scenes.
To me, the voice acting is a nice touch, but it's what is selling me the game. I'll be happy that the character has a voice, any voice. Because I think to really do it right, you'd have to throw obscene amounts of money and time at it. It's not like a single player game where you're going from one voice to three or five. It's going from 10 voices to 30 or 50.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
I could cope with that.
Nope. You're wrong:Skip to 8:00
They have many character cinematics like this because they don't want your character to just be something that stands there and is basically a lifeless fighting mass, like in pretty much every other MMO out there, they want your character to have their own personality and their own life to them that builds as you play the game with their personal story. Also, in combat, sometimes your character speaks, as shown here.
This isn't your every day MMO; this is a next gen MMO.
Exactly where am I wrong? I didn't say the game wouldn't have dialog, I said that I didn't think it would be possible to RECORD the dialog between two people AT THE SAME TIME because of all the minor characters. If you have a single player game, like Uncharted 2 as I said, you can have Nolan North and Claudia Black in your studio for hours at a time bouncing dialog off each other, that is if you're not just recording it when they're acting out the motion capture.
The example you give at the 8 minute mark is something I consider pretty mediocre voice acting. It sounds stilted to me for what I suspect is exactly the reason I said, you've got actors saying their lines independently. I'm not actually sure the woman voicing Sergeant Walters is good at all. So having your choice of voice for the one line your character says isn't going to make any difference. And to do it right, like I said, you'd need the woman playing Sergeant Walters in the studio with the woman playing Seraph_Soldier_01 at the same time you'd parade all 10 character voice actors in there. Now imagine doing it with 30-50 character voice actors. And doing it for every scene in the game. For every possible storyline branch. For every change due to temperment. It's not feasible. Sure, maybe you could have a couple of different voices, but without your actors being realistically able to work together, it's a ton of work for what I think is a small benefit.
And I'm sorry, but isn't it next gen to have your own character voice acting in cutscenes at all? Did WoW introduce them in Cataclysm? Because I don't remember your character speaking at all in WOTLK.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Plenty of other games have done it. Just because it is an MMO doesn't mean it's not possible. I mean, sure it'd be difficult, but one of their main priorities in the game is to give characters a full feel of their characters.
Anywa, I get what you're saying, you're saying realistically, it simply would not work, but I'm telling you if they wanted to, they could make it work. However, like many said, it'd be hard ecause of the budget, but they said extensive character creation, which means "There's more to this than your every day MMO", which also includes voices... Might as well be able to choose the voice! But as a previous comment stated, a slider for pitch shouldn't be too hard to add. The devs are going for diversity!!!
Now about WoW... WoW, no, is not a next gen MMO, we can both agree with that, but just because they give their characters 10-ish lines doesn't make that next gen whatsoever... Again, that's 10 lines for jokes and error speech... GW2 has full on character dialogue throughout the entire game. But, I dont think you're not seeing why exactly I called it a next gen mmo apparently, because I'm not talking about only the dialogue. The thing that makes this MMO so next gen, at least in my eyes, is not only the dialogue in the game (something never seen in an MMO before it), but also the extensive character creation (read: extensive. Not many MMOs can say that...), brand new + never before done combat system (something else never seen in an MMO), dynamic events that actually affect the world, which also replace quests and grinding to make it more realistic and epic (never seen in an MMO before), original an unique races (yet another thing never seen in an MMO before it), minigames (bar brawls, shooting gallery, etc... Never done before!) and a large number of other advancements never done in an MMO and plenty of things added to make the MMO unique and different and all ensuring that there has never been an MMO like this before... (If you would need a longer list, I could easily give you one.) Now that, my good friend, is what I could call a next generation MMO...Your NWN reference means you win this thread.
Really, it is not necessary, but they did say "extensive." When I think extensive, I think voice options. And as the OP has said, if I am going to be talking that much in the game, it would be very off-putting to have a voice incongruous with what I think my character should sound like.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
WTF? No subscription fee?
Yeah, I don't want to get into that whole "what is next gen" debate either. In bringing up WoW all I was saying was that the current gen standard doesn't have your character voice acting at all that I know of, so just having any is enough for me to qualify that aspect as next gen. Obviously multiple voices would be better, but I'm not going to feel cheated if it doesn't happen.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007