Voice Acting not such a good idea?

[AlbireoTheMad]

When I first found out that Oblivion had VAing for all the NPC conversations I was excited. But after I bought it, played it, and added a few mods, I realize there are vary few quest mods with NPCs that talk. I was wondering what other people in the elder scrolls community thought about this.

[Sypron]

Well, what would you prefer? Quest mods have no VA sometimes, true, but they still have text that you can read. Maybe in the next game they will have a hlaf decent voice synsthesis program, so modders can simply type what they want said and the VS will generate it.

[Vagrant0]

Well, what would you prefer? Quest mods have no VA sometimes, true, but they still have text that you can read. Maybe in the next game they will have a hlaf decent voice synsthesis program, so modders can simply type what they want said and the VS will generate it.

Doubtful, even high end programs that use that sort of thing don't sound human. Synthesis programs all sound "off", they also wouldn't be able to catch minor vocalizations to give emphasis or those subtle voice changes. There's nothing really wrong with voice acting as a whole. it's only when you're trying to cram voice acting with all the other sounds, meshes, and textures onto a single dvd that issues pop up. Bethsoft could, and obviously had, more voice acting included with the game, they just had to cut out portions of it to fit the whole game on a single dvd. If you notice, all the BSA's almost fill a dvd alone. This is why SI had so much more voice acting, they had room for it, so could have more unique dialogues.

 

As far as mods go, voice acting really isn't the issue, people who can make good mods don't need voice acting to make them good. And if they do, there are already a few groups out there that offer voices. As I had said a long time ago, voices aren't needed to make a good mod, a good mod alone speaks for itself. If enough people like a quest mod, there may even be people who want to offer their voice for that quest. The real issue is that there aren't many people who can do quest mods due to all the time and skill required to get them working right. Voices can easily be linked to already existing dialogues.

 

For future games, I wouldn't expect very much. If Oblivion is a hit of things to come, expect things to be even more stripped down and hard coded in the next version. Bethsoft doesn't care about modders, between the game being a serious technical downgrade from Morrowind, all the bugs which are caused by latest patches, and a still broken CS, they've already burned that bridge. I'd frankly be supprised if TES:V even had a released, working CS. Naturally, they would explain this being due to certain components which they aren't licensed to release. In the case of a voice synthisis program, even if they did use one, they would likely be unable to include it for that exact reason. I doubt they would actually go through the trouble of coding one from scratch or buying it outright, more over, even if they did, they still probably wouldn't release it.

[IonDune]

For future games, I wouldn't expect very much. If Oblivion is a hit of things to come, expect things to be even more stripped down and hard coded in the next version.

 

That is, of course, unless they move into multiple DVDs. Its bound to happen eventually.

[hoots7]

I agree with Vagrant0’s first 2 paragraphs, I hope he’s wrong about TESV not being mod friendly, but I fear he may be right about that too.

 

There are very good mods out there with no Voice Acting & you can find some good, maybe not great like Vagrant said, but good text to speech programs that you can even tell the program which words or parts of the word to stress.