Originally Posted by Taril
Originally Posted by Gray Ghost
Further, how are you going to make it feel natural for a barbarian and a wizard to say the same lines the same way?

The same way games have been for literally years, including Larian's prior titles?

Allowing options of different types of voices which will come with their own styles of dialogue (Usually having something like a "Rough" voice for your gruff Barbarian/Fighter types, your well educated noble voice for your Mage types and some sort of sly roguish voice for your Rogue/Ranger types)

Or, better yet, incorporate Solasta's personality selection. Allowing you to tune a voice/dialogue to specific archetypes (I.e. Sarcastic, cocky, aggressive, shy etc).

Originally Posted by Gray Ghost
DA2 and DAI get around this with differing tone options and making background more significant than class, but in BG3 we have so many classes and possible backgrounds. Just by virtue of those, you create too many possible personalities to create a voice for.

You act as if every particular pairing of class and background needs a singular unique voice.

While in reality, the only thing that is necessary is voices to match backgrounds. Just because someone is a Wizard, doesn't mean they suddenly developed a "Wizard" accent. Dialect and accent is determined by background, not class. The only thing that is class relevant, is the class specific dialogue options which is a simple as having whatever VA is doing the lines for the chosen voice option, to record those class lines too.

So if there's a scholarly voice type, it will work for anyone who has a scholar background (Or is roleplaying a character that has received an education, such as a Noble or even an Acolyte) - This can be for someone's Barbarian just as much as a Wizard, depending on how someone is roleplaying their character (For example, if I decided I wanted to play a Barbarian who was a noble that received an education but just happened to develop rage powers, I can opt for a suitable voice. Just like I could use an aggressive voice for a Githyanki Wizard who was raised as a warrior)

Forgive me if I'm missing important context here because my crpg experieince mostly goes back to dragon age, but those voice styles were always only for random barks of about a line each, not stuff that goes through an entire game. And if we're limited to the vocal "style" we choose at the beginning, that could prevent us from letting our character's personality and demeanor change throughout the game. In pillars of eternity for example, I often have my characters there go through major changes. In my favorite playthrough, my Watcher went from being sullen and withdrawn to being fiery and passionate. That kind of option would likely be entirely denied to me if I had to pick one style of voice/tone at the start of the game and stick with that.

I could argue against each of your points, but I'm not trying to prove you wrong here or convince you of anything. I think you make some good points here, but I also think that the two of us just have fundamentally different opinions. I think that silent protagonsits are simply better for crpgs 9/10 times, and changing my mind on that is going to be as difficult as changing your mind on your opinion here. I know that there are always limitations because this is a game, but it seems that you consider those limitations far greater than I think they are. I think that the silent protagonist gives me enough freedom to work around what's already established by the writer to craft characters I want in the way I want. I don't care how the npcs or the game reacts to my character, the thingthat matters to me is that the character s mine to craft as much as possible within the inherent confines of the game. I think that going fully voiced would take away far more options and the benefits wouldn't be worth it and would result in crpgs that lose out on the things I fundamentally value in crpgs. I think we just have to agree to disagree and really hope that we get the types of games we want.