Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General The importance of PC voice in RPGs

Well, if MC with voice, then with mute option too. And the wolf is full, and the sheep are whole. Like in some of visual novels.

If they're showing my character's expressions and reactions to dialogue then I'd like a voice. As it is, it's super odd, seeing these animated expressions from a mute while everyone else talks. It just reinforces the main protagonist isn't the player character vibe I get.

Agree with topic creator in some way. It is actually not that ruining the immersion process, but just quite odd to have muted MC in dialogs and suddenly speaking while in camp, for example. Many cRPG's implementing voices for MC just for shouts in battle, but if we have normal speech implemented, why not have full voice lines?
Of course it will be titanic and hellish a work and tons of money, because you will have to record AT LEAST 18 different voices to ALL the dialogs in the game (9 for all the alignments x 2 for male/female). Horrifying amount of work there. But it will be legendary, i would say. And there have to be an option to have muted version ofc.
The hard way to fit all the sides.

As for me, since it is still not the irl d'n'd, where everyone choose their own words to speak, etc, the game is much more like a story, where you're choosing between different options of the plot, like a number of books, where you can jump from one to another and they will compliment each other somehow. So, i prefer to have full voice acted MC.

Another interesting aspect: we will have opportunity to play companion chars, so, will they be acted? Or got muted just like a custom MC and lost so much of their charisma and personality. If so, i guess i never ever start the game as any of pre-created characters.

I'm going to concur with the OP's argument, but I want to add a couple of comments:

Voice acting in games is generally a bit overrated. Text can work really, really well. When I was playing JRPGs in the 90s, I was never bothered by the lack of voice acting. What those JRPGs did really well was making the characters really really expressive. You could feel their voices.

Another example of text working really well is the storybook sequences in Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

But voice acting can add to the experience, if it's good acting. Personally, I think it's also better for it to be consistent. The main character should be voiced, otherwise the absense can get distracting.

For comparison, this Fallout 3 conversation suffers for its absense. The dead silence is a bit jarring.

I'm not going to be bothered by the main character being voiced in the "wrong way". Even BoF3 (one of the example videos I included above) took this concept too far to the extreme by having the main character literally never have any dialogue (ie not even text). God forbid the player character accidentally have a personality. The player character should just be a lifeless boring husk for you to project a personality onto, I guess.

The only time I've had a problem with a voiced player character was recently in Cyberpunk 2077 when I noticed that the female voice actor had a bit of a slur that started to grate on me after a while. But generally, if the character has a neutral voice then it's fine. (I also think also the writing for the player character needed a bit of work.)

The bigger issue is multiplayer and other parties filled with player characters. One thing that really doesn't work is having 4 player characters with the exact same voice. Adding to this, I understand Larian is going to allow you to play as Gale and other voiced "origin characters".

My understanding is that having 2 voice actors (one male and one female) for the player character including all dialogue options is not prohibitively expensive at all, particularly with the budget of AAA games that BG3 has. However, multiply that cost by 4 or more, and it's harder for me to make that assertion.

So I don't know if it's reasonable to expect the player character to be fully voiced given some of the features that Larian is planning. XD

I think it is not a case, when you compare isometric RPGs or 20 y.o. RPGs with a game where all the dialogs built through cutscenes where your character show it's emotions, etc, and the game has very good instruments to show us much more of a character with voice+emotional reactions. Look at the companions. I am confident that all of them wouldn't been as much popular if they were silent as MC. So that's a big deal in particulary this kind of a scenery work. Text is a great way to deliver char's charisma, but not in the all types of RPGs.

"My understanding is that having 2 voice actors (one male and one female) for the player character including all dialogue options is not prohibitively expensive at all, particularly with the budget of AAA games that BG3 has."

Don't forget that DnD has NINE alignments and all of them are different. So even if there will be only 2 voices, they have to record different voice reactions to the same situations.

Actually, i don't think they will add full voice acted MC, but i'd appreciate this :)

Yup you got me on the KOTOR before DA:O. Good call. BTW, I love your avatar. Just be careful the Major doesn't come and scrub your brain 8P

The real irony is, that your PC DOES speak in a few cutscenes in the world. Like when you discover that dying Absolute cultist from the Owlbear, and a couple others. Which really just throws everything off. I mean does he/she speak or not! Make a decision people 8P!

I still don't understand the significance of this. Why do different alignments need different voices? Are the evil voices going to have an evil laugh after every sentence?

Also, I wouldn't be optimistic expecting that alignments will be implemented at all in the way you seem to be expecting. I doubt the player characters will have anything resembling a clear alignment. The best I can expect here is that Larian might use the alignments for some flavour in quest design. (And that's fine by me.)

I think I would like to hear more from my PC, but I would like to have a few options for the voices that fell between the "Downton Abbey" or "Eastenders" extremes we have now.

Aw, thanks. She can come and scrub whatever she wants

If I may, I think whenever BG3 needs a protagonist VO or not, depends what a player personally wants from BG3. Personally, I am far more interested in it being a modern take on cRPG, focusing on role-playing and player choice above all. If one the other hand, one wants a more modern defined protagonist with some choices adventure, VO definitely makes more sense - it helps to define and better communicate to the player who the protagonist is.

My personal worry is, that adding close up cinematics and VO is one thing, and doing it well is another. And doing full VO for heavily customisable PC and each of the playable origins, seems to me like a very expensive and pointess excercise. If you want VO for your protagonist, then define whim as a character to the point that you can cast him with one or two actors. If you want players to define who their character are - don't take that choice from them. Then again, I am a believer in doing one thing right, over many things poorly. I suppose that's why I don't care for most AAA.

They rather need other intonations and phrases. Now MC has a lot of sympathetic and kind phrases in the game. The difference is obvious. When MС sees the dead fishermen, she/he says with a sympathetic "no luck" . What does Astarion say? "Mmm, what a waste of blood."

Astarion is an evil character, you can see that right away.

Even in the first act, there are enough short phrases that might be unnatural for an evil character. For example, pity for the tieflings in the dialogue with Lae "They are not warriors , do not be so strict with them". Hey, am I going to kill them? What are you talking about? MC? So yes, it's a bit sad.

That's because he's a vampire though? Why would an evil character care about "wasting blood". What would the evil non-vampire character want to do with the blood?

I guess it's a bit awkward that his official alignment is "N/A", and that he's playable -- so we can expect that you'll be allowed to roleplay him as a "good" character if you wish.

I can promise you that Astarion's voice actor is not going to record every single line of dialogue nine times just so that each alignment can get its own intonation. That seems unreasonable.

I always thought Asterion was chaotic neutral.

I never liked neutral as an alignment. No one is neutral in any way. We always have biases in our decisions.

I preferred Palladium’s alignment scheme. Good. Selfish. Evil.

Agreed on the voice actors having to record nine times. Also can you imagine the size of the voice files?

I am growing very upset with this "we need pc, neutral gender" (ie lgbq etc) stuff in games. I have to say, the entire such things need to stay out of games.Larian has gone to the max extent or acceptable by enabling you to dream of the same sex, but really having anything beyond that is "forcing" that mindset on others who are not in agreement with it. A strong middle ground has been drawn here, we do not need more of it.

I say this with the upmost respect for peoples choice to live their lives how they want, but it simply does not belong in games, and it is offensive that such communities are trying to force their life styles on others who are in opposition to it.

Just out of curiousity, where did that come from in regards to a thread about PC (player character) voice?

Player options are just that: Options. Taking an option is optional. Also I fail to see the relevance of your comment in a thread about player voices.

I agree with the OP or my part. I get that it's not for everyone, but I think it's better to have it in the game with an option not to use it, than just flat out not bother. Player choice is the lifeblood of any RPG.

I assume they only read the title and assumed that PC meant political correctness.

I'd prefer no voice, period! Two voices for each gender is just too few. They work if you're playing as a good natured human or (half-)elf character, but with any other race, they feel off. NWN 1 and 2 had a decent array of voice sets to choose from, and so did the previous two BG games, and Pillars of Eternity as a more recent example. It's personally a HUGE detriment when I can't reconcile my character with his or her voice

I really don't understand you comment about it being for human or half elf, and not the other races. Every race in the game has a voice so not sure how that is applied as a reason for the player not to just because they pick lets say Drow. You could have 4 or 5 different voice actors, with some of them providing an "evil" voice over as well.