This game is looking AMAZING but can we please get voice acting for the dialogue options?

Pure text is fine for single player, but when playing DOS1 and 2 with friends it really broke our immersion having to ask each other what dialogue option we picked each time.

We ended up either having to wait for everyone to read all of the options and then tell them which one we picked, or awkwardly read out the lines as we selected them.

It would be much more immersive if everyone could just watch your character act out the option you've selected :)

Voice acting is extremely expensive. This is even worse in a game where you can have 5-8 different main characters who are also voiced as side characters, and will need several different complete voice sets for the entire game for custom characters.

from a recent interview it looks like well be getting full voice acting
which i personally think is a big waste of money but good for people who want that

Curious. That's what roleplaying is all about:-).

But as someone mentioned it seems Larian is planning to do full VO... It's not something that ever worked to RPGs benefit, but I shall wait to see it first before judging. Larian has proven many universal truths false so far.

I strongly prefer a fully voiced protagonist, I really like seeing the character I've created come to life.

If all other characters are fully voiced, and your character isn't, there's a kind of devide between your character and all other characters - conversations become rather static.
your character is pretty much confined to always stand still while talking - there's no dynamic intereaction with another character during it.
your character can't do anyhting during a conversation, if there is an action associated with a conversation choice, your character
will have to do that action afterwards while being silent, which feels really unnatural and awkward.

Having a voiced protagonist also adds more emotion to a scene imo. For example, in Mass Effect 2 during the final battle you (Shepard) holds a speech for the crew of the Normandy,
during which you get to see the reaction of the crew, and hear the music build up before going into that last battle. If shepard was a silent protagonist, you'd just click a line of text
and imagine it in your head... no thanks.
This is also why I skipped "the Outer Worlds", even though everyting else about the game looked really good, every time there was going to be a conversation it would take me out of the game.

(sorry if my english is a little awkward - not my first language)

I hope there will be full voiced protagonist, maybe they just wait to have all the lines set. It just feels weird when hero is the only one who is silent. And it's also very limiting for cutscenes. I don't really get how somebody could say that they would do such thing for immersion. Come on, it's a budget thing. Immersion is lost, especially when protagonist even now does say some things, scream some lines when castings spells or seeing something without cutscenes. So you just can't fully pretend that it's totally different voice.

I can completely understand that for some people a voiced protagonist is better, particularly is you come at games with a Hollywood mindset.

That's not true for everyone, though. I don't even notice that my character isn't speaking in games like Fallout3 or NWN2, because I'm automatically speaking the lines in my head, in the voice I have assigned to my character. Sometimes I will even play out alternate conversations in my head that are not even in the game! Different types of imagination, I guess.

This is preferable for me to spending an entire game trying to accept what I consider to be the wrong voice for a character I build, because there are only one or two choices. But each to their own.

Honestly, in an RPG I find the humbler presentation the better. Partial VO or no VO at all works the best for me. Here is why:

RPGs are all about creating your characters and interacting with enviroment. The more defined those interactions are, the less room for maneuvering there is. BG2 is not terribly big on choice and reactivity. And yet I was able to make many playthroughs, with various characters and they all felt differently - in a big part because there was a decent amount of blank space through which I could express my character - filling his voice in my head was one of those.

Have Witcher3 or Mass Effect or even Gothic... because how defined the characters are, I don't find subsequent playthroughs interesting. Especially the first two... those are barely RPGs. More like action games with some RPG elements infuesed into them. Shepard will always be out of my control.

I agree that, if you use movie style presentation for everyone else but your character, there is discrepancy there. But while devs managed to create customisable avatars which can act and interact with enviroment... how do you do voice? For that reason I prefer my RPGs more abstract, with top down view, getting the imagination working, but not defining it more then needed.

I don't think it's "my mindset". It's Larian's mindset, It's whole industry mindset. Games now are more similar to films than books, and it's pretty normal with technology advancing. And Larian said they always wanted to create games that way. Of course it would be great to have like 10 voice sets for different approach but there are always some limits. You probably can't create every possible hairstyle or armor set connecting with your imagination. I just think silent protagonist doesn't go with a way games are now. cRPG as well. Cutscenes are created to give some dynamic, not watching your character standing with arms crossed.

Whether an individual gets on with some aspect of a game is not at all related to what Joe/Jane Doe likes, nor what "the Industry" as a whole thinks people like. If that were true, BG3 would not even be made, since the game's sales will be miniscule compared to the 10s or even 100s of million units the most popular games sell.

Cutscenes have been around for 3 decades, and cinematic allegories have always been present in videogames. Voicing characters has similarly been around for a very long time. The only difference between old and new games in that regard is the capacity of modern games platforms to store/use the extra voice files, and the return on investment that allows fully voiced characters to be recorded.

If it were even slightly possible to tailor a protagonist voice, rather than select from a small set, then you would have a valid point. But if you can generally modify dozens of facial features, and select from a wide palette of hair/beard styles/lengths, then having almost zero choice in voicing is not necessarily an improvement over having no voice at all. At least, not for me.

More generally, the real promise of videogames is not to ape Hollywood, but go beyond the limitations of pre-determined cinematic storytelling. For at least 20 years there have been few genuine advances, with each new generation of games simply polishing the turd more brightly, because it's the safe thing to do.

It's beginning to change, partly because there is not much more polishing to be done, but until the day a game can ask me to record a few dozen phonemes and then synthesizes my voice for the protagonist, I will probably not consider voiced protagonists as superior to my imagination.

I'd rather have just 1 voice per gender for all classes and races than none at all, I can't exaggerate how much I hate the silent protagonist, it's one my 2 biggest pet peeves in games. I hate having to imagine half a game in my head, I want to see, hear and experience all that happens, and see my character FULLY interact with the ingame world.

I don't know, maybe I lack as much imagination as some people seem to have, because in every game I've played with a silent protagonist, my character has just seemed to me to be this lifeless soulless thing.

Sure, just look at the variety of opinions over what LOOKS good. There's probably just as many opinions over what SOUNDS good.

I suppose it all depends what your goal is. Investing in presentation isn't bad in itself, but has consequences. For example, there is clear benefit to designing units with a set, unmovable kit as that gives designers better control over challenges they can pose to the players. Similarly, defining character in a game does allow for a better control over storytelling. But IMO that's missing the point of what RPG is about, just as removing leveling system would be.

I would refer to Bioware, who peaked with BGates and went on downard spiral pursuing presentation over anything else... that said, BG3 seems to be amping everything up, so I am curious to see where it will lead. Dialogue system doesn't seem streamlined at all.

EDIT: I should clarify - I liked Bioware games (aside Dragon Age games) up to ME2. But gradually they became more and more passive experiences, and therefore - less interesting. END OF EDIT

Perhaps, this is why I didn't get along with D:OS2 though - for all the mechanical interactivity and clearly insane amount of effort and care that went into the game... there wasn't much roleplaying in it. Luckily, for now, Larian isn't Alpha and Omega of roleplaying, and hopefully for me, it will keep being that way.

EDIT2: Also brilliant Mark Brown's brilliant video on Shepard.

I think reading it is be better, because when you read it you can put yourself in the character position easier, than when you listen 3 character talking, it is an rpg after all.

Of course watching someone else playing is way different than playing it and you notice this way easier, that your main is not talking, if you play you would never question it.

It feels like you're connecting voiced protagonist with predetermined characters and no options to recreate your vision. But I don't think thats fair. Yes, with some developers there is tendency to give less and less choice, focus on action and generally "safe" storytelling but i believe it can be different. For me replayability is connected with choices, complex dialogues and variety of character build. This still can happen with voiced protagonist.

I would prefer no voice acting at all. I like to read the dialogue, and having them speaking at the same time as I am reading is jarring (and a bit annoying).

What I have seen so far in the Voice acting is really great.

I would be willing to voice act player characters on the house, and if we got a community of individuals together, we maybe able to help provide this resource to Larian in a timely fashion.

So interesting to see the different feedback here as well.
Reminds me of the Different player types in the D&D Dungeon Master's guide.

I would say that at least at a Table, all of my players prefer I voice the villain then handing them written text.
Some love speaking and representing their characters, and some are silent. While others create their own story within a campaign, by inserting elements tied to their character.

I would be curious if you didn't want the Voice Over, did you not like the ones done in other AAA games ? Did you prefer text options for dialogue in cut scenes ?

I agree that having the voice overs in some parts and not others does hinder a dialogue scene.

I am very excited to see more of the game.

First thing, Thank you.
I can't tell you as a creative writer how nice it is to hear some one who actually reads.

A voiced protagonist works well in a game where you’re playing a specific person, like in Mass Effect.

DnD is about role playing. There’s no viable way to add voice acting to the protagonist in a game with this amount of character customization. Fallout 4 tried it, got massive backlash, and reverted to a silent protagonist in F76: Wastelanders. And that game has a considerably more narrow customization. In BG3, some people will want to play an aging dwarf with a deep voice, others a gay teenage elf. A lawful good human Paladin and a chaotic evil half-orc Warlock won’t sound the same. You would need so many different voice actors to bring every player’s fantasy to life that it’s just not financially viable in such a massive game as BG3.

What would be fine, I think, is if they do record a few voices, and give you the option to either select one, or no voice at all. Their text is not emotional paraphrase as with many games, so giving both options would work.

I would prefer a silent protagonist, barring a basic voice for things like combat expressions, spellcasting, etc (things like grunts, groans, verbal casting components, selection confirmations and the like). A voiced protag I'm cool with too. I prefer one over the other obviously, but either will do.

It depends? In games like KOTOR, Jade Empire or Dragon Age: Origins I did find it mildly distracting, though I never felt like those games allowed for bit roleplaying anyway. Those, to me, are dwarfed by Mass Effect, which is a solid hybrid - an action game with roleplaying elements.

I like Witchers a lot, but being familiar with the characer I don't look to play as anyone else then Geralt - and in Witcher 3 especially, they did a splendid job portraying him. Funnily enough, a friend of made who didn't read books was getting constantly frustrated, when Geralt would say things he didn't intend him to say.

Fallout: New Vegas is probably the best example of no protagonist VO game - for one it's a great RPG when it comes to character building and expression, and having first-person perspective doesn't draw attention to our protagonist blank face as I read through available lines.

I have no problem with no VO or partial VO - IE games, Disco Elysium, Shadowrun all work for me wonderfully. I am happy to sacrifice a bit of presentation on the altar of RPG-nessness.

*Shrug* I tend to role-play a bit even when I play boardgames. Don't need a game to do it for me.



Well, that's kinda a big part of it no? Voice is a very defining feature of a character. In a computer game it is the only part that is comletely handcrafted and outside player influence - you can't simulate or gamefy speach. While you can control actions of you character, you won't change performance and interpretation given by the actor.

I am more curious then upset, because to me doing VO for protagonist seems counter intuitive to what Larian has shown so far. I an genuily interested in seeing how they want to pull this one off.

Wow! Just checking back here after a few days and I'm super happy this thread is actually getting some action. After waiting around for 2-3 hours after my initial post without seeing any responses, I was getting a little disheartened lol.

I can see where the people who dislike voice acting are coming from. In a way, for those who have a bit more of a creative mindset, it can be better to imagine the scene in your head. That is not all of us though, and I think there are a lot of people such as myself who don't necessarily like playing table top DnD but still love a great RPG with cinematics. I for one really loved how Bioware were able to voice Commander Shephard in the Mass Effect series. As someone mentioned earlier, this made it so much more immersive/emotional when your companions died or when your character made an important speech.

Dragon Age 2 and 3 are other good examples of where we had a lot of character customisation going on, but we were still able to comfortably weave a voice protagonist in. Admittedly, I enjoyed Dragon Age 1 the most out of the series, but this was mainly due to the story line.

I think the main thing that people are forgetting is that this RPG is quite unique in that it provides MULTIPLAYER functionality. This is a HUGE selling point for my fiance and I, as we are struggling to find any kind of multiplayer RPG to play together other than the DOS series. Text-only is perfectly serviceable for single player games, but it can be extremely jarring when playing with others. You end up having to ask "has everyone finished reading this?" and "what did you end up saying?" over and over. It is just totally immersion breaking, at least from my experience (again, not a DnD fan and really not into physically role playing my character out loud for others).

Really excited to see that some people have indicated that Larian will include full voice acting. I hope this is true, but I don't want to get my hopes up just in case. I don't think my heart could take the disappointment :'(

On that note, how cool would it be if everyone was given a choice on how they want their character to respond, then the game randomly picks which character actually responds? I think that Star Wars MMO did something like that, which I think was really innovative

I loved the voice of Shepard in Mass Effect. It suited that game perfectly. It's not that I don't like a voiced protagonist, it's just that it's unlikely to be viable in a game like Baldur's Gate 3, which will have considerably more customization than say Dragon Age 2 and 3. And even then I felt like the voiced protagonist of DA3 limited the role-playing aspect. There's also the problem of the dreaded dialogue wheel (it exists to prevent having to read and listen to the exact same sentence), which every developer so far seems to have a real issue with implementing. It's too common that your character ends up saying something you didn't really intend, which is always a bummer and can make it feel like you're watching a conversation play out rather than being a part of it.

The multiplayer issue of not knowing what your party members have said is, of course, a problem, but should be easily solvable with some well-timed text feedback.

I don’t think “full voice acting” means we’ll hear our character speak in every dialogue. DOS2 and the enhanced edition of DOS were “fully voice acted”, but that just meant that every line of NPC dialogue was voice acted, as opposed to you having to read most of it.

A fully voiced protagonist throughout would mean recording the other half of almost every conversation for each origin character, plus at least one male and one female custom character voice. That’s a lot of recording, and some people would still probably complain there isn’t a voice that fits the character they want to play as.

I wouldn’t complain if they did, but I certainly don’t expect it.

I disagree with people saying that hearing your character’s voice is essential for role playing. Fallout 4 was mentioned as a bad example earlier, but I think the problem with Fallout 4 was more that it very rarely mattered what you actually said. That’s far more important for role playing to me. That doesn’t mean I think you are wrong, I just don’t feel that way myself. It shouldn’t be very hard for any game with a voiced protagonist to include the option to cut it for those who don’t like it. Not sure why no one does.

I also disagree with people saying it’s weird to see your character just standing there, because that almost always happens with voiced protagonists as well. While you’re reading/deciding what to say, the character stands there looking dumb. Go and make a cup of tea and come back and they won’t have moved. The difference when it’s unvoiced is just that the game skips the part where you actually speak. So that doesn’t bother me either.

The point about not having time to see what was selected in multi player seems easily fixed to me. Just keeping the text on screen longer should prevent you having to ask your mates what they selected.

What interests me most about what we’ve seen so far is that there was at least one point where the protagonist does speak in an animated scene. In the first gameplay reveal, when they set up camp, Astarion says something about doing as the day walkers do. That makes me wonder if certain key protagonist lines are voiced, even if most regular dialogue options aren’t?

I think ME1&2 strength comes from more then just VO. They put a lot of effort into directing the shots - from camera angles, composition, background sets. You know, using basic visual language, instead of awkward closeups at digital models. Witcher3 succeeded as well - I remember analyzing facial reaction of a small quest NPC and realizing how much work was put into every conversation.


Not at all! My best time with Divinity was in Coop. I can see it being a boon when playing with randoms, but if I play with my close friend I like communicating. Reading our lines to each other and roleplaying was lots of fun... especially as I took care to create a character which would clash with my friend's character constantly. I never liked coop games which don't require constant communication. Still, I prefer board games for socializing over computer games anyway.

Personally I´m ok with fully voiced NPC but I prefer to be able to choose a portrait and a voice for my custom characters. If that means that my character will be silent and I have to use my voice that works for me.

Voiced protagonists wok better in Mass effect because you have a fixed main character: A Human commander named Shepard. That was also the case in Witcher, DAO2, Last of us, etc.
In this game, you can create your own custom main character, and maybe the voice options they give you do not fit.

That said, as Origin characters are predetermined the voices of Lae`zel, Asterion, Shadowheart, etc will fit just fine.

I really appreciate voice acting and would have loved a fully voiced protagonist, but I understand why that likely won't happen given the many race/gender combinations. Still a worthwhile goal to pursue imo.

Also, it can be kind of annoying to read the options, decide a response, and then wait as the char speaks what we just read to ourselves.

It prolongs the length of conversations and weights the pauses with an imbalance on our end, whereas an immediate, unvoiced answer on response selection retains more of the right timing dynamics in the dialogue.

-Press Space to Skip-

Skip

Sure, but that’s pretty easy to deal with.

Edit: Hurrah! I can finally quote! And in my first attempt am already abusing the system.

It makes me really look forward to tech such as Adobe's VOCO (which was a prototype only). It allows you to generate speech based on original content. So you could record x# of voice-acted lines, then use the generator so add more text without needing the actor for modifications, added lines, or original content.

I wonder if the prototype is available to companies. For modders, this would be golden. They could add dialog and voice to characters using the character's original voice, or they could transform to some other voice (think more monstrous goblins speech for example)

I would definitely take no VO over something like that. There is so much more to Voice Over then reading lines.

It seems like this is something that some of us appreciate, and some of us don't. That's fine, but I hope Larian finds a way to implement it and maybe make it optional? I get that it's super expensive but Larian has always surprised me with how far they will go for their fans so I'm going to keep my fingers crossed.

Worst case, I hope they are least put some thought into how they present the chosen dialogue option to the other players, as someone above suggested.

This was not text to speech, this was natural. It could be used for example to do deep fakes indistinguishable from an actual person. It was very impressive but may remain a prototype only due to concerns of privacy etc.

Yeah, there are going to be way too many dialog options to have a fully voiced protagonist, but the little vocalizations would be cool if we had an option to record our own mundane voicings during character creation. It would be easy to set up a little list of exclamations such as "OK", "Yes?", "Unnh, I've been hit!", and "Good heavens, I am in need of a rest." We would speak them into the mic, and the game would store them as little MP3 files for playback at the right times. Good fun!

Where do people find the salaries for voice acters? everybody keeps saying it's too expensive - but it's not like they're hiring Hollywood A-listers.
From what I've been able to find out, unless they are big names in the industry, they don't really get paid that much.

I don't care whether the MC is voiced or not but if you are not going to voice the MC, don't focus on them from the waist up in dialogues. They look like mannequins.

I agree.

Voice acting can be great for specific character (shepard, gerald, . . .) but not if you have tons of races, classes and alignments to chose from.

this is another one of those topics where a lot of people just go with their knee jerk reaction without thiking about it.

"Fully voiced is always better!"
Well is it? have you played Dragon Age Inquisition? Have you tried roleplaying a barbarian fighter? An old cranky mage? a disgruntled mercenary? A ranger more at home in the wilds than in the city?

If you havent, i invite you to try doing that and then reconsider if you want a fully voiced protagonist.

Trust me I've thought about it - and I'll GLADLY make that sacrifice in imaginary RP for a fully voiced protagonist.

I don't know what's the minimum wage for VO. Professionals will be protected by unions and considering it's a recording for which the actor won't get any royalties "per session" pay might be fairly high. At least that's how it works with musicians. Doing a lengthy VO, like protagonist will take a lot of time, though I am not able to even guess how many sessions it would take. Ideally, carrying an important role would also come with increased pay, but from what I know game companies like to dodge that burden. Also there is such thing as agents - I don't know how casting an actor for VO works, but it is possible that both actor and his agent will be paid, which would increase the cost.

And even actors aside - doing a VO take many many more people then just actors - from casting, to studio rent, equipment, recording session, producer, sound engineers, editing and implimenting the VO, involvement or actors and game directors in recording of VO. There is so much much more to VO then just a person talking to a microphone.

https://www.gravyforthebrain.com/how-much-do-voice-actors-make/

As with any professional actor, may vary between countries, prestige, the type of work etc
The following figures are only indicators. Hopefully they will give you some idea of the differences in how much voice actors get paid.

The average voice actor has a salary of $31,400 a year. An entry level voice actor can expect to earn $18,390 a year while an experienced voice actor has an average annual salary of $90,000 a year. Top level voice actors can earn way in excess of this – with some at the top of the profession earning healthy 6 figure incomes

Average Voice Actor Salary
Top 10% of voice actors earn $90,000 and above
Top 25% of voice actors earn $51,000 and above

Median voice actors pay is $31,400
Bottom 25% of voice actors earn $21,700 and above
Bottom 10% of voice actors earn $18,390 and above


https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/43u5am/how_much_do_voice_overs_cost/

I unfortunately cannot comment on the exact price it cost us, but it was low 5 figures to get our voice acting done. This was paid per hour (estimated at around 1000 words per hour I think, I wasn't part of sorting this out so I'm not sure on that) and included:

Casting for 4 different characters (they sent us a short-list of their top 10, we picked our favorite from that).

Recording it on site in their studio (with an additional voice director being there), most lines have around 4 takes.

Cleaning up/editing/renaming of audio files

They split up recording of actors between different days to preserve energy between recordings.

EDIT: our game is set in England so we got an English company to handle all of this for us, PitStop Productions. We also had our narrative designer fly over there to help out during the recording, mainly to give direction to the tone of each of our scenes.

EDIT 2: The total recording time for voice actors was around 20 hours or so spread over 4 days

I saw nothing wrong with how Larian studios handled the Voice Acting for DOS 1 and 2. It's nice we can pick the tone of our character as they make comments on the environment and such, but I think it's the difference between playing a role and playing a character. No matter which dialogue option you pick, Commander Shepard will always be Shepard, Geralt will always be Geralt. BG3 we are playing a character we make (or an Origin character), so we should be able to use our own imaginations in how they should sound like. We are playing a game of D&D and Larian is the DM remember, I wouldn't want the DM voicing the character I helped build and mold.

It does look like they'll be aiming for full voice acting for custom characters. It was mentioned in the AMA they did on Reddit a while ago, so unless something has changed since then it should still be the case. That said we have to keep in mind that the game is still early in development, and plans change. There's also no guarantee that they'll have it in Early Access if they do.

Here's the relevant bit from the AMA for reference:

Will custom (non origin) characters have Voice Acting, or is it for for origin characters only?

Adam: Hello! Yes, custom characters will have voice acting - you’ll choose a voice as part of character creation.

That's the real question. An answer like Adams is technically correct but doesn't get at what we're looking for - will lines be voiced etc. in similar ways for origin vs. non.

We get they'll have voice lines... that's basic.

Adam: They'll have full voice acting, just like origins!


Link to the compiled AMA if you want to check anything else:
https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/fhq9cq/compiled_baldurs_gate_ama_20200313/

Glad to see via the AMA that full VO is coming, I would say it'll be post EA, like a treat for full release: which will be amazing.

As much as a mute protagonist helps my RP side, the flow divide and suspension of disbelief required makes a full VO for me, essential, when all the NPCs are fully voiced in 2020.

Thanks DarkSeldarine for finding the answer from the AMA. Since they are so busy working on this epic and beautiful game it would be really cool to see more voices added after full release and over time perhaps, similar to gift bags so that we could have more voices to choose from with the diverse array of races going to be in the game :)

Watching that last Intellect Devourer gameplay further reinforced how necessary a voiced protag is; the narrator is amazing: good old Malady

That's just like... your opinion, man. Yet you talk as all the knowledge of the world is with you.

I'm wondering if Larian's love of the Brummie accent might extend to the protagonist this time. Though I'm not from Brum myself I think it'd be awesome, not least for its potential to wind people up.

eh that just reinforced how good a narrator is. with a narrator i see even less reason to have a voiced protagonist, especially for custom characters. it'll just suck me right out of the game and eliminate any idea of the character i had in my head.

They have already confirmed the protags/PC will be voiced but I just had a fantastic idea: this could be the first time ever it's happened in an RPG: the option to turn main PC VO on/off.

On would be the full VO with facial animation etc - what's been confirmed as happening.
Off would be how it is now (maybe with the option just to leave Narrator on/off also).

This surely wouldn't be too hard to do (I know , i know..I'm not a dev, but it is what's on the game now), and will then quench the RP thirst of fellows like yourself, and people who want a more cinematic adventure like me. Mass Effect/Dragon Age/The Witcher etc are my top games of all time, that type of VO/dialogue combo is what I want from this (and what is planned).

+1 I still have a hard time believing that would make full VO for multirace/multiclass/multisex protagonist, but if they do on/off would be greatly desirable (as well as wider selection of old fashioned "barks" rather then full VO). Why I don't oppose full VO, vioce does define the character quite a lot. If VO fits the character I want to play - that's fine. If it doesn't then I would rather have an option to disable/minimize it.

I'm still not fully convinced that the voicelines you choose during conversations are going to be voiced (I certianly hope so though), because I seem to remember that Larian also said that D:OS2 was going to have "full voiceacting", which it didn't.
So I think it would be great if someone from Larian could clarify if the conversation system we've seen so far is how it's going to be, or if the full voiceacting just hasn't been implemented yet.

That would honestly be pretty fantastic. I gotta say a voiced protag is the one decision that really, really bothers me with this game. I really don't think they understand how much that impacts the ability for some people to immerse themselves in the role play experience. But providing options like that would go a very long way.

I think it be awesome even if they only had one male and female voice like mass effect or two male and two female like dragon age inquisition to save money a voice just makes your character feel so much more alive

I just really hope I can turn voiced dialogue off for myself if they're really insistent on having the protagonist be fully voiced...

I'm sure that if it is fully voiced and you can't turn it off, there'll be modders who'll remove it. Modding it IN, if it's not fully voiced for those of us who want it, will be impossible.

For me it depends a lot on the VA, and how they choose or are told to do the voice. Worked well in DOS, was okay in DA2/I, but found FO4 and Mass Effect too jarring (both were way too shouty; I think even more jarring once I realised Jennifer Hale had a much broader range which included non-shouty voices, such as the female half of Lutece in Bioshock). Or the Divinity II approach where there wasn't PC-voiced dialogue but my character would comment randomly on various places and events ("ooh, shiny!")

I think the first D:OS isn't really a fair comparison, though, because that game wasn't as focused on the idea of custom characters. You were two source hunters no matter what, your fate was determined for you before you created your character, you just created the look and skills basically. Same for FO4, no matter how you wanted to play it, you were playing a very specific character. And those sorts of RPGs, a voiced protagonist works! It makes sense because you aren't using your imagination to determine who that character you control is, it's not a character you created, it's one defined for you.

I think D:OS2 mostly nailed it in that your thoughts were mostly conveyed by the narrator during dialogue, because you could be Ifan or Fane, but you could also be a custom character with a personality defined in the players mind, not so much by Larian. Now I know D:OS2 had the occasional bit of reactive dialogue, as you mentioned (the ooo shiny bit), but even that was a bit jarring to me because it was so outside of what I expected. But those were infrequent enough that it was easy to ignore or forget. But when it did occur, man it really took me and my friend out of the moment because it totally conflicted with what we envisioned those characters to sound like.

That's quite standard for an RPG. For practical reason you role has to be somewhat defined - Vault Dweller for Fallout1, Village saviour in Fallout2, Child of Bhaal in BGs, Watcher in Pillars, Kingdom ruler for Kingmaker, Sorcerer for D:OS2 etc. D:OS though kinda used both RPG stereotypes giving you both "Source Hunter" backstory, and amnesiac ancent generals backstory - a bit of an overkill, though D:OS story is kniwn to not be terribly well thought out.

When it comes to an act of playing I find full VO to be unecessary - first of all I want to read what I want to say: I dislike "summaries" - like in Mass Effect or to lesser extend Witcher. And if I read through lines, I won't wait for them to be read out alound again.

Something I literally just thought off, though - if Larian were to do voice protagonists it would be super nice for Coop, which might be the main reason for doing it. Player choosing the line might not care for the VO, but player "listening" on the conversation would probably prefer it to be performed.

Sorry, I meant Divinity II, not Original Sin II (as in the one from a decade ago). You got a choice of six(? Or maybe six each for male and female) voices but they were purely reactive. I suppose a bit like Dragon Age Oranges too, for that matter.

Anyway, I'm torn on the issue, and unsurprisingly it really depends how well the voice works with my vision of my character. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't; so Inquisition was mostly okay but FO4 kept railroading me, which was quite annoying.

I'm in total 'wait-and-see' mode on this myself. In the original BG/IWD games I always kind of 'settled' for what seemed at least 'closest to the ideal' for the type of character I was playing, but ultimately the overall pool of voices for the various reactions always seemed too small for my tastes...which back then especially I understood of course, but still, I always wished for more. Then with BG3, Swen & gang keep talking so so many permutations that you can take, even with the dialogue numbers touted in PFH taken in, it still seems like a daunting tasks to have more than 3-4 voice options you can choose from for each gender (and even thinking of that many makes my head spin).

Luckily, custom voices were easily importable. I finally did a full eng playthrough of BG1&2 as I wanted to recreate Garrett from thief, and VO I found was in English (for obvious reasons).

I didn't even know there were full voice mods for BG1&2....my mind is blown! Next you'll be telling me that the controller UI has been ported to the PC Enhanced Editions too in a mod (hoping I'm manifesting this as I type it lol).

Back to Voiced Protag news, has there been any more word in the community updates on this? I know the Narrator wasn't in the old build videos, so that's been added, and I'm guessing they are doing it piecemeal and adding it as they finish VO work... this and the now confirmed partial controller support at Early Access launch is my 2 biggies.

Still think there's a good chance VO work not added until Version 1.0, but it would be such a delight for Early Access....

Having fully voiced NPCs, narration and so on is always preferable, even mandatory Id say especially in text heavy games. Adding a fully voiced protagonist on top of that however is a bit excessive. Single player should always be the primary focus in this kind of games and Im perfectly able to read my own lines. Not to mention it would only prolong the development even further and we dont need that.

Quality voice acting greatly improves the product. If the acting is poor, the game become distinctly cheesy. To get it right, Larian need to go about recruiting voice talent in an informed way and source their talent intelligently. The West End in London is a world famous centre for theatre and there are several famous drama schools there and associated agencies which could help. BBC Radio has a ton of talent used to entrance listeners in radio drama, technicians, actors, agents and so on. There is a world of talent there just waiting to be tapped. If that wasn't explored properly, then Larian have failed quite considerably, but there is no time like the present to start making contacts and find out what is possible and even doable:

https://www.backstage.com/magazine/...gencies-every-actor-needs-to-know-69817/
https://actinginlondon.co.uk/top-drama-schools-london/
https://millennialstudios.co.uk/blog/top-british-film-production-companies/
http://www.britmovie.co.uk/studios/

Some games are just brilliant for their voices. Two examples should provide an idea of what can be achieved:

Thief II
Thief II was specifically designed to showcase audio and focus on how audio could enhance a game. Many people don't know that the voice acting for both the protagonist, Garret, and the antagonist was provided by the same person.

https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=u5VI1QcOq74

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Alien Crossfire
The amazing milieu in this game was brought to life by the different characters which came vividly to life in their voices.

https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=ftefXCqil_U

Normally, I would concur with this statement 100%.

...but watching the gameplay videos, I feel a distinct inertia in the flow of things due to everyone else's lively performances....it highlights even more, the weird vibe of a silent protagonist when the camera angles are as they are.

When they talk as freely as they do as companions, then once the same characters are the PC they go mute, it just has that weird stop-go affect on me. In games like Wasteland 3, DOS2 and so on, I don't get that same inertia as the camera isn't right in my face, but it is here, and without VO work, it's straight weird IMO.

Obviously, Larian has said (in the AMA) that all lines will be voiced in the final product, and it's getting there with the narrator (for sure), it'll just be great to hear once it's fully realised.

I’m still not convinced that “fully voiced” means a voiced protagonist for every dialogue choice, but they may well be for some story related scenes.

Personally I think it looks much weirder watching someone else play than playing yourself. Especially if you’re watching someone really labour over every choice, or taking votes on what to say next.

I replayed a bit of Dragon Age Origins recently and I’d forgotten it was the same system. It seemed odd for maybe the first half hour.

What no one ever seems to mention in these debates is that the whole conversation is often structured differently for voiced protagonists compared to silent protagonists. With silent protagonists, you usually pick a line of dialogue, then they reply, then you pick another line, and so on. But very often with fully voiced protagonists, picking a dialogue option results in a two way conversation, and sometimes a lot more than that. You don’t just pick one line at a time, more steer the conversation and events.

You could be right re: what is voiced (aka protagonist lines) vs chosen...I think if there were flavour things said in each exchange of dialogue, that would satiate that aforementioned inertia, the narrator also helps a lot here: but yes, for sure, if the protag fully voices all the cutscenes, then that'd be a great middle ground.

Hey @Larian , anyone able to clarify what the AMA meant when it said all dialogue was voiced? The addition of the narrator of late makes me think it's all getting done, but it would be good to know expectations going forward...either way, guess we find out in 2 weeks aye!

It worked for me in Mass Effect; although it was more like you pick a general idea, then..."OK surprise me".

Before you ask: Mark Meer.

Now in this game you can live someone else's story too...so lots more variety.


I will be a custom character and it will be the first time someone reads for me... so no opinion yet...other than a toggle on/off can't loose.


Now for voice spam we always got the same actor for "noble", "gruff", "ruff", scruff", ect, ect...It could get expensive otherwise. Unless of coarse they used a pay per line site and got lucky.

`"My favorite actor was wine-o Bob from downtown Detroit"... I smell mod opportunity.

+1 for Mark Meer too: I love Jen Hale, but man......Meer just connected with me perfectly.

I know what the above is talking about with the camera angles making it more awkward with no voiced protagonist, it's all well when it's at Infinity engine angles, and you're not right up in the grill of the person, but yeah: it's far more noticeable when you're seeing facial animations like they're about to speak, then boom, no speech.

I am pretty sure the AMA meant that the protag will be voiced - but now I'm thinking it may be just referring to cut scenes and flavor voicing too: if that's the case, I have that there's multiple voice options, that would be a cool halfway point/middle ground.

Voiced protagonist works well in the witcher 3 for example because you don't have the choice of the character you are playing.

But in a game in which you can make your own character from scratch with your own name, race, class, background and so on, it's kind of tricky to record the right voice for them. When you play a pnp game, there is nobody else next to you telling your lines. You are the one in charge.

And in that sense, Larian made the right decision in my opinion. It remains true to a pnp session adventure. And it's much less work besides, cause it would have meant find 10 more actors for generic voices and also make all the companions having to talk from the protagonist perspective as well.

I can understand people preferring the money spent on hiring an additional developer to add features to the game. You could probably play the game without any sound at all! Page 24 of this PDF has the rates:

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/contributors/bbc-equity-tv-agreement.pdf

I think most game studios are not aware of how much value a professional actor can add to the game, if the talents are well involved. "Here you are mate, read this. Bye!" Ideally, the actors ought to be in communication with the team writing the dialogue at an early stage. If the Art team and the Sound team haven't learned from the actors and incorporated this into the game, it is a waste.

IMHO Larian generally do a pretty good job with this, at least starting with Divinity 2 (Divine Divinity and Beyond Divinity were their own thing in that regard...) I'm not sure how involved the VAs were then but the acting really fitted the game well and it's improved through DOS and DOS2 which seemed to have a lot of actor engagement, or at least it sounded like it. Contrasted with several games I've played where the acting really did sound pretty much like it was phoned in with no direction.

I would expect this to be at least the same standard as previous games and may even improve on them.

One thing I'm not so sure about is blowing a huge chunk of the budget on A-list actors: a number of studios have done that and tbh a lot of the time a jobbing actor better known for bit parts in the usual carousel of TV dramas and soaps can do as good a job and it avoids the pitfalls of a game character being eclipsed by their actor.

I am pretty sure that most VO is done by professionals these days. Honestly, I doubt the quality of VO comes from actors competence, but rather from the process - game development is a fluid thing and actor has likely little insight into the actual game. If devs don't quite know what they want, or are doing recording in an overtime hurry, or keep changing the script it all might contribute to the final quality of the VO.

I will be honest - I don't think you want actors to have creative control over their work - their contribution are absolutely vital but one needs to accept, what the product is - just like music their work is complimentary to the game itself, rather then the point of focus.

Luckily, Larian's VO has been rather great so far. If protagonist has full VO, that is a decision that confuses me - not because full VO can't be effective, but IMO it goes against what an RPG should try to achieve. Or at least singeplayer RPG - I can absolutely see the benefit of the full VO in coop. But can we really have one voice for all of the races? Doing one voice per race and sex would be madness - but then it is Larian we are talking about.

You need to play Beyond Divinity. Half the protagonist gets full VO so you get the best of both worlds; and it is truly the best!

Will do! Recently bought all previous Divinities on GOG.

Unless it’s Brian Blessed. Every game should feature Brian Blessed.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HWAu7CQK6Wg

If they do give the protagonist a voice, I am rather certain they will make it optional, as it is a rather divisive feature among CRPG players.

That is completely true. This is one of the reasons I didn't like Lohse voice acting as they portrayed her personality as a teenager.

Even worse was Fane. His voice didn't match his character and his personality didn't match his history.

Apart from that, VA in DOS2 was generally good.

VA is mostly expensive when you hire well known or sought after talent. A lot of studios in film try new actors for instance "Baby Driver" because it allows the character to shine through the actor without say just being Tom Cruise, and it costs significantly less.

I too wish for VA for my main as well.

Really makes the character creation work well.

In DOS2 I was happy however, given that my character could speak, if very little, and in fact did sometimes converse with people.

This does indeed seem to be a very divisive feature. I'll always be for a voiced protagonist, because it seems like I lack some imagination some other people have. When I read text I never hear it as a voice in my head, I just kind of absorb its meaning as I read it - sort of like when you think you are hungry and will go make something to eat, you don't think in your head in a voice: "I am hungry, I will go and make me something to eat". People talking about imagining a voice in their head as they read lines seems very alien to me.
That's why silent protagonists are always lifeless to me.

You can’t have the same voice for dwarfs as you do for elves, half-orcs shouldn’t sound like githyanki, and gnomes shouldn’t sound like drow.

So how many voices should you need to represent all the different character options?

Let’s say 3, which I think is waaaay too low, but for the sake of argument let’s go with 3.

Multiple them by 2 for both male and female and now we have 6.

But all of the origins characters will be player characters, too. How many will there be?

We have 5 now, so let’s say we end up with 8. I feel that number is on the low end, but I’m being conservative.

So already we have 14 actors reading the lines for all of the main character dialogues in an exceptionally dialogue heavy game.

If Larian can pull something like that off I will be impressed, but I’m not holding my breath.

True, that. And every TV programme.


She never struck me as sounding like a teenager, just a rather "bohemian" personality, which is what she was meant to be. That said, I still have a sort of teenage level of maturity but I was actually a teenager back around Victorian times.

I acknowledge it's a risky prospect because of perceptions and expectations, though. There are plenty of examples where it works but sometimes it really doesn't: FO4's female voice actor (edit: proof-reading after the event, as I do, that reads quite oddly: I meant "for the female PC", not "the female actor"!) was good but defined the character in a very particular way; worse still, she defined elements of the story in a very particular way which wasn't how I was playing it. I could've overlooked the dialogue but not the intonation.

Geralt's voice initially sounded very out of place to me with his overbearingly strong American accent. I eventually got used to it and the whole thing blended together simply as Geralt but it took quite a lot longer than was ideal.

If we're doing regional accents, the protagonist in BG3 should have a Brummie accent. Larian likes Brummies. I hasten to add I'm not from Brum.

Oh, also on the topic of accents and voice intonations in general: there was a lot of major things I didn’t like about Mass Effect, but one of my more minor but persistent quibbles was that my character was the whitest sounding black man who ever lived. Every time Commander Shepard spoke I couldn’t get over the incongruity of his appearance with his voice. Set voices for custom characters is a tricky tightrope that I’d rather Larian all together ignore.

Maybe not a teenager, but her dialogue was poor (notably the romance) and immature. She had such a dramatic arc that I don't think was explored well because of the way they portrayed her in the game (on top of the lighthearted tone of DOS2). Imoen also did sound like a teenager but her dialogue and drama were better explored.

Had the same problem for Fane. On the other hand I think they did well on the Red Prince (good match on personality/story/VO).

For Geralt, he sounds generic to me with a Batman-ish or Solid Snake-ish vibe. W3 had solid VO, but nobody was really impressive.

I'll say it again, if it's a full voiced VA (which it is by the sounds...I think), then the option to turn off VA is all that's needed (so it's like how it is now) is all that's needed and boom!, everyone wins

Is Larian actually planning on fully voiced protagonist. I don't see how they can do that. There are currently 4 voice options ( 2 male, 2 female) but on top of that all 5 of our companions can also be chosen as the protagonist. . . 9 full voice overs seems unfeasible.

The issue with this is that it kinda only works when the voice lines up with how you imagine your character.
It can also have the opposite effect and make you feel like it's not your character or is forcing you into playing your character in a certain way.

I get how someone who is not used to it might find it lacking, but I can only say that ever since Bioware decided to voice its protagonists the dialogue became much more restricted. It boils down to what do you prefer, read a little (really not too much, you wanna see a lot of reading check out Pillars of Eternity), or lose a lot of story. Voice acting in general means less story (but today it's already a done deal, even obsidian added voice acting to poe2), but to voice your protagonist (especially if you have more than one voice set, and here you have something like 4 so you need to record all the lines four times) is too much work and it's not worth it.

Also, Larian already uses the protagonist voice sets for the dream boy/girl voice, so they already need to record her/his lines four times, and even this seems like too much work

Its not just 4 voice sets. Its at least 9 because the 5 companion characters can be selected to play as the protagonist. I really can't see Larian adding fully voiced protagonist . . . but there is some limited voice work scattered through Act 1.

Agreed. This is one of the many reasons why I play most games with sound off.

I'm actually very happy with the way Larian is doing it right now. I don't need to hear my character say the dialogue I choose, but its nice to hear her/him banter with the party members or react to failed/succeeded rolls.

Yeah you're right I forgot about them. So everything I said times 9

At least you'd have the option of skipping the voiced lines, those of us who want fully voiced protagonist can't add it in.

The way it is now, the protagonist looks like a mime, just making facial expressions and postures, all conversations just look so unnatural and awkward.

EDIT: I really wish Larian would comment on this - they claimed fully voiced in the past, but has been silent about it since.

According to the data mine there are 8 origin characters (assuming all companion characters are still origin characters as Larian previously said), so that is 12 voice sets,

I would like the option of a voiced pc as right now as other have mentioned it looks like your character s just making awkward faces and is a blank slate compared to everyone else. For those who don't want it have then simply put in the option to turn it off. Everyone wins.

It seems to be a matter of taste and perception. Fane voice was perfect for me. Now Gale reminds me of something similar. They're both scientists, so it makes sense.

About voice main character, dialogues become more lively, for example, I rly like sarcastic Hawke from Dragon Age 2. But on the other hand this leads to limited responses, and I am against it. I love role-playing games for their variety! For games of this genre, it is normal when the main character does not have a "voice". Choices matter than voice.

That's animations problem why not fix those instead of spending so much money on useless voice acting?

It is NOT useless, the mute protagnist is so immersion breaking for me that I decided not to buy the game.

I quoted a specific comment about a specific issue someone had. I'm sorry it's so bad for you that you can't play the game. And I can certainly relate, but I don't think it's a good enough reason to spend so much time and money on it.

Its not even just the money issue. There are likely technical limitations involved. I remember an interview about Dragon Age Inquisition I think and the developers mentioned there were things like a limit to how long each piece of voice over could be so lines had to be kept to a 'twitter' like limit and also limits to how much dialogue could be loaded into memory at one time. And voice files are some of the largest files soaking up hard drive space. Plus if 9 people have already recorded a line, and you later decide it should be changed . . . well lets just say it greatly restricts your options.

Lacking a voiced protagonist will be one of the biggest drawbacks when this likely masterpiece finally releases. When everything is so superbly voice-acted, the protagonists silence is deafening.

Not a Bioware fan I take iti?

uh... soundfiles are actually quite small compared to everything else in a game (unless you go for raw uncompressed PCM which I wouldn't know why you would). Also, limiting changing dialogue later restricting options? isn't that already a problem for all the voiced NPCs? (granted, maybe not quite as much) they should just go for no voiceacting at all then.

I also keep seeing people mentioning how expensive it is - it's not like they are using Hollywood talent, an average voiceactor makes ~$200 an hour. For the money spent on a CGI movie like the intro (now THOSE are expensive), you could get a ton of voiceacting.

You haven't played games before like this one, yes? I mean Tyranny, Pillars of Eternity, also Divinity 2?

They never do the voice acting of the main character, because it will take too much time and money. This is what happened to Dragon Age. You never play Origins? And after full voice (in DA2) we have only wheel of elections, instead of a full-fledged role-playing game...

Consider that this is not just a large number of default options. But also variants for races. Class. And other stuff like that. The worst thing is that everyone will have the same voice. The intonation will be the same. Dwarf and elf same voice? PLZ! Awful. Good and evil with same intonation? No plz!

It only makes it worse.

Or you need to do a voice for each race, at a minimum. I hope you understand that this is already expensive?

The compression between dragon age origins and it's sequels is very useful here. The difference in dialogue choices is staggering

Absolutely NOT. This isn't Mass Effect/ The Witcher/ Halo.
Having the exact same voice at every play-through is extremely DULL for this type of game. Defeats the purpose of creating a UNIQUE DnD character.
BG3 dialogue cinematic already butchered this game (makes having a load more companions impossible, no modded companions, very restrictive <movie like> dialogue options, romances look HILARIOUS, acting is cringy, looks silly/buggy/<face palm> and will age badly etc etc...
Now people complain that the only CREATIVE part of the game, the main character YOU create must have a Mr. Clean voice.
No thanks. Points to Larian on that. Now add non cinematic dialogues so we can have or create/MOD in more companions!

Although this doesn't bother me in the slightest, I think it's really unfair for me to tell people to "get over it". Not everyone grew up playing CRPG games and even I can get tired of playing something like BG 2 because of all the reading. I still think it's the best compromise between dubbing everything and dubbing nothing.

I would personally love to have the protagonist's lines fully voiced. But the way this game is set up makes that very unrealistic. First of all, they have four different custom PC voices. So all four of those voice actors would have to redundantly record EVERY line of dialogue the PC might say in the ENTIRE game. Thousands of lines, probably.

But that's not all. Because what if you're doing the conversation as one of the origin characters/companions? Oh shit, now we gotta have at LEAST five MORE voice actors also record every line of dialogue the PC might say in the entire game. That's if they don't add any party members, which we already pretty much know they're going to.

Paying to voice ONE, maybe TWO versions of the main character for the whole game, that they could do, and I'd expect them to. But ten or twelve different actors all recording the same massive number of lines? That would be more or less unthinkable.

They may do it, they've said it's going to be fully voiced on a couple of occasions... But it wasn't 100% clear.

And to add to what you say - even if they fully record lines for those twelve voices, we'll end up with four custom character voices. Only four. Two per gender. For all races, classes, backgrounds - all archetypes. A soft-spoken dwarven barbarian might make sense with a particular backstory, but not at all in most cases.

As I rarely find a voice I actually like (and in this game I barely can tell a difference but usually go with voice 3 for males). I have zero issues with a silent main character. I can imagine the voice as being pleasing to me for the character that way.

I would prefer a deeper voice (and not like solasta where deeper sounds like he smoked 4 packs a day since childhood, gravelly is not deeper). Just deeper. Not the higher pitched voices that seem to dominate the voiced main characters in games so far.

I played Baldur's gate 1+2, Icewind Dale 1+2 Planescape Torment etc. The HUGE difference between those isometric RPGs and this one is the cinematic conversations, those old games were almost half novel.

And stop saying it so expensive when it's really not.

And I'll take Bioware's conversation wheel and sacrifice some voiceoptions over mute protag any day of the week.

also, I REALLY wish Larian would comment on this subject and put this discussion to rest. It almost feels like Larian decided to not do full voiceacting even though they claimed it during an AMA, and hope people will just forget about it.

Well and this is kill roleplay gameplay like it’s dead right now in Bioware games…

The dialogs don't make sense in BW. And voices still sound absolutely boring, because we just have voice1 and voice2. We don’t have warrior, scientist, sly or other choices for the personality of our character with a change in intonation.

As a result, we completely lack the personality of the character, not only in voice, because it does not give the choice that we need, but also in the dialog wheel. Madness.

There is no chance that I will accept 1-2 options, but with a voice, instead of getting 10-15 options without a voice.

I can understand both sides of the argument, even though I personally vastly prefer unvoiced protagonist (though battle cries and occasional comments are fine, so long as there are a range of voices to choose from, like in DA:O and BG1 and 2).

I've had a hard time connecting to my characters in DAI and DA2 because they're stuck somewhere in between custom-made and pre-made. I can design them physically the way I want, but no matter what kind of personality I want to give them, I won't be able to do so freely because their mannerisms and voices will always be determined for me. Sure, there are a few options to choose emotional responses, but you will never be able to make ex. an Inquisitor as silly as Sera or as haughty as Vivienne, if that's even the right word. I love that Larian are making the protagonist have a lot of facial expressions (though I wish the player could decide what kind of behavior would suit their character in the CC, ex. stoic, smug and so forth), something I feel like DAI lacked a lot apart from some scenes.

I prefer my character not speaking for me, that way I can imagine the voice as I want <3.

I prefer non-voiced protagonists because of the extra dialogue options folks have mentioned and because it's much easier - and less jarring - to mod in new or changed dialogue with an unvoiced character. On the other hand, voiced protagonists can be very compelling if done well - back when I was into Star Wars: The Old Republic, there were some classes I played over and over just because the voice acting was so good.

Wish we could get a response from Larian around this

I also like silent MC. I love it how it is right now.

Mass effect 3 was really fun with a voiced protagonist. I'd like the protagonist voiced in BG3 too. Makes all the talking bits really enjoyable for me and much more cinematic to play thru.

Same here.
I really hope they give us the silent option, and drastically reduce the camera-time focusing on our characters doing these weird poses

I really hope the MC will remain as silent as possible. I can hardly stand those few lines the MC says right now. Less voice acting for the MC and more dialog options please.

I agree. Partial VO or no VO.

Without a doubt VO brings value to a game, same with directed cinematic - but it’s a question of what the game tries to achieved: be a pre-directed spectacle to be watched or give player as much choice and agency in shaping their character as possible? Spicing up presentation, unavoidably leads to limiting the player input - even choices and reactions are plenty, those choices are scripted, directed and recorded by 3rd parties, unaware of our intentions as players. That a big potential problem in an RPG.

I really don’t think getting closer to Uncharted level of production should be a goal of an RPG. I found talking heads detrimental in Dragon Age: Origins, and I am yet to be convinced by BG3. A sheer amount of animation and camera placement requires to make talking heads pay off is staggering. Even very limited in RPGness Mass Effects couldn’t keep up. Witcher3 did well, but.... that’s was a single character actionRPG, with a pre-determined and defined protagonist.

They've already gone with the cinematic path for dialogue though. At this point having every character be an active participant except the MC, who's just a mute observer, feels a bit jarring.

The production of this game is momentous with all the voice acting. I hardly doubt it'll be so hard to have the PC be voiced acted too. The already have given the PC facial expressions during his voice options. I hope they come to flesh it out more and give us more voices to choose from and bring our PC to life.

For me nothing would be more jarring than a voice that doesn't fit my character. It would a real waste of money to provide enough voices to fit all possible MC types, imho. And even if the voice was right, intonation might not be.

No it doesn't, it feels nice and comfy.
Also, making silent protagonist an option costs nothing and would make a lot of people happy.

I agree that currently lack of PC VO is jarring, especially that they attached hilarious animations to him/her anyway. I read that they will have full VO, and I believe them. It makes more sense to me with their current design, then not doing PC VO. Even if they won't do it, it won't alter existing decisions, so 🤷. Might as well have that VO so streamers don't have to do their own reading.

But from a purely theoretical point of view, if we were to keep PC mostly silent the simple solution would be keeping camera away from PC - there has been plenty First Person RPG with a silent protagonist and it works wonderfully. But yeah, cutting back to silent PC in otherwise fully voiced game has been awkward since KOTOR.

This is one of the main wastes of time and money so many games fall victim to.
One more reason Fallout 4 was so bad compared to New Vegas. They poured time and money into useless things instead of making an RPG.
I don't need to hear my own voice, ever. Actually seeing the entire dialogue choice before I choose it is enough. (It's a problem when you don't know what you're actually about to say, but hearing the voice AFTER choosing makes no difference anyway!)
I support the current state of a voiceless protagonist so they can work on things that matter more for the RPG experience.

+1

More choice is never a bad thing. Reading hundreds of lines of dialogue is prohibitive for a LOT of people, particularly in games with a more mature target market like BG3. Us old farts are blind as bats and time poor.
Also, more accessibility is never a bad thing. There's a vast difference between "we're adding this because it makes the game accessible to and playable by more people, and it might appeal to a niche of players. Things like spoken dialogue ENHANCE accessibility.

Ditto for FPS etc. The amount of games that get restricted to FPS/completely overlook people with migraines/vision impairments/disabilities/colour blindness/extreme motion sickness just because "X style of game is crap and for casual players and only losers like it anyway"TM (always said with a superior sneer) is mind boggling. Just make accessibility a NORMAL part of game development ffs. It doesn't take away from anything and it adds so much more for so many more players. I for one am sick to death of seeing people with health issues and disabilities being excluded because it's "too expensive or inconvenient" to just do what should be a NORMAL part of development for EVERY game.

And hell, people who actually need voiced dialogue/accessibility have had no choice but to skip oodles of dialogue/gameplay for decades. Everyone else spacebars through dialogue after the first shot anyway, so it's really not changing much for those who don't need it even if the devs don't add a "keep silent protagonist" option.

I really miss briowares circle dialog option wheel. It just made game look better, over the "pick option 1 thru 6" dialog list. I feel like Larian is making some big steps in all departments. Would love to see a new approach there in any new creative way than a list of sentences.

Is DnD not the focus of the morality chart? The whole good neutral evil chart? I hope Larian takes a chip off the old chart and let's players decided whether they are true neutral and good. Or maybe just chaotic evil haha

[img] https://imgur.com/a/YdV7wX6[/img]

So then you support the option to have a silent protagnist then.

I think most of us that want a Voiced PC are not opposed to the option of them silent. Thus "give us the choices."

I support the OPTION yes, as long as there is an accessible option as well. I think there should be BOTH. That said, if I had to choose one or the other (not ideal) then I chose the one that lets people who are being physically hurt or are unable to play if there is no voiced option.

If you have a voiced protagonist and you DON'T want to hear the voice... Just do what everyone else does and spacebar through it. Or have the captions on and turn the voices down to silent in options. People who DON"T want it already have the option to get rid of it when it comes down to it. Trouble is most people who are so adamantly against it are just railing against it because "I don't wanna" will win out over "I'm not fond, but if it's causing harm I can work around it" practically every time. Just look how many people are willing to kill granny over a piece of fabric over their mouth. People hate giving others the compassionate option.

Do you have a link to this please? This would make my day!



In a single player setting this makes sense, but in multiplayer it can be useful to see the other player's choice being played out because they probably would not have read your selected option before you selected it.

I'm sure even if they added voices, they would give us an option to mute them anyway. Otherwise, you can default back to spacebar'ing through everything as a few people have pointed out.

In twitch terms this is a 4head. If you have a silent protagonist and you WANT to hear the voice... just do what everyone else does and read it out loud!

Anyway, after playing a bit of Cyberpunk i really hope they either keep or don't remove the option for a neigh silent protagonist. Been playing a lot of CRPGs these last couple of years and i'd forgotten how annoying it is to have the idea of who my character is being completely subverted by how they're voice acted.

Only game that i can think of that did blank slate+voice near flawlessly is Mass Effect. Most others just just feel too railroaded one way or the other, like the Inquisitor (DA:I) and the Sole Survivor (F4) writing and VAs really only fitting good character.

After playing Cyberpunk, I lothe voice acted protagonists even more. I made I dark skinned brother and from the get go immersion was completely lost. Most games 100 percent favor specific backgrounds. It does not work in roleplaying. Its brother Commander Shepherd all over again. It really really reaaaaaally sucks.

Sooo everyone who's vision impaired, can't read very well, gets migraines reading walls of text and just plain doesn't like the things that you like has to suck it up because it's too much effort to turn the volume down, turn on subtitles (which is what you want anyway) and hit spacebar when you're ready to read the next line (which again is what you want anyway).

Nice to know who matters in the world.

A lot of assumptions you have there. First off you know it's ridiculous to turn down the volume for the main protagonist then turn it up for the other characters. That's comically ridiculous so I won't even bother talking more about that. Second not reading well? Do you mean skill, being lazy, or a disability? Sounds like a reach there, so you will have to clarify what you mean about that. Wall of text? What wall of text? Do you mean the lines in the subtitles? Or do you mean the options for responses are too long and/or too descriptive? I would assume being descriptive is a good thing so you know exactly what a dialog option actually means.

Don't give me some dramatic overly emotional nonsense. Do you want options? Make a disability mode that includes descriptions for almost everything. It's like audio logs. It's actually closer to DM'ing in real life too. Hell I'd even give it a try if they make it well enough.

I can't believe someone tried to bully shame me for lack of black voices using disability as a pity weapon. It's you who should feel shame. Unbelievable. Are there no rules on the forum against this?

I mean all of the above. And it's absolutely NOT a reach. Just because YOU don't have those issues doesn't mean many others don't. I've flat out said as much. I also said above that there are subtitles for ALL of the dialogue, so yes, if you don't want voice acting turn the damn sound off. Don't demand OUR enjoyment and accessibility be removed just because YOU don't believe that our preferences and accessibility needs matter.

You are quite descriptively proving my point about who you think matters dude.

You are presenting yourself as a bit too hostile in a conversation about a video game, there are many other things that matter more than this. The people I know with vision issues either decide not to play games or they adapt and work around said issues without complaining about them. There are medical/psychological issues with sound that are just as valid as your vision issues. I have played so many games with sound off (if I am lucky, I can have environmental sounds on) due to this and it sucks but I do not ask that developers fix the game just for me.

For the voiced protagonist here, since the voice is only being added I do not see why everyone can't have what they want.

LOL and telling someone with lived experience that they are "stretching" or "complaining" because their preferences and needs aren't the same as someone else's isn't 'hostile'.
It's so very easy to label someone as hostile when we're left out of 99% of human interaction because it's "just ...". Unless you are in our shoes, please don't fob off the right to participate fully in society as 'hostile'. Trust me, I wasn't being hostile, I was matching the energy of the hundred other answers to people who have expressed the same thing I just did.

We've been told over and over and over in every aspect of life (and in this thread) that our desires and needs don't matter. I'm absolutely unashamedly saying THEY DO.

I'm stating loudly and unashamedly that people's NEEDS are - bluntly - more important than the loud majority's aesthetic preferences.

The fact is, we shouldn't HAVE to "decide not to play". That's not a decision, that's an insurmountable problem that we're 'giving up' on. That's like saying we should 'give up' on going to the doctor because the only clinic in 100 miles won't install ramps and you're stuck in a wheelchair. It's like saying you "choose not to" go to a park because it's more aesthetically pleasing to have multilevel gardens and no seating just because you have a bad back.

People NEED recreation as much as they need food and medical care. It's NOT indulgence, it's a human right. Exclusion and marginalisation is as damaging as the disability itself. That's what you are all saying we should just 'deal with' for the sake of aesthetics. And what truly grinds my gears is that we're NOT EVEN SAYING you all can't have your walls of text and silent protag. We're saying that being inclusive is A GOOD THING. Options are a GOOD THING. It doesn't have to be all or nothing from our end. It's the people who are only dealing with aesthetic preferences who are saying WE don't matter.

I have been told this type of stuff many times in my life and depending on the circumstance is whether I will get hostile or not. I do not find optional things worth stressing about, for instance if a game is released in FP only, I simply ignore it since I can only play third person games due to motion sickness and migraines. I would not complain that they must change it to suit me, it is only a game. This is why I am not understanding your tone, this game was released with the silent protagonist. The things I will get hostile about are those that will cause me serious medical issues or death. I am in no way trying to dismiss your issues but how you present them is what makes people stop listening.

Ok, you edited your post while I was typing my response



There is a big difference between a game and a ramp. There are many games out there you can play if this is the only recreation you feel you can do. Same goes for me with the issues I have. Most of us are not saying you can't have your voiced protagonist, since they said they are already adding it we are simply asking for the option to turn this off. Options should make everyone happy.

And like I said, I am "presenting" my arguments with the exact same energy and tone as the people who are telling me I should just suck it up. If you read back through the thread, you'll clearly see (as I've already stated multiple times) that I have NEVER said don't incorporate both options. I am saying that the devs themselves have said that it will be a voiced protagonist. I am saying that the people who are demanding that this BE REMOVED FROM THE GAME are being unreasonable. I'm saying that if the devs saw fit to include options for both then that is a GOOD THING.

I'm now also saying that just because you are happy to be excluded from recreational activities because they 'don't matter' doesn't mean the rest of us are. Accessibility is A RIGHT, not a privilege. This extends to recreational pursuits as well as food and shelter and health care. Just because an activity is for fun, doesn't make it unworthy, if it did why does ANYONE play them - especially in the middle of a global crisis when every human on the planet needs to be able to relax in their own homes.

I realise it is hard to properly get the exact tone of a point across in a forum text but your posts seem a bit hostile and some responses you got are going to be the same due to this. This accomplishes nothing. Asking for accessability options is a good thing but people listen more when they do not feel attacked.

I never said I was happy with being excluded. I just simply do not see the point of being confrontational about it if it is not life threatening.

But thats exactly what you are doing to people who want Silent Protagonist.


If you want voice acting read out the line with your own verbal apparatus. See? We can be selfish too.

Mass Effect didn't have a blank slate though. The voice acting worked because you were Commander Shephard.Blank slates simply dont work with voiced protagonists, and in fact, voiced protagnoists are a plague, that are used as an excuse to have fewer option when it comes to dialogue choices. Look at Dragon Age Origins and how many ways you can react and compare it to the number of options you have in DA2 (mostly 3 option). Also in DA:O, your main character didn't get much cameratime, which made the game less narcissistic.
Voice acted protagonists and dialogue wheel are a plague on RPG.
I simply must have the silent protagonist option and I demand that Larian doesn't even consider contemplating the dialogue wheel.


Yeah I agree with you. Voiced protagonists have to go, not only because they will never represent a wide variety of ethnic voices (I'm mongolian), but also because even if they did, it would still be immersion breaking due to improper intonation or other issues with voice. Furthermore, a voice is inevitably a personality trait. If you give someone voice you've impersonated them and that is my job as a player, not the game developer's job. Larian must listen to this and at the very least give us the silent protagonist option (combined with vastly reduced camera-time focusing on the MC).
Origin characters can be voiced, that's fine.

"But thats exactly what you are doing to people who want Silent Protagonist."

No, no it's not. I'm saying AGAIN... I believe that extra options are always good to make the game accessible to as many people with disabilities and general preferences as possible. I have NEVER said don't have a text driven silent character. I have said over and over that people who DO want that despite what has already been confirmed by the devs should maybe (oh the irony here) play another game if the option to have a silent option isn't there. I think that making the game UNPLAYABLE for many people isn't worth improving superficial aesthetics for a few people who think it's unreasonable to have BOTH options.


So, even if it was what I was saying, like I've said 'till I'm blue in the gods damned face, it's "need for accessibility" v's "wwaaaaaaah I don't like it". You see the difference there?
On the one hand "actually can't play it because it's actively excluding a corner of the market" v's "I can't be bothered spacebaring, and I could easily turn down the voices but I don't wanna 'cause then I can't hear the voices I don't want to hear in the first place".

Yhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Voice protagonist is not a player choice or an accessibility option. It’s a design choice. A design choice which will have an impact on the whole of the game, no matter if you put the sound on or off. It’s not a “superficial aesthetic” - at the very least it dictated how PC is defined, presented and characterised. Something that might be fairly irrelevant in most game genres, but is the centre piece of “a role playing game” - a genre which revolves around creating and defining your own character, in a pre-made adventure. Designing around pre-recorded voice has an impact on the core concept of the game - for better or for worse.

And yes, as a player I don’t much care for making game more accessible to other players. It doesn’t mean that Larian shouldn’t care, but for me, someone who considers buying Baldur’s Gate3 for myself, the biggest concern is whenever I will want to play BG3 or not. I have more respect for focused experiences, even if those aren’t for me. On the other hand, I can’t stand Jake of all Trades - games which try to do it all, and do none well. If you want a game with pre-defined PC then go for it. If you don’t - don’t. Aiming in he middle will be just disappointing from either side.

No offence, but if you're serious it sounds like your issues have nothing with a game being voiced or not.

minimizing someone's request for accessibility makes you sound like a chud, and this weird victim blaming you're doing makes me really worried for the state of the game knowing people like you get to 'provide feedback' by coming on the forums telling folks their feedback is bad when all that's happened here is a request for more accessibility

This really ain't it chief.

What is a chud? Is it a slur? If so, you should stop because it's against the rules to call someone a slur.
What is victimblaming? Why is it that only people who ask for voiced protagonist are the victims, when in fact it is people who want a silent protagonist who are being marginalized? Larian already promised a full VO, so if anything, people who want a silent MC are the victims here.
Also I agree with Zarna, both you and the other person are very hostile, rude, accusatory and inflammatory and you should stop.

I can only think to explain this with another example. Some years ago, a parent had a son with a peanut allergy, she was upset that a restaurant in her area used peanut oil so she complained about it because it was not fair that some could not eat there. She might even have wanted them shut down, can't remember the whole story. People jumped on her about it, including people with peanut allergies. The other side of this would be a restaurant where I used to work had a customer with a gluten allergy who came in a lot. She was very polite and always came in at a slow part of the day, we were happy to clean everything well and open up new stuff to make sure she didn't get any gluten contaminants in her food.

Not sure how any of what I said would be called victim blaming, not seeing that word having any relevance to the conversation really. I was simply trying to say that much like a single restaurant, a single game is not worth getting worked up that much about. I would rather have enough options to make as many people happy as possible but getting angry and demanding things (on both sides of an argument) gets nowhere.

Do you even know what you are talking about? You argue about accessibility, but silent protagonist get kicked under the bus. You try to speak as if you are a group of people to intimidate others, but that is not happening "dude". So you might as well drop that. You talk about options, but what you really mean is you want a particular group to sit on everyone else because what? You pity someone? If you really wanted options you wouldn't have breeze past my suggestion for a separate mode like a headless chicken. You would have at the very least mentioned it.

Have you ever even met someone with a disability? The last thing they need is pity. You don't want to add options. You want to tip the imaginary scale in your head to make yourself feel better. Stop projecting guilt on to others. You come off as naive, emotionally reckless, and disrespectful to the very people you "think" your helping as well as everyone else struggling to be civil with you.

Hell you already admit you don't value people equally and are fighting for what ever "side" you come up with in your head. Options are to bring everyone together to have a good time. You 100 percent clearly don't want that. So I'm done with you. You do you.

Where are you getting that I don't respect people equally when... Let me repeat it AGAIN... I'm the one arguing to have the game both voiced AND silent so EVERYONE can enjoy it.

Thank the gods this forum has an ignore option. You all are showing your bigotry. 🙄

I'll be the judge of that, thank you. But in general terms, don't.

The discussion is getting rather heated on various fronts. Please cool it down a little, folks.

First off, this game is amazing and I cannot wait for the full release after playing through the early access several times.

The character models are gorgeous, the acting and facial expressions are amazing, there is just one thing missing.

I understand that it is an artistic decision to not have your main character speak during dialogues. However, with how amazing the voice acting is with all of the other characters, not having your main character speak becomes a big awkward hole.

As it is, your character’s voice is barely heard (during only a few cutscenes and exploration) so you essentially feel like you are playing a silent protagonist like in games like Halo, Bioshock, or Doom which is not the feeling you want from a game that is based off of D&D.

While I imagine that this choice to have your lines silent is likely because the “players voice” is supposed to speak through, when every other character is so beautifully crafted and detailed, it leaves much to be desired when you just want the same for your own character.

How many time are we going to get this exact same thread?
What about searching for pre-existing discussions before starting a new topic, for a change?

I was under the impression -- although I could be quite wrong here-- that the intention is to have the main character fully voiced by the end of development, its just not fully implemented yet. What with all the voice options there are, that's a lot of lines to deal with adding in at the current stage of early access. I also wouldn't be surprised if the devs wanted to collect some Feedback on the subject since some people seem to want silent protag entirely, but thats just my guess. Am curious if there are any official words on it that I've missed.

The one cutscene I came across where my character actually spoke in response to something (with camera actually up close on him) I admit threw me off a little but I wouldn't hate having the whole game be like that.

I support a voiced character. They have provided 4 options so far across the board, I hope they aim to provide more voices per race to really mix things up and keep the voices more lore immersive.

Please stop opening this thread every week.
And no, I don't want a voiced protagonist event hough we are totally getting one. Yikes.

Wait... I think it was old one! omg x_x

This is this guy's first post. No need to smash him on his first opinion. This is everyone's forum to speak their ideas and feedback. We can guide him that we've had an open thread on the topic and also reiterate any said points here. If you don't have anything nice or constructive to the topic to say, then don't say anything.

What we had of "constructive" to say about this topic was probably said in the dozen+ of previous threads about the very same argument.
That's precisely where the annoyance comes from: by being lazy/negligent and just starting a new thread about something that's been discussed extensively already, he's basically forcing everyone to repeat themselves over and over and over.


Also, back to the topic, and just to reiterate what I already wrote what it feels like one hundred times elsewhere, the game is already including at least 7-8 "origin stories" plus four custom characters voices, with possibly more to come.
To expect that each one of them could be be fully voiced from start to finish is pretty damn unlikely.

I'm not going to say "impossible" just because you can never know for sure what Larian will decide to do.

I support the fully voiced player character. Really like Voice 1.

I stopped playing the game since the last patch messed up a lot of stuff. From what little I have seen they took away npc voice lines and replaced them with pc lines. You can see this on the ship after first battle your character says something instead of Lae'zal complementing you. I wasn't a fan of the change, but it is more voice lines for the pc...

Made a thread about this a while ago which has about 8 pages of responses - https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=86751&Number=745216#Post745216
And yes, this game definitely needs a voiced main character!

I'm against this as I stated in another topic. Its great if you are caucasian/european. Sucks if you are anything else. Perfect example: Cyberpunk 2077. Try to make V darkskinned and tell me your immersed. They could get more voice actors, but thats wishful thinking and more expensive than just a relatively silent mc we have now.

It sucks even of you are a caucasoid because you will never get regional accents, plus RPG's should really just forget about the whole voiced protagonist thing as a mandatory feature. It's lazy. Give me more, higher quality writing please, I can read my own lines.

I agree 100%.

If I can create my own character, (s)he should be silent. Use money for things that actually improve my RPG experience.

But you know that voiced protagonist is happening anyway, right? It's been already confirmed. If you want your character to be silent, that's alright. BG1 and BG2 had this option, there's no reason to believe that BG3 will be different.
But majority of players want to have voiced main character, including me.

Larian already said they won't be swayed by what the majority wants all the time. And I will never give up on silent MC, because silent MC is what RPGs are all about. Maybe we should provide the voiced option for people who can't live without it, but preferably, resources would instead be used for coming up with conversations with many many many more options.

No, they said they can adapt and that they are not afraid to make changes. Removing voiced MC doesn't ADD anything valuable to the game.
No.2 - RPGs are not all about having a silent MC. RPGs are about being a part of a story and adventure.

You are flat out wrong. Addig a silent MC makes it more enjoyable for a lot of people, and the enjoyment of your players if valuable. Also given how the MC is still not voiced they didn't actually put resources into it yet so if they are smart they will change their minds about it and put their effort in more important things.
Also RPG are all about playing a role, so if you force a voice on my character you are forcing a eprsonality on me, because a voice is always a personality as well.
So yes, making the MC silent would make the game a better RPG.

You're wrong. I wrote that there should be an option, so if you don't like it - turn it off.
Also major part of MC voices has been already recorded (there's already like a 6 different versions), it's been datamined. Some of it is already in the game.
Larian after the first week of Early Access sold over 1 000 000 copies of the game on Steam. They have enough money to make this game exactly as they want it to be. Removing content won't make other aspects of BG3 any way better.
Like I said before, it's happening.

No, you are wrong. There is absolutely no reason to pour resources wastefully into an option that will not satisfy an overwhelming vast majority of people because at best we will only get 2 voices/gender, both of which will be british/american. It may be happening, but I still maintain that voiced protagonists are stupid and a plague on RPGs everywhere.
Also prove to me that there will be 6 different player voices and that they are all fully recorded.

What makes you think, that "overwhelming vast majority of people" won't be satisfied with voiced lines? Because few guys from this forum don't like it?
Look at Chubblot's channel, there are some:
I never said they are FULLY recorded. It's early access. Nothing's fully finished.
It's happening anyway. Don't be selfish. Fully voiced game is far more enjoyable.

I'm ok with both - I have favorite examples for voiced (female sarcastic Hawke - best character ever) and silent (apart from BG, my favorite is Malkavian from Vampire Bloodlines - there the silent treatment worked pretty well) protagonists and I can see the pros for both sides. I could live with what they are doing in the EA - have a few voiced lines and the rest is silent. But I'm ok with fully voiced too.

Not if we're talking about a role-playing game. Or you need a lot more voice variations.

I prefer silent protagonists since when the protagonist is voiced it's always a generic boring voice designed to fit all faces the "Tav" voice. When the game comes out I will mod the voice out if it is present, though I would prefer the "silent" button option in CC.

Protagonist should have a separate sound slider in the menu. Those of us that don't want this new voiced stuff can set this slider to off and the rest of you can keep it on.

BEcause it's a well known fact for years now that blank slate characters and voice acting don't mix.


Stop projecting.

No it's not you just want to gloat about your bad taste.

If it's a well-known fact, as you claim it is, then you should have trouble proving it, or at least citing sources showing such.

In theory they do, just in practice it's impossible. I'm sure that even you would enjoy voice acted character more if you had an option of voice with the right personality for every character you came up with, and voice acting would not reduce the number of available dialogue options.

That would just be a 500+gb game with insane development costs.

I think that our main disagreement here with people that like voiced PC is that we like to play unconventional characters while they like to play "Tav" so it's much easier to satisfy them with a voice.

I'm not sure I agree. I have a very active imagination, personally, and love characterization, so unconventional characters come naturally to me. While my character may be named Tav, she's still unique in various ways within my head, and voice acting will not change that. I just fill in the blanks, create explanations for why she would do or say x. It's something I've done with all games with a protagonist, voiced or otherwise, and it's not particularly hard to do without straying at all from my character, with rare exceptions where the only options are those that my character would never consider doing, which happens just as often with "silent" protagonists as it does with voiced ones in my personal experience. Usually the biggest stretch I have to go with is "It's the right thing to do," or "it's for the greater good," but most of the time it just flows naturally for me as the options make sense with the character, though this may just be because I have a strong streak of making chaotic good characters unless I need a villain (and I don't like playing as the villain, personally, outside of villain protagonist games like War For The Overworld).

(As a side note, I think voice acting only limits character statements somewhat compared to text based, which still has the constraints of only allowing what the devs come up with for the character, meaning you can still end up with situations where your character has only choices s/he would never do the way you imagined them, voicing just tends to reduce the number of options available). Again, all personal opinion.

Also, text based on both sides (to go to the opposite extreme, not to argue against anyone at all, I just feel like ranting a bit about dialogue I don't like) tends to end up with rather wooden sounding dialogue that goes on and on, which is why I write with a text-to-speech program going, to catch the wooden, awkward phrasings that look fine on paper.

The whole voice not matching the character thing (ie a black man with a white man's voice) that was mentioned either here or elsewhere is a valid criticism, however.

@zyr1987

I can just give you a practical example: I want to create a feminine male character who is cynical, fearless and rational. 1) There are no feminine male voices available. 2) The voiced PC always shows a lot of emotion ( because otherwise people say that the voice acting is bad and bland. ) Boom, character impossible to create, since every time the character will open their mouth it will not fit.

The problem when you have a voice protagonist is not only with WHAT you can say, but also with HOW you say what you can say. It's not about filling the blanks, it's about how the voice fills these blanks for you in ways that you might dislike.

Same back at you. Prove to me with citations and statistics that people are pefectly satisfied with vocied protagonists that dont represent their ethnicity.

Let's stop treating personal opinion and 'everybody agrees with me' as hard fact.

He doesn't need to, as he never claimed to be speaking for anyone other than himself nor did he state that what he's saying is "a well known fact for years". There are obviously many people in this thread who prefer voice acting, and many who don't. All opinions are valid and it's up to Larian to decide what to do with those opinions and how to best accomodate their playerbase. I'm personally hoping that they will fully voice the main character (with the option of being silent), but I'm not going to pretend my opinion is the only correct one and everyone who disagrees is just "gloating about their bad taste".

Then I don't need to either.

Really absurd that someone was actually praising the pathetic vague dialog wheel from bioware over "a list of sentences."
Absolute clown world.

Wasn't that bad, Mass effect had a similar wheel. Wasn't that bad either. It was something more UI inventive than...

1. Blah
2. Blaah
3. Bhal
4. Bah