Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback POLL: Voiced protagonist?

I might have been the only person in the world intrigued and enthused by the approach to picking dialogue options and actions demonstrated by Larian in the first look at the game. This had the player pick from a selection of past tense summaries of what the character had said or done, as though they were later telling the story of their adventure. I thought it had the potential to work powerfully and brilliantly alongside a voiced protagonist we could then actually see saying or doing whatever the option was in the present time on screen.

Of course, practically everyone else hated it and it was gone when the first EA release came. And the current approach of setting out what you want your character to actually say makes actually voicing the lines unnecessary and could even be repetitive.

But I still really, really want it! There’s something about a voiced protagonist that makes them feel to me more present in the world, and without a voice (except for barks) my main character too often feels like the least real person on screen. I love it when they comment on stuff, even just “This seems as good a place as any to camp.”

Though I know other players hate the idea and feel it would break immersion, especially if they couldn’t find a voice set that suited the character they wanted to play. It was actually somebody commenting to this effect in passing that got me thinking about this again.

So, for my first ever poll here (I hope it works) I’d be interested to find out where other forum members stand on having a voiced protagonist.

Would you like your protagonist to be fully voiced? single choice
	Yes, please give me fully voiced protagonists!
	I’d like origin characters to be voiced, but not custom ones.
	I’d like custom characters to be voiced, but only if I could turn this off if no voice suited.
	I definitely don’t want fully voiced custom protagonists (and don’t want or don’t care about origin characters either).
	I don’t particularly care one way or another.
Votes accepted starting: 08/01/23 04:06 PM
View Results

I really liked that Hawke felt so much like a real character, but it fell completely flat in DA:I. With the state of our character's expressiveness, I don't think I'd like looking at it for twice as long. The dissonance is often not so much the voice as the visual.

I would, however, like interactions between multiple custom characters voiced. It's Impossible to tell which is saying what quite often

I like everyone's voice acting, I really can't think of a bad performance among the main cast. We haven't gotten much of Tav's voice, but it still seems perfectly fine.
Of course there was voice acting for all the main characters in the first two Baldur's Gate games as well, it just was used for dramatic effect, supplementing much larger blocks of dialogue. I still like that because it allows for more and more diverse interactions, but we've gotten a lot of games recently that prove it doesn't need to be a trade-off, Disco Elysium coming to mind.

Lastly, I think my favorite thing Baldur's Gate 3 has done is the voiced narrator, if they give her more stuff all the better.

I was trying to find a video of that first look, to compare the Astarion scene then and now, but I wasn't able to. I agree with you about the way your choices used to be presented, I wish they tried it out longer, I guess people didn't like the fact that they weren't in total control of 'their' character. I remember a few people thought that if you didn't pick the [Baldurian] choices your character wouldn't
be Baldurian, but for me all the choices are supposed to be valid for your character, which makes the odd contradictory thing a little vexing.

Phew! Glad I wasn’t actually the only person in the world who thought it had promise. And yes, I wish we’d at least had a chance to try it out for ourselves.


Yes, I had always thought that our characters with the Baldurian options had those because they were assumed by the game to be from Baldur’s Gate, and would still be treated as Baldurian if they didn’t pick them. That said, I would like to have the option to be a human, elf, etc from elsewhere, so if the game gave us an early option to either confirm or deny we were from the city that would be appreciated. I’m sure there will be more responsiveness and special dialogue/content for Baldurian characters so it would make sense to play them, but for some characters it just doesn’t fit.

I voted for fully voiced protagonist. For me good voice acting brings a lot to the game, and it would be great if they would add it for the pc as well!

I like to play custom characters best, so I would like custom characters voiced as well! If they do add voice acting for custom characters, I hope they have a choice for a voice similar to Jennifer Hale in Mass Effect! Even though I am playing a custom character, I don’t like my character to sound too bland, and she was perfect!

I voted for no voiced custom character. I think for a custom character that's meant to be specifically crafted by the player, a full voicing just cuts off the ability to provide a breadth of options. Even in Mass Effect, we were always playing Shepard, who always was meant to fit into a defined character archetype. Here our Tav is in theory meant to be whoever we want them to be, and full voicing limits that and limits the possible choices we can make. I already feel as though Larian hasn't given us enough to really make the character truly ours, full voicing will only make that worse.

I voted for voiced protagonist. It is not my usual choice, but the game, as it is, doesn’t provide a satisfying custom PC anyway. It already imprints behaviours on PC during cutscenes, and dialogue choices are limited. Tav VO is very neutral.

Planning on having fully voiced PC is the only way Larian’s decisions up to this point make any sense to me. Trying out Dragon Age: Inquisition only reinforced that suspicion. Combining that with their early Q&A statement I will be somewhat surprised if 1.0 won’t have a voiced Tav.

I'm going to use the words "characterization" and "characterized" a lot...sorry 😅


I agree that it would be best (and that it's possible to have that in games, with proper writing), but given the current situation, I don't believe it would be possible to have a Tav that can be "whoever we want them to be" anyway 😔 (far from it, actually).



Pretty much this!

The way it currently works, we have a lot of forced characterization (in my opinion) :
1) limited dialogue options that are very characterized.
2) a lot of cuts to our Tav in conversation to see their reaction (aka characterization). Some of them are weird, like *SPOILER* Tav smiling when Astarion talks about his scars after they had sex *END SPOILER* .
3) several random comment such as Tav asking Laez'el not to be so hard on the Tieflings (again, characterization).

So, I made my peace with it (well, sort of). At this point, I would almost prefer the "three archetypes" given to Hawke in Dragon Age 2 (which I liked, but is a bit more jarring here in a D&D game).

Plus, it does feel weird to have a fully-animated-yet-mute Tav (although I would love to have the option to only speak without words, like nodding and shaking heads throughout the whole game).

Also, I will admit, I did enjoy hearing my Seldarine Drow react to Lolth sigils.



+1
I would love if they didn't cut as much to our Tav's face during conversation. It's often unnecessary and what could be easily avoided characterizations.


So, in the end, I voted for "I’d like custom characters to be voiced, but only if I could turn this off if no voice suited" because I like options 😄. It's not what I had initially expected from this game, but what would fit best at this point.

I personally am not a fan of a voiced MC/PC in choice based rpgs like this. Yes, a fully voiced protag can up the overall cinematic quality or feeling of a game, but in many ways it can also restrict variety of choices to be made. Logistically speaking it is simply easier to record one side of a conversation. Therefore it's possible that a voiceless Tav actually has the potential for a wider variety of options to explore in dialogue. The game is less cinematic at times, but it's usually possible to chose wider and more divergent routes of dialogue.

I'm biased though I like to read out loud and talk to myself.

I felt that 😅 same here!

Silent protagonist for me ...
Allways and everywhere.

I picked option 4, even tho option 3 would be acceptable ... but since voiceacting is quite expensive, and most importantly this is my decision, i would spend those money elsewhere.

Yes, I purposely didn’t put an “I would never have a voiced protagonist myself but don’t object to there being a toggle for people who want it” option, as I just wanted to understand what folk’s personal preferences for their own playthroughs were.

I voted against Tav voice acting. For me it's a matter of pacing.
I am given dialogue options, after reading them and deciding what I'm gonna say, I don't need to hear it read out for me, and would rather not wait 3-5 seconds before hearing the other side's response.
I enjoy the more immediate feedback.

As for dialogue that wasn't an option I made but rather something Tav decides to say on their own, I would prefer if that was voice acted....

I also wish Tav had extra voice actor options to choose from.

Must admit, I love roleplaying my character when playing multiplayer. Putting your own twist to your character is so much more fun!

Tav is currently partially voiced because they do voice their thoughts and commentary. So they already have a personality that is fixed and it makes no sense to claim that it is immersion breaking. However, I think we should have the option to turn it off, and I would also like more voice choice. Some will say that it is too much effort, but given we have many origin characters already, who must be voiced, it doesn't seem like to much to ask for.

I would also rather play muted (dumb?) character than listen curent voices on my Dwarf.

I dont mean to say they are bad ... just that they arent Dwarf.

Yes, I’ve said it before but will take any excuse to say it again, there is a definite gap in the voice sets so far available.

English voice 4 is a posh/cultured female-sounding voice, voice 2 is more “common” version (as a commoner myself, I say that in a totally non-derogatory sense). One or the other of them has fitted almost every female character I’ve wanted to play, but not my dwarf barbarian for whom I really wanted a deeper, gruffer voice, that would also be suitable for, eg, various other warriors and (hopefully) half-orcs.

Voice 1 is a posh/cultured male-sounding voice, and voice 3 is … a slightly deeper posh/cultured male-sounding voice. I don’t know why we don’t just have analogues to voices 2 and 4. And again we’re missing a deeper, gruffer voice.

Given I do want voiced protagonists, it would be unfair of me to also want lots of custom voice sets. But I think that six in total, if carefully chosen and clearly distinct, could cover almost every character I might want to create.

There are more voices datamined, that were available with a mod. Sadly that mod isn't updated for patch 9 yet. I can't say much for the male voices but there is a rather deep and more gruffy female voice among them.

About the Poll: I voted that I actually would like a voiced protagonist. It worked really Well imo in Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition and also in Mass Effect.
Plus I always find it a bit sad,, that my character just stands there, making derpy faces.

That’s reassuring to know, for female voices at least! Thanks.