Poll: For RPGs what voice acting system do you prefer

[Professor James]

I was reading on how Fallout 4 might be voiced and was wondering what dialogue system would be best. For RPGs, dialogue comes in three types. There is the Elder Scrolls method where you can look and be anyone with plenty of dialogue, but your character never vocally says anything outside of grunts and shouts. The middle ground method as seen in mass effect where you can still look and be whoever you want, but your character is only referred by an unisex title and there are specific voice lines with an actor based on the dialogue option you chose. The final method is The Witcher method where you play one specific character who has a variety of lines.

 

[Redryhno]

Personally, if I have a choice at all, I'd like to have a huge amount of lines, and no voice acting for your character at all.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Dang. When I clicked this I was thinking more along the lines of "Has dialogue text boxes, but speaks in a dialect of Simish".

That said, it largely comes down to what kind of RPG it is. The choices are basically "Sandbox, story with character creator, story with set protagonist." I was thinking more "Everybody has lines, silent protag with everybody else having lines, everybody speaking simish, or no VA apart from reactions."

 

[The Madman]

I like semi-voice acted rpgs, where voice acting is used selectively for specific lines and important scenes but otherwise much if not most of the dialogue tends to be purely written. I find that this sort of scenario works best in leveraging the strengths of voice acting for emotional scenes without the added drawback of having to limit dialogue options because having everything voiced would cost a small fortune.

 

[Quirkymeister]

I see why the Dragon Age Origins/KOTOR model where your character doesn't speak is liked and probably more feasilble than Mass Effect's model, but frankly, I found it really hard to view my characters in those games as people. Particularly Origins' romances; they tried their best, but the fact that my character never speaks makes the romantic dialogue come across as less of a conversation and more of a weird sex monologue. Not to mention it means that all the other characters get the awesome speeches instead of your character, because a text-only one'd be underwhelming.
So for RPGs, I'm finding myself more preferring the Mass Effect model, just because it helps feel like part of the world, even if it means less dialogue choices. Haven't played a Witcher game yet, so I can't comment on how that system works, however.

 

[Quirkymeister]

However, for games with less narrative focus, like Elder Scrolls and Fallout, no player-character voices is probably the way to go.

 

[gact]

I'm going a bit oldschool here and say I prefer no voice acting at all, somehting like zelda or any old RPG.

For me it feels like when I fill the gap of how the characters voice should sound like its just better, mostly because bad voice acting is everywhere in RPGs, understandably so, and also there are various instances of bad translations and lip syncing problems.

 

[DementedSheep]

I like my character having a voice if the voice acting is decent but I don't like the tendency for games that have VAed lines to give you dialogue options that don't tell you what the line actually is and this isn't a perfect world so these things cost money. VAing often means less lines. I think my "ideal" for an RPG would be where some lines are voiced (introductions, important scenes ect) but other aren't (follow up questions, minor quests ect).
I don't mind having a fixed PC in an RPG if there is good a plot reason for it but if it's just for VAing I would rather make my own. With the Witcher specifically it feels weird to me to picking dialogue options at all because he is and established character who already has a personality and his own book series.

 

[G00N3R7883]

First of all, Skyrim is a very bad example to use for the poll. The main benefit of no voice acting is that you can have lots more dialogue options to build your character's personality, but Skyrim has hardly any dialogue choices. Dragon Age Origins or Pillars of Eternity would be a better example to use.

The Witcher 3 style option depends on how much the player likes the character as they are written. Personally I think Geralt is awesome, so I don't have a problem with this game. I can't think of many situations where Geralt has said something that I didn't want him to. But it might not be the best system in general, because if you don't like the character, you won't like the game.

I think the middle ground, Mass Effect style, is the best system. You can have exciting cinematic cutscenes, you can have some dialogue options (not as many as non-voiced, but I think Mass Effect and the Dragon Age sequels had plenty), and you can customise your character's gender and appearance. Depends on developer size, but you could hire multiple voice actors for the main character so the player isn't stuck with one voice (I think Inquisition had 2 male and 2 female?).

I think the biggest problem Mass Effect had was sometimes there was a disconnect between the dialogue option you chose, and the spoken line, because they tried to shorten the line to fit it in the wheel UI. It would lead to situations like

NPC: "I don't like cheese"
Shepard (wheel): "Cheese is awesome"
Shepard (spoken): "Cheese is awesome and I will kill anybody who disagrees" (shoots NPC in the face)
Player: "what the ...?"

Just show the player the whole line before they make their choice, and there is no problem.

 

[infohippie]

All three systems have their merits, it really depends on the game type. I find I really like the Witcher style, with a fully voiced set character, but of course you can't do that if your game allows complete character creation like Skyrim. If budgets can handle it , a good compromise might be something like Mass Effect, where one male and one female voice actor record basically the same lines, but expand it so you at least have one male voice and one female voice for each possible race the player could be.
A silent protagonist is alright, but always feels a bit weird in conversation. However, that is by far the easiest way to allow full character creation.

 

[CrystalShadow]

I'm still hoping for a decent voice synthesis implementation, so that you can sort of have both.

You can have fully voiced stuff for every line in the game, but still create new lines (almost) as easily as just writing a bit of new text.
It would be awesome, but falls apart because voice synthesizers suck.
(And there's not much variety. If you're going to do voice synthesis, you also want several dozen distinct voices that can be used, or ideally, parametric voices, so you can alter the kind of voice with a lot of flexibility).

But... I guess that's just wishful thinking I suppose...

The state of the art in voice synthesis is probably the vocaloid tech, but that still doesn't sound right in English, and the only reason it sound natural at all is because some people spend an absurd amount of time tweaking the pitch and exact voicing of every section of a song...
Which is only marginally better than getting a voice actor to read lines in terms of complexity and probable cost...

 

[Maximum Bert]

If we are talking just about the voiced part of RPGs the Witcher 3 and Mass Effect series are essentially the same everyone talks you occasionally select a choice and you talk some more. Character and design wise the games are different but the way they handle the way they voice dialogue is very similar.

Personally im good with any and dont really have a preference as long as I enjoy the final result. If there is an option for the voice acting to be in the original language I will often use that as well.

Partial voice acting is also used a fair bit i.e some lines are spoken and some are not which I have no problem with. Then there is the garbled voice acting where they spout jibberish and if needed it is translated on screen. Both of these have been mentioned before in this thread and are fairly obvious inclusions for the poll but have been neglected.

Im wondering if the 3 mentioned are the only RPGs the OP has played?

 

[Hawki]

I'm fine with the Witcher or Mass Effect method. There's nothing worse for me than a silent protagonist to break immersion (non-voiced lines are okay) in a story-focused game. Yeah, every so often you get one that works (e.g. Chell) or the case of Link (cartoon, CD-I...god!), but it's the exception rather than the rule. I mean, how many people have talked about Shepard as a character, or Geralt? In contrast, how many people commented on the depth of character that the Dragonborn has?

I'd rather play "as" a character rather than go with the notion of "this blank slate is you," thank you very much.

 

[DementedSheep]

Since it's been bought up as a potential option by other posters while I'm fine with the other options I don't like gibberish with text. I find it very annoying,

Old school (no voice acting or voice acting by specific characters only) or New Vegas style (voice acting for every character but the PC). Every fucking time.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QUOZYFi6wts/UXWGM9xmD6I/AAAAAAAAAPM/sLf1EPO1_Ek/s1600/original.jpg
Look at the left side of that picture, that's no less than 18 different choices. Contrast the three on the right which all lead to the same thing. And even worse, those options aren't what the character actually fucking says, BY MAKING THE DIALOGUE PART OF THE GAMEPLAY AND FAILING TO SAY WHAT THE DIALOGUE WILL ACTUALLY BE, YOU ARE MAKING THE GAMEPLAY DELIBERATELY OBTUSE FOR IT'S OWN SAKE. IF YOU CAN AFFORD A FUCKING VOICE ACTOR YOU CAN FUCKING AFFORD TO WRITE PROPERLY.

As much as don't like the dialogue wheel in DA2 that image really isn't fair. Planescape is unusual for the amount of options you get and half of those are questions. For DA2 they picked a point in the conversation where you don't have general question you can ask and that line was stupid even by "comedic" Hawke standards.

 

[baddude1337]

I prefer the way of the PC has no voice and a load of dialogue options, rather than a voiced main character. As an RPG is all about roleplaying a character to me, and hard to do that if voice is set in stone.

I would still love to see an RPG with a Facade style dialogue system (as in, you just type in what you want), but I understand that would be a huge undertaking and nigh on impossible to do for a large game.

 

[DementedSheep]

Since it's been bought up as a potential option by other posters while I'm fine with the other options I don't like gibberish with text. I find it very annoying,

As much as don't like the dialogue wheel in DA2 that image really isn't fair. Planescape is unusual for the amount of options you get and half of those are questions. For DA2 they picked a point in the conversation where you don't have general question you can ask and that line was stupid even by "comedic" Hawke standards.

The problem here is that ALL of Hawke's Dialogue is bad AND RESULTS IN THE SAME FUCKING OUTCOME. Fight the Mages, the Templars attack you anyway. Fight the Templars, the mages try to kill you because they're also ungrateful cunts, it always ends the exact same fucking way so Bioware can force you through another 15 fucking waves of enemies. Most importantly of all is that YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU WILL ACTUALLY SAY, yet are somehow expected to choose. It's not about the bad writing in Dragon Age 2, it's about the problems INHERENT IN THE MECHANICS OF MASS EFFECT AND DRAGON AGE 2/3 compared to the standard dialogue tree. No matter what, there is little choice and the writing more often than not takes a MASSIVE hit all just so the protagonist can sound like a boring idiot, annoying twat or both. If you want to try and defend Dragon Age 2 I can sum it up far better reasons it's shit (not that it's saying much), like this...
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Uvzj9NR8YQQ/UXeEkUFavuI/AAAAAAAAAQw/mirHxdD9DEI/s1600/Windows+98+2.png
Back to important matters though, look at the left of that picture again, notice a massive difference other than the number of dialogue choices? That's right, what the dialogue says is what you actually fucking say. Again, the fact that simply knowing what picking an option will actually fucking do is something the player is denied is a FUCKING FAILURE. Planescape may be unusual in it's number of choices, but those choices tell you what they are, and that isn't unusual, in fact IT'S THE FUCKING NORM, even Fallout 3 and Skyrim have this advantage.

In case you didn't notice I didn't CLAIM DA2 WAS GOOD. The IMAGE puts emphasis on the NUMBER, The IMAGE puts emphasis on how STUPID that line is. The IMAGE is from someone intentionally picking the best example they could have gotten and putting it against the worst because AS PER FUCKING USUAL gamers have to EXAGGERATE their complaints. DOSE RANDOM CAPS MAKE THAT CLEARER?

 

[darkcalling]

The only thing worse than a silent protagonist to me (and I'm including text like in skyrim and Fallout) in a modern non-indie non-handheld game is a game where everyone speaks gibberish and it translates in text boxes. That's just freaking annoying. Just use the text boxes if you're gonna do that.

Even when games didn't have voice acting I found silent protagonists annoying.