Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Voiced Protagonist

That is completely true. This is one of the reasons I didn't like Lohse voice acting as they portrayed her personality as a teenager.

Even worse was Fane. His voice didn't match his character and his personality didn't match his history.

Apart from that, VA in DOS2 was generally good.

VA is mostly expensive when you hire well known or sought after talent. A lot of studios in film try new actors for instance "Baby Driver" because it allows the character to shine through the actor without say just being Tom Cruise, and it costs significantly less.

I too wish for VA for my main as well.

Really makes the character creation work well.

In DOS2 I was happy however, given that my character could speak, if very little, and in fact did sometimes converse with people.

This does indeed seem to be a very divisive feature. I'll always be for a voiced protagonist, because it seems like I lack some imagination some other people have. When I read text I never hear it as a voice in my head, I just kind of absorb its meaning as I read it - sort of like when you think you are hungry and will go make something to eat, you don't think in your head in a voice: "I am hungry, I will go and make me something to eat". People talking about imagining a voice in their head as they read lines seems very alien to me.
That's why silent protagonists are always lifeless to me.

You can’t have the same voice for dwarfs as you do for elves, half-orcs shouldn’t sound like githyanki, and gnomes shouldn’t sound like drow.

So how many voices should you need to represent all the different character options?

Let’s say 3, which I think is waaaay too low, but for the sake of argument let’s go with 3.

Multiple them by 2 for both male and female and now we have 6.

But all of the origins characters will be player characters, too. How many will there be?

We have 5 now, so let’s say we end up with 8. I feel that number is on the low end, but I’m being conservative.

So already we have 14 actors reading the lines for all of the main character dialogues in an exceptionally dialogue heavy game.

If Larian can pull something like that off I will be impressed, but I’m not holding my breath.

True, that. And every TV programme.


She never struck me as sounding like a teenager, just a rather "bohemian" personality, which is what she was meant to be. That said, I still have a sort of teenage level of maturity but I was actually a teenager back around Victorian times.

I acknowledge it's a risky prospect because of perceptions and expectations, though. There are plenty of examples where it works but sometimes it really doesn't: FO4's female voice actor (edit: proof-reading after the event, as I do, that reads quite oddly: I meant "for the female PC", not "the female actor"!) was good but defined the character in a very particular way; worse still, she defined elements of the story in a very particular way which wasn't how I was playing it. I could've overlooked the dialogue but not the intonation.

Geralt's voice initially sounded very out of place to me with his overbearingly strong American accent. I eventually got used to it and the whole thing blended together simply as Geralt but it took quite a lot longer than was ideal.

If we're doing regional accents, the protagonist in BG3 should have a Brummie accent. Larian likes Brummies. I hasten to add I'm not from Brum.

Oh, also on the topic of accents and voice intonations in general: there was a lot of major things I didn’t like about Mass Effect, but one of my more minor but persistent quibbles was that my character was the whitest sounding black man who ever lived. Every time Commander Shepard spoke I couldn’t get over the incongruity of his appearance with his voice. Set voices for custom characters is a tricky tightrope that I’d rather Larian all together ignore.

Maybe not a teenager, but her dialogue was poor (notably the romance) and immature. She had such a dramatic arc that I don't think was explored well because of the way they portrayed her in the game (on top of the lighthearted tone of DOS2). Imoen also did sound like a teenager but her dialogue and drama were better explored.

Had the same problem for Fane. On the other hand I think they did well on the Red Prince (good match on personality/story/VO).

For Geralt, he sounds generic to me with a Batman-ish or Solid Snake-ish vibe. W3 had solid VO, but nobody was really impressive.

I'll say it again, if it's a full voiced VA (which it is by the sounds...I think), then the option to turn off VA is all that's needed (so it's like how it is now) is all that's needed and boom!, everyone wins

Is Larian actually planning on fully voiced protagonist. I don't see how they can do that. There are currently 4 voice options ( 2 male, 2 female) but on top of that all 5 of our companions can also be chosen as the protagonist. . . 9 full voice overs seems unfeasible.

The issue with this is that it kinda only works when the voice lines up with how you imagine your character.
It can also have the opposite effect and make you feel like it's not your character or is forcing you into playing your character in a certain way.

I get how someone who is not used to it might find it lacking, but I can only say that ever since Bioware decided to voice its protagonists the dialogue became much more restricted. It boils down to what do you prefer, read a little (really not too much, you wanna see a lot of reading check out Pillars of Eternity), or lose a lot of story. Voice acting in general means less story (but today it's already a done deal, even obsidian added voice acting to poe2), but to voice your protagonist (especially if you have more than one voice set, and here you have something like 4 so you need to record all the lines four times) is too much work and it's not worth it.

Also, Larian already uses the protagonist voice sets for the dream boy/girl voice, so they already need to record her/his lines four times, and even this seems like too much work

Its not just 4 voice sets. Its at least 9 because the 5 companion characters can be selected to play as the protagonist. I really can't see Larian adding fully voiced protagonist . . . but there is some limited voice work scattered through Act 1.

Agreed. This is one of the many reasons why I play most games with sound off.

I'm actually very happy with the way Larian is doing it right now. I don't need to hear my character say the dialogue I choose, but its nice to hear her/him banter with the party members or react to failed/succeeded rolls.

Yeah you're right I forgot about them. So everything I said times 9

At least you'd have the option of skipping the voiced lines, those of us who want fully voiced protagonist can't add it in.

The way it is now, the protagonist looks like a mime, just making facial expressions and postures, all conversations just look so unnatural and awkward.

EDIT: I really wish Larian would comment on this - they claimed fully voiced in the past, but has been silent about it since.

According to the data mine there are 8 origin characters (assuming all companion characters are still origin characters as Larian previously said), so that is 12 voice sets,

I would like the option of a voiced pc as right now as other have mentioned it looks like your character s just making awkward faces and is a blank slate compared to everyone else. For those who don't want it have then simply put in the option to turn it off. Everyone wins.

It seems to be a matter of taste and perception. Fane voice was perfect for me. Now Gale reminds me of something similar. They're both scientists, so it makes sense.

About voice main character, dialogues become more lively, for example, I rly like sarcastic Hawke from Dragon Age 2. But on the other hand this leads to limited responses, and I am against it. I love role-playing games for their variety! For games of this genre, it is normal when the main character does not have a "voice". Choices matter than voice.

That's animations problem why not fix those instead of spending so much money on useless voice acting?