Going forward, let's hope EA/Bio learns from GW2 about the use of VO work

[moff]

been playing GW2 all week now, and its very different from SWTOR, which is a good thing.
but I have to disagree with the OP, one thing that is clearly better in SWTOR is that you feel much more immersed in your character, you feel like an actual part of the universe, with a purpose wherever you go. among other things, this is thanks to the 95% voice over quests.

in GW2, I dont feel that much connected to the world, more like a tourist, or someone playing a game. I realized it was the same thing in wow, rift and other MMOs, so I can definitely say, at least for me, SWTOR raised the bars pretty high in that aspect an should by no means "learn" from GW2, when it comes to voice over and story telling in general.

[draykorinee]

Please do not take any advice from GW2 VO it is cringeworthily bad, so so cringey that I had to just click next each time. I dont understand what EA can learn from Anet in that aspect.

[Venziir]

Please do not take any advice from GW2 VO it is cringeworthily bad, so so cringey that I had to just click next each time. I dont understand what EA can learn from Anet in that aspect.

Do the NPCs joke about the fact that you can't answer them like in The Secret World? Honestly every f'ing npc keeps calling my Templar "shy" "quiet" or something along the lines - sure it was fun the first 4-5 times - but ENOUGH is ENOUGH!

[Amsden]

Well seeing as it is a Bioware game I was expecting lots of conversations, and I got em. They don't bother me though... afterall I have played through DA:O 6 times, KOToR too many times to remember and ME2 4 times I'm used to repeated dialogue...

[gabrield]

Going from SWTOR to other similar games questing felt like a massive step down. SWTOR pretty much had it done perfectly!

[dokilar]

i prefer swtors voiceover work over just about every other game ive played. gw2's isnt bad but im not nearly as immersed in the questing in gw2 as i am when im playing swtor.

just my opinion however

---------- Post added 2012-09-08 at 06:15 AM ----------

Going from SWTOR to other similar games questing felt like a massive step down. SWTOR pretty much had it done perfectly!

yea basically this, i just feel like every game ive played since swtor the questing has been just "meh"

[peterpan007]

I love GW2, but it doesn't hold a candle to the VO in SWTOR. I can't even put my finger on most of it, but the voices with the characters are NOT believable in any capacity. Do I think this negatively impacts the game? No.

GW2 can't even be compared to VO's to SWTOR which SWTOR in this department is far far superior.

The VO's in GW2 for most is cheesy. Only very few are believable

Please do not take any advice from GW2 VO it is cringeworthily bad, so so cringey that I had to just click next each time. I dont understand what EA can learn from Anet in that aspect.

Agree here

[Grevie]

Honestly SWToR VO is way superior than any VO on GW2, you can't take that away from SWToR, instead there are
on GW2 some CS with a horrible voice acting, sometimes it feels weak and cheap, i like GW2 alot, but VO is not their
shiny point.

[Sunseeker]

I agree, and disagree. SWTOR needs to chill on the VO a bit, this is true, most major quests, especially ones that lead to long quest chains involving important aspects of the game should have VO. Personal, class, world and some other smaller, but important quests(like maybe Heroic+2/4). GW on the other hand needs to be a bit more creative in their cut-scenes, which as good as the VO's are, are dry and boring as heck. I have absolutely no desire to watch the GW2 cut-senes on 99% of occasions, while I still enjoy watching the majority of the SWTOR ones, even for some of the "unimportant" quests.

I think both games could learn from each other. SWTOR can tone down the VO and cut-scenes a bit, and GW2 can amp them up a notch or two.

[draykorinee]

Having now installed and played a few hours of ToR I can categorically say no, please do not change VO, it is hands down superior, it fits in so well with the lore that I tend to actually want to listen to them, granted im a few hours in but still I dont find myself skipping scenes like in GW2...please go play Asura and tell me you dont want to just hit skip every single time.

The choices also give me the feeling of a character instead of on the rails voice dialogue where you sound exactly the same goody too shoes hero on every character...it has nothing to learn from GW2.

[Redblade]

The only problem with the VO is that they have to many side quests with their own cut scenes. What they should have done in my opinion is add more extra quests within your story, for example the guy you are talking to for your story quest also tells you about X,Y and Z that could use some attention in the area, these extras would be added as bonus quests and you would choose to do them or not. This would have saved a lot of VO time and made the bonus quests feel less of an annoyance, I mean you can only help so many helpless lazy retards before it gets really old and make you want to shout Go fucking do it your self!

[Deleted]

Guild Wars 2's Voice Acting is medicore at best. The actors are trying way too hard (Norn fighters are hilariously bad, especially the women), or sound as if they're squinting and reading directly from the script. The cutscenes are extremely still and uninteresting to watch because all they do is stand and talk at each other anyway, it seems like a waste of resources to just not have them talk 'in-game' anyway. I don't deny some VO is better than non at all and reading a wall of text though.

The Secret World manages fully voiced missions (minus the protagonist) with a better quality in terms of VO and writing (admitadly it's aimed at a more mature audience than "Lightsabers kids!") and don't use Gideon Emery for every. Single. British/Imperial. Accent. They only use Steve Blum once too. Investigation missions make you actually -pay attention- to them for key information and hints that aren't dropped in your ques- mission log.

The amount of times I heard the same voice actor giving me another generic "The Imperials/Republic are pushing us back! Go and fight them!" speech made the novelty wear off quickly. Story VO? Great. Main planet VO? Great. But get rid of the generic incompetent grey uniformed officer asking me to kill people. TSW makes its characters feel like they fit in the world properly and somebody you could reasonable encounter (at least in the middle of a Not-Cthulhu invasion anyway) instead of sitting just outside tents in neat rows telling me how we're about to be pushed of the planet... again.

Mind you, both TOR and TSW's VO is superior to Guild Wars 2. That cannot be stated enough.

[ptwonline]

Why is everyone replying about the quality of the VO work? That wasn't the point I was trying to make at all!

The point I was trying to make is that because of the way that SWTOR has 1001 largely inconsequential side quests, it becomes too much. And IMO it's counterproductive: scripted scenes are more static and just conversations because they have to do so many of them, very few are memorable at all because they mostly end up as just conversations over trivial quests and so it becomes tedious, and because it adds so much production time (and cost) I suspect that's why new PvE content has been so slow to be released.

Using the VO and scripted scenes more sparingly for the major class/world stories--like GW2--would allow them to either save time and get content out faster, or else allow them to make the scripted scenes more dynamic because they'd have triple the amount of time to work on each scene. Another way to get to the same kind of solution would be to change the nature of questing from dumping dozens of these minor quests on us that all need their own scripted VO scene, and instead focus on giving us fewer but larger/longer/more vital quests and dynamic quest chains.

[Arlee]

So, this is pretty much a Game vs game thread, which is against the rules. However, there has been some interesting discussion and no one has been rude or anything yet so I think leaving this thread open for now would be fine. Just preemptively saying to keep the discussion constructive and civil so the thread doesn't have to be closed

[iceberg265]

Completely disagree with the OP. I love the convos and I love the VO in SWTOR and I would not want it changed for anything.

The only thing I would change is after you have run a FP/OP a few times, that the convos/cinematics don't play every time.

[Arlee]

The only thing I would change is after you have run a FP/OP a few times, that the convos/cinematics don't play every time.

I completely agree with that. In fact I would say even that as soon as you have seen the content once you should have the option of skipping the dialogue (with a setting or one button press instead of having to hit spacebar repetitively).

[Snorkle]

SWTOR was pretty cool for having everything voiced over, but I know I'm not the only one who got tired of having voiceovers and conversation scenes even for essentially "kill 10 boars" missions and then dozens more relatively inconsequential ones just like it. it was just too much, especially on repeated playthroughs of each planet.

Anyone else old enough to have played Wing Commander when it came out? Remember when voiceovers, conversations, and cinematics were seen as a reward for progress and used to progress the main storyline? Thus they became significant and both the players and developers could focus more on them. By having them used so much in SWTOR foften for such trivial things, and by having them mostly just be static conversations, they lose their specialness and can even become tedious.

Let's hope they focus more on quality than quantity when it comes to production levels of voice and cinematic work, and save it for more critical things and in more dynamic ways than just conversations.

You are aware that people can disagree with you, specially concerning the point that voice over should be only for progressing. I really like how large the scope is in this game, and I think it is a huge advance and a great point in favor of swtor!

[draykorinee]

Why is everyone replying about the quality of the VO work? That wasn't the point I was trying to make at all!

Let's hope they focus more on quality than quantity when it comes to production levels of voice and cinematic work, and save it for more critical things and in more dynamic ways than just conversations.

It was because you mentioned quality, the quality is fine the quantity maybe too much and like you say the time could be better spent on adding other content. I would still hesitate to agree that cutting down VO will mean we get more content updates personally.

[Deleted]

Alright...

The fact that pretty much every quest has a dialogue is just fun, it helps me get into my story emersion. I'm an avid roleplayer and I'm just loving the fact that I'm able to interact with every quest giver and/or NPC's along the quests.

Flashpoints... I love the fact that there are cutscenes I watch them every time pretty much unless someone from the party asks if I could spacebar due to lack of time. Not something you get asked very often however on an RP server.



You say it like, "10 boars" op but it is more, every quest is either a sub quest of the main quest or has its own story and in the end it all leads to your choices and how you wish to let your choices affect this zone. A clearly evil quest? I will leave the quest even tho it doesn't give me dark points, it helps if I listen to the characters their voices aswell because from the intonation or their behavior you can see that they are up to something!

You have the choice to space bar, why would you try to remove something then that us RP'ers love so much.

edit: Your asking for the removal of a feature while you could just space bar it instead, think about it!

[mirodin]

I completely agree with that. In fact I would say even that as soon as you have seen the content once you should have the option of skipping the dialogue (with a setting or one button press instead of having to hit spacebar repetitively).

The problem with that is that non everyone in the party has seen that cut scene so even if you spacebar you still wait for them to finish watching it. It's gonna be fine for the scene's where no used input is needed thou.