Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Partially Voiced Main Character

A long time back I suggested having the main character be fully voiced and a moderator said they are planning on doing that and I have found some parts in the game where your character really does talk and it was amazing... But, as I have thought about it. I think it be a cool idea to keep much of the game as it is now then have key moments in the game where your character does talk, but make them less random and more important. Like have them happen during important moments of the overall story. As a way to give a subtle nod to the player that says, "Hey, this is important. You should probably try and remember this." Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

I completely disagree. These moments of silence will be perceived as that larian just didn't have enough time/money to finish the VO.
I think full VO is better

We are never going to get a fully voiced MC.
Not in a game where "MC" could have as a bare minimum 8-10 different voices (all the "Origin" voices plus custom ones only for the player on top)-

I liked fully voiced MC... Until I created my evil Drow sorcerer and none of the voices worked at all.

Now, I'm more in the "Don't voice my MC" camp. Less money that way anyway.

Lets hope so ...

I honestly wouldn't mind either fully voiced or not voiced at all.

I just beg Larian to do something about the "funny mime syndrome" with the camera lingering over our MC OVERACTING his reactions like a moron.

If you have a main character that is not going to say a word during dialogues you could AT LEAST not spend entire seconds point the camera at him doing stupid faces as other people talk to him.

I second that plea.

By the way, how would a fully voiced Tav work? You have several dialogue options, like you have now, you pick one and then listen to Tav reading it aloud? I can't imagine that to be a very compelling experience. Escape buttons will be feverishly hit.
But dialogue options could be made very succint (for example: 1. agree 2. disagree 3. ask for a reward 4. act offended 5. act surprised), with Tav voicing those options according to some preset communication style that fits her/his character (something that you set at character creation). That way, it could be interesing to hear Tav speak, to hear which brilliant prose Larian's dialogue writers have come up with.

I'm just thinking of Solasta, and one thing I don't like is that you only have like 5 voices to choose from - and in that game the 4 custom characters banter a lot so it's more important.

In order to voice MCs, they'd need a lot of voice actors to voice a lot of lines. That's gotta be expensive.

I'd rather they focus on improving other aspects of the game.

I'd rather have a fully voiced MC even if there's a very limited number of voices than the wierd thing we currently have (it was even wierder at launch...).
Not a top priority to me but I'm not particularly fond of things done half-way.

That's how it works in Dragon Age, essentially. Only, there the full line wasn't written, just the general tone of the answer.

And, of course, that game had less dialog options - for the most part, it was positive / joking / negative selection. Still, it added plenty of immersion, imho.

I'm in the camp of people who don't know what a fully voiced Tav means. Right now, Tav talks occasionally, which seems okay. The two available voices don't fit a lot of characters, but whatever. As long as Tav doesn't talk too much, it's fine.

I do notice that Tav doesn't join in on the banter. It's always the companions talking to one another. Sometimes I wish Tav would join in. I wonder how that banter will work while playing one of the origin characters.

Overall, I guess I don't care about more Tav voice over.

Tav reactions can be a bit much, like the slight smile when someone offers a compliment or a thank you. Tav seems so childishly proud in those moments. It doesn't bother me though. I've gotten to the point where I appreciate it, even the recoil on the nautiloid in the face of a change at the pull of a lever.

Yeah ... the problem here is that sometimes such options are a little missleading. :-/

Which does sound unlikely, but I don't discount anything as impossible anymore.

I do think that during early Q&A Larian said something that could suggest them trying to do full VO, including protagonist. But I also remember it was vague enough that I didn't treat it as confirmation.

Full VO does make sense, especially from COOP perspective. I also think it makes more sense to voice Origins, that are already heavily predefined but not custom character.

As I am playing Inquisition right now, I have been thinking of this in BG3. Naturally, I don't really like it. First of all, there is no voice that would fit my Quanari, and the character voiced is bland as hell - because he has to be. Either created defined character (Shepard, Geralt) or don't. Going half-way just doesn't cut it.



I would definitely take more voice options, over fewer but full VO options.


Either I got used to, or it got better since EA. But especially when I did a run with Gythianky the mime factor was hilariously off the mark.

If they have the money for it, a fully voiced pc would be great! With a great voice actor like they got for Shepard!

Of course, the issue you are ignoring is that VO wouldn't be great if it came out from, lets say, a krogan.

+1

But they wouldn't have one or two characters to fully voice "like Shepard".

At the bare minimum they would need to do it for EACH "Origin character" that is playable as the protagonist, then for the male and female version of the "generic Tav" and this is IF they decided to ignore all the bitching about the current custom voices not being different enough.

That would make for SEVEN fully voiced protagonists IF they would stick to just five "Origin companions" without adding anyone AND if they would DITCH two of the current custom voice options, rather than adding even more ones as everyone is asking.
Otherwise they could easily become 8, 10 or 12 options for a MC...

This was discussed a dozen times already over the past almost-two-years. Why it has to be explained again?

I agree, mostly because this will be less complicated for multilingual VOs. I am assuming that this thread and the idea are primarily aimed exclusively at a purely English VO?

Depending on the fact that it is to be a multilingual VO, which I would very much welcome, the text versions of the respective language would have to be correct first. There are some gross bloopers here for the German text version as far as I can tell and I've only played as far as Goblin Camp because it's also time consuming for me to find all the lines of text and check for errors and contextual inconsistencies. The voice output then becomes correspondingly poor. In many cases you can quickly recognise that a native speaker has not been hired when a poorly translated text is also set to voice 1:1...

As far as I can remember, DAI has done well, but I doubt Larian and even WotC have good quality management for multilingual text translation / voice acting. I have observed one thing with both and others of the Video Gaming Industry, which leads to quality defects in the translation: If you really want top-notch texts + VOs, then the unwritten rule applies, namely: 1. native speakers of the respective language and 2. (in this special case) who are also familiar with the DnD lore to hire. To make it as flawless as possible to ensure contextually meaningful and immersive translation for the gaming experience. And unfortunately this is usually not done for cost reasons. Some prime exceptions with multilingual voice acting that come to my mind are: DAI, SWTOR, and TESO. Neverwinter (Online), on the other hand, is absolutely awful. Mixed translations = Denglisch = German + English or no translation for certain words... A recent terrible and "halfheartedly" translated example of WotC MtG DnD Crossover is:

English Original: https://scryfall.com/card/clb/142/ravenloft-adventurer
German Denglish Version: https://www.directupload.net/file/d/6581/ef9eyvm8_png.htm
They did not research the correct German Version for "Ravenloft" --> https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenloft
Actually it should be called "Rabenhorst-Abenteurerin"...

On the other hand we have

English Original: https://scryfall.com/card/clb/272/duke-ulder-ravengard
German Version (correct): https://www.directupload.net/file/d/6581/5ioyq89m_png.htm
As you can see, the word "Raven" is translated one time and not translated another time... By the way, Larian hasn't translated the German text version of "Ulder Ravengard" ingame yet...

Even with supposedly difficult 1:1 and non-literal translation challenges, there are very good sources to prevent translation mistakes, which unfortunately are not used / researched because, as I can only emphasize again and again: @ Larian pls (at least try to) hire: 1. native speakers of the respective language and 2. (in this special case) who are also familiar with the DnD Lore.

This alone kills that <cinematics dialogues are amazing> point everyone is trying to make.
Ignoring all the hilarious bugs...They are cringy. They are badly directed. And this.

I think they should of kept ONLY important story dialogue and improve on that, while scrap the rest minor stuff (vendors, minor npcs etc...) and make them voiced with text.
Yea its pretty faces. But NO its shit direction. Everything is off. Strange pauses, weird movements, camera placement...

I cannot take ANY characters seriously, particularly mine. This alone ruins the whole game for me. Its like having Monty Python music running 24/7 during cinematics.

Barking at the wrong tree here, because I’m absolutely NOT against having fully voiced dialogues for NPCs in games that can clearly afford it.

What I’m against is unreasonable expectations like “We should be able to create 50 different main characters” paired with “They should also have every line voiced. with countless different vocal timbres”.


But hey, maybe this is an area where partial automation/machine learning will be able to help one day: have a couple of actors recite every line, use software/filters to create alternated versions of these.
Like in those deepfake videos.