Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Voiced Player Character?

Will the Player character ever be voiced in NPC interactions, the way (s)he is in, say, Dragon Age: Inquisition, or is her silence simply due to the EA status of the game? In this day and age, being the "strong and silent type" strikes me as a bit of an anachronism.

In the original bg games and DA:O the "silent protagonist" wasn't a silent protagonist--they were just unvoiced. The dialogue is there in text form. This is likely a design choice since unvoiced gives players a lot more flexibility with RP. DA:O, for example, had significantly more dialogue choices for the player than DA:2 and DA:I because the protagonist wasn't voiced. Hawk, Shepard, and the Inquisitor were all given personalities (with some flexibly therein) that were within a limited confine created by the writing team and the actors. An unvoiced protag can be whoever you want them to be with whatever personality you want since you fill in their voice in your head. (Try reading the dialogue choices as if you're reading character dialogue in a book. I don't know about you but when I read books I fill in the dialogue with all sorts of voices with different inflections, accents, and attitudes.)

I like voiced protags in some games, (ME did it really well) but in games with a heavy emphasis on RP I prefer unvoiced.

Yes please, would love to have a voiced player character.

Larian said they were planning to voice it, but it's still not clear to what extent.
The challenge with a FULLY voiced MC is that you are going to have several permutations of it in a game like this one.

Each one of the "Origin" characters (which are supposed to be AT LEAST five confirmed, possibly more according to the rumors), the four "generic MC voices" currently included in this build and then there was already people asking for more diverse voices on top of those.
Basically it would be an amount of work (and more importantly cost) comparable to do a full "Commander Shepard" in a (bigger) Mass Effect game AND voice it in ten-to-twelve variations at least.

I'm not going to say that it's "Impossible", but I would be pretty damn impressed if they actually manage to do it.

From current content it is already fairly clear it will be fully voiced. Our MC often moves as if they are speaking without lips moving, and occasionally do speak, sometime with lips moving, sometimes without. It is just not in yet.

I h ope they keep it as it is now. Only hearing the character talk when they see something or comment on something.

Keeping it silent makes it so we can picture our character say it in the manner that we would say it.

Th voiced 'YESSS?' and 'A WASTE OF MY TALENTS' when I clicked on my PC and moved him was a thing in Baldurs gate but imo bg3 doesent need it. It dident really add anything really even though it would show a little bit more character in our....uh character.

So I would be fine with both I guess so long as our char is silent during conversations.

Voiced would help in Multiplayer to make it more clear what your friends are saying.

It shouldn't be too difficult. I don't know if you've seen the early access of Solasta, by a dev team of only 17 people, but it is another 5e based videogame very similar to BG3 in a lot of things, but seems to be doing things better in regards to gameplay. All custom characters are fully voiced and when you interact with NPCs each "option" of the dialogue is said by a different character according to their personality. Alignment and personality tags help shape what kind of things your character would say.

Generally when people talk about fully voiced they mean 'have personalities and backgrounds' and you can have conversations with them. Havent played the game but it sounds like they just talk when you give them an order like it is in bg1+2?

If not that does sound impressive.

No, please check it out on youtube, every dialogue with NPCs is voiced for every custom character. And characters also talk with each other during cutscenes. The graphics and art of the game are way better in BG3 but the idea of the dialogues answers being independent to each personality and being voiced is great!

I personally just miss the the voice types in bg1/2. In bg3 they all sound the same and have the same lines. In bg1/2 each had their own personalities and emotions that you could pick based on the flavor you were going for. They had things like "the old witch, the dumb brute, the posh elf, etc. At least will add something to the the characters the brief moments when they do talk.

If it means limiting the dialogue I prefer dialogue. if not, why not.

https://youtu.be/Ohfb4VNZUn0?t=528

Here is an example

You can't be serious with this comparison. Solasta doesn't even come remotely close to the amount of dialogue offered in BG3.

I am still not sure, it seems the game has set different answers for every dialogue according to the character's alignment and personality tags. On top of that every dialogue has been recorded by multiple actors, so you can have the same lines said by a woman or a man etc. It seems very interesting to me, but still haven´t played that game.

I know, you are right on that point. But again this is a very small studio with a budget that doesn´t come remotely close to Larian's. I think it should be doable, particularly considering how many people will play this game and the foundation this would mean, for future games and expansions as well.

Also I read that you would like a different more traditional party movement, Solasta has done that right too.

As I already said to others in the dedicated thread, Solasta does it better than BG3 (which is setting the bar pretty damn low) but I still count how Solasta manages party movement in the bottom tier compared to other games like Pathfinder, Temple of Elemental Evil, PoE 2, etc.

I totally agree with you, I am not saying Solasta is the role model. Just pointing out that if a smaller studio can achieve something similar maybe, keeping our fingers crossed, that could be scaled up for a game like BG3. I am glad to see that we are all asking the same things more or less