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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Quest/Npc voiceover? Cutcenes?
Haqi_gg
Member, Alpha Two
Hello Intrepid team and everyone else 
With the progression of the game at this pace and the complex system but at the same time new innovative game designs and ideas, i think AOC deserves some NPC and Quest voiceovers and maybe even a few cutscenes here and there. I know that this may cost a bit more and that should not be an issue implementing it later down the line once the company grows in revenue, but personally i feel more emerged and engaged in a game where there is voice acting, hell we can even do another donation round like the Kickstarter or a vote count. There shouldnt be much as it may ruin the game, however, there should be sounds from the npc's coming as like in other games like BDO or WoW.
What do you guys think, can this be possible?
Let me know of your experiences and how you feel about voiceacting
With the progression of the game at this pace and the complex system but at the same time new innovative game designs and ideas, i think AOC deserves some NPC and Quest voiceovers and maybe even a few cutscenes here and there. I know that this may cost a bit more and that should not be an issue implementing it later down the line once the company grows in revenue, but personally i feel more emerged and engaged in a game where there is voice acting, hell we can even do another donation round like the Kickstarter or a vote count. There shouldnt be much as it may ruin the game, however, there should be sounds from the npc's coming as like in other games like BDO or WoW.
What do you guys think, can this be possible?
Let me know of your experiences and how you feel about voiceacting
Also known as Haqi
0
Comments
For immersion, all dialogues should be in Dünir language. With subtitles for those who do not speak that.
You may wish to review Voice Acting on the wiki.
I personally hope they do not add narration to quest lines or NPC dialog. The voiced NPC greetings is enough to give me a feel for a character's voice, which then carries over into their text dialog.
There are a lot of reasons I feel that this is a bad idea, but most boil down to the fact that getting it right is really hard, getting it wrong is really easy, and on an MMORPG scale, consistency at that level is beyond expensive, while simultaneously increasing the barrier to creating new content and discouraging the developers from updating or tweaking old content to improve it by massively increasing the cost of doing so.
FFXIV is an example. Such a disconnected experience.
I think it would be great to have an introductory cinematic giving a general overview of the world, its history and your place within it as a player. A bit like the LOTR introduction narrated by Galadriel or this absolutely fantastic Map "introduction" for Warhammer Total War: Mortal Empires.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=zveFDWkaTYM&t=141s
These would take huge amounts of effort and resources, so I think for AoC it would be better to go for a quality Narrator over animated 2D images. Like this introductory cinematic from Elden Ring.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=_uydEN9Fu7M&t=59s
As for in-game NPC's I just don't think the resources are there to do it properly, so It's probably best to make sure that you have nice audio queues and notification sounds for quests etc. Do it well, or don't do it at all and wait until you are in a position to do it justice.
(Although ideally, you'd have a fully voice acted world)
Cutscenes can be good but they have to be limited to moments that can't, or shouldn't, be played by the player. A cutscene that takes away a playable scenario almost always turns out to be a negative for the player. I'm not opposed to cutscenes but for a exemplary experience they need to be judicious about the moments they pick.
I typically don't prefer voice lines because most of the time it's half-assed. They read part of the dialogue and then just stop. Or the voices just don't match the character, are unenthusiastic and the dialogue doesn't match the words. It drags down the game quality. However, when a voice actor nails a character and everything is done right, it can bring the game to life and make a good experience phenomenal. Witcher 3 cast comes to mind but above all of them the dwarf character, Zolton Chivay, is exceptional.
If IS did decide to do voice overs I don't think any of the typical problems would be an issue given how dedicated they seem to be to producing a quality game. If voice overs do end up on the menu at some point that could add up to a decent chunk of change and a fair amount of time when you consider the amount of lore, number of quests and NPCs. Then multiplied by all the different languages. I don't think it's going to happen.
Also I have to ask, why do people keep wanting to throw more money at this game? The literal 10s of millions they have at their disposal isn't enough? I get that games like this can cost a ton of money but those games are run by people that don't have their own money on the line. Steven does. He's a very successful businessman and if you listen to him talk, he's a calculated individual. He seems makes decisions based on multiple factors that will lead to his desired outcome. Not knee jerk reactions. If you guys are dead set on more donations why not just put your cash in an envelope and mail it to Intrepid Studios?