He claims 4203 lines recorded, which is a fraction of what other actors declared for companions (the guy that voices Astarion claimed 30K+, for context).
The implication is that like in the current build "Tav" will voice only some occasional bark or special dialogue here and there and for the rest will remain a mute protagonist.
Just to be clear, this was never a topic I was particularly invested in so this isn't a thread "to complain" as I'm in fact absolutely neutral to this news. But since I remember some people cared a lot about it and asked often in the past years, there it is your (indirect) answer.
Party control in Baldur's Gate 3 is a complete mess that begs to be addressed. SAY NO TO THE TOILET CHAIN
Too bad for people who were expecting it, considering it is a feature that wouldn't have affected people who don't want it. I can only say that I hate voiced protags so I am just shrugging right now.
Boo! A voiced protagonist is something that I really, really wanted, so that’s disappointing if that’s the right conclusion to draw. 4203 lines seems a lot to me for just barks and the odd comment, and I feel it makes sense either just to have those or a fully voiced PC, whereas a halfway house seems likely to please noone. And clearly there’s a big difference between 4K and 30K, but Astarion would need a whole lot of lines as a companion as well as a protagonist that Tav doesn’t, as well as all his personal quest stuff. I’ll admit it’s looking unlikely on the basis of this info, but I’m not going to despair just yet.
Unless someone can tell me that 4K words actually isn’t many at all even for a minimally voiced protagonist?
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
Someone can explain me what is "Tav"? From context I understand - player character. Right? Why Tav? I can't find information about it.
“Tav” is, in EA, the default name for our custom protagonist though we can change it. It’s derived from Gustav, who I seem to recall might be Swen Vincke’s (head of Larian’s) dog?, and from whom BG3’s code name of Project Gustav was taken.
It’s become common to refer to custom player characters as “Tav” as a result.
EDIT: And I see snowram answered while I was typing this!
Last edited by The Red Queen; 23/06/2310:29 PM.
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
Interesting, and, if the interpretation and conclusions are correct, very good !
This was far from being my top priority. And certainly not a topic I discussed too often, or gave feedback and suggestions about often.
Although there is some inherent bias here. I (like many players, I suppose) tend to give feedback about aspects I don't like with the current features, or additions I'd like to see. I rarely give feedback on a feature that I'm perfectly happy with. Unless I would have some reason to believe that Larian's plan is to change that feature I'm happy with.
I prefer a mute PC as it allows me to roleplay who I want. With a highly voiced PC, the risk would have been to hear them say things completely incompatible with the character I have in mind.
With lots of hope, and still assuming the conclusion is correct, that could mean that Larian's overall vision for the PC and roleplaying will be to not enforce their ideas (notably about Classes, Races, etc) upon the players. Or at least, perhaps, less than original envisioned.
So, for example, that would hopefully mean fewer things like the Paladin's oath breaking mechanics where Larian basically says "this is how, the GM, see Paladins, this is how I interpret your character's oath, and if you don't agree, well your oath is broken anyway".
That may also, hopefully, mean fewer cinematics where we see the facial reaction of the PC, and it doesn't match our PC's personality at all.
With a bit less hope, it just means that they wanted to provide us with more than 2 voices per sex, and realised that full-voicing would mean a massive ton of voicing. With much of it going very unused in each playthough. I'd still take more than 2 voices per sex.
Also, not having a fully voiced Tav means that there will be more voices to choose from. Some other Tav voices have already been datamined from the time they considered the fully voiced path :
At that time half of respondents definitely wanted voiced custom protagonists, with another 7% wanting voiced custom protagonists as long as they could be muted if no voice suited. In total, only around a third didn’t want custom characters voiced, including 9% who did want origins voiced as protagonists though not Tavs.
Obviously with a sample size of 68 this isn’t necessarily representative of the wider player base!
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
On a personal level I don't particularly care one way or the other.
I don't dislike voice acting in games and I don't think it "severely limits options" for dialogue, either (I feel like that's a complaint that belongs to the past and just doesn't fit a production of this size and budget).
At the same time I don't give a damn about your custom MC in particular reading his lines aloud.
What I can barely stand in BG3 and hope to see addressed to some extent, on the other hand, is the player character over-acting and over-reacting with stupid silent expressions like the most insufferable street mime.
Party control in Baldur's Gate 3 is a complete mess that begs to be addressed. SAY NO TO THE TOILET CHAIN
What I can barely stand in BG3 and hope to see addressed to some extent, on the other hand, is the player character over-acting and over-reacting with stupid silent expressions like the most insufferable street mime.
Yeah, iirc that came up in that thread I linked to as well.
Personally I like the idea of showing our character reacting rather than just standing there like a lump, but I’d agree there’s a large distance between the latter and what we have in EA. Definitely needs toning down.
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
I dunno if I’m in the minority or not, but I’d actually prefer if the camera just stayed zoomed out 90% of the time. Cinematic camera angles only work for me with high quality cinematic animations. BG3’s canned animations are way better than BioWare’s, but I think what they have now would look better with some distance.
My main concern with that voice line count is that what Larian are going to give us here will be "The worst of both worlds" - The character will be mostly mute for mos of the game, and those wanting a voiced protagonist will not get much of a fulfilling expereince... but there will be enough specialised lines that force themselves onto important scenes and so on that those folks who prefer to have a silent protagonist and map their own idea of what their personal character sounds like and the way they talk onto the game will *Also* have a sucky experience and have to put up with character invasive voice lines that create immersion breaking dissonance for them at important moments.
Hopefully I'm wrong, and that ~4k tally really does just represent voice barks and neutal-disposed* ambient lines.
((*Having a player character say "They're dead... must have died in the crash" is a neutrally disposed line; it conveys information but doesn't impose upon the personality of the speaker; this is how all pre-set lines from a player character should be pitched. If instead you make the PC say "They're dead.. Good!" Is NOT neutrally disposed, and it forces a stance and opinion onto the character that you may not hold; spoken voice lines designed for a player character should avoid doing this if at al possible.))
I've sort of resigned myself to having a lesser experience because I want to make my own character. It sucks, but it is what it is, it's not going to change now.
As worthless as my opinion is, I kinda preferred unvoiced just because it's far more likely we'll get more dialogue. At least, that used to be true. I think about some of my favorite (J)RPGs like the Legend of Heroes, one of which has a script larger than 10 novels.
That's not feasible to voice (that's slowly changing though), and I actually like it, since the result is that we get a lot of really rich worldbuilding moments and NPCs with quite a varied amount of dialogue, some of which is highly amusing or simply immersive since they have multiple reactions to current events.
Of course, I read fantasy novels and visual novels like they're water and I'm dying of thirst, so I know I'm an exception. That being said, the narrator route could work too and might be a much better stand-in for our own voiced TAV. It worked really well for Disco Elysium which also has some really fantastic writing.
Something that kind of annoys me slightly anyway is that with voice acting you're kind of limited to a specific kind of tone and way of speech. Like, if you wanted to be the suave bard with a charming accent, you can't. If you want to be the old crone or wise sage with a tired voice, you can't. The short spurts that signal personality (basically the traditional way of doing it where you get many options but only a few lines for like combat start and moving around) at least allows imaginative symbolism the way say portraits used to do (and in many cases still do).
All that to basically say this is to me good news or at worst neglible news.
I'm very happy with not having lines voiced. The dialogue options we have already limit our character's personality to a frustrating degree and voiced lines on top of that would only make it worse.
