sajuukkhar9000 Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 (edited) SWTOR has shown it is very possible to make games that are large and expansive that are fully voiced, we should be pushing Bethesda to the future not the past. Secondly "lets set back all of gaming 10 years for nostalgia reasons" does not anywhere imply that ES is all of gaming. It never implies or directly states ANYTHING is all of gaming, it was a broad and general statement. Were you are pulling this ES is all of gaming thing is beyond me but it is not in my sentence. Edited January 17, 2012 by sajuukkhar9000 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
faifh Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 Secondly "lets set back all of gaming 10 years for nostalgia reasons" does not anywhere imply that ES is all of gaming. It never implies or directly states ANYTHING is all of gaming, it was a broad and general statement. Were you are pulling this ES is all of gaming thing is beyond me but it is not in my sentence. Dude seriously you DID. argument: This kind of games would be better of with text only.troll: lets set back all of gaming 10 years for nostalgia reasons Get it? So keep your cynicism to yourself please. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RokHere Posted January 17, 2012 Author Share Posted January 17, 2012 ...If having to choose, because of budgetary constraints, I'd rather have text and a deep world with all kind of interaction than voice and for example stupid secret-fire still telling me to join the college, albeit I'm the archmage. I just suppose as the market works today, non-through voice acting will get bad reviews, will hurt sales :( Its still behind the horizon, but I believe that one day, speech synthesis will that good, that it won't just even sound natural, but also non-monotonous. Already today you have a variety of different speakers available, albeit yet they all sound like robots. Who knows when it will be common place. On the other hand, remember how games looked 10 years ago? 20 years ago? So it's not too far fetched to assume such things in 10 or 20 years in future. Seconded, on the part about being happy with mainly text-based questing if this is what it takes to produce a "classic" again. And I also believe that if done creatively and intelligently, and it does indeed lead to deep and rich worlds with countless relationships, contacts, encounters, etc., then the product will find its niche and market and there will be positive reviews from lots of intelligent reviewers out there who appreciate good effort and well-produced interactive entertainment. Seriously, man, if Fallout I or II had better graphics, more music, and a few modern tweaks here and there, I'd go back and play it today, with its text-based questing. And even if I don't play WoW anymore and lots of people quit, it is still a good example of a popular game today where the quests are mainly text-based. Borderlands is still another example. I firmly believe it can be done, and the commercial success of WoW and Borderlands speaks for itself; you don't have to have 100% voiced questing to produce a fun game that also becomes commercially successful. Heck, they can even make it so that very deep and rich romance options are also mainly text-based, and it doesn't have to feel boring or backwards. For example, it could be a 3D first-person or third-person game and all, just like Skyrim, but perhaps with the art-style of Borderlands, and when you start a conversation with the companion you choose in the current playthrough, she'd look at you and you hear a very simple by very well acted and emotional, warm, romantic, "Heey..." while the NPC smiles at you (remember Jack's "Hey.." line in Mass Effect 2? Simple, brief, but meaningful), then the 3D view is cut, and the game smoothly and quickly, with no delays or clunky feeling, switches to perhaps a comic-style or some sort of 2D art-style, showing portraits of that character, describing what's happening, giving you choices for the conversation, and once the scene is over, that screen fades back to the 3D world and you continue playing. Of course, this is a very crude, top-of-my-head idea; things can be done much better with proper professionals sitting down and brainstorming solutions. And the message here for developers is that they don't have to feel that voice acting will limit the richness, quantity, or quality of the stories, characters, relationships, and options of their games. If they feel that it's better to switch from 100% voiced questing to 20% voice + 80% text in order to produce something so rich, addictive, and replayable over and over again, and keeps surprising the players and showing them new things, then by all means, I think I'd love to experience these things again today, just like I experienced them back in Fallout and Baldur's Gate days. I really miss the richness of options and relationships in those days, and the feeling that you can spend hundreds of hours playing the game, finish 5 playthroughs, and on your 6th playthrough, you're STILL discovering new things for heaven's sake...even when you tried to be very thorough in your previous playthroughs. You just rarely, if ever, get this today, and it would be lovely to get back to it somehow. And while I agree with you on the above, I don't agree with you on the part of synthetic speech effectively replacing actors; can't be done. Just like there is something called "bad acting", and by the way, someone on this thread pointed out how bad the voice acting was in Oblivion (I know some people don't agree, but I fully agree...Skyrim is like a huuuuge improvement over Oblivion in terms of good voice acting and emotional involvement...I can even see that Bethesda used some of the voice actors that BioWare used! Have you noticed?!), so yeah, synthetic speech even at its best is always going to sound like "bad or monotone voice acting". You simply can't replace human emotion; no substitute for it. Just like you also need today actors for your motion capture to produce the most natural looking animations for your game characters, the need for actors is never going to die no matter how technology advances. We'll need humans to show perfect, realistic animation for game characters, and we'll need actors to have emotional, engaging storytelling. But yes, synthetic speech can very much be suitable in the future for non-important characters in the game. Important characters, on the other hand, simply must be voiced with professional actors, and that need will never die. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
faifh Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 (edited) And while I agree with you on the above, I don't agree with you on the part of synthetic speech effectively replacing actors; can't be done. Just like there is something called "bad acting", and by the way, someone on this thread pointed out how bad the voice acting was in Oblivion (I know some people don't agree, but I fully agree...Skyrim is like a huuuuge improvement over Oblivion in terms of good voice acting and emotional involvement...I can even see that Bethesda used some of the voice actors that BioWare used! Have you noticed?!), so yeah, synthetic speech even at its best is always going to sound like "bad or monotone voice acting". You simply can't replace human emotion; no substitute for it. Just like you also need today actors for your motion capture to produce the most natural looking animations for your game characters, the need for actors is never going to die no matter how technology advances. We'll need humans to show perfect, realistic animation for game characters, and we'll need actors to have emotional, engaging storytelling. But yes, synthetic speech can very much be suitable in the future for non-important characters in the game. Important characters, on the other hand, simply must be voiced with professional actors, and that need will never die. Never is such a long time :) I give you not in the next 10 years. But 20? Think about it, how did games look 20 years ago? Tetris was the wonder hit! There is a lot of research going into voice recognition, synthesis, spectrum analysis, etc. I suppose we will just have time make its decision. I'd be happy with Oblivion-quality voice as well, if it came to a complex quantity. Yes, I think for this open world games with dialogue options, quantity rules quality (in terms of voice acting). If it will be still in our live time. I'd rather have Secret-Fire tell me in medicore acting quality, "So you know became the archmage? That was fast", rather in top acting quality "you know, if you got the aptitude, you should join the mages college in winterhold". When at the moment its just a plain stupid thing to say. Edited January 17, 2012 by faifh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sajuukkhar9000 Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 (edited) The Japanese already have voice syth programs that can sing, supposedly quite well, from what I have heard. It isn't that far off that it COULD replace human acting, though everyone would probably sound like the G-Man from Half-Life 2 Edited January 17, 2012 by sajuukkhar9000 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RokHere Posted January 17, 2012 Author Share Posted January 17, 2012 I'd rather have Secret-Fire tell me in medicore acting quality, "So you know became the archmage? That was fast", rather in top acting quality "you know, if you got the aptitude, you should join the mages college in winterhold". When at the moment its just a plain stupid thing to say.Hehehe...seconded! xD At least you could think of it as a "monotone person" anyway, rather than think of it as a "programming bug or mistake by Bethesda...great". =) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bloodinfested Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 Stuff like UI really doesnt concern me that much it can be easly changed and stuff like that everyone has a pretty vast opinion what is good and is not for a UI. I was a bit disappointed in no repairing gear and the faction quests are short. The story lines it self I thought are well done.The leveling is vastly superior I was hoping when skyrim was 1st announced that the perk trees would be more deep. I was thinking along the lines close to age of Conan for those who played it. The feat trees had a pretty deep selection witch was roughly 80+ feats or perks you could call them just in one area or rather skill in tes terms. I hope in future tes that they deepen the perk skills. In older tes games for example in Obivion had perks at 25,50,75 and 100 but you got them automatically.I guess it doesnt help when they have to build an engine from the ground up thats a hole lot of extra time burned, doesnt matter if it was heavily based off byro I mean every game engine is based of something regardless. At high level I was hoping for far more of an challenge but who am I fooling its tes high levels own everything.I could go on and on about whats good like the diverse dungeons for example witch is a pretty big plus. overall I think they got more right then they got wrong witch is a good thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sajuukkhar9000 Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 I could go on and on about whats good like the diverse dungeons for example witch is a pretty big plus. overall I think they got more right then they got wrong witch is a good thing. This here is what really matters. The games will never be perfect but as long as they got more right then they did wrong its better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RokHere Posted January 17, 2012 Author Share Posted January 17, 2012 Dude seriously you DID. argument: This kind of games would be better of with text only.troll: lets set back all of gaming 10 years for nostalgia reasons The thing is though if one big game becomes popular and it uses text others will mimic it, then if those games get even remotely popular also others will mimic them, and so on and so on till it infects as many games as it possibly could. The game industry it built mimicking the style of the most popular games on that time. It goes beyond genres and could infect possibly any type of game. That is the basic operation method of the games industry. I find that you called me a troll quite rude and unnecessary. I hope someone beats you over the face one of these days. Commenting at faifh's point: exactly, sajuuk. I know it's easy to deny the accusation, but very honestly, not trying to get back at you or be mean or gang up on you, I swear, very honestly, I agree with that point from faifh because I was going to make the same exact comment. Argument: "This kind of games", sarcastic comment: "...all of gaming..". So yes, in a way, you've implied that by doing something to "this kind of games", it's going to bring "all of gaming" back 10 years. The person who made the comment had every right to say that they never said that they want to do this to "all games" or "all of gaming", but just this kind of games. In our context, it would be healthy to assume that "this kind of games" is simply open-world or sandbox types of games with almost countless encounters, relationships, etc. So really, man, I am serious when I suggest the book "Rulebook for Argument" by Weston. There's also another book that I read years ago and really loved, had to do with learning, and had gems of advice about choice of words and the way we teach things...trying to avoid or at least be extremely careful with expressions like "always, never, all, none, must, this is the truth, this is the way, etc.", and replacing them in our language with "sometimes, rarely, most, very few, can, this is what we know, one way to, etc." By doing that, you can avoid offending people or alienating anyone or sounding dogmatic and self-righteous to most people, and by recognizing that even if it's easy to slip away and pretend you "never said that", the implications you make with your counter-arguments will always be caught by intelligent readers and sometimes will be criticized and you won't be appreciated because of them, so it pays off to be accurate when counter-arguing, and it pays off to put an effort to be / sound friendly when dropping comments of sarcasm. Failing to put an effort in all this, would result in some people labeling you as a troll, and many others would be happy to follow and agree. With all that said, commenting on your own point, sajuuk, I understand your concern about how the industry has a lot of mimicking, and for good reason sometimes; frankly, I always wanted Bethesda to mimic BioWare when it came to storytelling, choice of voice actors, and relationships between protagonist and companions, because it would be totally awesome to have BioWare's writing, storytelling, and voice acting put into Bethesda's sandbox, rich, open worlds, and design all this using Crytek's CryEngine 3.0. I say to the industry, give me an MMO done that way, and I'll most probably happily quit "gaming" for a few years and stick to your MMO...haha. But really, if Bethesda mimics the genius in BioWare's storytelling, I'm sold; if they mimic DICE's or Frostbite graphics, I'm hooked. If BioWare mimics Bethesda's open worlds and richness and slightly better graphics, I'm double-sold; if they also mimic DICE's or Crytek's graphics, I'm a rabid fan. And so on. I don't mind companies mimicking each other if it is done well, creatively, and with those companies still retaining their own identity and retaining their full strengths. As a result of all this, I understand your concern...what if one company goes for this 80% text-based questing and its game becomes successful? Many other companies would copy it, and we're suddenly 10 years back in gaming playing mainly text-based games with no engaging voice acting and all! We can't have that. I share that concern, and maybe a couple of years ago, I would've totally agreed, but at the same time, we have to consider that if the very voice acting is impeding companies' abilities to tweak, patch, update, improve, or enrich their games, then by all means, maybe we should all be reasonable and let them know that as long as they don't do it out of sheer laziness....as long as they go for maybe 20-30% voice acting and 70-80% text, and make up for it by inundating us with rich, deep, and complicated fictional worlds, with almost perfectly harmonious relationships between elements, characters, and factions (a solid, believable social structure), then by all means, maybe they should go for exactly that. And I'm sure those games will be more fun than short 100%-voiced games that we finish in 20 hours, play one more time, then put on the shelf. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sajuukkhar9000 Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 (edited) Bioware's storytelling works because their games are more confined and linear, yes you can run off and do side things, but compared to the ES series Bioware's games are considerably more focused. The main drawing point, and one of the most loved features, of the ES series is that you can run off and do anything whenever but the ES biggest draw is also the cause of its biggest flaw. When you have such levels of "do whatever whenever" the game devs have to make things more generalized to accommodate all the possible times in which you could do something and as such the stories seem considerably more bland in comparison. I do wish the stories were better, but if doing so requires that the game have less free-roam, I would rather have the lesser story then the lesser free-roam. Bioware's methods are good for Bioware, and Bethesda's methods are good for Bethesda. I really don't think they should be more like each other. You can't make up for free roaming exploration outside of games, you can however make up good story outside games. Beyond that I find the Cryengine and Frostbyte to be ugly graphics engines, I would rather ES be on SOURCE then those. Edited January 17, 2012 by sajuukkhar9000 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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