On voice acting, I disagree on it not being a priority.
A good voice actor can make a line come alive. A good voice actor can make a lasting impact to a game; he/she can literally turn an average / okay-ish dialogue into a fulfilling experience. In videogames, the ideal is to use sound, vision AND text to make an impact. Dialogue can be carried via text only and that has been proven to be a working formula, but it needs to know when to be succinct and when to ramble. The best-case scenario would be to have each dialogue with a facial of the one speaking - complete with facial expressions and voice acting. I think of Witcher 3 as the golden standard for modern dialogue in videogames.
That being said, it's ridiculous to assume that Larian can pull off something like that with their resources. So there needs to be an alternative. They are talented people and I trust they will come up with something satisfactory. And if not, well, back to complaining!
Very well said. Personally I use the Legacy of Kain series as my writing to voice acting gold standard, but the Witcher is fantastic in this regard as well. But regardless, if it were enough to simply read things, no one would act out Macbeth or turn Lord of the Rings into movies.
I don't think any of us really expect or have asked for facial expressions or anything like that though. I don't even neccesarily want the whole game voiced; so many games have so much fluff, weak dialogue that just doesn't need to be there, let alone be there and be voiced.
But the main stuff? No, I don't want my character to be a mute who only communicates in summaries. My DOS1 game has run into a strangle glitch where all the voice over doesn't play as of today in fact, and it's eerie how quiet and unexpressive the game becomes when no one talks, and even the in-combat lines are just...subtitles...
But that's a glitch. That shouldn't be DOS2's intentional design, and it sure as hell shouldn't be defended on the basis of "no money".
