KOTOR style cutscenes in 7.4 story

[Ollmich]

We all know that voice acting and, specifically, voiced protagonist is a signature feature of SWTOR. We also know that it costs and also takes time to plan, organize and deliver. Need to record 1 line said by player character? Contact 48 actors. And don’t forget about NPCs.

Let’s go down the memory lane a bit.

4.0: KOTOR style cutscenes come into play for side missions such as Alliance alerts and Star Fortresses. Protagonist isn’t voiced but has more dialogue options as well as different ways to interact with the environment (remember Sith relic puzzle on Yavin IV?)

6.x: during the pandemic side missions were released with close to none voice acting – PC is silent, NPCs use recycled alien lines. This approach is still utilized in story bits associated with Galactic seasons.

7.3: KOTOR style cutscenes made its way into the main story, but it felt more or less appropriate. Missions in Interpreter’s retreat are similar to half-voiced New Manaan or Ruhnuk planetary arcs, you just have to complete them in order to progress through the main story, not after it.

And finally, in 7.4 main storyline we jump from normal cutscenes to “black box” ones seemingly at random. That lack of pattern is what bothers me. Sure, important parts are fully voiced, like the final encounter, but I can't wrap my head around everything else. There’s also (pretty nice) banter between cutscenes with PC having things to say. But if the amount of PC’s lines has to be reduced for one reason or another, cutscenes should have priority over banter, no?..

If we look at FFXIV, for example, they have 3 types of interactions during MSQ:

• short conversations with one NPC outside of cutscenes;

• non-voiced cutscenes with multiple characters discussing things or with some action;

• voiced cutscenes (important stuff, pay attention!)

It's logical, and you get used to the scheme.

It doesn’t mean I only want important stuff being voiced in SWTOR too. I also understand that it’s unrealistic to expect everything being voiced like in the old days. But if fully voiced scenes are going to be mixed with half-voiced ones from now on, I’d like to have some pattern here. I don’t see any at the moment.

Do you?

[bahramnima]

first of all ffxiv has by far more content than swtor, your compare a huge game with ton of story content with small game that has story update 2 times a year and those story content are very small so it make no sense to compare those 2.

no main story must retain the signature feature of the game which is voice acting for both npc and player character and light vs dark decisions, if we get small story content and those small content lack the voice acting feature, then swtor has nothing to offer, we get raid  every 2 year or so, one flashpoint every year or so and pvp did not see new map in years, now the main story content is lacking full voice acting.

no i hope broadsword do better job than BW and make the quality and quantity of content better, or at least make/keep main story similar to core game with full voice acting.    

Edited December 11, 2023 by bahramnima

[eabevella]

What's the point of SWTOR without fully voice acted story? It's the only edge it still has over other better games with more real contents.

[Trlance]

I'm playing 7.3 Old Wounds and when I reached the new area on Voss and saw this Kotor-esque cutscene, I was extremely suprised. It's a joke? These types of cutscenes should only be for the Galactic Season and not for the main storyline. For the love of god .. we waitinf for new story entire 6 months and even we can't have all voices including my character in every cutscene. That sucks. Now as i can see 7.4 will be the same .. just perfect. This is so dissapointing. For several years now, Guild Wars 2 has outperformed Swtor in my opinion, and now it's worse for Swtor. What a circus...

~ Tsukito, Alliance Commander

[LD_Little_Dragon]

I don't mind the kotor style cutscenes.  Story is story. 

Even back when I still bothered to try using sound in games I never had the patience to listen to the actors read the lines anyway.  It's so much faster to read the captions and move on.

[Trlance]

11 hours ago, LD_Little_Dragon said:

I don't mind the kotor style cutscenes.  Story is story. 

Even back when I still bothered to try using sound in games I never had the patience to listen to the actors read the lines anyway.  It's so much faster to read the captions and move on.

It sounds like you don't care at all about what's going on in this story. Maybe others care and want good cutscenes, not Kotor ones.

I finally see what's going on. They just copy and paste the environment from Voss and Ord Mantell, not to mention cutscenes done with low effort. This is a low-effort job for developers, and that's very sad. I just don't believe anything will change with the broadsword.

[Whykara]

I really hope we can put the kotor style cutscenes behind us in 7.5. It's annoying and diminishes the experience. The black bars part inbetween the main story in the recent update was especially jarring because it was a tiny part and they really could have just recorded the lines. Maybe those lines were written later and they couldn't be bothered to hit up all 48 VAs again, but this is an explanation, not an excuse. Voiced story is literally the main selling point of this game (besides Star Wars obviously), so I think they should take the time to plan their content.

[LD_Little_Dragon]

7 hours ago, Trlance said:

It sounds like you don't care at all about what's going on in this story. Maybe others care and want good cutscenes, not Kotor ones.

I finally see what's going on. They just copy and paste the environment from Voss and Ord Mantell, not to mention cutscenes done with low effort. This is a low-effort job for developers, and that's very sad. I just don't believe anything will change with the broadsword.

That's incorrect.  I care about the story, what I don't care about is the voice acting.  I get that others do, but it was never a selling point for me.

Same with fancy graphics, it's a minor point to me and in general I prefer less realistic styles in videogames.   Overly detailed graphics don't excite me much, since story isn't affected by how realistically the wind moves leaves on trees.

Personal preferences differ.  It doesn't make my preferences, or yours, wrong.  They're just different.

[__andrea__]

I feel so strongly about the fact that we are given 20 year old gameplay and my character just stands there while I have to read through lines of type that I canceled my subscription and left the game. It is the last straw.