Hay Steve, have you seen this?

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

Who here would love to see this be an option for Ashes? I know I would. AI Voice Over can be done cheaply and well. This would add so much depth for people who love story and voice acting.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Noaani

Well, if *someone* made a video about it on the Internet, it must be needed.

AI voice not needed.

Mattchoo

I for one would LOVE to have well done voice acting in Ashes of Creation. Good voice acting can take a game to the next level of immersion/enjoyment for me. As as example I would give, Baldur's Gate, the voice acting in that game really made me connect with the characters. BOO!

Noaani

Mattchoo wrote: »

I for one would LOVE to have well done voice acting in Ashes of Creation. Good voice acting can take a game to the next level of immersion/enjoyment for me. As as example I would give, Baldur's Gate, the voice acting in that game really made me connect with the characters. BOO!

I agree that it adds a lot, but the issue is cost.

Star Wars; The Old Republic spent $150,000,000 on it's voice acting. Ashes has less than that to spend on everything.

This is why the suggestion was AI voice acting, but that isn't going to be as easy as suggested, would result in voice acting that is not as good as actual voice actors, and just isn't actually necessary.

Mattchoo

150 million? Are you sure that number is correct? From what I saw of the AI version for WoW it sounded pretty good. I downloaded it and am about to try it out for myself.

Mattchoo

Quick Wiki check said the entire budget of The Old Republic was 200 million, I somehow doubt they spent 3/4 of the budget on voice acting.

Talents

No. AI voice acting sounds shit atm. If they can't afford professional VA's then don't bother at all.

Hinotori

I'm with talents. If and when they get around to voice acting I would much rather have it done by professional voice actors who can really lift the setting through their tone and inflection.

AI VA is terrible and I would rather have no voice acting than bad voice acting.

Fantmx

Talents wrote: »

No. AI voice acting sounds shit atm. If they can't afford professional VA's then don't bother at all.

This

Solvryn

Out of all the things needed to make a grand MMO I think Voice Acting is the very bottom of my list.

Especially for Ashes.

They're already going to give us the core systems..

So all they need to do is nail their class, combat, and AI. Which are usually underwhelming in the genre.

There are a few MMOs that have some top notch classes, but none that have stellar combat to go with it.

And AI is a meme.

Hopefully Ashes can nail all of it.

Noaani

Mattchoo wrote: »

Quick Wiki check said the entire budget of The Old Republic was 200 million, I somehow doubt they spent 3/4 of the budget on voice acting.

The actual final budget for the game ended up being about $250,000,000 (no, I dont have sources).

The $150,000,000 was for all sounds, to be fair, not just voice. However, voice was the bulk of it.

$150,000,000 was the initial budget for the entire game, just as an fyi. My understanding is that they opted to go full voice acting part way through development, which is why the budget blew out so much. Further, my understanding (which I am as happy to assume is wrong as is right) is that there was an amount of mismanagement involved.

That said, if you look in to how much it cost to hire a top end recording studio, what the pace of work is for voice acting, work out how much dialogue a game like that has, start factoring in rewrites, and you'll fairly quickly see how this could be.

Edit to add; my "source" for this is someone in the recording industry, rather than someone in game development (which is usual for me), and was worked out over a few beers and based on market rates of time spent in session (we looked back over the numbers without a few beers, they were accurate).

It is possible EA may have negotiated a cheaper rate, however since this discussion is about Intrepid adding voice to Ashes, and since Intrepid wont be able to negotiate that same rate, the going rate is the appropriate number in this discussion.

daveywavey

?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hrwiki.org%2Fw%2Fimages%2Fthumb%2Fe%2Fe8%2Fehsteve.png%2F180px-ehsteve.png&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=7b9353460ec5a1309b48ff16c9f9c1440580c2f6834ff24f97e0d197e865bfc5&ipo=images

arsnn

I completely disagree with the sentiment of most people here.

For me the AI voice over idea, presents a solution where you can create a lot of value with relatively low effort.

When someone can create a good ai voice over plugin for curse on a hobby level, like the WoW plugin guy that made the plugin mentioned in the video, i can see Intrepid building something really solid.
Especially b.c. AoC is still years out and ai tech moves fast atm.

We know Intrepid has not got the resoures for extensive voice acting. I would be really surprised if intrepid passes on beeing a first mover on this one, it would be a strategic blunder imo, as it perfectly fits their strategic environment and the timing.

And i think its actually good, right now.

Dezemi

Honestly? That sounded MUCH better than I thought it would. The one thing that is very immersive breaking (yeah, I am one of those people) is that it does not match the original voice ("Keep yer feet on tha ground!"). But in a game that does not have any voice acting at all? Non-issue.

My final point - it would definitely be cool to see if it could do the work. But I am personally the kind of person that reads all of the quests (... yeah. [: ) so I am a bit in the camp of "idm either way." :]

One concern is that regardless of "oh this is so little effort, cost efficient and all that", if it would delay the game by... Well, anything really (?) - then I'd probably pass. At least until after A2 launch.

It could do well as one of the A2 patches - and I would very much recommend Intrepid to let the A2 players scan through these ingame to catch any weirdness. :]

As far as I can tell, Intrepid has 3 options:

A) Full AI voice acting (with potentially "real" voice acting here and there)

Spot voice acting (like WoW and FF14 - or even Owlcat's Pathfinder-games or Obsidian Studios' Pillars of Eternity) - only important quests and dialogue have VA, but they have high quality such.
C) No voice acting. Just wall of texts. (aka, continue as planned.)

I am used to all 3, so I seriously do not mind either way.

Nerror

Yes please to AI voice acting.

I have made a post before about adding TTS as a basic accessibility feature for people who have a hard time reading, due to some level of vision impairment or dyslexia or something. Other people have made similar posts asking for something like this.

We already get other accessibility options for people in the game, like customizable UI and various color-blindness settings. Adding accessibility features for people who have a hard time reading is not unreasonable.

It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be accurate enough to be understood. The AI speech in the video was great for that. Make it a toggle so people who prefer not to have it can get their way too of course.

It's MUCH, much cheaper than hiring real people, and there are no continuity issues down the line.

Arya_Yeshe

Why commit to voice acting when you don't even know how much text will be in the game?
That's like commiting money to be thrown into the fire

But maybe in the future AI voice over will sound even better than what we have today, maybe AI voice will be a thing

nanfoodle

Nerror wrote: »

Yes please to AI voice acting.

I have made a post before about adding TTS as a basic accessibility feature for people who have a hard time reading, due to some level of vision impairment or dyslexia or something. Other people have made similar posts asking for something like this.

We already get other accessibility options for people in the game, like customizable UI and various color-blindness settings. Adding accessibility features for people who have a hard time reading is not unreasonable.

It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be accurate enough to be understood. The AI speech in the video was great for that. Make it a toggle so people who prefer not to have it can get their way too of course.

It's MUCH, much cheaper than hiring real people, and there are no continuity issues down the line.

I think this is the thing. It really does not need to be perfect. For myself. I am dyslexic. I have a rare form where letters move around and its very hard to read. If I am tried it get worse. So having this as an option, I will get much more of the lore. Would be cool if they also added this for any documents or books added to the game. This would be a dream for me.

Veeshan

Talents wrote: »

No. AI voice acting sounds shit atm. If they can't afford professional VA's then don't bother at all.

I think they can go a bit of both here, major story lines and thing a good VA will be worth the price, all the little side quests/less important quests though the AI might be a better way of going about it so it doesnt cost a shit load :P

i do think it better to have voiced quests than just text since it makes thing more immersion and people less likely to skip though everything and not know whats happening. You can do the whole thing Ai and have the option to disable it then it be voice actored by AI or text like were gona get anyway

Veeshan

Natasha wrote: »

I'm with talents. If and when they get around to voice acting I would much rather have it done by professional voice actors who can really lift the setting through their tone and inflection.

AI VA is terrible and I would rather have no voice acting than bad voice acting.

I think u go profession voice acting for main story line and important quests and thing but AI for side story or less important ones to keep costs down.

Mattchoo

Update from testing VoiceAI in classic wow HC.

Yes Please!

I did not think it was 100% the best thing ever, but compared to just having text quests it makes the game light years better. For anyone who has not tried it, I highly recommend you try it on wow classic before you rule it out. It is quite good.

KingDDD

Let's add more features to a project that's already behind schedule. Nothing can go wrong!

Child Item