How important is voice acting for YOUR immersion?

Hey everyone!

How important do you think voice acting is for your immersion? For me I think its important for major questlines or dungeons to be voice acted if they use humanoid characters. I understand AoC is dynamic and built by the players so this is not a theme park but I feel voice acting is still important when it comes to NPC interaction, especially in the starting areas, as you progress further into a game with a non linear story and custom node systems with their own questlines I can understand that not really being feasible, but when we're exiting that gate for the first time I'd like some voice acting to pull me initially into the story of Vera. What are your thoughts? Do you not like voice acting in games? Do you think its a vital component?

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Talents

It's not vital for me.

If a game does have voice acting, it needs to be good voice acting, not SOLO or LA tier.

For me, if every character is voiced, then the main character also has to be voiced. For example, I fucking hate how FF14 does it where every character speaks but your character moves his mouth while saying nothing. That is really shit. I like how SWTOR did it where you can pick options and your character will actually talk.

PenguinPaladin

Voice acted cutsceenes where appropriate. Text everywhere else. Its too costly for the benefits otherwise.

Caww

I play with the speakers turned off...

NishUK

I love cringey voice acting! I mean you can have great voice acting but rare, cringe is better for me than average anime dubbing or something.

BUT I know all the american kids love anime dubbing, so it needs to be done I guess

Music is most important imo.

Dygz

I can read, so...
Having no voice acting is not an issue for me.
If there is voice acting - it needs to sound pretty good.

Azherae

Voice Acting is a negative for my immersion.

If a character is fighting, being hit, or considering something, I will accept 'battle cries', 'hmm', and maybe key signature phrases so that I 'have a mental model of what they sound like' to use for everything I read 'in their voice'.

Other than that, it generally breaks my immersion even if it is above average, because it's so hard for most voice actors to stay in character or understand the full scope of their character for an MMO, I guess.

If I had the option to turn off voiced cutscenes but leave 'battle cries', that's what I'd do always.

MybroViajero

For me it is very important or not important at all, it all depends on the quality.
If it is not very good then I prefer to read, but if it is very good then I will enjoy it.

It also depends a lot on the style of video game that uses that voice, if it is an MMO with a narrative style where they tell you a well structured story then the voice will always be necessary but if it is an MMO where the story is in the background and other things matter more then the voice would not be so necessary.
I particularly like the narration of a 3 person narrating the events, I think that would be a good addition and could save a lot of voice acting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdhpA2yPu1w

CROW3

Shitty voice acting can undermine great writing, and great voice acting can help compensate for shitty writing (sometimes). The voice acting I find that contributes the most to immersion isn't quest driven, but the trivial NPCs that have snippets here and there about the weather or politics or fisherman that drowned.

So, given realistic costs of writers to voice acting (and the steep engineering costs), I'd rather read great writing and have the investment avoided from voice acting to go into other parts of the game.

unknown

This content has been removed.

Nerror

I thoroughly enjoyed SWTOR and all the voice acting there at release. And yes it helps my immersion, but the cost is so damn high I don't want it for Ashes. If Steven was a multi-billionaire and could throw enough money at it, sure, fine, add it as long as it doesn't delay release too much. Failing that, I am ok without. A few neat cut scenes for the most important story quests is fine.

mcstackerson

Voice acted quests help me pay attention but don't do anything for my immersion. In ESO, i noticed the random conversations you could hear people having in the world gave me a feeling of immersion.

darthaden

They've already said the game won't have voice acting. Being a indy team they'd rather put the money elsewhere

ArzenaI

I'd be happy to see AI generated voice lines. Not to promote this service but aws's polly service can generate quite good quality speech from text. Although there are limited voice profiles but the generated speech can be altered any way to make it sound like a different character but, it wouldn't be so immersive without feelings that a proper voice actor / actress can bring to the table.

It could be cost efficient tho and would fit the idea of a dynamic world.

George_Black

Not important in mmorpgs

JamesSunderland

Barely important for me atleast for the MMORPG genre, but if implemented requires a certain standard of quality to not be counter immersive and detrimental, and that quality usually comes at a quite steep price....

keenow

I mostly dislike it. But it is fun to hear NPCs in a town saying something random as you run around so it sounds more populated, but a far prefer to read the quests myself. When there's a voice actor, we're always going at different paces. They're usually talking way slower than I'm reading it in my head so it just makes it disjointed and harder to take in the info.

EdGeFromSWHIPGaming

For me, voice acting is very important for immersion. I can still enjoy gameplay, but, probably won't bother reading quest text, so I most likely won't be invested in the world.

Amist

For me voice acting can add a lot of immersion to a game, however I think there are much more important aspects than that which need to work before it makes a bigger difference for my own gaming experience. If the world building and lore has inconsistencies or simply doesn't make any sense, then voice acting is really the last thing on my mind but if everything just works, then it's a very nice addition to a game.

But it is by no means necessary in my book. I'd much rather the team focus their funds and energy on other aspects of the game, as it is quite expensive to get extensive voice acting in big games like MMORPG's. Perhaps having cutscenes VA'ed would be a great place to start!

Soliton

While I prefer 100% voice, I think main storyline quest voice-over is a fair compromise. Like FFXIV. Makes the NPCs feel more real.

Liniker

Not important for me. I'd rather if they use the time/money for extra functionality such as > Optional < proximity voice chat, a basic optional DPK system built in the guild functions/mobile app, support for uploading custom guild emblems to use on armor/flags and all that

Child Item