Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta I approve of this delay.

Just wanted to say thanks and say this delay of the release gets my approval

Mainly cause it said they needed extra time to record more voice-overs for a wide range of characters! I approve a 110%!

Voice overs?

meh.


Good news for the gameplay and mechanics adjustments and upgrades.


nice.

Looking forward to playing the game with this sorted out.

I'm glad it's not full voice overs. I'm a bit on the fence about whether I'd like my PC to have any voice overs at all, but we'll see how it turns out. Having some initial lines of important NPCs voiced would be nice though (but doesn't seem like they're going that router?)

All you need is a volume slider for spoken dialogue (many games offer this). Then, if your response to voice overs is something akin to "meh", you can just position that slider to the left and read to your hearts content. Everyone wins.

I'm also sure the team won't be sitting around twiddling their collective thumbs while a studio is working on voice overs. 10 more days is a lot more bugs being fixed.

Agreed. Although I would love to have a finished copy I must admit I did sigh in relief when I heard about the delay. I would hate it if the game gets the image of a unpolished bugfest on the first week of launch. D:OS is a masterpiece and I would hate it if people don't give it a try because of a bad reputation.

I agree with Hiver... the delay is good for fixes, but the VO deal leaves me utterly and completely cold...

The problem with voice overs is not that they are there, but that they are very expensive, both in money and time and all-around resources, which could be spent elsewhere instead.
If done in a different way then Larian does it now, at the very end, they block any further changes in the writing - quests, events and so on. They cement the content to a large degree.

The "meh" is my personal view on the matter. Hearing voicovers wont do much for me, except being vaguely - nice.
i would always rather opt for more or better content, instead.

Its Larians business and money to burn anyway.
Hopefully it will bring them better sales, which is the real reason they are doing it after all.
Its a tough business out there to survive in and a lot depends on this game for the studio.


I am of course pleased they will use a lot of that time to improve the game a bit more and clear some more bugs too. I already said i wouldnt mind some delays anyway.
I thought game needed it to do that little bit more to be really as good as possible on release.

With this small delay we all get a better game.

I'm pretty sure that some voice acting was always in their budget, I don't think they are taking money earmarked for something else and spending it on VA. Kickstarter Update #3



Larian wants to make a quality product, and if that means getting quality voice acting, that's fine too.

My main concern with voice acting is the potential for repeated merchant barks and such to quickly become grating (it's harder to ignore those than the text). Hopefully they'll save the VA for important one-off lines.

I've actually wanted Larian to release the game in the fall or even winter of this year, so this delay gets my approval as well.

Voice acting I can do without in a game that has this much dialog. Games this huge don't really need it.

They certainly never promised me there wont be any voice overs. Which is why i am saying its just my personal dislike - based on those specific general principles. Not just because i got up on my left foot.

I dont think it takes away money from the game other budgets or features. - I AM speaking generally.
I even clearly SAID its their own business.

And it certainly is a more PR friendly tack to deliver then just "umm, we need more time to fix stuff, mkay?"

Its all good. But i still dont like voice overs!

Of course, everything is subject to personal preference.

But good voice acting has always been something that cemented games into my memory and remember fondly... even the more annoying ones. Like Baldur's gate slave miners "Get me out of this hell hole!" God... but I remember it well.

Probably the reason why I've loved a lot of Larian's games.

And it's not like they have to have everything voiced, a lot take for instance the first few sentences, so you get a feel for the character you're talking to and thus leaving more of the text/content to be altered.

Irenicus is still the best voiced character in the history of games.

Made that whole game reach another level.
But that was just another proof of Sturgeons law.

Heavy voice acting ruins the experience of character development for me, but I enjoy the occasional "I serve the Flaming Fist!".

Reading character lines is like a book, voice acting is like a movie - I prefer to envision my characters via their actions and the way the text reads - play the movie but read the characters.

I also read faster than people talk (most of us do), and while I love to immerse myself in RPG's, I don't do that by spending 3x the time waiting for dialog lines to be read by an actor.

Just a point, since Voice acting has been brought up.

Other than that, I 'voiced' my opinion that the delay is more the acceptable, we the players want massive D:OS success maybe even more than the developers.

I like voice acting, I think more casuals do as well and at some point they have to cater somewhat to them.

As said Larian does quality VA work and the whole game won't be VA, so a balance is hit.

Psomm I agree with you, I can read much faster than actors who dramatize every line in games. That is why I have to turn off subtitles, so I don't do both which is the worst.

However for Text Only, I prefer a system that prints out the text as you read. Preferably a speed slider in setup so we can match our own speed-reading level. Why I like it, I can focus better. Instead of getting hit with a wall of text and my mind responding with fatigue. This way I don't know how short or long a streaming print will be and I can just follow and focus on streaming better.

Nintendo perhaps pioneered that, some other PC games have done it, I simply prefer it. Not that I'm even asking for it for DOS, but just some Armchair Designer talk.

I'm curious about the link between 'casuals' and voice acting?

Anyway, I don't mind the odd snippet of voice during play, but having some npcs chat only some of the time breaks immersion for me.

My guess would be, although I believe the distance between HC & casual is shrinking, the typical 'casual' player may need more 'hand-holding'..the VA's can engage w/o effort.

My wife for example I would consider a casual gamer, at no point do I expect her to be playing a game, but I'm not surprised when she does. Me on the other hand, my wife would expect me to be gaming on a typical evening...if not something must be going on.

So I went and asked my wife just now, what she said slightly surprised me..but made sense. She said she would rather read it as well, mostly because she said that the delivery is crucial...so she'd rather make those assumptions herself.

So I'd say it be great to have a volume slider to make all happy. What each of us think on our own is rather irrelevant.