Divinity: Original Sin II - Voice Acting Confirmed

Larian tweeted this tidbit recently. Voice acting is a go for Divinity Original Sin II.

Last week we were in the UK recording voice actors and doing mocap! It's HAPPENING AHHH!
— Larian Studios (@larianstudios) August 2, 2017

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More information.

I wonder what the mocap is for?

Umm so is this coming in a later patch? Seems kind of VERY late for a September 14th release to be doing that now, no?
Not that I was planning to play before the EE anyway but will people get only 70% of the game on release again?

I thought they weren't voice acting because of the amount of text. D:OS had very uneven voice acting. I thought most of the companions weren't well done, but some of the main npcs were. I personally think voice acting is something better done right or not at all.

forgottenlor said:

I thought they weren't voice acting because of the amount of text. D:OS had very unever voice acting. I thought most of the companions weren't well done, but some of the main npcs were. I personally thing voice acting is something better done right or not at all.

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Its probably not full voice acted but partial like the first go round of Divinity: Original Sin. It will be interesting to see the final result.

Interesting. I myself don't particularly mind voice acting as long as it's limited. I'm more invested in characters when the majority of their persona is left up to imagination, which I believe can be conveyed well through text.

Having said that, however, I am a big fan of rather hammy characters, and when that's expressed through voice acting it's an absolute treat.

A waste of time and resources.

Not at all. Voices can add quite a bit to game. Anyway 6 more weeks....

I was planning on playing this on day 1, but this made me somewhat uneasy. Shouldn't this sort of thing have been completed some time ago?

I just read the text and am not going to wait for an NPC to finish talking. I break it off an move on. Voice acting is overrated and often unneeded in the way I play my games.

Myrthos said:

I just read the text and am not going to wait for an NPC to finish talking. I break it off an move on. Voice acting is overrated and often unneeded in the way I play my games.

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Having important lines here and there voice-acted, just so the player gets a sense of what voice that character is intended to have, isn't a bad idea. Also, atmospheric voice/banter is good. But I'll never understand how there are apparently players out there who actually sit around and just wait for a voice actor to read off the lines during dialogue. I guess it's the same crowd who opts for audio books in a situation where they could just be reading the actual book instead. Oh wait, that's nobody.

Maybe I play my games like I read books. I just imagine their voices

I actually prefer partial voicing the most - this way, you get clear picture of what the devs intended for each characters to sound like, then apply your imagination of how lines are said!

Stingray said:

Having important lines here and there voice-acted, just so the player gets a sense of what voice that character is intended to have, isn't a bad idea.

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That's up to debate. Many prefer abstraction to simulation myself included.

Sure, I could see it going either way. Leaving it completely up to the imagination is fine as well.

But voice-acting everything is just a giant waste of time and actually annoying.

Myrthos said:

I just read the text and am not going to wait for an NPC to finish talking. I break it off an move on. Voice acting is overrated and often unneeded in the way I play my games.

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Speak for yourself.

I enjoy good voiceover that fits a character. By that I don't mean only japanese exaggerated moans and whatnot, dubs if done properly can also be good. An example where dub is horrible compared to original is Valkyria Chronicles. Through the game I just couldn't believe how original VO is so superior to dub. An example where dub seems great is just released on Steam Trials of Cold Steel, this dub finally doesn't feel like some random people are reading text completely uninterested in it.

In my case, sometimes an actor can make a character believable. As if ones and zeros are actually alive. For example if Claudia Black wasn't behind Morrigan there is a good chance I wouldn't care about her at all.
Sometimes, voiceover is so unique I just can't get enough of it. An example is "being on heavy drugs" Jensen.

Voiceover and text is not the same thing. I always play games with subtitles turned on. When voiceover sucks, but writing is still good, I'll skip to the next line of text before yucky voiceover ends just like Myrthos. But this is not something I always do.

Voiceover IMO is not overrated. What's overrated sometimes are games with good voiceover. The best example is GTA5. It's mediocre racing sim with horrible controls overrated because of one of best voiceovers ever.

Depends on the game for me. I could not imagine a Witcher 3, a TES or a PB game without proper VO while I can live with more limited VO in games like D:OS, PoE etc.

I also skip most dialogues before the line is finished but it depends a little on how much the game grabs me. If I really enjoy the game and the writing is good then I might try to take it all in and might even listen to every line in full. This can also be very relaxing. Just stay awhile and listen...

On the other hand if the game is "only" pretty decent, the writing OK-ish etc. then I will probably skip a lot of VO, especially if it is side quest NPCs with nothing much of value to say.
I will only listen to the full lines at pivotal moments of the story or any other important dialogue.

I like that they are going to have VO in D:OS 2 and would not consider it a waste of resources. They have put some pretty unique characters in the game and VO might add quite a bit of flavor to their personalities.
A quick Larian game example: Remember (I'm sure everyone does who has played the game, right? ) the crazy rhyming mage Bellegar from Divinity DKS? That character would have (IMHO) only been half the fun without the VO.

There have only been a small handful of games where I enjoyed the voice acting: Fallout, Baldur's Gate & series, Jagged Alliance 2. It was sparse, you never felt like it was dragging on and you wanted to skip it, and the key word was "acting". Fewer lines, better delivery, and of course, it was well written. Haven't seen anything like that this century.

I turn ALL sounds OFF when I play, so I couldn't care less about VO's!!

From what I played of D:OS, some of the VA was fine, but Larian made some very questionable casting decisions. Madora's fake American Southern accent was just unbearable.

Anyway I don't care about VA. All I want to know is if the gameplay has been improved. If it's still endless trash mobs, random generic loot, and talking inanimate objects, I'll pass.