E3: Kinect Voice-Powers Mass Effect 3 and Ghost Recon

[-Dragmire-]

damn, and here I was hoping for mass effect's kinect interactive make-out minigames where you mime hugging and make embarrassing kiss faces...

Seriously though:

No word on how it will work for PS3 or PC versions of the games.

Spoiler: Worked well enough for similar uses...

 

[nifedj]

Having voice commands in combat can stop you from having to frequently pause to use the power wheel. Using Kinect like this to actually add functionality to a game is cool, though obviously it doesn't justify buying Kinect on it's own. Here's hoping we'll see more uses like it, augmenting games in a non-intrusive way.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

(exhales) It's not as bad as I feared then? Thank goodness. I probably still won't use the kinect though.

 

[Broken Orange]

I am glad that it is something that isn't as intrusive as whipping your arm to cast fire balls. If I can split the cost with my sisters, I'll try out Mass Effect while they dance central.

 

[Alade]

I don't understand the complaints, it's just them throwing a bone to microsoft who probably threw a very large sum of money at them to do this, the same money that probably will get used to enhance other features of the game and maybe even other future bioware games.

As for the functionality, I'll definitely be using it on my first walkthrough (the story one), but not on insanity, that would be stupid.

 

[Techno Destructo]

So long as I can play Mass Effect 3 without Kinect, I'm happy. If Mass Effect 3 becomes Exclusive to Kinect only, I'm shooting myself in the foot to remind people that this is not a good idea.

 

[Wolfenbarg]

Unless it's going to respond to commonly used phrases like, "Holy shit!" "What the fuck are you doing?!" "Or just sit there, that's fine too." "I'm fucking dying here, do something!" and "FUCK THIS GAME!!" then I won't have much use for it. I'll just stick with the controller, which won't record my embarrassing outbursts.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

Do you really need a kinect for this crap? Endwar managed to only garble half my orders with a headset. So yeah, great development MS, a 150$ microphone :/

 

[nifedj]

More ME3 being shown off at the EA Press Conference! Perhaps that will let us know more about the game besides Kinect, which MS was obviously pushing.

http://achievementhunter.com/liveblog/?id=11&sort=&auto=1

 

[ShadowsofHope]

If that isn't optional, my family is going to begin to think I am quite.. insane, everytime I pop Mass Effect 3 in for a few hours of gameplay. <_<

Otherwise, looks awesome so far.

 

[RandV80]

Seems kind of pointless, and the technological advancement is how well they can improve voice recognition.

In my opinion the more important tech breakthrough with voices is not voice recognition but accurate text to voice oration. To be able to capture a person's tone then accurately mimic it, opening up in game interaction to how much a dev team can afford to write rather than how much they can afford to pay voice actors. Though you'd still probably need them for key roles.

 

[Danzaivar]

Loving how everyones moaning that kinect in ME3 will break the hell out of the immersion. Because saying 'Liara use singularity' is way less immersive than pressing LB to freeze the game, wheeling to liaras singularity spell, pressing a and letting go of LB.

I mean the dialog one just sounds like they threw it in for the hell of it, and it should be usable with a microphone rather than only kinect, but come on guys. Jeez!

 

[The Dutchess]

I think it's pretty cool, especially directing companions (not sure how well conversations work, I can see it getting my choice wrong and having me end up punching someone when I was trying to be nice) I would love to yell "Garrus! Move up!" and have him move but that's just me.
But I'm not a fan of the whole motion control thing so I will not be getting a kinect until it looks like it actually works. Why does this voice recognition need to be for kinect? Surely if you have a headset you should be able to use this? I hope somebody comes up with a little mod that allows this for PC, seems to me it can't be all that hard.
Anyway it's a cool feature but unecessary and unlikely to make kinect sales rocket ... just package some voice recognition software with the game and voila - players don't need to buy a stupid kinect.

 

[Nami nom noms]

It's a nice idea but rather then barking orders at them I tend to swear violently at them when they do stupid things (which is a lot in mass effect).
If they can hear me I don't want them to get upset!

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

Well that's a surprisingly benign and fairly logical use for the technology, even if it is kind of pointless given the actual depth of possible squadmate commands in previous games amounted to "Go here! Come back!" and who can forget the classic "Use [some ability]!". How exactly one would convey the where part of directed movement with voice alone also seems suspect.

Now a game like say... Freespace 2, where you have a comm system with multiple pages of depth and granularity, with the ability to issue squad level commands or requests or drill down to individual ships, asking them to do everything from forming on your wing and attacking your target to protecting escort ships, disabling or destroying targeted sub-systems, intercepting bombs or what not, all the while you're busy dogfighting? Voice controls just make sense in that scenario (which makes how it's sort of an orphaned feature in the current FSOpen builds a wee bit disappointing).

The ability to pause and the relative simplicity of the commands you can issue to squadmates really makes voice commands a pointless frivolity. But then I play Mass Effect on the PC anyways, so it's not like I'd be using the Kinect in the first place.

 

[SNIPERFOX ft. Harry P.Ness]

you know what? fuck it. i'm not getting Me3. it sold out. i hate it, saw the gameplay, smeared with the turd of marketing, and i hated it. fuck you bioware. i lost interest in you.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

Interesting but I don't see why it's necessary. It just feels like a gimmick and my rule is that if something feels like a gimmick then it's not being used for innovation. Or at least not being used right.

I suppose this is just part of the mindset of publishers though. And I suppose voice recognition technology isn't quite good enough either. And also, I want to hear Jennifer Hale dammit!

If this were real innovation, it should have been bold and just done away with dialogue wheels and controller commands entirely, and then assigned those buttons to something else. If they made a Tom Clancy game where it wasn't possible to order your troops around except by voice recognition, then I would respect it. It still might plummet and fail, which is why no one would ever do that , but at least it would be a step towards fully integrated voice commands in games.

This doesn't feel like a bold new step forward, it feels like someone saying 'well the game will play perfectly well without it but if you have a couple of hundred quid spare then you get to talk at your computer very loudly hoping it doesn't interpret "Push forwards" as "Throw a grenade at me".' Like I say, a gimmick. Like 3d. Movies are still perfectly fine without 3d, but if you want to pay a little extra you get to see it in headache-o vision, joy!

And I mimick what someone on the Facebook comments said. Why can't it just be done with a headset mic? What made the Kinect the vital new part of this? Because if the Kinect isn't the vital part, and it could have been done with technology we've had for over a decade, then see the gimmick argument above.

And also also also, It's the general problem I find with Kinect. Unless you have an unfeasibly large bedroom you have to set it up in your living room (and at uni even my living room wouldn't be big enough, so thanks for the gigantic fuck you Microsoft) and what if I like to game late at night sometimes and my roommates wouldn't appreciate me effectively doing areobics or shouting really late when they're trying to sleep?

 

[Mimssy]

That would be weird for me if only because I just swear constantly while playing games.
"Liara move you [expletives] over there and [expletives]." I would get nothing accomplished.