Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Why can't we have a fully voiced protagonist??

Well, i would ... and i did. �\_(?)_/�

Thats why there is no reason to swap camera on your character in dialogue. :P

Nah ...
One is created for you, the other is created by you ... there is difference.

*extremely slowly said, In voice of Alan Rickman* Obviously.

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Yup, that was my point.
As far as i know, so far nobody invented any other way to do voiced lines than one of those two.

Indeed ...
But that is bcs you are not actually making *a choice* in Mass Effect ... that game, if you think about it, is very strictly railroaded and all you can "choose" (for lack of a better word) is emotions of your protagonist.

You never "choose" if your Shepard will be a Hero or Missfit ... even tho, BioWare wants you to feel that way ... you are allways a Hero, all you can pick is that if you are going to be Smooth Hero, Rough Hero, or Silly Hero.

I only seen this thing in Fallout 4 ... after people moded it to have classic full text.

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Have you ever wondered why AI voices sounds so dull?
*hint* Maaaaaybe its bcs in our speech patterns, other things than just words play a role?

And thats the thing ...
With voiced protagonist, this all is picked for you and you can do nothing about it.
With silent, its up to you to fill the gasps.

NO ... obviously you cant say anything that isnt prepared for you ...
BUT! And this is the important part, you can imagine you said it however you want.

Prime example here is Astarion ... (funny when you think about it, we are NPC in that conversation)
When you first meet him, and go on with his dialogue ... wich you are forced to do, bcs nobody in Larian have balls big enough to actually allow you to smack his smug face ...
You get to the point, where he apologies ... and once again you have to accept it ...
Personaly i HATE this part of that dialogue, first of all bcs you have no other option than to accept it (since even if you dont, the scene goes on as if you did, as i stated thousand times ... really bad writing sometimes) but mainly, bcs Astarion VOICEACTOR ... makes him sound like he apologized bcs he simply have to, but didnt mean a single word about it.

And that my dear, is the benefit of silent protagonist.
I do apologize ... bcs that is dialogue option im going to pick.

But i can apologize in mean way, in mocking way, in honest way, i can do that angrily, calmly, diplomaticly ... the options are limitless.
With Voiced, all those stuff are picked for you and there is nothing you can do about it.

//Edit:
Few more points:

Of course ...
Lets not forget about that tiny biny insignificant detail ... that voice acting is quite usualy (i would dare to say almost all the time) THE most expensive thing in game development.

Also ...
I would dare to say that is well known fact that in voiced games, your dialogue options often tend to be MUCH more limited than in silent ones.

And last but not least ...
You and OP are talking here about Immersion and stuff ... those are cute excuses, for certain specific characters.
But once you leave that area:
Can you please point me towards "immersive" voice for a Half-Orc or a Dwarf in this game? :P

Sure, for the most part that's true. Since games often do the "Silent protagonist" thing when it comes to actual dialogues.

With exception of Solasta of course, where it influences what dialogue options are available and the things your characters say.


I suppose that would be dependent on how the "Style" is formed. Something such as Solasta's personality picker could very much be adapted to be malleable given that it's based on picking certain aspects of personality (Like Egotistical, Violent, Lawful etc) that it could use generic "Alignment Shift" tech when utilizing other dialogue options and allow for shifting into alternate styles once a threshold has been reached (It'd probably come across as a bit janky and abrupt... But to be fair, so is any sudden shift in disposition)

As far as going from sullen and withdrawn to fiery and passionate... It's not even particularly likely that such a change would effect vocalization. Rather it would change what options you pick and get vocalized (I.e. You stop picking the dialogue options that avoid emotional responses and transition into picking the more emotive ones). Which is already possible in games with voiced protagonists (For example Cyberpunk 2077 you have options to pick those types of dialogue options and V expresses themselves accordingly)


I'd still like your input on exactly why you believe so. Since I'm struggling to find where the benefit is for a silent protagonist.


At which point you can emulate your silent protagonist by having a voiced protagonist and simply skipping their dialogue and headcanoning your own thing in place. If actual dialogue is irrelevant to you, then there's no downside to simply skipping all dialogue and headcanoning whatever you want.


Seemingly it's because I care about dialogue as a whole and not just what my character is doing.

As a whole, I care about what my character does, and how other characters react to what they do. This creates more of a sense of being in the world, which I find far more conducive to roleplaying than simply being an observer pretending like what I think is occuring.

I personally can't get into headcanoning my own actions into the game if every other character doesn't respond to them. Since it's so jarring to have that occur (To me at least. Perhaps some people like trying to fight the narrative of the game by pretending something completely different is happening)

Possibly because I see a video game as a means to explore a writers story rather than a means to create one. For creating a story, there's Tabletop RPG's where it's all about becoming a character and interacting with the world directly. Where whatever action I think up, is what actually occurs and things actually ensue because of that.


Fully voiced doesn't take anything away. Especially if you're the type of person who doesn't actually care about cohesive dialogues. As dialogue skipping can emulate silent protagonists.

Meanwhile, fully voiced can directly add to dialogues by allowing for more dynamic sequences. Something that cannot be recreated with a silent protagonist staring at people like they're in middle school giving a presentation.

If fully voiced is done well, with adequate options for voice types (Accents, demeanor), personalities and actual responses. They can create a far more immersive and enjoyable dialogue experience than a silent protagonist. Whilst still retaining a high level of personal creativity, enabling creating a character that has a relatively unique personality.

Taril, thank you for such good wording of your arguments, you did a far better job than I have


I like how NPCs are fleshed out, how they react to my character and the world around them, but I would also like to be able to react as well - in the same manner. I like how my dialogue options are crafted, I just need to see and hear them to actually FEEL them.

Hail to everyone's powers of imagination if you prefer to imagine your reactions by internally modifying the response you've just read into whatever you feel would be appropriate, but I prefer having my character feel cinematically alive and being an actual part of the world I'm experiencing. I can't feel like a part of that world if I'm just absently staring at everyone and reading voiceless lines. It throws me off, it makes me feel like a construct, and all the "freedom" that a mute protagonist offers becomes a constraint.

If I was playing a game where everyone is mute just like I am, I wouldn't have a problem. I would feel normal, because everyone else is "suffering" from the same shortcoming.
But in this game, it's just ME. I have a few lines here and there, but that only makes it worse. The game is forcing me to imagine my player's speech based on those voiced scraps. It's inconsistency. It feels more like cut content than intentional feature.
And this is especially grating when I'm playing as an origin character. When they are followers, they feel so alive and nuanced, but when I'm the one directing them, all that personality falls flat. This is the biggest reason why I avoid playing as either of them. Their personalities are basically replaced by a mute void.

Well, I want that "cut content". However Larian makes it, I want the voiced protagonist. Judging by the quality of voiced content in ALL of their games, I don't think any of my role play value would be ruined - quite the contrary. And I would be honored to be my character's guide through the game.

Right now, as it is, I'm just... coping. I'm forced into this setup and I have to make do. I can't establish a proper connection with my character, no matter how I devise it, and that's why I've found myself starting the game over and over again. I just can't immerse myself properly into that pretty mute zombie. And if I ever abandon this game, regardless of its regular updates and new content, this will be the main reason.

I think Solasta isn't a great example because Solasta isn't really about creating character personalities. I actually think you using Solasta as an example here illustrates where we diverge in our view of these games and roleplaying within them. I don't see the party in Solasta as my characters the way I see Tavs in BG, or the PCs in Dragon Age, etc. I'm not roleplaying them, I'm not actually making dialogue choices, not really. Their personalities are wooden and weak. They can get away with full voicing because the game is fundamentally on rails at every point. I actually like Solasta better than I like BG3 for multiple reasons, roleplaying is not one of them, and I do not want a game that focuses on roleplaying using Solasta's system. I can't recall a thing about the personalities of any of my characters from Solasta, but I can recount the personal arcs my characters in Pillars of Eternity went through, Kingmaker, Wrath of the Righteous, etc.

As for going from sullen to passionate, those two demeanors definitely impact vocalization. If you're sullen and withdrawn you're going to talk slower, softer, more maybe hesitating more at times, while being passionate and energized would lead to you being louder, more certain and confident in your words.


I seem to have not expressed myself well enough here. When I say that I don't care about how the world reacts to my character, I mean it in the sense that I can accept people reacting to my words in a way I didn't intend them, because that happens in real life. You can say a thing and people interpret it differently than you meant it. So if I say something intending to be jokey and an npc takes it as an insult, that's fine to me. It's not that my character was arrogant, the npc just took it the wrong way.

Let's look at another example. I like Telltale games a lot. The two telltale Batman games especially. Those are games with voiced protagonists. People complain about illusion of choice and different dialogues leading to the same outcome but I don't care because I don't view the outcomes as being important, I view my character's response as being what's important. No matter what the result of their action or words, the fact they I was able to choose those words and envision what that means for who they are is the thing that's important to me. So skipping dialogue isn't going to emulate the silent protagonist experience for me. Firstly because having to be poised on the continue button to skip dialogue is not condusive to an immersive, enjoyable experience of taking in a story. Secondly I have yet to see evidence that a fully voiced protagonist wouldn't result in a major curtailing of dialogue options. As much as I love the latter dragon age games, it's evident that when they went fully voiced for their protagonists, the dialogue choices became very limited compared to Origins. I'd just rather have more options even if they lead to the same outcome.

Finally, I'm not convinced that your idea of a fully voiced crpg protagonist "done well" is even possible at this stage anyway. I think what we'd actually get is something way more limited, without the capacity for varied, choosable backgrounds, little variety in voices, and loss of the choices that make this genre exciting and unique. Look at Cyberpunk 2077, you're always V, and the background system for that game was downscaled to have minimal impact. Compare that to Wrath of the Righteous. The number of choices in that game is immense, as is the variety of them. Imagine having just one voice actor try and perform in a way that could make consistent sense across all of those paths, now try and apply that to multiple actors who all have to try and go for multiple different tones. Maybe in a decade or two that will be possible, but until I'm convinced you can create a game the scale of Wrath of the Righteous, with all of its options and possibilities, and still have a fully voiced protagonist, I don't think we should even entertain the notion, because the result will absolutely be watered down.

You're taking the Solasta example too literally.

The game has its flaws, especially with the personality system. But it's more to do with resources rather than overall inception.

With a AAA title like BG3 there's much more leverage for putting in the resources to refine the system.

The system is there, in its base configuration with Solasta. You can pick a personality from an alignment chart (With influence from the background you took) and the game adapts the characters voice and dialogue to match your choice.

With more refinement and more resources for VA's and dialogue options, such a thing can become a solid system.

Of course, there's the argument that could be made that one might prefer the resources to go into other aspects of the game. But the same can be said about many things that one doesn't particularly find important (Such as my view on games trying to up graphical fidelity just because of a need to "Look pretty" despite often resulting in poorer performance)


Yes, but how does that impact overall character vocalization rather than simply... Which dialogue options you pick?

Like, you pick the sullen dialogue options... Your character will speak with a sullen and withdrawn demeaner. You pick the passionate dialogue options... Your character will speak with more confidence and ardor.

It's not like you're going to be suddenly changing your accent or basic vocal tone. Your character simply performs the relevant dialogue lines in the demeanor they are representing (So long as this is accurately depicted). Thus it's not particularly restrictive to pick a voice at character creation even if you plan to have the character change demeanor throughout the course of the game.


Which... Doesn't invalidate my points.

If you don't care how characters react to your dialogue, there's nothing stopping you from skipping dialogue and headcanoning whatever you want. (Since from what I understand, what you're saying is you don't actually care about your characters options, you simply want to pick how NPC's react so you can headcanon whatever you want in place of what the protagonist says)


It's hard to say. Given that BG3 is the first AAA CRPG and most other CRPG studios are smaller and with less resources. The ability to do such things is indeterminate.

For sure, it would require resources. But as far as technically possible? I believe it is.


I'm not sure your concerns are necessarily correct.

More and more games like Wrath of the Righteous are involving fully voiced companions. Meaning all of their dialogue options are being voiced. For upwards of like 6-10 companions. It's becoming an industry standard to have all this VA work done, it's not outlandish to consider having VA work done for protagonists too.

Maybe you're right, but honestly I think that the level of development required to make the personality system into something that could provide the level of quality and flexibility in a crpg like say, wrath of the righteous would be so great that it would end up barely resembling Solasta's system, as much as a gun barely resembles a bow and arrow, despite the latter being the conceptual brithplace of the former.


I was arguing this in the context of your suggestion of picking general "styles" of dialogue, and that dialogue styles would be too restrictive. Picking a "sullen" style would lead to that style influencing even the more passionate answers. But beyond than that, what about responses that aren't about being passionate or sullen directly? If you just pick the option to agree to something, then that option would still be said in your default tone, even if by that point you want your character to have grown beyond that.


My point was almost opposite of this. I absolutely care about what my character is saying. I don't want to disregard the dialogue options entirely. I want a breadth of dialogue options as well as the freedom to envision those options being said in a variety of tones that are suitable for my characters. I accept that NPCs won't always respond perfectly to how I envision my character says something. If I find that certain routes of roleplay aren't well-catered to, then I'll adjust to that in future playthroughs. I don't need perfection, I accept that roleplay in a crpg is a matter of working with the game, I simply put more value into contributing as much myself into the game as possible, taking limitations into account.


The difference is that companions are far more predictable. The writer has complete control over exactly what they're going to say and when, and they're able to direct voice actors accordingly. Meanwhile a protagonist is directed by the player, and their lines are far more isolated from each other, which makes directing a perforomer more difficult since lines have to work together even when they may not logically flow. Again, look at dragon age and mass effect. They got around the issue by giving players less automomy over their characters and letting the protagonists speak on their own more often and the players simply directed their characters at certain points. That's a viable way for games to do things, Inquisition was my favorite game for a long time and still in my top 5, but I don't want that to be what all crpgs turn to. And I have no faith that crpg developers, when they need to choose between providing choice and managing cost, won't choose managing cost and curtailing choices. Not because of a lack of integrity, but because they've got to cut costs somewhere and full voicing is more impressive on the surface. I think it's in the same boat as higher fidelity graphics; sure some games benefit from it, but it's a crutch that diverts focus away from the important parts of the game because it's something that can be pointed to directly as an easy proof point of "look how impressive this is."

And also, wrath isn't fully voiced. The companions only have dialogue in certain scenes, but the majority of their lines are unvoiced, which I think is the ideal sweet spot. If wrath were fully voiced, protagonists and all, I don't believe we'd have been able to get the level of choice that we do.

I had the same impression while trying to play as an Origin character, where they just felt like automatons as the leads, because I had already experienced the various companion dialogues and interjections in the TAV runs. Taking on the role of an Origin was basically like some scene from that flick Last Year at Marienbad...



Except in this case, where I'm trying wake up Lae'zel and Shadowheart, just so they'd remember and deliver their right lines lol, but then those lines also don't actually get delivered. It's odd, cause even though the concept of Origin protagonists didn't grab me at all initially, I figured that their purpose in the game would be to scratch that sort of itch. Like for a fully voiced protagonist I'd probably just choose Lae'zel 100 times in a row, but since her dialogue isn't voiced that way it just feels like a lesser experience than Lae'zel as a companion.

I also would wish for D&D CRPG that had a fully emotive character design suite. I thought maybe they'd try to pull it off for some sort of Re-Tales of the Sword Coast expansion, a BG4, or maybe a NWN3 follow up, something set in the Realms using the same party based approach or same game engine (or at least one that was similar enough for the continuity to hold.) NWN 2002 felt like a completely different game than BG2, which for me was pretty disappointing cause I love BG1/2. I think BG3 is actually a better Dungeons & Dragons game than BG1/2 or NWN were, at least in the one respect that they made that D20 feel major, and the emergent party-based antics do feel like a core part of the experience. The combat and encounters in BG3 are all very entertaining, with most of the surprise factor and novelty coming from that for me, rather than from immersion in creating my own character concept and seeing that realized before me on screen. Mainly cause I can't really create most of my character concepts in this one, instead I have to lean into what the game is giving me and then come up with something that gels. It reminds me very much of showing up to a session and rolling a brand new character on the fly based on the campaign and the DM or who else showed up to play that day, as opposed to crafting a really personal or unique character concept beforehand, arriving with a notebook full of tables and charts and mini bios complete with painted portrait. BG3 also does a pretty good job of striking that tricky balance between servicing the blighted actor theater kid type D&D player and the armchair general wargamer type D&D player, which are sorta different demographics I think, but both good to have on board. Just anecdotally I feel like there are D&D players who show out because they want to adlib with their friends focus on character and story and go light on the mechanics, and then there are other D&D players who show out more for the dungeon crawling nuts and bolts, but sometimes they drift inexorably together when paired up. In the BG context I'm sure I'm more the latter than the former, like I just need some "It Shall Be" barks and I'm pretty content with that lol, but BG3 is a nice marriage of both sensibilities for the most part.

It does seem limited though by the fact that we can have Bafta winning companions doing the Talkies in technicolor right next to us, but then we're sorta still stuck in the Silent Era as the protagonist responding to whatever like mimes. It's a weirdly solipsistic experience that way, like everyone else is hitting all their marks and their cues for high drama, but Tav/Durge/Whoever as Origin just doesn't have the same thing going on as the Companions do in that regard. Maybe someone will come along and really knock the emotive character creator out the park. The sort of thing where the Player Character is in the director's chair on that stuff. Pitstop did very impressive work for BG3, they could probably figure it out if it was like all hands on deck with sufficient zots going into such a thing. I think whoever pulled that off for a cRPG set in the Forgotten Realms would have the golden ticket for sure, but it always falls somewhat short of what I'd wish. This game came very close though. I think they could have pulled it off, but it would have required some sort of DM screen mode or a module maker suite, or the sort of thing where the player is given some of the same tools that the game's developers/cinematographers/technical artist are using to create their memorable NPCs or to set an archetypal character vibe. I'm sure it's tough because material that is particularly excellent they'd want to showcase and reserve for their characters, rather than carving it up into fragments and making it more Tav exclusive. Sorta the same thing where a particularly cool outfit or haircut or face or voice would go to a companion to make them feel all extra, when I'd want that same approach taken for the Tavs. Or just the whole idea that 'even if only 1% of players experience it - it's still worth it' but taking that spirit into the custom character creator.

A daunting task, surely. It's the sort of thing that would probably command a budget in the millions upon millions to execute well, and even then they'd need the full ensemble theater, like the trope troope, to bring like every single thing they know to the table, about how to breathe life into a character concept. Just to get all the constituent elements. Then someone to figure out how to gamify that in such a way that the player can use it and incorporate into the character "build." I still don't know what that looks like, no one has done it yet. The scale up there is probably pretty close to insane, but I liked what Larian had going. It felt like just the right amount of cartoonish and irreverent for my aesthetic sensibility, but I also want like x256 for all the options, all the everythings, whereas right now it's more like x12 or x24. Maybe the next one will actually dwarf it after all, but that's the order of magnitude. 256 heads, and all the Orbs of Dragonkind! Guess we'll have to wait and see again. Hopefully it happens someday. Who knows right!?

I am of a split mind about this.

I mostly play origin characters so I do really miss the characters' voices when they are my PC. However, much of the player dialogue is so bad, that even someone performing it couldn't save it. I think, one of the many reasons why Astarion Origin with Gale as my constant companion and romance is my favourite version of this game is that Gale has excellently written player lines which I can easily imagine in Astarion's voice - and I am quite happy with that. It does help though, that they have these cute little overheard conversations with each other - like admiring the Myconids' spore zombies or joking about the Wyvern poison - and I really wish there were more of those.

Though maybe if the lines had to be read aloud, they would overall be better.

Another point I have been thinking about is something Gray Ghost mentioned on the last page. Most of the Sorc dialogue is written to sound like the character is a pompous ass and the characters react accordingly. Most of the lines in Gale's dialogue that are neither obviously mean nor obviously nice are written as banter and Gale reacts to them as banter. So does the usually pompous Sorc suddenly develop a sense of humour when talking to Gale? Or is our resident wizard just a really good sport about an obnoxious PC? As Ghost mentioned, as long as the lines aren't performed, I can have my own theory about it.

Yep. Nothing else needed.

Unless you somehow need explained that all the "protagonist" says is what I just read before deciding the option I want to pick.

I assumed thats bloody obvious but YMMV.

I don't think it requires much development.

We already have the basis with alignment wheels and Solasta's prototype.

All it would require is setting the "Alignments", writing the dialogue for them and then getting them VA'd by the relevant parties.


Except you don't.

Your entire thing is that you can make up exactly what you pretend your character says, you don't care about what they ACTUALLY say because if you cared about what they ACTUALLY say, then the responses to what they ACTUALLY say would be important (Even if they are misunderstood, having them misunderstand the thing you specifically said is still important).

Your stance is that you want your characters to say what you want them to say and in the tone you want them to have, whether or not they actually do that or anyone responds to it so long as you can imagine your character saying it that's all that matters.

Which completely undermines the entire purpose of communication as a concept. Where the reality is that what exactly is being communicated is irrelevant, what matters most is how it is received (Since the purpose of communcation is to convey ideas to others)

Having a silent protagonist is beneficial to you BECAUSE you can disregard dialogue. You dislike the idea of voiced protagonists because it limits you to what the dialogue options provide, you find it harder to simply ignore it like you do with purely text based options and replace with your own headcanon.


Not at all.

Protagonists have set dialogues just like companions. They pick dialogue options just like when companions respond to said dialogue options. Protagonists literally are written just like any other character in the game. Their dialogues happen at scripted times just like every other character in the game.

The literal only difference, is the idea of having freedom of creation of a protagonist. Whereby unlike appearances which you're limited to picking from a set of options, we need this vast choice of different vocal types that can be manipulated to create the most nuanced behaviours (Like having personality shifts throughout a campaign, which are reflected in the very way the character speaks).


Yes, the protagonist says what you just read (Depending on whether the game fully articulates the entire dialogue option or abbreviates it leading to the protagonist saying more than what was read).

That is obvious.

However, you've not explained WHY that is stupid.

Nor have you bothered to read points about how when the protagonist is saying the thing that you just read, they're engaging with the people in the conversation. People in the conversation are responding to your character saying these things in real time. Body language is used to aid with communicating the thing you just read.

A simple sentence said by a living person contains more than just the bare text that you would read.

Really this thread reminds me of this scene from Galaxy Quest:



LOL

@Taril

Clearly this conversation isn't going to go anywhere. I've laid out and explained my personal philosophy as clearly as I can and you have come away with a complete misunderstanding of it. We clearly have fundamentally different priorities and beliefs in this area, and are both equally convinced of the certainty of our opinions. Which is fine. These are games, the stakes are low. But if I can tell you that I value working with the game to craft the narratives I find engaging and you interpret that as me saying I ignore the game and only want to make stuff up regardless of the options, then we clearly can't have a productive conversation on this subject.

I hold you no ill will, I think you're a good conversationalist and maybe on a topic we weren't so diametrically opposed on, I'd have more fun chatting with you.

Brilliant.
First my idea is stupid, then you resort to mockery. Completely uncalled for.

And let me address this while we're at it:

How else do you think a voiced PC works?? You pick the line you want and then you SAY it. That's how thought-to-speech in our brain works in real life, but instead of reading, we think of what we want to say. Obviously, the game can't read your mind, so you have to pick a response - which is written because it's the only way for the game to present a choice to you. I don't see what is unclear about that.
If you want a particular nuance, such as verbally expanding on what is written in the chosen option, yeah - I wouldn't mind that. I also wouldn't mind having the chosen line word for word. As long as I can hear and see my PC acting like a living being - just like all the other NPCs - instead of being a blank construct in a dialogue, I'm fine.

My mention of "it's the 21st century" implied that having a voiced protagonist is an advanced feature in (C)RPGs, one that was omitted from the majority of older games. The general philosophy was along the lines of: "Let's not bother with voicing the player, it's too much work, too much money, additional scripting, so just let the players imagine that the PC speaks, let their imagination do the job for us, they'll get used to it".
Apparently we did get used to it, to the point when the voiced option is offered to us, we don't want it. For us, that means we have to force our brains to fill in the missing feature in the game, and the devs don't mind really, because it means less work and less investment for them. Nowadays video games look much better and feature better mechanics than they used to in the past, meaning the overall quality has improved, more features are added and improved upon - so why not voiced content as well??
You may feel fine about it all, but I feel like I've been denied a valuable feature that was supposed to be in the game - a high quality, modern game - in the first place.

Also, this wasn't the only reason, it's just the one reason you decided to hang onto for the sake of disproving me (which you attempted to do with no valid argument whatsoever).


See, perhaps a lot more care would have went into crafting certain lines if the PC was meant to be voiced from the beginning. Instead, it was an optional feature that was tentatively suggested to the players. Since it was rejected, the lines were crafted with no deeper thought to them, in a way that lets you "adjust your narrative" and/or "fill the blanks" with your mind. Or at least that's how it feels to me, since everybody apparently prefer to imagine things instead of experience what the game actually offers.
If there's a bad feature in the game, or the lack of one, we can only suggest repairs and ask for content - just like I am in this thread - and hope for the best, I guess.


For me, a video game is a cinematic form of entertainment that is supposed to provide full experience. If I'm going to "imagine" something that isn't there, why am I playing it in the first place?? In that case, I'm better off at a table top D&D session where I am actually encouraged to envision and voice my interactions however I want. The biggest problem here is that people are trying to force the table top aspect onto a video game. They are two completely different methods of playing. A video game can only resemble the table top to an extent, but it's still a video game and that means operating within the boundaries of technical means and video game mechanics. You have a number of choices made for you and you can operate within the boundaries of those choices, whichever you opt for. Voiced content is also a part of premade aspect, it's there to make the game world come alive - including the character you play as.
A video game is not something fluid where you can input whatever you want, you are limited by what has been developed into it, and that is the reality. However, I am not confusing "limited" with "cut content".

When a game cuts on content for the sake of "freedom of imagination", that is just plain wrong and defeats the purpose of the video game.
Imagine your DM saying "You are communicating without verbal expression or gestures, you don't have a voice at all, but everyone around you just acts like you do. And if you want to address someone, you have to write it down, no talking". And no, it's not some elaborate curse or disability, it's just normal, that's you in the game and you have no other choice. Would you want to play like that all the time?

As others pointed out, there is a lot that can be interpreted regarding intention of how the character said the thing. And yes, a response can clash if your roleplaying choice, but in smartly written RPG it won�t. I tend to replay RPGs I like, and in a well carpet RPG with silent protagonist I tend to be I free to come up with variety of characters with different motivations, personality, background and attitude.

Let�s be honest, outside branching quests, and build unique dialogue options, most of the will use a lot of the same conversation tree. It is the ability to interpret lines on offer that grant the ability for those characters to be roleplaying as. Reactivity needs to exist to some extend, but the game doesn�t have to react to every roleplaying choice - a lot of time it just doesn�t have to contradict it.

That would not be possible if all of the, shared the same voice, as their intentions, attitude and personality would be defined by the actor. Even if there were enough voices for each character I still wouldn�t like that - as I would have little agency in defining my character.

(To avoid misunderstanding I should mention here, that in my opinion BG3 has some shortcomings when it comes to writing. I think race and class dialogue options often provide a set personality response, rather than response relevant to that race and class. I do think quite often a dialogue choice is interpreted in a very narrow and specific way. It happens a little in every RPG, but it happened in BG3 a bit more than I would like).

This is my view as well. I would love to see fully voiced protagonist.

We will have this in a CPRG at some point. No doubt AI will play some part but it is inevitable.

Remember all movies used to be “silent” as well, and there was opposition to the idea of introducing sound. Many thought it would detract from the visual art of cinema.

No matter how one rationalizes it, it remains a silly thing to complain about.

FEASIBILITY is the name of the issue here, it's not like the idea that people would like it didn't occur to them. it's that "voiced main character" and "main character can be 35 different things" are two design principles that at least at this point in time are fiercely at odds with each other.

Maybe as you said some advanced form of text to speech or ayt very least some form of AI filter (i.e. record just a male and female voice over and then create variations of it with AI) will be the solutions in the near future, but not currently.

And we ALREADY have people on this very same forum occasionally throwing a fucking tantrum because they didn't like a text line or one of the sparse voice barks, imagine if they had to deal with every single line being "different from what they imagined in their head".

In an ideal world I'd like both of those, but having thought about it I think I slightly prefer the freedom to define my own character. I do like the occasional bits of speech to add in a bit of personality. Maybe one day the technology will exist to create the variations we'd want with AI, but I think that's a long way off. And even then, how would you control it? Will it be fun to tell the game whether you want it to say that line neutrally, enthusiastically, nervously, sadly? I'd like to see it if someone works it out, but from here I don't know how it would be done. It's not that imagination is in conflict with a CRPG: they enhance each other.

My brother, who's playing BG3 at the moment, told me that BG2 doesn't even have all the NPC dialogue voiced; and he thinks that allowed them to have more dialogue options, particularly related to romance. I can't say for myself because I haven't played it yet, but a fully-voiced protagonist certainly wouldn't help that. Even if I've played some very good games that do fully voice the protagonist. They tend to have fewer options than BG3 did.

I agree regarding the challenges and do accept this isn’t a feasible request for BG3 especially seeing as Larian is moving on (as is their right).

In fact I think we all have to accept that the game is more or less complete aside from the Modding tools and some ongoing bug fix support. Most of the forum topics aside from bug reporting and announcements are now superfluous.

It's not really FEASIBILITY that's the issue.

It's very feasible. That's why so many games have fully voiced protagonists.

The crux of the issue is making that decision of "This is a video game, so this is your character" or "Lets make you the least defined entity in existence so you can headcanon in something"

Feasibility only comes in as a factor when deciding on "Lets make you the least defined entity in existence" but also trying to allow you to personally define your character.

Meanwhile, every game ends up with "This is a video game, so this is your character" because that's the nature of having a predetermined narrative. Some people try to deny this by pretending that the written dialogues are something else, but the game will simply continue on with your character being a predefined character (To a degree determined by how extensive the actual dialogue options are)

Some people will prefer the wishy-washy notion of being undefined as a character and detracted from the actual world in order to pretend a video game is a TT game where you can actually be whatever you want in the story.

While others will accept the nature of video games being pre-defined and simply want their character (Whomever it was written to be) to be integrated into the world as fully as possible.

It's simply up to developers to decide which crowd they want to appeal to (Where I can imagine the former would take precedent due to it being far easier and cheaper to simply not animate and voice the PC during dialogues)

There's no limitations at play here. Even when it comes to dialogue options, there's nothing limiting the options available for voiced/unvoiced other than things simply not being written and the budget to hire VA's to record all the lines (And to a lesser extent, the decision to move towards "Dialogue Wheels" that have limited space for options and are simply awful design compared the the classic list of options which can be infinitely long...)

Maybe somewhere down the line, when AI has all but replaced every aspect of our lives, we'll get that idealized scenario of being able to make your own custom character with the narrative being altered based on specifically your decisions with your character whereby AI writes the narrative as you engage with the game and also voices your character based on what you imagine...

It is much easier to have a voiced character, when the pc is set, like in DA2, where you have one defined character ( Hawke, human, male or female). Two voices,easy. It started to not work so well anymore in DAI, where the character felt generic, because the lines had to fit more different character types. But I think the amount of voicework that has to be done to make a believable dragonborn or orc is a lot. I love that dragonborn lady in the weapon shop as much as everyone else, but her voice doesn't sound very ... dragonborn to me. It's hard to explain, but with so many races, having them fully voiced even with only maybe four voice actors to choose from is a lot - the amount of dialogue and options to choose from is more, than I encountered in most games so far.
And there will always be the people,who want gruffier voices for their orcs, dragonborn, dwarves etc. That was for example a big discussion with DAI, that the qunari inquisitor sounded too posh or too human.

I love voiced protagonists, if done well, it really brings the characters to life. As I said, it worked well for me with Hawke ( female, sarcastic for me), but it didn't worked that good for the inqui - they had a lot less personality. So I think in a game with a fixed protagonist, it is a good thing, but in a game with so many races and backgrounds, it will always feel generic, no matter, how good the voice actors are.