Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General The importance of PC voice in RPGs

I don't need for the protagonist to be voiced. I don't mind having a voiced protagonist if you are playing the character that the game throws at you and you don't really have any choices; they are handing me a character and this is their voice. That's fine.

If I am coming up with a character on my own, to the degree that you are creating a custom character in BG3, I would prefer for them to not be voiced, because it invariably clashes with whatever conception I have about my own character.

I'd like to see your sources for this information. A brief search on my end (SOURCE 1, SOURCE 2) indicates that voice actors are paid hourly at a rate of $200-$350 with a minimum number of hours per session (2-4 hours according to source 1 and 1-2 hours according to source 2). Source 1 also mentions mandatory bonuses based on the number of sessions worked. For someone voice acting as the PC, it seems likely that the number of hours and sessions alike would climb pretty high, especially for Baldur's Gate 3, which already has 45,980 lines of dialogue in early access alone. And who knows how many voice options we'll end up with (though to be fair, I wouldn't personally expect more than the ones we already have). One thing that may muddy the waters here, though, is where Larian's voice actors work; they sound pretty American to me, but it's not hard to imagine them being paid to if Larian expects the majority of sales to come from the US.

It seems to me that depending on the number of characters and lines in a game, the costs of full voice acting could certainly add up to something quite significant (again, especially for a game like Baldur's Gate 3) and thus there is something to be said for the argument that voice acting is expensive enough to detract from other features, particularly insofar as they'd require additional dialogue. As far as cutting into other development options goes, there's also the time it takes and the constraints it can impose on writing; J.E. Sawyer brings this up, though admitted in nonspecific terms, in regards to its impact on Deadfire. Maybe full voice acting makes up for it in terms of added sales/profits; it seems very likely that there are far more people who will slam or flat-out won't play a game that is unvoiced for significant stretches than there are who will slam or refuse to play a game for being fully voiced (full voice acting isn't a deal-breaker for me even though I'm personally of the opinion that bad or even mediocre voice acting is worse than none at all, and I suspect that a lot of people who have problems with the current insistence on voice acting in games are similarly willing to buy/play games that indulge it).

All that said, Larian is already going for voice acting for everyone else in the game, and paying a narrator to read the unspoken lines on top of that. Whatever damage voice acting can cause in terms of time and money it takes away from other options will already be done in spades on the basis of its existing scope throughout the game, including the origin characters who combine PC and NPC voice acting requirements.

I am not talking about voicing a bunch of characters, but the PC, the origin characters have already been voiced. You are trying to conflate the entire cost of VA for 2 or 3 variations of the PC. Not to mention, VA does not affect the cost of other departments like development such as level design or character design. This is also not even taking into consideration that the PC ALREADY talks during travel in the world, so it is straight out strange that he/she doesn't in cutscenes. All the other companions have great facial expression and voice, and the PC (which seems to be the issue for some in regards to RP) looks like a half dead mime Vulcan with no expression at all. Also, hourly rate for VA is totally different than day rate. The shorter amount of time you hire them, the more you pay. Average Day rate is around $1500/day. I mean there is video from actual VAs that discuss rates on YT, as well as on web pages. It just seems all to common that people that do not want it, try to resort to the old argument "well it costs to much" which is BS today. This is not 10 years ago.

As for the point of bad VA work, yeah your right. Bad is bad! But I am pretty sure so far this game has only presented GOOD VA talent, so that is a moot point in regards to that issue.

Well I guess you feel about VA, what I feel about day/night cycle...

Quite the contrary. I actually mentioned the existing scope of voice acting in the game precisely because whatever issues it causes are already abundant even without full voice acting for the PC. This conversation drifts a bit between issues with voice acting in general and voice acting for the PC in particular; the information that I cited in the first paragraph relates to the latter since it concerns individual pay. My personal position is that cost-based objections to PC voice acting would be better directed towards the preponderance of voice acting throughout the game in general.


Presumably, Larian has a finite amount of time and money and must make choices on how to allocate their resources. I would expect the amount that they budget for particular features, such as voice acting, to limit the amount they have available for others.

Cinematics are in a tough spot where custom PCs are concerned. The more that they sink into giving a custom PC specific reactions to events, the more they cut into the freedom to define the character (which for me at least is the main point of choosing a custom PC). A good example of this is a Lolth-sworn drow or cleric of Bhaal looking horrified at the death of the tiefling child when you first meet Kagha. I'd prefer first person dialogue or less cinematics for this reason, but if those aren't on the table, I can't say that I consider a lifeless mannequin to be worse than an animated impostor.


$1500 a day seems quite a bit different from the $300 a day that you estimated before (so much so that I suspect that I'm missing something here). Do we know whether the voice actors for this game in particular are working per hour or day, or is the latter more likely for specific reasons?

True, I linked to two websites myself, and I'd still like to see your sources.

It isn't clear at this point exactly how much it would cost to fully voice a custom PC for BG 3.

While I personally will be the boring person (yet again) to say that I can roll with whichever - full voice, part voice or no voice. I will agree on one thing Blotter said: it is REALLY weird to have your character making all of these weird expressions if it is not part of your character and voicing risks on adding to that factor.

I personally feel like about 50% of the time, my character is making faces not even remotely close to whatever reaction I'd imagine them having. If I could wish for something without regarding to the work or money behind it - then it would be some kind of pre-set animation personality. Kind of like how you choose your animation kit in PoE2, but yknow... Included in these cinematic sections so we don't have, like Blotters example above, a Lolth-sworn drow making weird faces when encountering death...

And thus, I can only imagine how I'd feel regarding full (or at least more) voicing for non-premade PCs if it is anywhere near the PoE2 voicing... I still feel this mix of cringing and laughing whenever I think of my character randomly screaming "RAAAAAAAAAWWRRGHHHH!" when I start shooting things... I literally went through every single voice option in PoE2 and almost died out of laughter every time my character randomly went screaming. That is not quite how I imagined my silent, sneaky ranger to approach enemies... :') Meanwhile, I'd say the voice acting in Pathfinder is a rather good "medium" option, where your character interacts and talks (out of dialogues), but in a more... Subtle and neutral way. Like our Tav does right now.

However, if we are to discuss full voicing for dialogues and cinematics ... Uhm, yeah - there's a risk it'll do much more harm than good. If it goes anywhere near Guild Wars 2 protagonist voice acting, then imma mute my headset and close my eyes when it is time for character dialogues. Not ever have I cringed so much at character dialogues as in early GW2 - I still to this day remember my first norn character that was supposed to be a calm, elderly, wise necromancer... Until the cinematic dialogues happened... >.< Now if it would move more towards SW:TOR character voice acting, then I'd be alright with voiced dialogues. Just... Uhm, remember to give appropriate descriptions to the actual voiced responses. Anyone who has played SWTOR have probably had more than one surprise experience where the voiced dialogue didn't match the written one AT ALL... x')

Fortunately, in this game you can save before dialogues and reload if your character goes off the rails. No need to press ESC like a madman in hopes of replaying the cutscene.

HAHAHA, true fact though! :'D

Eh, it's way riskier, sure, but also way faster. I don't know how much time i've spent on the loading screen, but it's a lot.

I am not to worried about bad quality VA in this game, given what I have seen so far. As for the facial expressions, I am hoping either way, whether they go voice on the PC or not, these are just placeholder key animations and will be corrected before launch. Keyframing is a bitch though, and it takes a while. Especially for facial features to get them right. So I can see why they would just put these quick animations on the face until they got them better.

I agree that if we're ignoring the costs, having a set of personality options for characters that would influence animations and tone would do a lot to mitigate the problems that crop up from voice acting and cinematics. Even this wouldn't be perfect and could introduce clashes between character concepts and implementation, or even between implementation and players' expectations of the chosen personality option (e.g., "I just wanted my character to be stoic but you made him a jerk!"), but assuming it was done fairly well I'd expect it to be a substantial improvement over what we have now. Moreover, personality options along these lines are a way to make custom characters potentially stand out among the origin set, whose more defined natures allow more specific options and interactions with the setting, while still leaving the further characterization necessary to do so at least partially a matter of player choice.

The main problem is that if we aren't ignoring costs to improve an already costly feature in this way, it presents a rationale that amounts to digging the hole deeper until we come out the other side.


I suppose it depends on the voice sets you choose. I was pretty disgusted with how Kingmaker's male madman voice was basically Looney Tunes chaotic neutral, even if I probably shouldn't have been surprised. The only Kingmaker male voice sets I could really stand were Pragmatic and Aggressive, though to fair I felt pretty much the same about the voice options for PoE I and II. Luckily, those voice sets were limited enough that it was easy to find alternatives for them via mods, which is hardly a realistic expectation for a game that has a fully voiced protagonist.

I disagree with this a little bit. The origin characters are already fully voiced as companions, but they would need substantial additional VO work to fill in the dialogue needed for them to be fully voiced as the player character. I don't expect them to record every single line with multiple inflections, but I still expect the player character will have a lot of lines to voice.

Additionally, if they want to provide generic voices for "Tav" I feel like they will need 4 minimum in order to facilitate co-op.

When you start adding this up, I start to agree with the point that it might start getting a bit expensive. Again, though, I'm not going to sit here and tell Larian how to budget their development costs. I want it fully voiced, but I understand if they decide it's too hard.

Sorry if this already has been asked, I've searched and all I can find is mostly rumors/speculation, which is weird.

I haven't been following the development of this game but I'm getting more and interested after seeing a few videos. I did notice that the protagonist seems to be silent though. I know some people prefer it this way on these types of games, but personally I find it really jarring to witness these amazing 3rd person cutscenes with side characters being super expressive and chatty and then there's the protagonist, with no voice and a blank face. I don't mind it in games like Divinity or Pillars of Eternity because you can't see the characters faces anyway, but in such a cinematic game it really throws me off.

I've read that they were planning to fully voice the protagonist, but some are saying that it's just for ambient dialogue and not actual cutscenes. But apparently some dialogue is actually voiced already? (I haven't played the beta) Which might mean they plan to have a voiced player character after all? At the same time, it seems almost impossible considering you can choose from so many characters to play as.

Hopefully you have some more insight to share with me. Any clue when we'll get a confirmation on this? It's a pretty important feature to me. I think it's either going to make or break my desire to play the game.

Oh I have gone off about the same thing. I am hoping not, but there is a decent discussion about it here:
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=756450#Post756450

Yeah, I just read that thread, but I'm left with the same question. Some people seem to believe the character will be silent, others don't.
It's just so weird that Larian hasn't confirmed this since it's a pretty big thing, I feel like.

It probably won't be. If they went full voice with the custom character they'd need to go full voice with the Origins too, and that'd basically be like having around 12 fully voiced options (5-8 Origins and 4 custom) for the main character alone. Inquisition is the only triple A title that offers more than 2 that i know of, and it's got 4.

Realistically speaking, they can either half-ass one thing or another, or just make the main character silent whoever they are. Which is also how they went about things in DoS2.

I agree with this. I don't mind an unvoiced PC in this game, but the "reaction" animations during dialogs are often silly and overdone. I especially dislike the "hands on hips" reaction, which I guess is supposed to signal "oh, really?" but just looks stupid. I wouldn't mind at all if every scene showing the PC reaction during dialog was cut from the game, and we just saw who we're talking to, with the dialog choices below.

I'm also not a fan of some of the other brief animations of the PC during events. Especially the frightened look that's often triggered by first view of something horrific. My PC concept isn't someone who is that easily frightened! This is another case of game developers wanting to be movie directors, instead of giving the player full agency. Quit your job and go into making movies if that's what you want to do.

some folks may know this already, but the new patch did add VO/speaking dialogue to the MC during the edowin true soul scene at the end after you send the minions to avenge edowin/kill the owlbear - it does seem to be in a more similar vein to when you travel to the camp for the first time tho, with set/stagnant VO lines that are made outside of an actual dialogue, but i was surprised to see my mc speaking again. idk if this means that all dialogue will eventually be VO upon launch, but sharing for those interested

That bit of dialogue has always been there. Since there's no choice or anything i imagine it's like when the MC speaks during exploration, just in a cinematic.

very cool - i think bc my playthrus never ended too peacefully there i may have missed it before. but i agree, it does seem that all mc VO currently in ea are restricted to cinematic junctures