Add voiceovers for player characters!

[Knightraven8]

This is something I dont't understand at all. Bioware had it in Mass Effect and I thought the pc voice overs totally made me believe I was Sheperd. But its a bit awkward talking to people in DA:O because your chracter never says anything, they just kinda look around with a stupid look on their face. It really kinda throws off some of the immersion, and I certainly dont feel as attached to my character as I did in ME. I don't know why Bioware didn't put this in in the first place, and I don't know if it is possible for someone to do, but if you can make a mod that adds pc voiceovers, DA:O would probably be the best RPG ever.

[andro21]

well, first, i wudnt say best ever. this game has its obvious flaws. and honestly, kinda sucks. once u beat it, theres basically no new content to want to replay the game for. origin stories are not enough.

but secondly, VO for ur PC wouldnt mean someone actually going into a studio and speaking every single dialogue option and doing it for every single voice personality (the different voices u choose in char build), both genders, and all three races... so u can imagine how this idea is not a mod, but a freaking month long undertaking with talent, a studio, lots of time and practice to be gotten "right," etc.

third, yea, bioware are punks for not doing this themselves. they wanted to save money and release a "great" game asap.

[Knightraven8]

True, and really I meant best more in terms of story than actual game play. Yeah it wouldn't be an easy mod, but it would be epic if someone did it. :yes:

[patterabbit]

As stated already, it would take veeeeeeeeeeeeeeery much work to do such a thing - and there is a simple reason for why they did it in Mass Effect, but not in Dragon Age.

 

In Mass Effect you have 2 voices - Male or Female

 

In Dragon Age you have human, dwarf, elf - male/female, so its so much much more work to do voices for that.

 

I seriously doubt any modder could do this ( with good result ) unless a whole team gets together and records in a studio.

[malad]

I would be ready to have a go at it. We'd only have to do one female voice and one male voice for starters, and give them to all the characters. I'd be prepared to do the female part if someone is ready to make the mod itself (and if people stand my accent). Yeah, it's a huge project, but it'd make a huge difference.

[Aria C]

but secondly, VO for ur PC wouldnt mean someone actually going into a studio and speaking every single dialogue option and doing it for every single voice personality (the different voices u choose in char build), both genders, and all three races... so u can imagine how this idea is not a mod, but a freaking month long undertaking with talent, a studio, lots of time and practice to be gotten "right," etc.

 

Most real mods are not created over night, in days or even weeks they take months and sometimes years depending on the project. A mod like this would take several months at the least. The voices could be recorded rather quickly and implemented but its the bug testing and fine tuning of the sound quality, the quality of the voiced dialogs ect that will take a great deal of time. Anyone can shout "charge!" but making it believable and not so loud as to blow your ear drums off is something else altogether.

 

There is plenty of freeware and lowcost recording software out there that is up to the task, the recording quality on one program that I use called FreeSoundRecorder is very much capable of the task, there are also other software programs both free and lowcost that remove background noise ect. So this is very much a project that could be taking on.

 

The only hangups I see at the moment is adding the PC's voiced dialog to DLC like wardens keep, stone prisoner and the coming return to ostagar, its kind of bleh to go and voice the main campaign and be forced to skip over those due to not being able to edit DLC in the toolset.

 

third, yea, bioware are punks for not doing this themselves. they wanted to save money and release a "great" game asap.

 

I do not blame Bioware at all for not doing this, you need to remember that work on Dragonage started not long after the release of Hordes of the Underdark, That it is a brand new IP and that it was huge gamble for them being an indy developer at the time. Alot of money time and rescources were put into the development of the games engine alone, once you add everything else up its easy to see why costs would need to be cut particulary after EA purchased Bioware. No doubt in my mind that Bioware was on pins and neadles untill DA became a success.

 

I do however expect more out of DA 2, there would be no excuse for not putting a bit extra into a proved title.

[LordKinoda]

Alot of money time and rescources were put into the development of the games engine alone, once you add everything else up its easy to see why costs would need to be cut particulary after EA purchased Bioware. No doubt in my mind that Bioware was on pins and neadles untill DA became a success.

 

One would think that would seriously be the other way around. Because EA purchased BW they should of had more than enough money and resourses to throw in voice work for the player character. EA is a publishing giant. I'm sorry but it seems like a huge step backward that BW didn't have a fully voiced main character. This would have improved the game by leaps and bounds. I blame BW very much. It should of been added. And if was EA's fault for not fronting the cash because the IP is new that's sad. No risk, no reward. Way more developers and publishers need to not be afraid to take a little risk every now and then. And even that is silly to say, because there was already a great example with ME 1.

 

Surely it would been worth the cost to have what, six different versions of the main character. One for each race and gender. Or hell even four voice actors would have been sufficient. The humans and elves could of shared the same voice actors, and the dwarves would have their own. I could of lived with that. The game recieved 9 out of 10 almost across all reviews. Having the PC voiced would have easily bumped that score up to 9.5 on most, and 10 on others. How could that NOT be worth the investment ?

 

It would have been great for all platforms to have and play with, but especially for PC with the modding. Because presumably, it would have been as easy as swapping out the main files with your own to put your own voice into the game.

 

 

 

From what I understand about the toolset, which isn't very much mind you, all the pieces are there to make the PC have a voice. Personally all I'm interested in is somebody making all the camera angles, lip syncs, and dialog line shortening akin to Mass Effect, so I can just throw in my own voice for the character. It would be well worth $100-200 investment on a decent recording microphone to make the dialog myself, if somebody just handeld all the other technical details.

 

Either that or BW can release an official DLC pack to do this and make it easily accessible for you to add your own audio files. I'd say that would easily be worth $5, and they would sell tons of them.

[Aria C]

One would think that would seriously be the other way around. Because EA purchased BW they should of had more than enough money and resourses to throw in voice work for the player character. EA is a publishing giant. I'm sorry but it seems like a huge step backward that BW didn't have a fully voiced main character.

 

Not at all Bioware being a very new aquisition to the EA empire and being very much aware of EA and it's practice of breaking up the devoloping houses they aquire, were under more presure not less. The budget they had for DA was no longer thiers to control, so if they go over budget they have to justify that to EA, along with the additional amount of developing time. EA wasnt going to wait DA had to be released to hit stores in time for christmass.

 

Not to mention that Dragonage was first brought to light something like 6 years ago when a link popped up on the bioware forums stating coming 2006. That is a very long time for a game to be in the development process and even though EA was not a part of it then, they certainly are now.

 

So for Bioware asking for additional funds and delaying publishing by saying hey we can add x, x, and x feature doesnt work. The reason being is that features can allways be added without ever posssibly running out of new things to add. The whole development process has to end at some point for the game to ship. Not to mention that after such a long development process DA was almost certainly well over its initail budget something that I again stress that EA greatly frowns upon.

 

So when it comes to cutting features as the developer of a new IP thats likely over budget, who has a boss who's intentions you are unsure of but has a pretty bad reputation what features do you cut to keep costs down and speed up production? I think Bioware made the right choices, it was not that they did not want to include them or the idea of it slipped the mind of the project manager they just ran out of time, money and patience from EA

 

Either that or BW can release an official DLC pack to do this and make it easily accessible for you to add your own audio files. I'd say that would easily be worth $5, and they would sell tons of them.

 

If you read through the threads on Biowares forums you will learn that stone prisoner was intended to be a part of DA:O it was cut due to bugs and fixed after DA:O was shipped to the publisher. David Gaider has stated that It made it back as a DLC only because it was a mostly finished work and that it was allready fully voiced.

 

Wardens keep was also completed before DA hit the stores and again fully voiced, in every reply that Biowares made regarding anything origin related, companion related and so forth Biowares stated things like "no" concerning new origins the reason being is that requires to much work and additional voice acting.

 

The same was pretty much said for additional companion options, so I think that this is most likely a mod that will have to come from the community being that among the main objections to the other requests were based on additional voice acting

 

 

From what I understand about the toolset, which isn't very much mind you, all the pieces are there to make the PC have a voice. Personally all I'm interested in is somebody making all the camera angles, lip syncs, and dialog line shortening akin to Mass Effect, so I can just throw in my own voice for the character. It would be well worth $100-200 investment on a decent recording microphone to make the dialog myself, if somebody just handeld all the other technical details.

 

Thats a possability, I never looked myself so I dont know but it stands to reason if some or all of the work is laid out that it could be done sooner, the camera isnt the issue, that I believe allready does exist. The lipsynch files are beyond my abilities though, I have never done them before and I suspect that its as difficult to do as it implies.

[LordKinoda]

Not at all Bioware being a very new aquisition to the EA empire and being very much aware of EA and it's practice of breaking up the devoloping houses they aquire, were under more presure not less.

 

That's a highly unlikely scenario for BW I think. Maybe they break up other development houses because they don't work well together, or haven't came out with anything of real substance. But BioWare ? They've proven themselves to be very talented with their games. EA would be seriously idiotic if they even entertained the idea of breaking up a winning team. Presumably they bought them because they know they're going to be a sure thing. And won't be afraid to indulge them with a little more money than they're used to because they know they will get their money's worth.

 

BioWare had no involvement with EA for ME 1, but cranked out a voiced main character. For BOTH sexes no less. Why is it so unreasonable to assume they could of easily did it with DAO, most especially because they have EA's backing ? As if paying a few people to do the lines of the game would be THAT much money anyway. No way it would be over $50,000. And that's if you used 6 FAMOUS actors. Hell, let's say they could of at least did 2 actors. 1 male, 1 female. Tops, what's their pay ? $10-15,000 each ? And that's if they're known actors. What do you think they pay Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale (ME Shepard actors) ? Probably something like that right ?

 

Mass Effect 2 will have 90 actors playing 546 characters, speaking over 31,000 lines. Take into account that Meer and Hale will most likely be getting paid the most because they're doing Shepard. So that's 30k, maybe. Who knows if they even get paid that much. But let's assume that for arguments sake. That leaves 88 people. They've announced 12 other famous/reasonable famous actors for the game as well. Let's assume they each get 10k. Up to 150k. 76 people left to do other companions, plot characters, random characters, codex VO, etc. Let's assume they each get $1000, so $76k. 150+76=226. Let's be generous and round up to 250k to account for the famous actors of the game. So $250,000 to pay the 90 voice actors. What's the total budget on the game ? Has to be anywhere from 20-30 million. So even if you rounded that voice actor cost up to $500k. It would still leave PLENTY of money to pay the devs, marketing, manufacturing, and shipping to outlets.

 

So as far as I can see on my assumptions, voice acting is hardly that big of a hit to a budget that it must be one of the first things that is cut to save on costs. Most especially because it hurts quality. And because famous actors don't always have to be used. As soon as they saw how successful ME's conversation system was with the fans they should of immediately went into talks about incorporating it into DAO. They had more than enough to do it. And as I've suggested, money couldn't of been the deciding factor to not have a voiced PC. Who knows what the hell that factor is, but I'm sure it's not one that I (or many other fans), would like to hear.

 

The lipsynch files are beyond my abilities though, I have never done them before and I suspect that its as difficult to do as it implies.

 

This feature in the toolset makes it out to seem that it's not as hard as one would think.

 

FaceFX

 

My guess is that proper editing to show the PC's expressions, animations, and camera angles so the performance could come through would be harder than the lip sync.

[TGBlank]

"As if paying a few people to do the lines of the game would be THAT much money anyway"

 

A nobody charges over 800$/session. Which is about 4 hours. The 'nobody' that gave the voice to the main character of GTA4 (and by nobody, i mean a bartender, bagel shop employee and perfume hawker) charged 1000/day of work for 15 months; a week of this nobody is far more than what a programmer charges in a month.

Patrick Stewart charged on the high 6 digits for his performance as the king in oblivion.. that was less than 5 mins of dialogue. Other somewhat obscurely famous actors would charge on the 5 digits for each session.

 

DAO also haves a whole lot of dialogue, so far a lot more than any other voiced game i've played; a single pc voice would be well over 20-30% more dialogue to record; such costs is the kind of things a CEO would cut out to have a prettier budget.

 

 

If anyone wants to try this, be my guest, just be prepared to spend 2 years doing it.