Old Republic Is All-Talk (Literally)

@firstworldgamer…dood: Without captions in games, how will underpaid voice actors know their lines?

mcderek3000

@Marlor: Hey! I like voice acting! I even turn off the subtitles so they won't look ugly during a cutscene.

mcderek3000

@GOLD5: Without captions in games, how will underpaid voice actors know their lines?

mcderek3000

@Adnoz: This is easier than it sounds. Hire a male and a female voice actor to impersonate the voice talent. Go generic until a character reaches a certain level (to avoid busywork) and then record the name. Not difficult or expensive.

@Stinkfinger: Moms everywhere would go on a mad rampage if they heard their TV saying LOLDONGS every 5 minutes.

This is going to be bad news for women and I am being dead serious about this.

I played warcraft with my best friend thats a girl and we ended up resorting to just use using steam to talk through and she would type to everyone in game. Because most everytime we got in a group and others found out she was a real girl they would constantly bother her and ask her if she had a boyfriend and shit like that.

And Im sorry, I dont mean to be harsh but I dont want to hear a bunch of pre-teens yelling out stupid dumb internet words like pwned all the damn time.

Besides, if someone yells for help how the hell are you going to know who said it? Or you get some rude fuck with music on in the background drowning out the games sounds.

@cfive3: I still can't believe this tech hasn't made it into current games.

In school, 25 years ago, on an Atari 800 cartridge there used to be a speech program where you could cobble together words and sentences with pre-defined inputs.

For example, the "oo" sound in boot would be represented by "boo1t" where the "oo" sound in foot might be represented by typing "foo2t".

With all the voice acting, audio editing and the fact that there are less than a hundred "sounds" in the English language (screw everyone else I say) it seems like having in game characters say your name should be tech that's been around for ten or so years now.

Stinkfinger

1) EQ2 was the first MMORPG to be all talk. I don't applaud them for it though as the EPs and added on content they seemed to have forgotten their boasting of all "all talk" but nonetheless, it's been done.

2) This is suppose to be appealing? MMORPGs are a grind and the quests are all always rather generic usually with nothing interesting and they tend to never involve moving cutscenes (Aside FFXI with their few cutscene quests). So am I wondering... Who cares? In fact, if it's all talk and no text messages as this blog seems to suggest, does that mean having to endure a full speech cause if so, I'm out. WoW at launch was horrible when you had to wait to read the dang quest as the text slowly appeared... Imagine having to listen to someone talk, it'll be much more time consuming than just reading through.

I'm sure the game will have both text and speech and in either sense, I don't much care for talking NPCs unless of course it involves a nice cutscene.

Luke Shiffer

I hope this also means that content like the voice files will be streamed. Otherwise, the game will come on 15 DVDs.

mattigus

I found the wording of this article somewhat alarming as it does seem to imply a universal lack of text in part. If that were the case I would be skipping this MMO and I pretty much try all of them. Not kills emersion like having to listen to players voices. I refuse to use voice chat and I always will.

The could do something like vocaloid... combine a few generic syllables to make your name.

...but more likely they'll just refer to each character by class.

I though it was pretty clear: they didn't mean there will be no text chat, just no text-only speaking NPC.

America would be a much cooler nation if congress dressed up as the sith. They already look like the sith under the hood for the most part anyway.

@HoxtonHero:
thats actually what i was hoping for in this game, but I haven't played any 3d mmo's, just mud's

Though one thing you could do is send droids to swap recorded video/voice messages of each other instead of flying across the entire galaxy yourself

@wolve: Voice will still be available for butterflies, just use vent or maybe it'll be supported in-game.. More and more butterflies playing mmo's now. Voice overs just refers to npc voices, so those who are scared shitless of text don't have to go near it. Can you imagine having to read something!? AHhh, just the thought gives me shivers.

@Erode: Hate reading that much?

@Muramasa: I agree.. Is reading so horrible? What if the voice acting sucks ass? Will my character have some horrible voice that doesn't fit? Not have a name?

Sort of an insult to imply that we cant' read.. Though I admit far too many of us probably would rather not. But they should be encouraged, not coddled.

@Posthaus: lmao so true

Frologic

@Valkrin: Many gamers would object, which is in my mind the biggest problem with voice acting in games nowadays: It's not considered optional anymore. A lot of people think it's lazy to not have voice acting, and won't pick up games that don't.

Which is a shame when mid-level studios have to choose between spending more time making an awesome game and throwing that money at voice actors.

It's also a HUGE freaking shame when it comes to these open world RPGs. When you don't have to pay to have every line recorded, you're free to write loads more dialog. Imagine Mass Effect with three times the script, including many more story paths.

@Rebochan: They would never do that. Moreover, they would never get rid of text completely. There will be subtitles, if only to make it handicapped friendly to the deaf.

@Evdor: This is why I welcome the coming world of machines. And why TF2 is one of the few multiplayer games I can stomach on a regular basis.

@blex64: I don't know, I think the words, "first MMO to be all talk"/"no text messages whatsoever" should inspire fear in anyone who has indeed ever been on Vent/etc, even if that's not the point of the article.

I'm curious, though, what your definition of 'not garbage MMO player' is, though. Do you mean the "skilled" players that achieve objectives well and are good at the game? Or do you mean good players (by my definition) who are good at communication and being friendly and just do their best to enjoy a game with a large focal point on playing with other people?

'Cuz I'd rather fail a dungeon run with some fun people than succeed spectacularly with average MMO asshats that think calling things gay is the shit. Which is why I don't play MMO's all that much.

Those screens? Nerdiest thing evar!

Honest question:

Can the deaf play this? Will their be subtitles? I don't like my games without subtitles. :(

@cfive3: Japan can get away with that, because of how languages work. There's only so many characters that can be used, and they'll always be pronounced the same, not used in conjunction with other letters to make sounds.

And there was a Zelda game I was VERY much looking forward to that was never released in the US, I believe it was, at one time, called Tetra's Trackers, and would work with 4 Swords if you had a GBA at the time. I think the Gamecube 4 swords may have been a "Sorry we screwed you in the ass, America" game. :(

TheCodexx

@HoxtonHero:
I kind of prefer it like that... it makes one interact with the Pc's around you instead of searching all over the server to find people to group with. makes it more intimate.

@cfive3: I recall an arcade game called The Grid that let you keep an 'account' on it by using a 4-digit password, and the announcer was able to pronounce any common English name by mashing syllables together effectively (you could help it along if need be).

That was one (generic) voice, done at least 5 years ago. If BioWare are being this ambitious with the volume of voice acting within the game, they might be able to create a similar system.

@ToastyUterus: Everyone is called Sheppard.

The trailer for this game looked great I am really looking forward to seeing how this one turns out.

Oh thank god.

If there's one thing that bored the crap out of me in MMO's is having one guy voice acting 1 line of no consequence and some guy spewing forth a load of text that's important and I'm not really motivated to read the text.

Drogmir

@P-Flute:

It's a good thing there's not a lot of text in this game, you'd utterly fail, since you seem unable to read.

The announcement was, more specifically, that all the PC/NPC interactions were done with voice-acting. Not that the entire game is done with voice-chat only. Forcing PC players to own a mic to play seems to be a sure-fire way to make the game fail.

Any MMO player that's not utter garbage probably owns a mic and uses Skype/Vent/TeamSpeak/etc. anyway, but there will almost certainly be text to converse between players with.

blex64

those were some damn nice looking Sith and Jedi

qhue

@OoBaSNoRk: Yeah, I've been surprised lately by the number of non-captioned DVDs and Blurays. Like the HBO show Dexter has no subs or captions in English, but you know they already did the captions for TV, so the work was done, and they included Spanish and French subs. I wouldn't be surprised if games have gotten rid of pesky text chat options in a few years forgetting all about how many handicapped people were able to use the games before.

@P-Flute: Oh, god, don't get me wrong.

Abuse of voice chat is the fastest way you can make me hate a game ever. I guess something about the internet makes some people think that strangers give a crap to every stupid insight you think you're sharing or every dumb idea of a joke that pops into your head needs to be spewed out to everyone. Being forced into that makes me shudder just to think about it.

Evdor

@Rebochan: They would never get rid of text chat between characters. It's probably just specific to NPC's. Could you imagine though, having to fly across the galaxy just to meet your friends and tell them hello? haha, it would be hardcore!

@Evdor: I don't trust you kids and your voice chat.

Admittedly I did jump to the conclusion that upholds my worst fears.

But hey, maybe...something or other.

God I hope its only to talk with the NPC's, I don't want it to turn into XBL

Avinash_Tyagi

So far, the trailer is the best thing I've seen at E3. The Project Natal was cool except you'd never catch me doing any of the things they showed people doing with it.

Rockabully

@ShaSt One: That was pretty remarkable when you think about it. I didn't even really notice until like halfway through each game.

SuperSonik

@Rebochan: you will probably have a respond text interface, to select what you want to say, and im sure there will be a subtitle option.

and if your talking about p2p communications, im 100% sure they will have texting between players regardless, all i think they are refering to here is npc's and players comms

I wish we'd drop this whole obsession with voice acting. Many people skip most of it, because they can read the subtitles faster than the actors speak.

It's really just a waste of money. I'd prefer it if the developers spent that money on extra development time/scriptwriting/level design.

Baldur's Gate II had the right amount of voice acting. There were occasional snippets of spoken dialogue to help establish the characters, then the rest was text.

@cfive3: it will either be HEY GET OVER HERE!

ie. Hey smuggler! get over here

or they wont reference you ever, like in kotor, you were talking directly to everyone so usually you know who they refer to as who has to do something,.

@OoBaSNoRk: I'm sure there is. Bioware tends to be good about that kind of thing. They know that some of their audience is hard-of-hearing or deaf, or might just like to play with the sound turned off/covered with music.

@P-Flute: I can see where you might get that, but think of what that implies: Implimenting that would require an in-game voice chat, with the server infrastructure to account for the bandwith of the VOIP. Ever play WoW? Know why their VOIP client sounds like complete crap? Doing so also throttles the hell out of people's connections--basically, if you don't have Cable net, GTFO. Don't even get me started on people with bandwith caps.

and on top of all that, it would mean playing the game with any real degree of success would require a mic to speak.

It would make zero sense.

Evdor

@gaijira: But Mythic used to be a good developer, too. And they had the money so I wouldn't be entirely sure about that.

BarbeQueQ

@Goldwings: Has no idea why his avatar is a smiling sun:
I came,
I saw,
I felt a little bit embarrassed for the guy.

@wolve: You can still voice chat or text chat with other PCs, it's just that your NPC interactions will all be voiced.

@stupid_mcgee: uber pyro > zerg rush: Yeah I'm guessing they're just bragging about how much voice they're recording. Age of Conan had lots of voice acting, but not for every NPC.

gaijira

@Seanchaen: It's not hard to do, and it generally works rather well. I don't really tend to notice it.

@cfive3:

Do people not realize that you can get any voice actor worth their salt to do more than one voice? You hire 12 voice actors and tell them to do 20 voices each...not exactly rocket science.

Bryce Clifton

@Rebochan: I think they are only talking about you interacting with NPCs, not other players. I'm sure there will be subtitles, too.

What I don't get is that Westwood launched Earth and Beyond with almost every NPC having speech... So no idea how this is the first...

@cougar88:oops I meant clothes

cougar88

@BarbeQueQ: This will not be utter shit I think. Not with Bioware and lots of cash behind it.

The trailer is better than much of the prequels.

gaijira

@Valkrin: I don't really think bad voice acting is a good reason to avoid it all together. I enjoyed Mass Effect a lot more than I would have otherwise because everything was (well) voiced. I'm sure they'll still have a way to turn subtitles on--accessibility is enough reason for that. And I'm sure they'll have a way to skip dialogue--they've done it in all their other games.

It *can* be done badly, to be sure, but Bioware's shown that they can do it well, and I think it really does add a lot to a game if it's done well.

Pyrthas

Didn't the first KotOR do this (outside of interfacing with computers and such).

Odds are this will do the same thing. 75%+ of the dialoge will be rendered in the same obviously reused "alien language" or droid whistles.

Nothing to see here, move along, move along.

deuxhero

Actually, it's probably that they will just skip over your name in the dialogue or, alternatively, if they really want to go all out, it's possible to record basic sound clusters of a person's voice and then, from that sound bank, reproduce any word. This would allow them to make the characters voice your name but I'm pretty sure it would add a decent bit of expense to the project.

@Rebochan:

No, that could get annoying immediately.

@Evdor: Dunno, I don't seem to be the only person confused by the poor choice of words in the post.

@Hey_Blinkon: If only I could play an MMO with well written NPCs instead of disgruntled players that refuse to communicate with a good, friendly demeanor.

Why hello there Oblivion, my buggy friend.

Hopefully they'll have have some way to recognize the name you give your character and have it used in game. The only game I've seen that happen in, and it may have been accidently, was in Madden 09. My players name was Gurble Gooch and the announcer said "Gooch with the ball."

Best. Trailer. EVER.

gaijira

@Seanchaen: I hope someone recorded the phrase- 20 womp rats! screw that I'm gonna go dance in the in the middle of a crowded room with no close on.

I'm going to go watch the trailer again and cry. Why can't they just make KOTOR 3.

cougar88

Play a droid. Bewoop Beep. No text, so sorry.

As long as there is a text option for the hearing impaired. That would be pretty bullshit if there wasn't.

OoBaSNoRk

@Valkrin: I usually don't like it either. I hate when you can't skip the talking, when there is text down below. I'd like to just be able to read what's going on, and move on to gameplay.

Hey_Blinkon

@lethal funk: By chance is your name Carlos Mencia?

@SwKninja: That is what I said, but apparently doctors becomes concerned when this happens.

99-Luft-Balloons

Can we clarify on this further? I hope this pertains to the NPCs only. I really, really don't want to be on the mic when the ganking idiots start squawking in their high-pitched preteen voices.

I'm all for the NPC voices though. When I tried the Age of Conan trial, I was impressed with that feature...up until I left the first town and discovered how incomplete that game was.

They managed to not say your name in the entirety of KOTOR (and Final Fantasy X), two games with plenty of voice acting, so I'm sure they'll find a way.

@brokenscope:

Hopefully I can send text based messages if I want to.

The benefits of all talk are questionable at best. Voice acting is probably one of the few things that I wish was not part of modern games. Just plain text is much better in ways that I am sure any gamer who has played a badly voiced game knows.

Save costs and get rid of voice acting altogether, wouldn't degrade the game at all! And I doubt many gamers would object.

Valkrin

@MaxDragon7:
"Please Zexionbobtfngif....uhh...please....help us?"

Okay, they will just call you by your class name then.

Dragon Quest VIII got away with never calling you by your inputted name.

@Goldwings: Has no idea why his avatar is a smiling sun: Haha. BUSTED.

Hey_Blinkon

@P-Flute: Yeah, but it comes with the territory of MMOs. And so I avoid them.

Hey_Blinkon

@P-Flute: They mean NPCs won't have any text, PCs are still going to be textified. Think about it for like five seconds.

Evdor

I think there are just two Jedi up there. The rest are Sith or something.

@99-Luft-Balloons:

WHO PUT FOOD IN MY GAMING SCHEDULE??

SwKninja

Let's see... full voice overs (wtf happened to something called "voice chat"), CG trailer (instead of say gameplay trailer) and no real info about game mechanics and/or classes. Fail.

wolve

This game might become of the better MMOs of this generation. But then again, WAR sounded just as promising and then turned out to be utter shit.

The CGI Trailer was stunning.

BarbeQueQ

No text chat?

Great. Now getting called a gay mexican jew lizard just became a 100% certain phenomenon. Count me out of this one. The regular MMO crowd is bad enough with their complete failure concerning the English language. I don't want to hear them cursing all over themselves and sounding dead-tired in the process.

P-Flute

I've been less than a fan of this game since I found out it was coming in lieu of a KotOR III but I'll admit, this bit of info has me intrigued...

@cfive3: It would make sense, but if the actor mis-pronounces your name...

Argh!

@lethal funk:
Gametrailers: "that teaser alone was better than episode 1-3 combined."

fixed

They probably just have everyone refer to you by class, gender, or side that you're on. How many times have you read "Ranger, we need your help" without a second thought?

That or there will be a lot of "Hey you, we need your help killing womp rats, go get 20 and then come back to talk to me."

Seanchaen

Uh, that doesn't really sound too positive.

that teaser alone was better than episode 1-3 combined.

lethal funk

OMFG SO MANY GAME ANNOUCEMENTS!!!
FUCK FEEDING MY KIDS!

99-Luft-Balloons

This game will be fruit fuckering epic!

Ghostwise

*head explode*

Yes! Bioware is slowly but surely making up for those "fat lightsaber" screenshots! I kid of course, this game was a must buy for me the moment Star Wars and Bioware were uttered in the same sentence!

Er...no text chat interface then? That could get annoying fast.

Maybe they'll just hire voice actors to say the player's name whenever it comes up. XD
Actually, I think Nintendo did something like that with some obscure Zelda game.

cfive3

I've never seen a real life Jedi that wasn't morbidly obese. Those guys actually look dangerous

@Boxworth:
-game
"Islam is the light"

-mom
"WHAT?!?!"

@kyosen: Obama would have to force lightning himself in the face for quite a while.

meesa wanna raid krayt dragons

i sure hope it's not all talk as in elder scrolls 4 with 3 people doing all the characters and NPCs

desterion