Songs and storytelling are great ideas!
Songs are easy to integrate to the current performance system.
I was only talking about Songs in the mechanical and naming sense. The Perform action leads to a secondary-choice window where you can select which
Song you want to Perform. I was just saying that I would like the addition of Perform>Story Telling.
I'm not much into musical Bards, so I'm very indifferent to the addition of any actual singing (with instruments or voice-only) to the list of
Songs of the Perform action.
For storytelling, [...]
I think the main issue is words. They require writers, editors, a bunch of voice actors, translators for localization, a bunch more voice actors.
Firstly, it doesn't have to cost all that much in terms of writing.
The story or stories of the
Perform>Story Telling don't have to be told in full, if at all. The Bard can spend the beginning of the Performance with some "Oy oy. Come round good folks. Come hear of a grandiose tale", or something like that. This can be followed with a story full of wow's and woa's from the crowd. That's good filler already. And if the stories are actually told (with the player able to hear them), there don't have to be many of them. One or two, or a handful, at most.
At most, a writer would have to write a couple of short stories, ok. It can have a comedic ending. I could google "tavern jokes" and I'm sure I'd find ideas.
It can be inspired by the totally-not-massive
lore of the Forgotten Realms. It could tell of
Gorion's Ward and the Bhaalspawns. Whatever. If I can find ideas in two minutes while writing a forum post, a Larian writer can sit down one hour and find ideas too.
Oh, one more. If Larian writers were very much able to write
stories in the books we can find in the game, I don't think it would require them a week of hard thinking to realise those same stories can also be told by a Bard. Recycling assets = win !
Secondly, it doesn't have to cost all that much in terms of voice acting.
Localisation is only for subtitles. I don't think Larian has any plan to adapt the voice acting to any language other than English. So, that's only as many voice actors as the number of voices for Custom Characters.
There is no need for translators either (I don't think the Cutting Words insults have subtitles).
Thirdly, this is Larian and BG3 we're talking about.
Larian has decided to sink a massive amount of voice acting budget into making every single companion an Origin Character (and I'm very sure that very very people will make a playthrough with each of those). They have decided that they would create whole scenes that very few people will ever see. They might be voicing the PC, meaning at least 4 more voice acting sinks (if they keep the number of Custom Character voices at 4). They have decided to come up with a freaking 97 insults for a spell that only College of Lore Bards have access to, when a dozen would have done the job. I'd be really disappointed if they now balked at asking these 4 voice actors to also tell a couple of stories.
Also, when we're in a video game world with no passing of time, no Day/Night cycle, a pocket-dimension camp, and overall where immersion isn't exactly priority number one, I don't think that
Perform>Story Telling requires full dedication. As I said, 30 seconds of mostly "wow, woa" would be a good start.
Well, since Volo is actually a Wizard, that would be a good thing, yes?
Oh, indeed. I'll edit my post.
