Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Male narrator option

With plenty of permutations and possible choices within the story it is expected replayability will be very high so I was wondering if there will be an option to switch between male and female narrators. This would help with keeping the story somewhat fresh. I'd imagine listening to the same narrator all the time will become annoying sooner rather than later.

That’s a shit ton of extra recording for no reason.

Do you really want this instead of all the other content that could be added instead with that extra budget?

No. The narrator is one of the current high points in the game.

I was surprised when I played Dungeon of Naheulbeuk (fantastic game by the way) that you had the option to choose either a male or female narrator. First time I've seen that done. It was nice for multiple playthroughs. But there is much less dialogue in that game.

I don't think its worth the extra cost to do a male narration for Baldur's Gate 3, and Amelia Tyler does such a fantastic job. Although now that I think about it . . . come on Swen . . . you can do the mail narrator voice over . . . you know you want to! 😄

it would't be worth it with a low budget game but they confirmed they are putting a lot money into this so why not? This would encourage multiple playthroughs even more making the game more enjoyable for more people in the long term.

Because the narrator isn't worth a replay.

Put the money into things that matter.

I don't think it would be worth it to spend the money on another narration option when it could go to more important things.

I don't know, I can't think of any game where I got tired of the narrator's voice. The narrator in BG3 is doing a great job.

I think they should do a narrator with a British accent.

And then another male narrator, only this time with an Australian accent.

And then another female narrator, only with a Southern United States accent.

And then if we get a Russian accent, please?

Also, am I the one who wants a Slingblade accent, like Billy Bob Thornton had in the movie?

Then we can move on and do one of those Transatlantic accents like they used to use in the picture shows.

Oh my goodness, the possibilities are endless. I'll start making a list.

Nah, Even if there was a male option(which would be too much work) i would keep that sweet and silk female voice.

+1 to these

Voicing variety is good, especially if you actively dislike hearing a particular voice; but additional narrators would be quite low on my priority list. Turning the narration voice off would be an easier way to get variety.

Im not a sound designer but In 2021 there is no technology <filtering software> that alters one recording of a voice to whatever?? Male / Female / Orc / demon etc....??

There is more to a performance then just digitally modifying the voice. Watch Dogs: Legion attempted something of that sort for it's multi-protagonist design. I heard the result was mixed, when it comes to believability of the voice.

Even if it's functional, a question would be if digital creation of multiple VOs out of one would be worth a weaker base VO performance, which is a must have, if that same voice is supposed to be bland enough to be moulded into whatever sound engineer desires. I also doubt it's as simple as switching couple settings and calling it a day - with a massive amount of VO, like Baldur's Gate3, how much would they gain by having audio engineers work on it, instead of setting up few extra recording sessions.

While I get your point... I don't think it is worth the extra time and money (at least not in my opinion).

I also love the female narrator. The woman behind the voice is doing a great job (as do all the voice actors so far ).

In the almost 60 hours I've played, I don't think I have ever gotten bored or annoyed with the narrator. I don't think I will either, if my initial binge is anything to go by.

That said, given that this is just the tip of the iceberg, I don't think we will see another narrator voice.


Wormerine puts it best. I have a very small amount of experience with VA work and I can tell you that this work can be more than you might think. Not only are you likely going to have to do all the lines again, but you are also likely going to have multiple takes for each as you try to find what the director is looking for, and then the audio engineers have to clean up/adjust the audio, and people on the software side have to put it into the game while making sure they all trigger like they are supposed to. Throw that on top of everything else they are working on currently (character models, quest/item implementation, AI tweaking, etc.) and that can cause the game release to be pushed further into the future. More variables you add into the game, the more things that require double-checking lest they break. That takes time and money. Money, while likely ample, isn't infinite. They also have a set timeframe (possibly) they want to release the game, so having this extra narrator would be redundant in the bigger picture, best left as possible DLC.

Long story short: My bet is that we won't see another narrator.

Yes, you can process audio to modify timbre and pitch, and probably a number of other characteristics, but the resulting experience is not always comparable with the original quality; that will probably improve over time.

The alternative approach is generating the speech using audio samples from a voice actor. This has the advantage of not requiring pre-recorded audio, but is more challenging to achieve the intended quality, particularly the "colour" and "character" that a voice actor can impart to lines through an understanding of the context.

The flexibility of the latter approach will probably win out in the end, but we may first see games where the voice actor records fixed dialog, and a generation system uses their "voice" for less scripted audio.

"Deepfake"A/V techniques already show the direction of travel.

I'd rather see more Female/Male custom VA's than a different narrator, having DOS2's Malady voicing the chaos is fantastic. Sultry sass that's not hard to understand. Perfect combo.

Although having Matt from a certain D&D group would make an excellent addition if it gets enough traction.

This won't happen and shouldn't happen for the many reasons mentioned here. Larian have made an excellent choice of narrator as they did in DOS2. In general the voice acting is absolutely top-class. Only VA for custom player characters that is missing in action (likely mostly due to the origin system).