By John Walker on July 20th, 2009 at 12:00 pm.
The LucasArts peeps reveal the motivation to have Star Wars: The Old Republic be a fully voiced MMO, in a video below. None has done it before (although it’s not the only MMO in development aiming to do it), and it’s a huge task. Especially in a game that’s essentially two games, since there’s no shared quests between Republic and Sith campaigns. It’s hundreds of thousands of lines.
It’s interesting that they’re voicing the player character. There’s pros and cons with that. Obviously a massive pro is that your character doesn’t stand stupefyingly silent while people shout insults at him, while it does of course reduce the sense of uniqueness about your customised character when he talks with a prescribed voice.
The video shows lots of clips of the game, and gives an idea of the style of voice acting. Well worth a look.
20/07/2009 at 12:10 Daniel says:
Interesting! I’m not sure about the art direction- nor how this will work when grouping with people. Are all quests going to be solo experiences, or will we have some manner of group conversation system? Definitely watching this with interest, though. If they pull this off well, this could verily change the nature of the game. Still, it could all end in tears. We’ll see.
20/07/2009 at 12:17 Novotny says:
God I hate that ultra-macho voice-over being used by one of the main characters.
Does anyone actually speak like that outside of a Hollywood film/trailer? Total immersion breaker for me :(
20/07/2009 at 12:18 Daniel says:
Wow. I just read that both characters displayed were players. Very interesting, very interesting indeed.
20/07/2009 at 12:19 Ian says:
Don’t know that I’d have chosen to have player characters voiced too. Might have been jarring to have them be silent and represented by text, but it’s better than potentially having a group full of folks with the same “voice”.
20/07/2009 at 12:27 9of9 says:
No one has done it before? I think not.
Everquest 2 was the first fully-voiced MMO, coming out quite a long while ago.
20/07/2009 at 12:29 Kadayi says:
@9of9
Did they voice the main character and their companions in Everquest 2?
20/07/2009 at 12:34 Max says:
How is this going to be done? Will the sound data be stored online or will I have to buy a new hard drive and take a week off work just to install this monster!
20/07/2009 at 12:44 unique_identifier says:
fully voiced star wars mmo? text-to-speech with extra breathy effects.
20/07/2009 at 12:47 Lobotomist says:
Looks great… just not sure its a MMO
20/07/2009 at 12:51 Dante says:
I think they’ll employ KOTOR’s ‘looped alien gibberish’ dodge to cut down on the amount of voicing a bit. Nonetheless that’s still way more immersive than just text.
20/07/2009 at 12:53 Biscuitry says:
So they talk about varied, high-quality dialogue, all well and good, but still use the Generic Growly Protagonist Voice? Double standard, much?
That said, I loved both KotOR games, so I’m still looking forward to seeing how this comes out. They’re ambitious, you’ve got to give them that.
20/07/2009 at 12:55 Quests says:
Will the madness EVER stop?
We don’t care that this game got fucking voices, can they talk about what one does in it?
20/07/2009 at 13:11 .backslash says:
Damn, that guy really needs a cup of tea. And to quit chain-smoking.
Also, it looks like they’ll be using the Mass Effect dialogue wheel, and I’m one of the few people I’ve spoken to, that don’t like the bloody thing. Ah, well, at least the welsh Maul got me intrigued.
20/07/2009 at 13:20 Nero says:
So, will every player created character have the same voice? Kinda odd. Also, it sound like Steve Blum which has a voice in damn near every game released right now.
20/07/2009 at 13:20 Spiny says:
tsk, & I thought this ws Taff Wars :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXCkybuziIc
20/07/2009 at 13:22 Sagan says:
I just watched that entire thing, and I still have no idea how they talked for over five minutes about a single feature in the game.
And as several people have pointed out before me: Those characters don’t sound very convincing. Especially the guy at 2:46: “Our MISSION would GREATLY benefit from YOUR ASSISTANCE.” Nobody talks like that.
Also: “We have over a dozen writers making sure that every piece of dialog really is a living, breathing thing.” – Daniel Erickson, Principal Lead Writer, Bioware. :D
20/07/2009 at 13:23 Bobsy says:
Alright, I guess I’m in. But I have one important question that needs to be answered:
In the clip it appeared that two seperate players (growly armour guy and effeminate lightsabre chap) were delivering dialogue in the same scene. Are they players, or is one of them a party NPC?
The former will win my loyalty, because I know of certain people I’d like to Sith it up with. The latter would reaffirm my belief that this will be a good RPG, but an awful MMO.
20/07/2009 at 13:24 the affront says:
FULL VOICE. FULL VOICE. FULL VOICE. AWESOME. NEXT-GEN. IMMERSION. CINEMATIC. EPIC. RICH. DEEP. EMOTIONAL. WORLD-WIDE. DRAMA. TENSION. YOU’RE THE STAR! THE INFINITE EXPERIENCE!
So, yeah, I might have made some of those up, I’m not sure. They just felt right being there, because I do so love meaningless buzzwords. May the hype be with you, young customer!
“None has done it before”
Because it’s stupid. New content already takes long enough (too long, really, story driven instead of grind content isn’t feasible as of now without the player being bored as fuck for weeks/months in between patches, if one plays more than 3 hours a week) to release without having to voice every little thing after testing is done and you can be sure it won’t change so you’ll not have to re-record some of it.
Also your usual MMO player doesn’t give a shit, at least if it’s not exclusively solo content (why play an MMO then?) where you’re at leisure to wait for the cutscene to finish without pissing off your group. Many people I know even skip quest text the first time they see it and just have a glance at the objective, so you actually get to the real content (PVP, achieving PVE goals as a group, socializing) instead of listening to an audiobook. Also reading is probably 2-3 times as fast as waiting for the voice actor to finish. ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
So all I can see this as is an attempt at reeling in singleplayer players that have never played an MMO before at the cost of slower content release for everyone else.
Anyway, should be hilarious playing this with mates on VOIP and making fun of the dialogs. If I should cave to peer pressure / boredom sometime, that is.
20/07/2009 at 13:25 CMaster says:
@9of9 – Although I’m not sure about whether any other MMOs have been fully voiced, RPS does seem fond of making false claims of “firsts” for SW:TOR – in an earlier article, they claimed that it was the first MMO with dialog choices…
20/07/2009 at 13:30 N-Al says:
Incidentally, I just watched a performance of Shakepeare’s Troilus and Cressida at the Globe Theatre this weekend where the actor playing Achilles had a distinctly Welsh accent. Took some getting used to, I have to say.
20/07/2009 at 13:32 damien says:
while i find the technical accomplishments involved in writing, recording and editing / mastering that MUCH spoken word impressive on some level, i’m unsure if any of it will be any good.
i suppose i get the same amount of enthusiasm from this trailer as i would if a film director announced that he was making the longest, “most epic” and compelling film experience in the history of the entertainment industry.
is “moar!” really what gamers want?
20/07/2009 at 13:33 Nafe says:
So this game seems a lot like a very big follow up to the two KoTORs but what exactly about this is an MMO? Presumably other people are doing the same campaign as you, will there be people queuing up to do quests like in WoW or some sort of phasing system?
20/07/2009 at 13:37 Jason says:
Well the voice acting sucks
20/07/2009 at 13:40 damien says:
hrmmm. in the article about Galatea posted earlier today, i think Lewis Denby said what i was attempting to say better than i said it:
“This is the thing. We’re often guilty of looking at it from the wrong angle. All the cinematics in the world, all the fabulous cut-scenes, high-budget voice acting, huge, expansive, conspiracy laden plots – they’re all getting tiresome, and not evolving the videogame in any meaningful way. Quizzed about their choices by a clearly bemused pair of podcast hosts, Reid and Orland both agreed: the strength of the videogame is not in telling complex, confusing stories. It’s in showing simple ones.”
i can’t help but watch this trailer and think that all of it’s voice acting is going to amount to very little narrative.
20/07/2009 at 13:43 Hmm-Hmm. says:
One of the big issues with having the player character’s voice being.. voiced, is that one has to offer enough voices to satisfy most player or basically force the voices on them.
Really, unless it’s a game where the character’s not (made by) the player (like in, say, Halo or Monkey Island), it’s usually better not to have player character voices at all.
20/07/2009 at 13:45 Larington says:
I’m not yet convinced they’ve found a way to defeat the ‘skip through all dialogue’ attitude found in many MMOs just yet.
Aside from that, I’ve read in a recent PC Gamer UK that the combat is going to be properly synced up using a choreography system so that players aren’t waving weapons in the air useless, so that should make the combat much more interesting to watch as well as play, if they get it right of course.
20/07/2009 at 14:01 BrokenSymmetry says:
Jennifer Hale was glimpsed in this video. Everything will be good.
20/07/2009 at 14:07 Tei says:
Age of Conan first 20 levels are voiced. And Is awesome.
One of my favorite characters is “Captain Pedro” (or something like that). is a witty character, and everything he say must be interpreted as the reverse, If he say “Thanks!, very good work!”. Is something almost imposible with text, and fun, really very fun.
Of course, voices are like textures, and models *SHOCK SURPRISE*, If you have poor textures or poor models, the game looks like crap. If you add voices, should be good, if the voices are bad, the result is worst. Is this simple. No ifs, or buts.
20/07/2009 at 14:18 Tei says:
AION has small cutscenes and is great. One of my favorite features of AION.
These cutscenes can helps you understand what you have to do. Why you failed, or reward you.
It seems (I have not played it long enough) Final Fantasy MMO also have cutscenes.
The way I understand TOR, it will be really nice.
In AION a cutscene feel like a reward. Much like in a adventure game like “The Day Of The Tentacle” once you do something right, you start a animation/motion that is funny/interesting.
And theres another reason why is interesting: another step outside the mold. MMORPG games are stuck on a obsolete design, and need a huge /unstuck command to move the genre forward. Anything can helps, really, even incremental enhancements. We are this stuck.
*mind explode with ideas*
20/07/2009 at 14:28 Vandelay says:
It seems like MMO fans don’t think this is MMO enough, whilst fans of the Knights of the Old Republic don’t want it to be an MMO (I’m in the latter group). Why not just drop the MMO stuff and make a huge singleplayer RPG? Everyone can be happy then.
Ignoring that, looks interesting the more I see of it, but the purpose of the video wasn’t carried off very well. The voice acting I heard there all seemed fairly standard video game quality, i.e. bad. They also didn’t seem to demonstrate the consequences of your actions after someone stated the feature. Betraying that guy didn’t seem to have much affect at all.
20/07/2009 at 14:29 Dave says:
I’m hopeful that once all this comes together it’s going to be worth the ridiculously massive effort.
I also suspect they have a HUGE HUGE HUGE HUGE budget and are determined to spend it all. Full voice-overs probably don’t add to the total length of the development cycle, but it’s a parallel effort to everything else.
20/07/2009 at 14:31 Dan says:
An exclusive interview from SA:
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/old-republic-interview.php
20/07/2009 at 14:38 cyrenic says:
It looks like they’ll cut down on budget by having Steve Blum voice half the male characters.
Seriously, though, is full voice over really worth it? I think they could probably do much better things with all that budget. Like hiring decent writers. Some of that dialogue was awful.
20/07/2009 at 14:38 TooNu says:
This game is really going to shine when you can take the piss out of what is happening.
Example 1.
You make a character, give the female body that deep bounty hunter voice.
Example 2.
give every member of your party that deep bounty hunter voice.
Example 3.
get your RL friends to give their characters that deep bounty hunter voice.
Or simply, do what you can in most other Bioware games, use thet alk function at range and then simply fight instead and have the NPC standing their waiting for the conversation whilst taking the punishment.
Truthfully though, this will be rocking awesome.
20/07/2009 at 15:13 Lambo says:
@Vandelay, PC Gamer did a preview of this last month. The guy did the exact scene as was shown here. Basically there ARE consequences. If you pardon him, he commands the ship and gets all our fellow NPC characters on the ship healed by sickbay and most of the enemy are destroyed before they land. If you kill him, his arrogant second in command gets the job and the fight is much harder with more enemies and none of the soldiers on your side get healed or revived. So I expect your choices in game to have a actual gameplay effect, as well as simply changing the story.
I remember reading that there will be pretty much all of the regular MMO stuff in the game, its just that they are waiting to show it. As far as I can tell though it seems like for the most part it will play as a regular KOTOR game, but if you want your friends with you they can hop into your story. Its probable that the usual MMO staples will be in a place in-game where you can go when you want to use them and socialize or whatnot. But when your on a mission its basically a instance.
Lambo
20/07/2009 at 15:29 Bhazor says:
“The reason Star Wars is so popular is because of those great deep characters and those emotional stories”
No it isn’t. It’s because the entertainment industry and pop cultures is controlled by nostalgic basts in their 30s who remember the lasers and explosions from when they saw it as kids. Don’t get me wrong, Star Wars is the best family action series ever made but it’s pure nostalgia that keeps it going. KOTOR 1 & 2 would have been as good without the license.
20/07/2009 at 15:54 Tworak says:
fire the art director
I’ll be spamming escape throughout this whole voice acting bullshit like a normal mmo player. stupid fucking gimmicks go end yourself out back behind the sauna
20/07/2009 at 16:18 Shane says:
I hope they don’t voice eating and drinking, you know what I mean? Like when someone is sitting behind you chewing their Wheaties. There’s nothing I hate more…like fingers on a chalkboard.
20/07/2009 at 16:19 Lambo says:
I don’t think people realize that this game isn’t really being aimed at the usual MMO crowd. I think its funny that people see that just because a game is in a online persistant world it BELONGS to MMO gamers and so its their property and everything in it should be a simple variation of what they have at the moment.
I remember reading in some dev interview that this is a game fans of Bioware want as well as it being the ultimate experience for Star Wars fans. Its a game for both those demographics, and the reason that the game is mentioned as a wow killer is because with both of those groups behind the game it might just build up a player base to rival WOW’s. So far it has never said its going to be the MMO players paradise, so why are you all so god damn angry at the cutscenes that were implemented to please the Bioware/Lucas fans. You might as well just be ranting on about how Counter Strike had no quest givers.
20/07/2009 at 16:21 Doug F says:
@Bobsy:
Those are both players – I saw a ridiculously detailed dissection of the video that showed what looked to be some sort of dice-rolling(maybe) mechanic that seemed to determine which player got to respond at each stage of the dialog.
As for the prescribed voice making your character feel less like yours, I believe there are at least going to be multiple voice tracks recorded for each class/race/gender/whatever so that you can pick which one you prefer.
20/07/2009 at 16:21 Doug F says:
@Bobsy:
Those are both players – I saw a ridiculously detailed dissection of the video that showed what looked to be some sort of dice-rolling(maybe) mechanic that seemed to determine which player got to respond at each stage of the dialog.
As for the prescribed voice making your character feel less like yours, I believe there are at least going to be multiple voice tracks recorded for each class/race/gender/whatever so that you can pick which one you prefer.
20/07/2009 at 16:22 Doug F says:
also, this is the ridiculous analysis of the video I just mentioned.
20/07/2009 at 16:34 Dave says:
Some of that dialogue was awful.
True to the Star Wars legacy, then?
20/07/2009 at 16:34 Tei says:
Doug: haha.. great photo-article. I love the part of “Confirmed sith=rogue”. Made me laugh.
20/07/2009 at 16:42 Arturo says:
This still looks like a cartoon. I can’t get over how absurd it looks to see a character with a light saber have his strikes harmlessly bouncing off of enemies. Big Glowing nerf-bats, those are. The should have incorporated some dodging animations and parrying, it looks silly at current.
20/07/2009 at 16:42 bill says:
I’m beginning to feel that the more graphics, VO, etc.. improve, the more IMPRESSIVE it is… but the less you use your imagination. So it actually ends up less immersive in the long run.
But we are way past that point by now, so i guess i should stop worrying…
20/07/2009 at 16:46 Caiman says:
Sometimes I wonder if these developers really think about whether these features are actually what people want. Everyone I know always skips the long, drawling voice-overs after they have quickly read the text. Me included. Voices are a huge immersion breaker in video games for the single reason that the acting is universally totally awful. Dragon Age now has me on the fence instead of the “must buy” that it once was purely because of the truly abysmal voice acting which the developers seem to think is astounding and emotional. How they hope to maintain any consistent degree of quality voice acting with so much dialog is, well, frankly impossible. What a complete waste of resources.
20/07/2009 at 16:57 xtinctionevent says:
I don’t mind voice-overs, as long as subtitles can be disabled. That drove me crazy about NWN2.
Also, whilst I appreciate that developers have to consider lower-spec systems when creating the art for any game (especially an MMO), is anyone else utterly underwhelmed at the graphics we’ve seen in videos so far? Obviously we’re a long way off completion, but surely they could add a little more polish to material deemed worthy of pre-release promotion? For such a high-profile title, I’d expect some serious improvements to the art before I start getting excited.
20/07/2009 at 17:02 Backov says:
Don’t really care about the voice, it’ll be skipped like crazy.
However, the game itself looks like WoW with Lightsabers. Same bar of actions with global cool downs, same ineffective weapons (even when it’s a lightsaber!), etc..
Disappointing, but to be expected I guess.
20/07/2009 at 17:03 Nighthood says:
Is it just me that would prefer a Mass Effect MMO? I find the story much more rich and interesting. Each race is different enough that they could all do huge amounts of different things, and it means we don’t need to faff on with who gets lightsabers and who doesn’t.
20/07/2009 at 17:41 Bobsy says:
a) Anyone tries skipping dialogue on me gets a fucking kick from the party. On a wider note, I rather feel that the sort of people who will want to skip it will not be the core audience here.
b) Cheers for the tipoff Doug F. I don’t really see that as proof though, but it’s looking likely. I’ll be on absolute tenterhooks for confirmation of multiplayer dialogue, because that’s what’ll make or break the game for me.
(yes, I realise the idiocy of getting excited over “multiplayer dialogue. Still)
20/07/2009 at 17:44 Koopa says:
I tend to play my MMOs with most in-game sounds off while listening to my own music, so I’m not really that interested in fully-voiced dialogue. Especially considering it’s usually so awkward anyways, I can’t even begin toimagine what the quality must be when they have to write this much dialogue.
By the way, I read somewhere that you can’t skip dialogue, but now that I think about it, am I confusing this game with Dragon Age?
20/07/2009 at 17:55 Wedge says:
If anyone can do it, I’d trust Bioware. They’ve been doing full voice acting in their games for a while, and it’s always been of a consistent quality. Also I see they nicked the ME dialouge thingamabober for this.
20/07/2009 at 17:59 Psychopomp says:
@Backov
“However, the game itself looks like WoW with Lightsabers. Same bar of actions with global cool downs, same ineffective weapons (even when it’s a lightsaber!), etc..”
1)If *that* combat looked like WoW to you, I suggest you actually play WoW
2)In and RPG, you can’t just make the lightsaber the ultimate weapon, otherwise *there’s no point in using anything else*
BALANCE!
“Also your usual MMO player doesn’t give a shit”
Good, I don’t want to deal with the average MMO player.
20/07/2009 at 18:04 Psychopomp says:
Damn missing edit button
3)If an action bar, and cooldowns is enough to make it WoW, I guess TF2 is a rip-off of Doom 3. Afterall, they both have guns, and healthbars
20/07/2009 at 18:08 Mr_Day says:
Bobsy, you are aware that the more voice actors needed for the game, the more chance they’ll have to hire Cam “I’m Cam Clarke” Clarke.
He can be your character, I am sure you’d enjoy that.
20/07/2009 at 18:08 the affront says:
No idea why you’d want to play one in the first place, then, Psychopomp. Much, much better alternatives to enjoy singleplayer/co-op stories out there than this.
Well, maybe not if you’re a huge flaming SW fanboy.
They should also probably stop marketing it as one or you’ll end up with the average MMO player anyway, just that he’ll bitch and moan before quitting after a month or three, causing them to shut down half the servers.
20/07/2009 at 18:24 Zyrxil says:
This is gonna be awesome. All that voice acting is what turned Everquest 2 into the #1 MMORPG after all.
20/07/2009 at 18:24 Psychopomp says:
@Affront
I like MMO’s, I just don’t like the average player.
I jumped through six WoW guilds, before I found one I could stand.
“Much, much better alternatives to enjoy singleplayer/co-op stories out there than this.”
At the going rate, we get about one good RPG every three years or so, and I’ve played them all to death.
20/07/2009 at 18:33 the affront says:
Well, yeah, if you’ve played everything already, including user created content like NWN modules and whatnot, you might have a point. Otherwise I consider properly finished storylines with an ending much more enjoyable than, basically, never-ending episodic content (it does also have a monthly subscription, doesn’t it?). Episodic because you’ll probably be entertained 1 week in 4 by it, and that is reaching really far out, seeing how fast (slow) other companies release new content (which is probably easier to design as well and doesn’t need voiceovers, mostly).
Also, what you wanted to write is “I don’t like the average person” :P. What you described is the case in every online game, ever. Except maybe very small niche communities.
Seeing as this is marketed as MMO I also don’t expect any meaningful choices & consequences, as I expect the medium doesn’t allow it.
20/07/2009 at 18:34 fearghaill says:
@Psychopomp
I’m in complete agreement, though my experience has been somewhat less harsh. I was fortunate enough to join a good guild the moment I started playing (my friend was leader), and have stuck with it for however long I’ve been playing the damn game.
I still leave all public chat channels immediately upon creating a new character however, and just pretend that WoW is a largescale coop game and limit my interactions outside the guild to using the Auction House, and occasionally letting guildmembers friends come on raids when we’re short.
SWTOR seems incredibly well suited to this approach to MMOs.
20/07/2009 at 18:37 Stupoider says:
I’m still sceptical about how they’re going to deliver this as an MMO.
Plus, full voice acting doesn’t necessarily mean good voice acting.
20/07/2009 at 18:37 Psychopomp says:
The average person is a bit of a jerk-ass, now that you mention it.
20/07/2009 at 18:38 Psychopomp says:
@fearghaill
WAIT
I CAN LEAVE TRADE?
20/07/2009 at 18:43 Calabi says:
@Tei. You have a point, its all very well using voice, but if there just going to have characters convey straightforward information then its such a waste.
When people talk they do not just convey the information that they are conveying. Their voice can let slip a lie in a stutter or change of tone. A voice can let you know if someone is smiling. You can tell someones state of mind. Lots of subtle things are unknowingly expressed in peoples voices.
I expect they will over dialogize it as well lots of pointless telegraphing scripts. “I will keel you!” “No, I will keel you!”, “Let me tell you my secret plan” etc. Lots of stuff like that as if they’d never heard of silence.
20/07/2009 at 18:45 negativedge says:
why does anyone care about this? please don’t bend over to the PR drones and talk about what they want you to talk about, ok. once the game comes out and people are actually playing it, no one will care about the voices. unless they are terrible. at which point they will be modded out.
20/07/2009 at 18:48 Bhazor says:
If they’re so intent on making a single player focused game why are they charging a monthly fee? MMO’s, all MMOs rely on grind, all of them. Even EVE’s mining and trading though the trading at least is nicely reactive. So the question is what will you be grinding while you wait the 3-4 months it takes to add in a whole three hours of new content?
Reply to Psychopomp
One every three years? Christ get a DS, you can’t move for the fuckers. The World Ends With You, Devil Survivor, Dragon Quest, Dark Spire, Etarian Odyssey, Disgaea, Pokemon and on and on. Western RPGS on the other hand have been dying on their arse ever since voice over and graphics became an industry standard.
20/07/2009 at 18:59 Bobsy says:
@Mr_Day: I am resigned to the fact. He was in the first KOTOR as EVERY PERSON YOU MEET. But I will not have Cam Clarke being my Sith. I’ll have Kevin Michael Richardson if he’s available, thanks.
Or Jennifer Hale. Rawr.
20/07/2009 at 18:59 Psychopomp says:
@Bhazor, while I like Etrian Oddyssey, Disgaea, and Pokemon, I don’t generally lump jRPG’s in with real RPG’s.
Same with stuff like Oblivion.
It takes more than stats to make an RPG.
I think I’ll install Planescape:Torment, and Fallout again.
@negativeedge
Wrong, there’s plenty of us who care about this.
Like, the type of people who read quest text in WoW, in a wasted attempt to get some story out of it.
20/07/2009 at 19:00 Lambo says:
@Psychopomp.
Agreed man.
If someone wants to be in a party with me they better be there for eithre A) the company or B) the fun.
Under no circumstances will I put up with a twat who wants to skip every scene and just play without not knowing what the hell is going on. Especially as that just leaves, increasing some number so you can hit sprites who have a slightly larger number beside them.
You might as well just save yourself the money, cancel all your subscriptions, get a piece of paper, write 1 to 100 down one side, and draw a little goblin beside each number. Then cross each number off and then cross off the goblin beside it. A MMO without story, context or a party that you can have fun it is exactly that but it takes longer and you use slightly more fingers.
20/07/2009 at 19:01 Psychopomp says:
I’M LOGGED IN WHERE IS THE EDIT BUTTON?
I still need to play The World Ends With You
I also need a job :c
20/07/2009 at 19:01 SteveHates says:
This looks like a cool single-player RPG… but how does it work as an MMO?
20/07/2009 at 19:02 Psychopomp says:
@Steve
http://darthhater.com/2009/07/18/dissected-videodoc3/
20/07/2009 at 19:15 Jeremy says:
That looks to be pretty interesting, if I may say so. There are of course pros and cons to the whole process, but I’m curious to see how it works in the game and how it impacts dialogue. I’m a little surprised that so many people are going to discount it right away (although I shouldn’t be), as if this “voice acting” aspect is the only selling point to the game. If they were selling it as the “voice acting MMO”, then I might have cause for concern, but what they’re going for is a more immersive MMO, which includes voice acting as a part of that. I can find no reason to complain about this.
20/07/2009 at 19:18 Bhazor says:
Speaking about grind that dissection highlights such things as “Level 1 mobs” “Level 4, possibly Newbie zone” and “Quest giver with icon”. Thats that sorted then.
If it wasn’t Bioware (my third favourite western RPG team) working I really wouldn’t give a damn. But these guys are essentially out of commission for 5 years. If this was Obsidian I’d probably be crying right now.
20/07/2009 at 19:40 Bobsy says:
Bhazor, you do realise that Bioware is super-big now, and are capable of working on Dragon Age, The Old Republic and Mass Effect 2 simultaneously?
20/07/2009 at 19:43 techpops says:
The voice acting I heard here was terrible but maybe those clips were chosen for their impact. Hopefully we’ll hear some more realistic, down to earth speech in the game proper. So I’ll give them that for now but when I play the KOTOR games I always skip over the spoken stuff because I’ve already read it in text and the character is still wittering on.
The look though? Oh it’s hideous. Like Lego Star Wars with a slightly higher poly count. The animation was awful too.
What was equally laughable was the facial animation. Having eyebrows that go up and down does not an expressive character make. Half life 2 was way ahead of this years ago.
I hope they grunge down the look, make things look dirty and realistic, really pull out the stops on the head and facial animation.
20/07/2009 at 19:55 Tei says:
Opinions have a property. Wen theres enough opinions, is like a WALL. A wall that stop.. everything. Is more powerfull than stell strings. Nothing can be done, or tried. One of the million of problems that MMORPG games have is this WALL. Normal opinion walls are huge, 30 foots height. The MMORP is km of height.
You can’t break such wall with opinions. Not even with good opinions. Only a good MMORPG game can break that wall.
The last 2 (3?) years has been terrible for the MMORPG world, because more and more games have tried to break the wall.
I want to add a opinion to this thread, but… I can’t. I don’t know what will work, and what will not work.
But.. I totally disagree with everyone. No one know what will work, and how it will look, till that game is invented and we have played it. Things are this FUBARed now.
20/07/2009 at 19:56 .backslash says:
@Bobsy: Actually, that’s what bothers me most about their recent releases. Although they claim that they move a team on to the next product only after they’ve finished with the previous one, I fear they’re streched too thin among those three games. I already am rather sceptical on how Dragon Age will turn out to be and just hope that they’re not trying to achieve impossible deadlines resulting in crappy games.
20/07/2009 at 19:57 Tei says:
Grr… I have notice my post don’t make any sense. Well.. Ignore it. Sorry.
20/07/2009 at 20:17 Poltergeist says:
“What’s made Star Wars so appealing was it’s rich story and it’s deep characters.”
pfff
20/07/2009 at 20:21 Psychopomp says:
@Techpops
An unrealistic art style can grow on you, and ages far more gracefully than realism.
Realism makes a great first impression, but two years down the line you want to gouge your eyes out.
Also, the art style is based on Gendy Tartovsky’s Clone Wars mini-series…
As the new-fangled 3D cartoon illustrates, Gendy’s art style takes a bit getting used to in the third dimension.
20/07/2009 at 20:22 fearghaill says:
keep in mind that SWTOR is almost entirely Bioware Austin, and the original office in… Calgary? Edmonton? somewhere in Alberta is still largely working on single player titles. They did a TON of hiring for the Austin branch.
Also, they did just devour Mythic like a tasty morsel, no? Unless they plan on working on a second MMO already (doubtful) I have a feeling that their newly aquired MMO veteran developers may end up doing a lot of the support/content expansion of SWTOR post-release.
20/07/2009 at 20:22 Nick says:
Dragon Age was finished ages ago.
20/07/2009 at 20:24 fearghaill says:
@ Psychopomp
I hope you’re joking, but on the off chance you’re not.. yes, you can leave Trade, General, LocalDefense, and anything else. As far as I’m concerned the majority of other characters I see in WoW are sophisticated NPC AIs, with varying degrees of sophistication.
20/07/2009 at 20:34 Psychopomp says:
@fear
I figured you were stuck with the default channels
20/07/2009 at 20:36 DSX says:
Perhaps they’ll let you modulate your player voice pitch and depth like the sims3 does, the technology behind it is very simple. I’d hate my char to sound like that guy. Or look like him frankly. All he needs is a trench coat, a Corely motors chopper, and a wise cracking gang to hit route 9 with.
20/07/2009 at 20:43 DSX says:
er.. accoding to the SA interview with Lead Creative producer
Lightsabers won’t even be in the game.
… wtf? Hasn’t every single vid they’ve released shown lightsabers? Nor will you have force powers. . . . I really hope that article is just flame bait.
20/07/2009 at 20:47 An Innocuous Coin says:
You know, it’s interesting; I’m finally getting around to playing Mass Effect. I’ve always stopped before partway into the game because I have trouble deciding what to make of Shepard; something my customizable character being voiced means that her personality is, to some degree, already decided. It feels as though there’s less room to input myself. It then feels more like I’m deciding which Shepard to play, rather than playing my own character.
Not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but how is this kind of thing going to translate into an MMO, where you ideally have personal ownership over a character amidst the armies of other people playing the game? There is something to be said for letting people fill in the blanks…
And of course the voice acting and writing need to be consistently good. Or good at all. I guess we’ll see if they can do quality along with quantity. Certainly is interesting seeing this game develop, if nothing else.
Graphics look ugly though.
20/07/2009 at 20:47 Psychopomp says:
@DSK
Did you *really* take the Something Awful review seriously?
SERIOUSLY?
IT’S SOMETHING AWFUL
20/07/2009 at 21:06 hahaha says:
Does anyone with a slight grasp on gamebudgets and cost know how much a full voiceover for this kind of game costs? If it’s only some of what grafics costs, it could very well be worth it.
One thing is certain though – it is done well, most MMO players need to rethink their way of playing these kind of games: ingame sound off, musik on.
20/07/2009 at 21:51 Larington says:
I do hope they’re going to have a wide variety of hairstyles for humans, I’ve never been satisfied with the selection of hairstyles offered in games thus far, including The Sims 3 (Though in that one to a lesser extent than most).
20/07/2009 at 21:59 Larington says:
Also, I don’t know if they’ve got multiple takes for the starship captain seen in that vid, but they ought to look into using ones where the voice actor is saying his lines a little bit slower, the speed with which he is talking is robbing the text of subtleties needed to make the text work.
20/07/2009 at 23:14 DK says:
Well, am I just giddy that Admiral Ballsack (seriously, that’s the joke your going to for Bioware?) is going to be voiced.
That’s sarcasm by the way – full voice overs utterly ruin the range of possible dialogue.
Also, the return of the Mass Effect Response Wheel further cripples the dialogues.
21/07/2009 at 00:19 fearghaill says:
@Psychopomp
you poor bastard.
21/07/2009 at 00:46 Psychopomp says:
@Fear
I left trade
I think my I gained some sanity points.
21/07/2009 at 01:48 darkripper says:
I’m a bit scared by the fact they’re not talking about endgame. This still looks like a possibly great singleplayer rpg with an elaborate copy protection mechanism.
21/07/2009 at 02:24 Adventurous Putty says:
1.) There’s a “games as art” comment early in. Coming from Bioware, it made me chortle a bit.
2.) Mass Effect dialogue system makes it look like…well, an uglier Mass Effect.
3.) Fully voiced amounts to large repeating voice casts and a “unique” celebrity voice for each class of PC character, at best.
4.) Not KOTOR III, not representative of a viable alternative. Yawn.
5.) “Grand Moff?” Seriously, 3,000 years before the Empire? I’m not even a canon buff but at least even I know that can’t be right.
21/07/2009 at 06:49 techpops says:
@Psychopomp
I agree that stylized games can age much better than those trying to be realistic, when you look back on them. Thing is, I want to play this game in the now, not treat it as some kind of gallery piece I’ll appreciate the look of many years from now.
Realism is what is needed for Star Wars, half life with more attention to detail is all I’m asking. World of Warcraft in space is just going to break my heart.
As for that style from the 3D animated cartoon, that was hard to really grasp for a while. I think they were using some kind of radiosity (global illumination) which worked really well, but the caricature characters just made that realism work against it. the robots and sets were fine, just the humanoid characters didn’t work at all and for the same reasons, highly stylized characters in this game are going to royally suck too. It’s Star Wars, everyone that knows it, sees a realistic world of characters when they think of it, its the only way to go.
It has to be dirty, dark, gritty and draw its humour from great writing, not from bobble head wooki’s moonwalking past you because the animation frames aren’t there / too much lag.
21/07/2009 at 08:46 orta says:
grunt huff
21/07/2009 at 16:48 Psychopomp says:
@techpops
Actually, moonwalking bobble head wookies sounds like an amazing game.
21/07/2009 at 20:48 DisgruntledGamer says:
A message to all you film school flunkies and hacks who couldn’t cut it in Hollywood. Stay the fuck away from the games industry.
That is all.
22/07/2009 at 01:41 Devan says:
Is it just me, or do all the voices sound like they’ve got a bit of a robot-sounding filter on them? The characters in the movie feel pretty rigid to me, and I can’t easily empathize with them. It would be a problem if I can’t immerse myself because my own toon is awkwardly voiced or animated.
22/07/2009 at 17:41 partyhat says:
I think that we’re missing out the fundamental problem here: Star Wars is shit.
24/07/2009 at 05:30 Psychopomp says:
Tell that to it’s status as a classic