Just watching through the beginning of the Josh Sawyer talk. He mentions how they felt they had to go to everything being voiced because of DOS2 and streamers. ugh. it kills me that streamers, who are the equivalent of someone who only wants to "read" picture books had any effect at all in developing a crpg.
It makes perfect sense, when you think about it. Did you ever watch someone attempting to play an all-text game for an audience? They are some of the most miserable bastards on the planet.
It always starts with the cheerful, jolly streamer telling to his/her audience "WE ARE PLAYING THIS AWESOME RPG! So, SO AWESOME! Hehe, you can't imagine how awesome it is!" ...and then fifteen minutes into the gaming session, while reading every single line aloud, you star feeling the tiredness and exasperation in their voice as they begin to realize what they got into, exactly. The day after (or two days later if they are incredibly stubborn) they dropped the game and moved to something else that doesn't consume their vocal cords. If they chose to NOT read aloud? Even worse. They spend minute glaring at the screen with dead eyes while reading in silence and the audience starts to complain that it's boring to watch and leave the channel.
Incidentally the day I started to notice this trend is when I realized that all that old school whine about "voicing dialogues being a waste of money" is tragically outdated. These days it's something expected as a baseline. And frankly unless your game bombs for plenty of other reasons it's something basically that repays itself, for how it expands your user base.
Party control in Baldur's Gate 3 is a complete mess that begs to be addressed. SAY NO TO THE TOILET CHAIN
