100% spoken dialogue. Yay or nay?

[Sever]

[img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img] A bit disappointed by the second eh? I wouldn't know. I played less than 30 seconds of the demo.

Dues Ex's player voice was good i suppose. But i nearly mentioned DE earlier in the thread as an example of the worst voice accents i've heard in a game. The French, Aussie, Cantonese and South African (i think, the bartender in HK) accents were terrible. I think half the reason i don't mind dunmer accents in MW is because i've nothing to compare it to.

A player voice works in games like DE because, at the end of the day, you can be a genetically modified secret agent in a black trenchcoat or you can be a genetically modified secret agent in a black trenchcoat.

[TheCrimsomBlade]

Server these are almost the exact same arguments made in the 1920's when the movies went from slient non sound music backed Poster Board printed dialogue to what at that time was called Talkies. These are better known now as having voice actors and syncronized voice sound tracks.
This is in a way what Bethesda is trying to create. Except using totally self contained artifical intelligence in a video game where the NPC's in game are self contained and all live out their lives day to day and speak in conversation to each other.
If you feel this type game play is to repetive for you and too boring then that is your right and nobody is going to twist your arm to make you play Oblivion. I suggest you find one of the other RPG's comming out that all use the same old way to portray the game and fight the battles. From what I've read on the Oblivion Offical wed site 99.999999% of all that frequent those forums since 1994 as well as myself are leaping for joy to have the Elder Scrolls come more to life with each new chapter over the past 12 years. In fact I hope that some day that they figure out a way to make the game go on forever writing its own story and adventures in which you bring your character in as the hero or as a villan to play out the game with the characters all speaking on their own each with individual generaterd artifical intelegence not needing pre generater dialogue that gets repeated by more than one for the simple fact that some people may miss one NPC and not get the message that's required to complete a mission and need to get it from another in that area.

I may have broken the record on Ironworks for the longest run on sentence with this last statement.

[ 10-30-2005, 08:53 PM: Message edited by: TheCrimsomBlade ]

[TheCrimsomBlade]

I just finished playing Call of Duty 2 the single player game part anyway. and on the second DVD of the collectors Ediition they said they had 20,000 (twenty Thousand) lines of Dialog and it only took up 2.8GB of the DVD for the whole game including the 20,000 lines of dialog. The multiplayer portion of the game is the same as the single player except that you get the option to play the german army or any one of the Axis armys on line with the rest of the world that own the game for free.
Now if Oblivilon has almost 3GB of just spoken dialogue I dont believe I'll be hearing the same line repeated very often nor will I find it to be the least bit boreing!!!

[SpiritWarrior]

You can be certain that lines will be re-used as will voice actors. It is not economical to do otherwise. There is however a happy medium, and it is what I think people are hoping for with Oblivion, where we don't hear the same obvious actors repeatedly thus creating the illusion that each encounter is unique. I for one, would be happy with that.

[Kyrvias]

Thats exactly why they grey things out after you have heard them. So you don't have to here the same information over and over and over... ect.

[Sever]

Originally posted by TheCrimsomBlade: If you feel this type game play is to repetive for you and too boring then that is your right and nobody is going to twist your arm to make you play Oblivion. I suggest you find one of the other RPG's comming out that all use the same old way to portray the game and fight the battles. From what I've read on the Oblivion Offical wed site 99.999999% of all that frequent those forums since 1994 as well as myself are leaping for joy to have the Elder Scrolls come more to life with each new chapter over the past 12 years. In fact I hope that some day that they figure out a way to make the game go on forever writing its own story and adventures in which you bring your character in as the hero or as a villan to play out the game with the characters all speaking on their own each with individual generaterd artifical intelegence not needing pre generater dialogue that gets repeated by more than one for the simple fact that some people may miss one NPC and not get the message that's required to complete a mission and need to get it from another in that area. I may have broken the record on Ironworks for the longest run on sentence with this last statement.

Lol! [img]smile.gif[/img] I think you're right about that last bit.

I understand that the overwhelming majority of posters on the official forums want 100% voice acting. But not everyone who disagrees with the majority over there can be bothered putting up with the response par voidus intellectus you get from all the fraggin' kids when you voice your concerns. Are you sure it's 99.9% on the spoken dialogue issue? This particular thread in IW tends to contest that notion. IWers, at least, seem to understand the associated costs of 100% spoken dialogue.

Originally posted by TheCrimsomBlade: I just finished playing Call of Duty 2 the single player game part anyway. and on the second DVD of the collectors Ediition they said they had 20,000 (twenty Thousand) lines of Dialog and it only took up 2.8GB of the DVD for the whole game including the 20,000 lines of dialog. The multiplayer portion of the game is the same as the single player except that you get the option to play the german army or any one of the Axis armys on line with the rest of the world that own the game for free. Now if Oblivilon has almost 3GB of just spoken dialogue I dont believe I'll be hearing the same line repeated very often nor will I find it to be the least bit boreing!!!

Originally posted by TheCrimsomBlade: 1000 lines of Dialog doesn't sound like hearing things over and over.

Where did this 1000 lines number originate from? (A link would be super.) I can only assume that this number refers to each npc having 1000 lines of dialogue, yes? Or else you wouldn't get excited about it considering that there are over 1000 npcs in Oblivion bringing the total average of lines per npc to 1. Enlighten me, please.

While we're doing math, here's another one: 50 hours of dialogue according to Todd. Sounds impressive. But then factor in that 1000+ npc number and you end up with an average of less than 3 minutes per npc. I'm not kidding myself into thinking that Beth aint gonna cut corners on the uniqueness of the "unique" npcs so i'll assume that some of the lines are shared and some of the npcs are generic. I'm a cynic, i know. But what do these figures tell you?

More on this after the weekend...

[Brayf]

Right now I don't know whether 100% spoken dialogue is going to turn out as a great move or a bad move. It'll either work or it won't, depending on just how much variety there is. And although I hate to be cynical... I'm sure it'll sound great to the players that complete the main quest and move on, but to 'hardcore' gamers, I can't see how it won't become equally as aggravating as the repetitive text in Morrowind.

[Sever]

Originally posted by Brayf: Right now I don't know whether 100% spoken dialogue is going to turn out as a great move or a bad move. It'll either work or it won't, depending on just how much variety there is. And although I hate to be cynical... I'm sure it'll sound great to the players that complete the main quest and move on, but to 'hardcore' gamers, I can't see how it won't become equally as aggravating as the repetitive text in Morrowind.

Given the amount of support the idea is getting, it can't possibly be a bad move. There are going to be those that will hate it (me), but there are plenty of fans who are easier pleased and don't quite enjoy roleplaying the social elements of the game - something i enjoyed in Morrowind, but also something that i felt there was great potential for improvement in Oblivion. It doesn't look like that potential is going to be realised in the way that i had hoped. Everything that an npc has to say throughout the game can be said in an average of 2 minutes (apparently, there's now 1500+ npcs. There's a thread on the official forum with an analysis that is quite interesting and, i dare say, intelligent. http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/i...owtopic=185906 But still they stand and clap...)

[SpiritWarrior]

Originally posted by Brayf: Right now I don't know whether 100% spoken dialogue is going to turn out as a great move or a bad move. It'll either work or it won't, depending on just how much variety there is. And although I hate to be cynical... I'm sure it'll sound great to the players that complete the main quest and move on, but to 'hardcore' gamers, I can't see how it won't become equally as aggravating as the repetitive text in Morrowind.

It will work but it won't be anything astoundingly new. It will be...sufficient. Enough to add life and believability to NPC's, improving on ES3 whilst not hogging the whole budget for this game. I have to agree with Severs calculations, you won't see more than 1 or 2 lines for 'generic' NPC's. This is what I expected personally. Anyone who's expecting fully unique and immersive conversations done in full surround-sound dialogue with every NPC that they happen by needs to stop dreaming. This isn't an audio-only game.

[Brayf]

To recap:

Originally posted by Sever: Spoken dialogue will indeed highlight recycled lines. You can't glance and ignore audio like you can with text.

That's what I'm worried about.

And when I say a bad move, Sever, I mean a bad move for me personally as opposed to for Bethesda!