The Old Republic Script Is the Size of 10 KOTORs, 40 Novels

[Bored Tomatoe]

This may be the first MMO I can actually stay interested in, if the game comes out as they planned it to.

 

[The Shade]

Why didn't he just say "4,000 hours of voice-overs"? "A thousand four-hour voice-over sessions" is way more than we need to know. I mean, who cares if you do them in four hour blocks? That's just extraneous knowledge. This is why most people in the games industry are not public speakers.

It's still interesting to people like me, who work in the media industry. Knowing that they record a mammoth project like this in four-hour increments is good to know.

It's a measure of how taxing you can be on your voice actors in an industry-pratice sort of way. When we do ADR, for example, it's valuable knowledge that four hours is a cut-off point.

 

[Ralackk]

Holy crap... how much space is this going to take up on my hard drive? Oblivion is the closest comparison I can think of in terms of voiced NPCs, and that took up 4.6 GB. Of course, that was back in 2006, and games have got a lot bigger since then. I think I saw somewhere that Dragon Age would take up 10+ GB, so I don't even want to think about how much space this would take up.

Dragon age is actually going to be 20GB so I expect we will be looking at 35-50GB for this MMO.

Why didn't he just say "4,000 hours of voice-overs"? "A thousand four-hour voice-over sessions" is way more than we need to know. I mean, who cares if you do them in four hour blocks? That's just extraneous knowledge. This is why most people in the games industry are not public speakers.

I would assume because It's not actually going to be 4,000 hours of worth of voice overs in the game. In a 4 hour session I would imagine they would do several takes of different lines and everything until they got it how they want it to sound.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Holy walls of walls of text script batman, that's a lot of writing!

Seriously, I would hate to be one of the poor SOBs that have to write all of that stuff and then go over and edit it. That must have taken forever and a year.

 

[Keane Ng]

According to the devs in this E3 interview they have many hundreds of voice actors on the project.

 

[Agayek]

Esteemed team of scribes? You're kidding, right? The guys who hit the copy+paste button on the dialogue from KOTOR a few times for their last few games?

If memory serves, the script for Jade Empire and Mass Effect was fairly different from KotOR, in the details if not thematically, and that's the only games of theirs since the original KotOR as far as I know.

 

[Diablini]

No way. It can't be 10 times bigger.

 

[Avatar Roku]

Why didn't he just say "4,000 hours of voice-overs"? "A thousand four-hour voice-over sessions" is way more than we need to know. I mean, who cares if you do them in four hour blocks? That's just extraneous knowledge. This is why most people in the games industry are not public speakers.

Probably because 4,000 hours of voice acting sessions does not equate to 4,000 hours of dialog. It's likely just to avoid confusion.

 

[Ben Legend]

Yay!
I cannot wait for this game. And to know that from the start it will be a large game even without add-on's is surely good news for us all... unless of course you wanted the game to be small so you could... y'know, socialise

 

[LewsTherin]

I'm impressed. Genuinely. oh, and for the record:

 

[Ghostkai]

One word: Awesome.

 

[rowan-thats-me]

Is this game going to be monthly pay?

 

[Gaderael]

Why didn't he just say "4,000 hours of voice-overs"? "A thousand four-hour voice-over sessions" is way more than we need to know. I mean, who cares if you do them in four hour blocks? That's just extraneous knowledge. This is why most people in the games industry are not public speakers.

One thousand four-hour voice-over sessions doesn't necessarily equal four-thousand hours of voice overs.

 

[pigeon_of_doom]

According to the devs in this E3 interview they have many hundreds of voice actors on the project.

Excellent. Now all I have to worry about in this regard is the quality of the writing and the voice actors.

 

[Outamyhead]

Holy crap... how much space is this going to take up on my hard drive? Oblivion is the closest comparison I can think of in terms of voiced NPCs, and that took up 4.6 GB. Of course, that was back in 2006, and games have got a lot bigger since then. I think I saw somewhere that Dragon Age would take up 10+ GB, so I don't even want to think about how much space this would take up.

This is one of the few MMOs I'm actually interested in, and it looks like it's going to be good. Having it fully-voiced would add a hell of a lot to the experience, but I'm a little concerned that BioWare are biting off more than they can chew with this one.

I would imagine with it being an MMORPG, a lot of the stuff required for the game will be on the game servers themselves, Haven't been interested in an MMORPG since City Of Heroes back in 04', this looks and sounds like it will be epic (seems to be a lot of info flooding out lately, it's not even due to hit the shelves until next year?).

 

[HobbesMkii]

Why didn't he just say "4,000 hours of voice-overs"? "A thousand four-hour voice-over sessions" is way more than we need to know. I mean, who cares if you do them in four hour blocks? That's just extraneous knowledge. This is why most people in the games industry are not public speakers.

Why are you complaining about more information?

For now, I refuse to believe unique actors for every npc.

Probably because 4,000 hours of voice acting sessions does not equate to 4,000 hours of dialog. It's likely just to avoid confusion.

It's still interesting to people like me, who work in the media industry. Knowing that they record a mammoth project like this in four-hour increments is good to know.

It's a measure of how taxing you can be on your voice actors in an industry-pratice sort of way. When we do ADR, for example, it's valuable knowledge that four hours is a cut-off point.

One thousand four-hour voice-over sessions doesn't necessarily equal four-thousand hours of voice overs.

I left off "sessions" at the end of the first quote, because it made the conciseness of my altered quotation contrast with the mouthful he said, and I assumed that people wouldn't think I was a stupid bonehead (I make this mistake a lot, mayhaps because I'm a stupid bonehead). I understand that 1000x4hrs of sessions =/= 4000 hrs of dialogue. Still, the point was that by specifying they used 4 hour blocks, we were given more information than was necessary and more like to distract us, as it forces us to pause and think about what he was saying. Saying something like over "4,000 of voice over sessions" (as I originally meant my quote to be) keeps the language concise while also telling what needs to be told.

While it's nice to find out a ton more than you need to know, when you're attempting to strongpoint whatever it is you're talking up, it's good to give the people your talking to a sentence in the most simplified way, so they can repeat it from memory easier. I suspect the only reason a number of us will remember his verbose way of describing it is because I pointed it out (poorly, I might add) and the rest of you called me on it.

 

[scotth266]

...Will this be the next MMO I can actually enjoy?

The only one I like thus far is City of Heroes: perhaps this game will buck that trend.

 

[Sewer Rat]

I MAY look into this (if it doesn't require monthly pay that is, I am not paying for a game I already bought) but at this point I am not completely bought in by it.

 

[Gaderael]

I left off "sessions" at the end of the first quote, because it made the conciseness of my altered quotation contrast with the mouthful he said, and I assumed that people wouldn't think I was a stupid bonehead (I make this mistake a lot, mayhaps because I'm a stupid bonehead). I understand that 1000x4hrs of sessions =/= 4000 hrs of dialogue. Still, the point was that by specifying they used 4 hour blocks, we were given more information than was necessary and more like to distract us, as it forces us to pause and think about what he was saying. Saying something like over "4,000 of voice over sessions" (as I originally meant my quote to be) keeps the language concise while also telling what needs to be told.

While it's nice to find out a ton more than you need to know, when you're attempting to strongpoint whatever it is you're talking up, it's good to give the people your talking to a sentence in the most simplified way, so they can repeat it from memory easier. I suspect the only reason a number of us will remember his verbose way of describing it is because I pointed it out (poorly, I might add) and the rest of you called me on it.

I see where you are coming from. I didn't see the information presented the way it was as be extraneous. The whole article is about the enormity of taking on this aspect of the game, so he was just helping to emphasize how difficult this was.

When I read about the 4 hour blocks, me immediate thoughts were "holy crap! Four hours in the session itself, then god knows how many hours before and after those, scheduling more studio time, co-ordinating with all the other studios around the world on what they are doing, auditioning people, and then making sure they show up on time." That's a lot of stuff.

 

[Darth Pope]

Jesus on a fu**ing pogo stick. Let's hope that alien languages don't have the same few looped lines of diologe like the first two KOTORS.