How will you deal with a voiced protagonist?

[Belthan]

Forgive a somewhat flawed metaphor from an old-school PnP RPG player, but Fallout & Elder Scrolls games remind me of a D&D campaign with friends, where almost every aspect of your character, even your background, goals and priorities, were conceived and developed by you. Games like Mass Effect seem more like D&D tourney play, where they gave you a quest objective and a character sheet with your class, stats, equipment, back story, etc. and then you played the role you were assigned. I'm not saying either form is better, just that I hope there will always be room for both. The voiced protagonist in FO4 feels like it signals a step away from the former and toward the latter, but I'll reserve judgment until I actually play it.

 

Anyway, back to the "how do we modders plan to handle player dialogue" question: Jeff's Brian Delaney impersonation is good enough to draw a chuckle (especially after a few beers), but I'm convinced the difference would be noticeable and immersion-breaking in the game. (Which was the inspiration for the total player voice replacement idea). However, his reaction to the idea of re-recording 13,000 lines of Brian's dialogue just to make 1000 lines of new dialog for the mod dovetail smoothly with the vanilla content was less than enthusiastic. More like "stay polite and slowly back away from the crazy person".

 

The more I think about this, the more I like RoyBatterian's idea. If we end up with multiple player voice replacement mods, do I pick one to use with my quest mods, or make multiple versions to be compatible with any voice replacement the user has installed? And if modders rally around one particular player voice replacement, what if the actor in question leverages the increased demand for his services to start charging $10 a minute or something? And could you really blame him, after he invested the time to record 13,000 lines of dialog in the first place?

[DaemonGrin]

The more I think about this, the more I like RoyBatterian's idea. If we end up with multiple player voice replacement mods, do I pick one to use with my quest mods, or make multiple versions to be compatible with any voice replacement the user has installed? And if modders rally around one particular player voice replacement, what if the actor in question leverages the increased demand for his services to start charging $10 a minute or something? And could you really blame him, after he invested the time to record 13,000 lines of dialog in the first place?

 

To be honest I wouldn't expect anyone to put so much time into such a task without compensation. I mean a 3-5hr mod is one thing where there are 2-5mins bouts of dialogue every 30 or so mins of game play but a full overhaul of a highly anticipated video game. Break out the check books folks! They would deserve it. The easiest thing is silent voice files in the playervoice folder and subtitles.

 

Never played D&D,

Geoff

[Nimboss]

Let's first see what they actually did this time when the game comes out?

Secondly I think Roys path to disable voice and only have text probably will be possible. Bethesda I hope will support it since it usually is a strong demand from organizations against companies that not make their products usable for hard hearing people. Voicing had its place in Mass Effect but I'm not sure I support it fully in FO4 the games are different styles. First FO4 play I will try voiced, then depending of result I for now still think I will turn it off for other play rounds.

But as Fallout2AM mention I also see there will be lot of tries of people to do a total makeover for VA most will probably be bad (we speak of 13,000 lines something that must be done with the same quality all over).
They however will do it for the challenge and in the hope of getting famous and recognized, and some probably will. That can be a nightmare for modders in the future if they start to need aid from let's say 10 different popular voice actors to release a new mod. And if some of them start say (most likely) they will do it but it will cost you a bit? I just cringe thinking of strange scenarios where users start demand you (it will) that their favorite voice actor should be added to a popular mod you made, or start telling it's a bug/error because the voice is wrong when playing your mod but with another mod "works".


However I hope most people will stay with vanilla voices or have it turned off using text. In the first case a good voice actor should be able to get close enough to mimic the original, and the last part with using some good audio filters will get it near to perfect. Just look on how music industry does it.

[RoyBatterian]

I'm sure people will make total voice replacements yeah, but as stated that will complicate things for authors of quest mods. It's already an issue if you want to use a pre-existing NPC in your mod and have their lines voiced. It takes a talented voice actor to mimic someone else perfectly or close to it, and usually such talent doesn't come on the cheap.

 

I mean heck, I'd probably do a play through with Gopher or Al Chestbreach as the main character just for the novelty of it, but it's not something I would do for more than one play through, and that would probably go for any voice actor.

 

I completely agree with Belthan's assessment of it via D&D analogy. Am I playing my own character, or a prefabricated one, and that was kind of my point. I like the mix of RPG/FPS where I can role play the kind of personalized harbinger of death that I want to. It's not like the character is a well established persona, say like the upcoming Mad Max game where you play as Max Rockatanksy. That's never been what Fallout was about, ever, and I for one, don't want that to change because it really will make the franchise become stale quickly for me and I will go back to playing the older games if that's the case.

 

But we have to wait and see what they did, the only thing that scares me so far is that "they listened to Fallout and Skyrim players". This is not a TES game, so listening to Skyrim players really really makes me uneasy. It's like going, hey we're making a new Left 4 Dead game, so we listened to Team Fortress 2 players... Valve made this mistake with Left 4 Dead 2, and killed both games (L4D1/2) and communities in the process.

[Fallout2AM]

 

and usually such talent doesn't come on the cheap.

 

Absolutely. But in general I believe there's a lot of talent around here. As Skyrim's fan, for example, I played many mods and... well, I believe that people like Christine Slagman or Viridiane (just to quote 2, but there's a lot), if they ever will decide to jump in post apocalipsia, I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't have problems in a duty like that.

[Tony the Wookie]

 

 

However, for those of us who specialize in quest mods, companions, and so forth, this has the potential to be a big problem. Now, the obvious solution is just to find voice actors who sound like Courtenay Taylor and Brian T. Delaney, but IMHO unless the impersonation is spot-on perfect, that approach is likely to be an immersion killer.

 

 

IMHO I think you are being a bit ridiculous if you think things have to be "spot-on perfect" for people to not notice.

 

With all the things going on in Fallout, nobody is going to really notice a change in voice actors unless it is some drastic difference. I stumbled upon a guy that does a seamless impersonation of the male player character without any problems at all.

 

 

 

It sounds amazing actually having banter back and forth with two or even 3 characters in a conversation. It is monumentally better than being talked at like in Fallout 3. Things just flow and it feels like you are part of it, as opposed to forcing the player to tear their mind away from the game play to go into reading mode again.

 

I will post an example of one of the 3 way conversations I am recording for my mod once I get the chance.

 

 

 

Though, I might be the minority here that cares more about the flow of game play than I do about playing a little bit of a game, reading a little bit of a story, playing a little bit of a game, reading a little bit of a story.

 

I like to both read and write books, I like to design characters and stories and other aspects. But I don't like when the media aspect breaks me away from the game aspect on a constant basis. I don't like when I feel like I am being pulled between two activities, one being an oldschool D&D style RPG and the other being a FPS video game.

 

Mass Effect 2 and 3 never felt like the media aspects pulled you away from the game play, everything flowed.

 

I know it is a bit different, since the media aspect that earlier Fallout games were built on was pen and paper RPGs where Mass Effect 2 and 3 have more or a movie media aspect. But that is a debate for another day. The simple point is, that the media has to flow with the game and not slow it down and feel separate.

 

 

Basically, if having short choices on the dialogue screen as opposed to having to read 3 or 4 full dialogue options makes the game flow better, then I am all for it.

 

 

I absolutely DO NOT ever want to have to read the dialogue options I choose not to say. If I am playing a 'goodey two shoes' type character, it is very, very immersion breaking to have to read some bit of dialogue that is totally evil and brutal and gory. Voice acted or not, having short options by themselves will make Fallout 4 soooooo much better than Fallout 3.

 

That way at least I will only have to read the option I actually chose.

[llamaRCA]

I agree with Roy and Belthan's assessment of the issues with a voiced protaganist in a Beth game and the issues surrounding integrating new work into the game.

 

I'm waiting until I've played the game and we've had a chance to dig around in the new Geck to decide how exactly I'll handle it (we don't know for sure at this point how dialogue has been built). Having said that, I am currently leaning heavily toward Roy's method. I'd rather have an entirely silent protagonist throughout the game than have a mishmash of solutions running in my game side-by-side.

[mindboggles]

I'll be holding off purchasing it until I get some feedback about the voice etc. even though I am tempted to make a few mods poking fun at the voiced player.