Im sure this has been discussed ad nauseam, but for a game where each character has their"own story"

[imjake.7539]

.... we sure do lack voice acting and facial scar options and old man/woman faces. Why? There isnt that much voiced dialogue for our characters. We need some voice options. I made an old man character but he sounds like a snobby young man, as all human male player characters do in this game.

We need scar options, better wrinkles, and more voice choices, please. And maybe some better background choices. They feel like beta options and it's been 6 years now. I dont always want to find my sister, my parents or cry about not joining the circus. I also dont want to be a city dweller all the time who's just leaving home for the first time!

 

Before any one freaks out on me; I love this game. I do. These RP issues are my ONLY complaints (sans no great axes lol). I dont RP with others, but i like to be able to have my character make sense.

[GDchiaScrub.3241]

> @"imjake.7539" said:

> .... we sure do lack voice acting and facial scar options and old man/woman faces. Why? There isnt that much voiced dialogue for our characters. We need some voice options. I made an old man character but he sounds like a snobby young man, as all human male player characters do in this game.

> We need scar options, better wrinkles, and more voice choices, please. And maybe some better background choices. They feel like beta options and it's been 6 years now. I dont always want to find my sister, my parents or cry about not joining the circus. I also dont want to be a city dweller all the time who's just leaving home for the first time!

>

> Before any one freaks out on me; I love this game. I do. These RP issues are my ONLY complaints (sans no great axes lol). I dont RP with others, but i like to be able to have my character make sense.

 

I can't say it's feasible to expand the voice acting talent nor is the adding in new "paths" in scope for what Arenanet does currently (living story). However scars (especially for female humans) are something to consider. I think female human in particular only has the one face that is 'exclusive' to makeover kits (e.g. you don't start with it). Male humans only have the Clint Eastwood look that is tolerable to me. I don't recall a scarred option, but I think there is. There are more wrinkled/crowsfeet for the male humans however.

 

D:

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

The developers addressed the issue of voice options in the most recent AMA (you might have heard a thing or two about it recently).

 

The short of it is that adding a single extra line of dialogue means recording the voice another 10 times minimum (for English, French, Spanish, German, Mandarin... and in both genders). Adding just one more female norn voice (the one I'd pay gems to replace) means adding 5 new actors to record every bit of dialogue.

 

For games in which the character hardly speaks, this might be a realistic option. For games, such as GW2, in which the player character speaks in all stories, to vendors, and during combat, it's an incredible expense without as much benefit as most of us think.

 

 

[Glacial.9516]

While this would still be (a lot of) additional work, instead of hiring new voice actors to do voices I would quite like if the existing voice actors also voiced lines for the other four races. That way we could choose between the five voice actors for each character, regardless of race.

 

I wonder just how much extra dialogue would be required once they get past the initial hurdles of Lv10-30 PS and combat/skill/class comments. As far as I can tell most of the post-PS story voicing is the same or very similar between the races. It might just come down to a few extra lines here and there, and for the Elite specs some of which aren't race-specific anyway (I hear a lot of Weaver quotes shared between the races).

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"Glacial.9516" said:

> While this would still be (a lot of) additional work, instead of hiring new voice actors to do voices I would quite like if the existing voice actors also voiced lines for the other four races. That way we could choose between the five voice actors for each character, regardless of race.

>

> I wonder just how much extra dialogue would be required once they get past the initial large hurdles of Lv10-30 PS and combat/skill comments. As far as I can tell most of the post-PS story voicing is the same or very similar between the races. It might just come down to a few extra lines for the Elite specs, some of which aren't race-specific anyway (I hear a lot of Weaver quotes shared between the races).

 

Using the current actors "instead of hiring new actors" is potentially more costly. Because those existing actors will need to get paid for doing more work and coordinating their schedules will become more difficult, since they'd need to be in studio 4-5 times longer.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Does Spanish have audio? It didn't used to (only text); if it does now, we should update the Wiki.

[starlinvf.1358]

> @"Glacial.9516" said:

> While this would still be (a lot of) additional work, instead of hiring new voice actors to do voices I would quite like if the existing voice actors also voiced lines for the other four races. That way we could choose between the five voice actors for each character, regardless of race.

>

> I wonder just how much extra dialogue would be required once they get past the initial hurdles of Lv10-30 PS and combat/skill/class comments. As far as I can tell most of the post-PS story voicing is the same or very similar between the races. It might just come down to a few extra lines here and there, and for the Elite specs some of which aren't race-specific anyway (I hear a lot of Weaver quotes shared between the races).

 

Thats not how Voice talent works though. You pay them on a contract with an estimation of their studio time, and will often include expenses during work hours; though generally no where near as extensive as live actors, given those are on-location and need to do a lot of traveling. But the Studio time is what the bulk of their contract is about. Regardless of them reusing the current the cast, or bringing in new talent, it will cost them at roughly double or even triple the amount of per character (race/gender) as it did originally, because they have to do all the old content PLUS everything post launch (2 expansions and lot of living story chapters) to cover that. Even if we were to ignore that and only include wild lines (stuff the they say in openworld play), that still a huge amount of voice work (plus the jarring inconsistency when going into a story mission).

 

I've seen other games do voice packs, and pretty much all of them are done for content that is largely devoid of real dialog, or is extremely limited on it. A lot of old shooters used to include voice packs, because its mostly grunts, screams, taunts and one liners. But name one major RPG with a selection of voice packs that wasn't done during a remastering version. And compare the length of a fixed game verses an MMO where expansions are more like story Sequels.

[Sojourner.4621]

> @"starlinvf.1358" said:

> > @"Glacial.9516" said:

> > While this would still be (a lot of) additional work, instead of hiring new voice actors to do voices I would quite like if the existing voice actors also voiced lines for the other four races. That way we could choose between the five voice actors for each character, regardless of race.

> >

> > I wonder just how much extra dialogue would be required once they get past the initial hurdles of Lv10-30 PS and combat/skill/class comments. As far as I can tell most of the post-PS story voicing is the same or very similar between the races. It might just come down to a few extra lines here and there, and for the Elite specs some of which aren't race-specific anyway (I hear a lot of Weaver quotes shared between the races).

>

> Thats not how Voice talent works though. You pay them on a contract with an estimation of their studio time, and will often include expenses during work hours; though generally no where near as extensive as live actors, given those are on-location and need to do a lot of traveling. But the Studio time is what the bulk of their contract is about. Regardless of them reusing the current the cast, or bringing in new talent, it will cost them at roughly double or even triple the amount of per character (race/gender) as it did originally, because they have to do all the old content PLUS everything post launch (2 expansions and lot of living story chapters) to cover that. Even if we were to ignore that and only include wild lines (stuff the they say in openworld play), that still a huge amount of voice work (plus the jarring inconsistency when going into a story mission).

>

> I've seen other games do voice packs, and pretty much all of them are done for content that is largely devoid of real dialog, or is extremely limited on it. A lot of old shooters used to include voice packs, because its mostly grunts, screams, taunts and one liners. But name one major RPG with a selection of voice packs that wasn't done during a remastering version. And compare the length of a fixed game verses an MMO where expansions are more like story Sequels.

 

Basically this. Look what happened when FO4 decided to voice the protagonist. People got upset at the "Mass Effect" like dialogue wheel where you no longer had dozens of different ways to react to every situation that varied based on your perk choices. When you add voice acting like this, there are places you make sacrifices. That's why most RPGs just flat out do not voice the protagonist beyond basic grunting cave-man noises.

[Algreg.3629]

after much consideration and pondering after the rando ahat incident, I came to the conclusion I prefer a Dark Souls approach unless you play a predefined character.

[kharmin.7683]

Would it be feasible to add a slider option for voices where, on your local client, you could adjust the pitch/tenor of your character's voice?

[Dreadshow.9320]

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> The developers addressed the issue of voice options in the most recent AMA (you might have heard a thing or two about it recently).

>

> The short of it is that adding a single extra line of dialogue means recording the voice another 10 times minimum (for English, French, Spanish, German, Mandarin... and in both genders). Adding just one more female norn voice (the one I'd pay gems to replace) means adding 5 new actors to record every bit of dialogue.

>

> For games in which the character hardly speaks, this might be a realistic option. For games, such as GW2, in which the player character speaks in all stories, to vendors, and during combat, it's an incredible expense without as much benefit as most of us think.

>

>

 

They could sell voice over makeover kits in the gem store for benefits.

[Edelweiss.4261]

If anything, voice acting actively hinders the ability to make the character your own. Take for example the sentence "She said she did not take his money". Any word you place emphasis on changes the meaning. Adding voice to an option limits a line to only having a single meaning. Voice defines a character leaving little to no room for roleplay. Voiced protagonists have ruined so many games for me.

[starlinvf.1358]

> @"kharmin.7683" said:

> Would it be feasible to add a slider option for voices where, on your local client, you could adjust the pitch/tenor of your character's voice?

 

Technically yes, but the audio fidelity would suffer. Good Auto Tuning is still considered an art form, as it has to be tailored to the whole of the mix and not just a sample. Bad Auto tuning (which doesn't put in that effort or level of precision to achieve natural harmonics) results in Kanye West and/or Amateur Vocaloid songs. Pitch shifting in itself creates a lot of artifacts in the audio, and those have to be cleaned up if you don't want them noticed. Tenor on the other hand is a whole collective of speech behaviors, that I don't think can be achieved by sample modification... at least not without AI or Human intervention in the audio processing stage.

 

You can't just create a slider and get an acceptable output..... not with the software we have today. And I'm talking at the professional industry level, not just those compatible with games. They'd have to go through a remastering process; and even then, theres only so much variation you can create from that source material.

 

To get anything close to the desired concept without involving anything more then an audio team, we're need another major break through in voice synthesis. Implications of industry upheaval aside, you'd still need expensive software to do the voice creation, and a skilled (ie expensive) team of audio engineers to run it. The software replaces the cost of the Voice Talent.... but you now have a different problem of finding proper expertise to operate it. If you look at the Vocaloid scene, good talent is rare, and the divide in quality very clearly shows.