Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Will there be spoken dialog or just text?

Hi first off i think this game looks sweet and this is a minor issue but i would like to find out in any case.

Will D:OS have spoken dialog, or will it all just be text, or a combo of both? If anyone has info that would be awesome thanks

V

I think they'll go for the combo with main story line voiced over. It would be just insane to try to voice over all the text in the game.

I personally - and again, this is just my personal opinion - would rather they leave the dialog unvoiced. There's no replacement for how you voice it in your mind, and it echoes games like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, that did beautifully with unvoiced dialog (the only voiced parts being cutscenes).

I wouldn't complain if they voiced it, but I think the game can stand beautifully on its own without it.

In Divine Divinity they voiced a few of the major characters (with, uh, mixed results) and left the rest of the dialogue as text-only. I imagine it will be the same for this game.

Pretty much this.
I don't know about you guys but for me, after having played the alpha for a few hours, all the characters I've met already have their voice. : )

Yeah, I think it's going to be partly-voiced.

Character dialog will be 100% unvoiced, though.

D2 was voiced (except our character) and apparently DC too

Yeah, and that is really expensive. It was made clear during the Kickstarter that the game will not be fully voiced. It was not even one of the stretch goals. There will probably be a few voiced bits, like Divine Divinity, for things your characters say when crafting or interacting, and a few main quest voiced bits, but not much more than that.

I'd be glad if they did a voiceover of some of the main npc's and both protagonists' lines (DD style), but surely not at the expense of game's quality. Better to spend extra money on game polishing.

^ very much.

Personally I would appreciate some of the main NPCs (particularly companions) having some of their key dialogue and opening lines voiced (assuming done well ;-), but would be really, really disappointed if the protagonists were voiced.

I much prefer silent protagonists as I find that voiced lines confer a specific tone and meaning to dialogue that limits role-playing flexibility for different characters. I can easily accommodate the cognitive dissonance that occurs when the intended tone of a written line of dialogue doesn't match my role-playing interpretation of that line, in return for the flexibility, breadth and nuance in role-playing options within dialogue that comes from being free to interpret tone and meaning.

For example, a dialogue option may read as "Oh yeah, so do you want to make something of it then?'. This may be intended, as written, to be a snarky line that accordingly results in a hostile response from the NPC you are talking to, yet if it is voiced then it can only ever be a snarky line, and furthermore will be imbued with the personality of the voice actor. If unvoiced I am free to imagine my character saying this line, with my character's personality, in a diplomatic or humorous or disinterested or offhand way etc (all very plausible ways to say such a thing) and can easily interpret the hostile response from the NPC as a misinterpretation of what I meant, or them acting for other reasons despite my conciliatory tone or based on some other motive of the NPC, according to the context of the situation. After all, a lot of real life discussion is miscommunication and often others actions are not readily understandable. Sure, sometimes the mismatch may be so glaring that you just have to hand-wave it, however I consider this a small price to pay for greater roleplaying freedom and player agency.

Or to put it another way, voice actors tend to give far too much character to MY character.

Voiced is fine for set protagonists, can be great even, but not so much for blank-slate protagonists imo, which I am under the impression is the case for Original Sin.

The player characters should have voiced dialogue for feedback purposes, like "Let's see if this works" when crafting, because an animation plays and if you don't notice, it looks like they're not doing anything.

Maybe they also should have some of their floating text dialogue voiced, because occasionally, it can be hidden by other messages or the inventory screen (some of the floating text dialogue is triggered by using an inventory item, so it can be obscured if it's just text.)

They don't need voice for conversations with NPC's, even if it wasn't cost-prohibitive.

Yeah, I would hope for a selection of voice sets for feedback things, combat barks and so on. That's nice for flavour and would be useful as you describe.

What do you mean Stabbey by 'floating text dialogue'? Do you mean of NPCs or the protagonists or both? I'm not playing the alpha so this isn't clear to me.

In the world, characters speak aloud and you can see floating text above their heads, so you see what they're saying without being in a conversation with them. Both NPC's and PC's can have that at times, but the NPC's can repeat their dialogue, while the PC's only say it once, and you could miss it.

Hang on, sorry, so both NPCs and PCs have the floating text but only the NPCs speak aloud as well, and you suggest it would be helpful to have the PCs speak some of the floating text dialogue as well?

Well I guess the next obvious question is what sort of dialogues those would tend to be and how much of it would be in the game? How would you know when it is likely to be missed or not? I suppose you could just voice the key dialogues.

I would have to know more to know if I would be really, really disappointed with this ;-) though I'd think that a dialogue history log (as usual in dialogue/text heavy RPGs, as was in the previous Divinities too) in the diary or accessible through the UI would be my preferred option. I have no idea how practical that would be to implement including these floating dialogues. I would hope Larian is considering it cos yeah, as you say it would suck to miss something important that is only said once on a busy screen with lots to look at and occupy your attention.

No one speaks aloud at all currently.

Using certain inventory items triggers dialogue, whether or not there are any windows open to block it from being seen.

There could be a temporary log of floating text kept for the last 5 minutes, or so, with a changing icon if text, or PC text, has been added in the last minute. The length of time the player characters' text stays up could also be increased, and the game could check the position of any open windows before displaying the text.

I'd like to see a text outline / shadow added, as well, since the floating text can be hard to read on light backgrounds.

What they could do - for the main npc's just like they did in the Bauldurs Gate series was voice the first sentence or two as a synopsis, then have a following paragraph or 2 of text.

hmmmmmm unvoiced game is a bit immersion breaking IMO :s

Would it be any less immersive if every person had the same voice? Since different people can say the same thing (pool of random responses), everything that wasn't NPC specific would need to be voiced at least twice (or the responses divided into male and female groups). That would cost a lot of money, and guarantee that pretty much every review of the game counted the voice acting as a negative.