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.
The bar’s been set fairly high for performance in my view. The current pieces range from good to great, imo, and the ability for other performers to join in is cool. Having a new option that’s less polished than that might feel weird.
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.
We agree there. Having two or three stories would be enough.
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.
Great idea! There are plenty of poems, stories and shanties about in books. A bard could even recite all of A is for Azeroth. And nearby bards could reply with “B is for Baal” or whatever.
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).
I didn’t realize that cutscenes won’t be translated. There are still more than 4 necessary voices, though. Any companion could become a performer and have to sing/tell stories. All the same, not having to translate does facilitate things.
Larian has decided to sink a massive amount of voice acting budget into making every single companion an Origin Character. […] I'd be really disappointed if they now balked at asking these 4 voice actors to also tell a couple of stories.
I agree it would be cool, but I suggest you manage your expectations in that regard, if only because everything can’t make it into 1.0.
As I said, 30 seconds of mostly "wow, woa" would be a good start.
That made me think of a street performer. Someone suggested accrobat or contortionist, which would look sweet. What about a street magician? Larian could recycle spell casting animations and have the audience clap and cheer.
