Dialog in Wasteland 2

A

AtomBomb

It Wandered In From the Wastes
I took advantage of "ask a dev week" and it just so happens that they answered my question about what dialog in wasteland 2 would be like. On top of that, it was Chis Keenan. So here it is. Hi AtomBomb,

Most of the dialog in Wasteland 2 is text based. There are very few actual voiced roles in the game. This was something we decided early on for a few reasons.

1. We missed the emphasis on awesome descriptive text from older games. They had to do it out of technical necessity, but as an industry, we've pushed towards more graphical means to show off the world. Wasteland 1 had tons of text that gave you great details on the environment...even more than would be feasible to show with art.

2. During the Kickstarter campaign, we asked our community what they would like to see as stretch goals. Overwhelmingly the answer came back with bigger world, more content and deeper story. VO was very low on the list

3. Part of what's allowing us to continue to create deep interactions is not having to worry about VO. Costs aside, it is a production nightmare to do proper VO work. There are so many variables that tie into it. You have to lock down the script quite a bit before release. This really limits the changes you can make at the end of the game when you're tuning all systems.

4. With a game this large, the total cost for VO work on all characters would likely exceed the entire budget we got from our Kickstarter campaign.
 
Sub-Human said:
Same. Voice Acting limits the player's imagination.
Click to expand...
Amen.

Also, even using "budget voice acting" means, like FO3/NV did with reusing the same actors, again and again, is just irritating. You can make up an inner voice for any character if it's not provided for you. But if they give you the voice, and it's a voice you've heard hundreds of times already over dozens of roles, you'll notice it and say to yourself, "Oh, it's THAT guy, again..." It can break the immersion if done poorly, and for what? Just to avoid "relying" on text?

I'd personally LOVE a game that focused on text-based conversations, with subtle, vague, early-Sims-esque "Oooh Waah Eey!" mumbles in the background. It gives the character a little life, and yet you're still creating their voice inside your own head. I'd prefer that over poor voice overs ANY day...
 
IMO voice acting has its place, I'd say, in a GTA type game or anything fairly linear or presented in a cinematic style. It works for Mass Effect since that game just has a basic "A or B" path.

But yeah if paying actors is half of your budget for an rpg game then something is wrong. The talking-heads worked well for the original Fallouts but for the new games, hearing the same 3 actors voice minor side-quest NPCs gets really old.
 
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