Drakensang not fully voice acted?

Personally it doesn't impact my enjoyment of the game … I would rate full voice acting way, way down on my list. Of course it is nice, but given the choice of the enjoyable dialogue in Drakensang being partly voiced and the mediocre crap in Fallout 3 being fully voiced …

Fully voiced seems an approach a little extreme I know it's the point of the Gothic series and I definitely feel that it adds a lot to immersion when well done but not much to the core gameplay of a CRPG. The Witcher even add voices for common peasants and for that too I felt it adds a lot to immersion and to the mood.

A mixed approach with voices for the main NPC and important dialogs make sense for me, but I feel the Drakensang approach less interesting. For the CRPG bigger and bigger I feel it wrong, there's a link, when they are so big the it's extreme expense to have voices then it's perhaps too big.

The point is that resources that would be better applied to gameplay or better written dialog are wasted on crummy voiceacting. There's no way to turn off voices and then turn on content that is lacking.

Originally Posted by Thrasher
There's no way to turn off voices and then turn on content that is lacking.

Very important point - we all want everything … but exactly what are your trade-offs and priorities?

gameplay over presentation for me

Originally Posted by Thrasher
gameplay over presentation for me

I understood that from your post and apologize that the way I said it sounded like a question back … it is really a rhetorical question everyone hsa to answer for themselves.

Wow, I was really fascinated to read through three pages of opinion about voice acting. You must all be truly desperate to be heard (or 'read', for those of you who prefer 'content').

Here's the thing: saying you like content over voice acting is just plain stupid. If you like content, read a book. I play games to be entertained, like going to a movie. If I wanted content I could read, do a crossword or peruse the thesaurus.

You morons who claim to be so enthralled with content from a - VIDEO GAME - are ignorant, pompous little noobtards. You probably 'read' Yahoo for your news too, right?

Save your pathetic roleplaying opinions for your friends at the renaissance faire. Shave the hair off your little dwarf hobbit-toes. Tell them to your imaginary girlfriend, or write a long blog post in Olde English. Just don't inflict them on normal people.

And by the way, I stopped reading after opinion #4. So did everyone else. So only YOU actually read this crap, and if you're still reading my opinon - well you're just pathetic.

You're a bunch of idiots. I dare you to flame me, you 35-year-old RPG fanboys who live in your parents' basement. I could care less because, thank God, I will never visit this forum again, I'll never see your mundane little ramblings, and your opinions just DON'T MATTER. NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOU, NO ONE HEARS YOU, AND YOU WILL NEVER AMOUNT TO ANYTHING.

Now go eat shit.

Welcome to the forum!
I wish more games would have content comparable to a well-written book, that would be great. Books are also great, but they are not interactive.

Games are NOT movies.

10 bucks the nice mr. 'have' *is* checking back here… desperately hoping for someone to take the bait

Very obvious heavy-handed troll attempt that should be ignored, and preferably deleted.

Just ignore him. I felt tempted to ban him right away, but one of the other mods has already given him a warning. One punishment is enough.

From a psychological perspective, the posting of "have" is fascinating.

His posting is very well conceived and undertook probable several hours of fine-tuning.

He begins with a relatively low tone, saying nothing extraordinarily new , or especially interesting. Just an opinion like any other. He calls the people who posted here "desparate", if they cling to a certain opinion.

The next paragraph contains a tiny bit of a stronger tone. He calls the readers "stupid", which is the first real kind of insult, although a relatively mild one.
This insult is very much neutralized by the following sentences which do nothing special but offer the reader(s) his opinion.

The next paragraph is obviously much harsher. The poster didn't want to write down more in order to slowly climb up into his climax of insults, insteads he uses several expressions which are clearly meant to insult the reader(s). The amount of words used to express his or her opinion dwindles.

The next paragraph is not rather filled with "real" insults, but rather with indirect, even implicit ones. The poster clearly speculates on some being offensive on a special kind of readers, because they are expressed in a certain way. This is like a shot into the dark, with a weapon aimed at someone without knowing whether the "enemy" wars a bullet-proof vest or not.

The paragraph following that is a try to put the own opinion as the most important one in this forum. He or she even doesn't care about the fact that this thread is being read by an unknown number of lurkers, even worse: The poster pretends to be speaking for a group of readers he or she cannot know.

This is insofar interesting in that this is a clear expression of the own opinion - and therefore the ego - being most important to any one in his or her whole life. He or she expresses himself or herself as if he or she was being superior to anyone else on this planet, and everyone else is inferior to him or her.

This is a clear sign of a social disorder.

The last paragraph doesn't contain nothing personal of the poster anymore. It nothing but consists of insults. The poster is writing himself or herself into some kind of rage (like I do in other discussions sometimes, but without insulting anyone (at least i try to), which leads into a staccato of uttered wods like someone who is overwhelmed like a great anger and/or fury.

Also interesting is, that the amount of expressions expressing his belief to be superior to everyone else here increases drastically.

In this paragraph, as a summary, all personality is lost, and it is instead replaced by words voiced from an inflated ego.

The very last paragraph is written like - not an insult, but as a way to degrade a person. This is how I imagine a sadistic person finding lust in degrading another person - or even several ones.

I believe from this that this post is a) remarkably fine-tuned to produce the most possible amount of anger / feeling to be insulted / feeling of degradation in the reader, or b) this person has already had so much training in writing similar posts that this comes already naturally.

In conclusion, I'd call this person an inherently sadistic person which finds fun and lust in degrading people. His or her tool in fulfilling this lust re words - and in particular posts like this.

He or she assumes that he or she will provoke very, very strong reactions in he readers, the more, the stronger his or her words are which are used. Which is another hint towards the nature of this poster.

These reactions are also meant to generate nothing but attention. Here comes in the term of an "attention-whore", which he or she very likely is. Attention is like sustentation for the poster. He or she cannot live without it, otherwise this post wouldn't contain so strong expressions - expressions which are perhaps even hand-picked during year-long training in order to provoike the most strongest possible reactions. Expressions that he or she has perhaps assembled from other posters who use a similar style, which means that the poster is constantly learning in order to further develop his or her posts into a certain direction.

From people like that I would expect criminal acts.

Nicely done.

I agree that this is definitely a very sick individual.

For the little I've played of Drakensang (I still haven't reached Ferdok), I find it a bit distracting to have the first line spoken and not the rest of the dialog. I would of preffered to have no voice acting at all and only text.

Originally Posted by k1000
For the little I've played of Drakensang (I still haven't reached Ferdok), I find it a bit distracting to have the first line spoken and not the rest of the dialog. I would of preffered to have no voice acting at all and only text.

You can always turn down your speakers.

From what I've seen, a lot of people find the voiceover thing in Drakensang confusing, which is kinda interesting. Do we expect to always have full VO in games nowadays? Since when? Heck, I enjoy voiceover *a lot* myself, but I'm not surprised if a game does not have full VO.

I mean, in BG2 only the most important dialogues were fully voiced, and in the party conversations only the first line was spoken. That's similar to Drakensang, only in DraSa every now and then we get a cutscene with full VO! Sure, BG2 is an old game, but, for example, do the NWN2 games have full VO? No.

Still, I have to admit, I highly appreciate it when imporant characters and party members have full VO - but, hm, in DraSa party members *have* voiceover for most of their lines, don't they?

As far as I remember, NWN2 has full voiceover.

River of Time will also have full voice acting - and a legion of additional writers. Strange combination.

Originally Posted by Grandor Dragon
As far as I remember, NWN2 has full voiceover.

No, it doesn't. Well, yes, there's a lot of voiceover there, but it's not full. A lot of npcs don't have spoken lines - shopkeepers, etc., but not only! Even Deekin does not have voiceover (a travesty! ). And if I remember correctly, in NWN:HotU the companions usually had voicover for the first line only - don't remember how it was in the OC, but I'm assuming it was less than in that expansion, but that's NWN1 anyway - just saying.

@Gorath: Well I hope some reviewers will be satisfied with the VO this time. I don't mind really, as long as it doesn't cost too much.