quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster

Repeat speech is generally a bad thing, I would imagine. Doesn''t someone repeating themselves verbatum kinda breach the whole immersion thing?

IMO it does so in both reading and voice formats. A really horriffic thing is when you have to read pages written in a handwriting font. I get eyestrain often enough as it is, thank you...

You could use the text to speech OCX from Microsoft and have it read out the text.

*shudder*. I think I will stick with text thankyou. If anybody is saying anything for my character, it is me... in MY voice.

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - Site:"The Philosophers' Stone of Programming Alchemy" - IOL
The future of RPGs - Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche
          

quote: Original post by w_enslin

You could use the text to speech OCX from Microsoft and have it read out the text.

Or, Mac users could use the same speech technology they''ve all had packaged with their computers for the past five years.

I''m from sweden and we''re so used to subtitles that it doesn''t bother me the least (I''m talking about films here). In fact I read the subtitles automatically, even if it''s a film with swedish speech and, say english subtitles or if the subtitles are in french (I understand about ten words in french)...
I just can''t help it and since it takes about half a second to read those two lines it doesn''t bother me.

I think it''s mostly a question about what you''re used to.

And people in general are pretty much used to games being "written" instead of "spoken" so I don''t believe it''s that big a problem.
As someone said above, bad voice-acting can totally ruin a game (Yes, yes, I know: bad writing can too)

One important thing is to present the text in a format/font/colour that is comfortable to read.

//Jesse

I don''t mind subtitled movies at all, and actually, I prefer reading text to listening to speech in games. There are a few reasons for this, most of which have already been mentioned. It''s faster, which is nice especially if you accidentally talk to a particularly long-winded NPC whose story you''ve already heard. It would take up immense amounts of storage space for some games, so it''s going to be a ways off.

And let''s face it, most of the game industry''s attempts at good voice acting just plain suck. One counterexample that I can think of is Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. The voice acting in that game was fantastic, especially for Kain himself. I loved the cut scenes in LoK.

You say that people hate to read text on screen, and give the example of subtitled movies as an example. I don''t think that''s a good example to use, because they''re two completely different mediums. People don''t like subtitles in movies because they''re used to movies having speech, just as people don''t mind subtitles in games because they''re used to that. The other thing is that a movie goes at its own pace, so you have to constantly be watching for the text, which can take away from the experience. A game generally moves at a rate that the user can control; or if it doesn''t, it is paced with the subtitles taken into account, unlike in movies.

Now I am not saying that people don''t want speech in games simply because they''re not used to it. It''s like having a car: When you don''t have one, it''s not a big deal. But when you do have one and it breaks down, it''s a pain in the ass because you''re used to having it available. People don''t mind text now because it''s what we''re used to, but this could very well change once DVD games become the norm and developers have a lot more disk space to utilize, and speech becomes more common.

One last thing: leaving the character''s voice out leaves a little bit more room for imagination. There will always be people out there who think the voice doesn''t fit the character that well, especially if the actor doing the part isn''t that great. It''s like reading a wonderful fantasy novel, and then in a later book in the series, seeing cover art of a character that looks NOTHING like what you envision them to be. (I hate that. )

-Ironblayde
 Aeon Software

The following sentence is true.
The preceding sentence is false.

I think that is what it comes down to. Imagination. The more that the player is required to visualise in their head, the more likely they are going to be happy with. This does not mean that you can leave it all up to the player, but you should guide them in their decisions. They should be hinted ideas about things that form opinions and pictured in their head. This goes for voices as well. The voices you may be able to get away with are for others (such as NPC''s from the now voided term ''RPGs'') but definitely not the character that the player controls. It becomes far too shocking to hear the wrong voice on what is supposed to be you.

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - Site:"The Philosophers' Stone of Programming Alchemy" - IOL
The future of RPGs - Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche