I think full voice can add a lot to a game. I don’t think I would have enjoyed the Mass Effect series as much without Jennifer Hale, and the voice for Kassandra really added to Odyssey.
Still, this won’t deter me at all from getting this game day one.
I am a fan of voiced protags, and well written protags with defined character stick longest in memory (Geralt, Arthur Morgan, Wei Shen etc).
But in a game like Fallout where I create a character and define who he is, unvoiced protag is the best way to go, if only because it allows for so many options of what to say and do.
What I really loathe and hate with a passion of thousand burning suns are unvoiced and silent protagonists of the Gordon Freeman style (I love Half Life, but silent Freeman ain’t the reason for it).
I think Silent Freeman of Half Life 1 has to be viewed in light of its time, and the desire not to pull people out of the action with cutscenes or cheesy acting (note that the cheese-tastic cutscenes of Jedi Knight were only a year in the past at that time). Granted, they could have included voiceover for Gordon without leaving his POV (“Hey Barney, help me out!”) but that might have called attention to itself too, especially if the same voice clips got repeated over and over again.
It felt like an elegant solution at the time, IMO. By Half Life 2, when you are mutely participating in longer and more complex scripted scenes and conversations, and when you have Alyx tagging along much of the way, it wasn’t really working anymore and felt more like an affectation.
Yeah, I agree- HL1 it wasn’t too bad. HL2, and especially the biggest modern offenders Destiny 1&2, this is just painfully stupid.
I’l admit that games without fully voiced protagonists kind of feel cheap in this day and age. The bar has been raised, IMO. I mean, it isn’t a deal breaker or anything, but having everyone else talk and you just selecting lines off a menu is always a little jarring.
Whenever you cut off an NPC by choosing an option before they’ve finished their line, they should cut your line off by the same amount.
Would you -
I won’t -
But the King -
Screw -
Then at least -
SPARTA
or something.
I prefer silent protagonists for exactly the reasons Tim Cain laid out.
And I felt the exact opposite. When someone spoke directly to me, I replied to them in my head. I thought it was perfect.
Dialog wheels and the like annoy me.
I don’t think Gordon’s silence would have bothered me nearly as much if just about everyone he encountered didn’t constantly give you these looks of hopeful anticipation, like ‘maybe this time he’ll talk to me!’. But no, you just stand there, blank, unresponsive, just an empty vessel for others to project their hopes and fears onto.
It’s the epic tale of a mute who saves the world
I would like to see more of the “vats” like combat. I am to sure I got it – it’s a slow time it looked like.
Plus it is a lot more colorful that Fallout. For better or worse.
My favorite sentence I read in a while.
Games that really needed a fully-voiced protag?
I agree. The voiced conversations back and forth during the cutscenes were one of the reasons I enjoyed Mass Effect so much.
Is there a VATS-type combat option? Not a fan of the fast paced “shooty” games. Wish this was 3rd person.
That gripe aside, this looks fantastic (watched it at work with no sound so no idea about music or voice acting, but the character models and animation look fantastic - take note Bethesda).
Hope this does really well for Obsidian, would be nice for them to have a huge original hit for a change.
They show off the slow-motion mode during that video a few times. It seems like you do additional damage in that mode, while having plenty of time to line up a head shot (think:Red Dead Redemption 2’s dead eye meter but without tagging targets). I can’t remember now typing this up, but I think there was some sort of stat that governed it’s duration and frequency of use, of some sort. It seemed to me that it was some sort of VATS-like mechanic.
Tetris would be much better if Yakov Smirnoff were in V.O. the whole time cheering you on
“Where’s the long one? I need a long one! Please Lenin give me long one!”
“If this gameplay gets much faster it will be like inevitable decline of imperialist capitalism!”
“In Soviet Union, government bilks YOU out of lucrative game proceeds! Wait, is not even joke.”
“Hey LAAAADY!” Oh no wait, that was someone else.
Are you know…bullet time. The Matrix, Max Payne, F.E.A.R., et al
I actually downloaded a bullet time mod for Fallout New Vegas and used it a lot in lieu of VATS. Weird I know.
I’m in as well, this sounds RIGHT up my alley (in space, with a smattering of Fallout.)
VATS always seemed gimmicky to me. I never used it in FNV.