So no more voice acting for our characters?

[LadyRavenShadows]

4 minutes ago, Sarova said:

🥺

Maybe the block of text (aka Kotor interactions) is not permanent and was required because they changed the voice actor for the male IA too late to get all that character's interactions voiced, so rather than have just that character with no voiced parts, they gave us all the same.  At least, I hope this is the case.  I'm optimistic, as the voiced story is one of the best things about SWTOR.

I just looked up when the chapter expansions came out aka the Alliance Commander storyline and they have switched to the KOTOR interaction with NPC since then so we are talking about an early 2016 time frame. So it's been that way for over 8 years now. Plus some of the original voice cast is dead now in real life, not the game. 

[DuchessKristania]

16 minutes ago, Sarova said:

🥺

Maybe the block of text (aka Kotor interactions) is not permanent and was required because they changed the voice actor for the male IA too late to get all that character's interactions voiced, so rather than have just that character with no voiced parts, they gave us all the same.  At least, I hope this is the case.  I'm optimistic, as the voiced story is one of the best things about SWTOR.

I'm hoping this level of unvoiced content changes as well. I'm right there with you as far as being optimistic. I also think being constructive and hopeful is more effective in the long run. I love SWTOR, it's probably my favorite game, and definitely my favorite mmo.

[Sarfux]

19 minutes ago, DuchessKristania said:

I'm hoping this level of unvoiced content changes as well. I'm right there with you as far as being optimistic. I also think being constructive and hopeful is more effective in the long run. I love SWTOR, it's probably my favorite game, and definitely my favorite mmo.

its my favorite game ever.  I have been with it since alpha testing in 2009 and through every single thing.  Been through the ups and downs.  but this is a whole new low point.  i hope it's just a temp thing

[FlatTax]

3 hours ago, Kristallia said:

They will probably communicate little later as they might be very busy now so soon after the patch launch.

Broadsword says that communication and transparency is one of their core values so I think its safe to say that they will eventually communicate about it.

@JackieKo, you are cordially invited to communicate with your community about this.

Sincerely,

A concerned community member

[JakRoanin]

I think it's unfair to blame @JackieKo for not posting because she can't post at will. There are meetings she has to have, and she can only say what her bosses tell her to say. It takes time.

[cannibithobbal]

13 minutes ago, TheScorpionQueen said:

Why not use Artificial Intelligence to create new game voice.

If they already have the persons voice, it can be done.

No.

Just, no, please and thank you.

Taking away more work from actors is not the solution to this problem.  Not writing more scenes than they can afford to voice act is the solution to this problem.

I would rather wait a year for a high quality 2 scene update that is fully voice acted than get these frequent updates that are 80% unvoiced and almost entirely daily area filler content totally tangential to the main storyline anyway.

Edited June 1 by cannibithobbal

[JakRoanin]

No AI! Does nobody remember the entertainment world shut down partly because of AI (yes world because non US actors in SAG couldn't work in US projects) under SAG. SAG includes VA's because 99% of them also do screen work. People AI will not help!

[DuchessKristania]

51 minutes ago, TheScorpionQueen said:

Why not use Artificial Intelligence to create new game voice.

If they already have the persons voice, it can be done.

They cannot just use the actor's voice. The actor MUST give permission, and even then someone has to record the lines for inflection and delivery. Interestingly, this was something that just came up in a work meeting. We had an actor pass away before he could finish work on the last few episodes of an upcoming project. The family gave their blessing to finish the project out with an AI generated version of his voice, and one of the other actors will be stepping in to do the performance recording. We all agreed that this was the only time we would use AI, and it was only due to the unforeseeable circumstance of the actor's death, and with the complete blessing of his family.

 

*** also if I could quit making and finding typos that would be awesome, lol.

Edited June 1 by DuchessKristania

[DuchessKristania]

38 minutes ago, TheScorpionQueen said:

Off course they need permission. Something is just self-explanatory.

If someone asks a question I don't assume they already have the answer. Without the inflection of voice, or seeing visual cues why would I assume your question was not a genuine one? There was nothing in your comment to indicate it wasn't. My mistake.

Edited June 1 by DuchessKristania

[DuchessKristania]

7 hours ago, TheScorpionQueen said:

Here's my reasoning.
If they already have the persons voice on tape..
1. they would have a cooperation agreement.
2. that agreement may give them permission to use it as they like.

It can even give the Actor some income.

They'd have to pay the actors whose voices are being copied, and then pay another actor to record the performance that the AI generated voice would mimic. AI can reproduce the voice, but a fully realized performance would still require someone to act it out as a guide.  So it would mean paying more people,

I believe they did something similar for Val Kilmer in the Willow series. They used old recordings of his voice in tandem with his son's voice and performance for a scene where we hear Val's character from the movie. I didn't love the series, but that voice was fairly convincing, not quite the same as having Val perform it, but what can ya do, the man lost his voice. It's pretty impressive that they can do that though, impressive and scary. How many movie franchises are there warning about AI, lol? If they sell this game to Skynet I am soooo canceling my sub, lol!

[Pietrastor]

If the budget is so low that they can't even afford full VA anymore for short updates once every half a year, then the game's trully in a miserable state and really, what's the point of it anymore TBH. I do think that in a game like this non-voiced main quests are unacceptable and there's a line where compromises no longer make any sense, from the artististic POV too. What's next, cutscenes will be just 3 static artworks? You get the point...

So yeah, maybe I would rather have 1 main story update every 2 years WITH full VA and a bunch od non-voiced sidequests in-between (or filler with alien jibberish akin to recent events) than what we get now. Or drop the German/French dubbing alltogether (sorry but that's the cold truth). VA costs are actually NOT that big of a deal in game production and are very predictable part of the developement process. If there's still an issue with that then it means the game's financial state is way worse than we think

[Sarova]

On 6/1/2024 at 8:15 PM, LadyRavenShadows said:

I just looked up when the chapter expansions came out aka the Alliance Commander storyline and they have switched to the KOTOR interaction with NPC since then so we are talking about an early 2016 time frame. So it's been that way for over 8 years now. Plus some of the original voice cast is dead now in real life, not the game. 

Yes, this has been around a long time in SWTOR BUT never for the main storyline, only "side quests" and things like companion recruitment quests.  

I really hope this does not become a permanent thing for the main storyline quests.

[Pietrastor]

26 minutes ago, Sarova said:

Yes, this has been around a long time in SWTOR BUT never for the main storyline, only "side quests" and things like companion recruitment quests.  

I really hope this does not become a permanent thing for the main storyline quests.

I mean, it already has, it's been like this for the past 3 major updates since Voss Retreat so at this point we're most likely fighting an uphill battle to change their future plans for 2025 and later... notice how not ONCE they addressed it in the past year despite the same complaint every story drop since 7.3

 

Edited June 3 by Pietrastor

[OldVengeance]

I had come to expect that there would be some level of Kotor style dialogue in these updates, but the sheer volume of it in this update was very alarming and troubling. It was made worse by the fact that unlike the Voss update, it hasn't been segregated from the main story and doesn't appear to have much rhyme or reason to when it is included.

There were absolutely some scenes that felt like they should have been voiced, but were not. I have no idea if it's a budget thing or a time and effort thing, but it seems like an extremely bad sign. I was honestly a little shocked by how much of it there was.

 

Edited June 3 by OldVengeance

[DuchessKristania]

The percentage of unvoiced scenes has definitely shot up in this update. The whole conversation with Sah-ar on Mek-Sha should have had our characters voiced. without the player character voiced it put all the focus on Sah'ar and turned the player into her sidekick. For my part, she was also glitching like mad, bouncing all over the screen, sometimes practically walking through my computer screen, lol. Super clunky and not at all immersive.

Edited June 3 by DuchessKristania

[DakhathKilrathi]

I don't mind the unvoiced scenes, personally. If that's where we're at, I get it. 

But this is not the sort of thing that should have been dropped in a patch with no communication. It's definitely not the sort of thing that should have been ignored for a week post patch launch. That's disappointing. 

[FlatTax]

Have the devs addressed this anywhere, on any platform?

[DAWUSS]

On 6/1/2024 at 5:17 PM, TheScorpionQueen said:

Why not use Artificial Intelligence to create new game voice.

If they already have the persons voice, it can be done.

This isn't that bad of an idea - if it can do original voices, it can be a cheaper alternative to having some VA voice all the male (or female) denizens of a town. Doing VA impersonations is another matter entirely.

-------

As for the main topic, I do find it somewhat ironic - one of the original SWTOR devs (Dallas Dickenson?) made the comment that once you have a voiced PC, you never want to go back to a silent NPC. I'm OK with it - while it does look a bit cheaper (especially when coupled with jibberish alien speech), it does allow us to have more dialog choices than just the Wheel of Three.

[arunav]

The trend seems to be less player voice acting in each story update since 7.3 (at least that was my impression). 

Perhaps they are weaning people off the expectation slowly, or there's some other reason for less voice acting temporarily. I think the most logical answer is right there to be understood, but we don't really know the state of the game's budget. 

I personally don't mind, if the dialogue choices have more to them, allowing for better storytelling - as they did in the KOTOR games. Since those games were made roughly 20 years or more ago, I'd like to think more can be done with the system now. So far, it's not really different than the 3 choices in the voiced SWTOR system. 

Edited June 7 by arunav

[Stradlin]

5 hours ago, arunav said:

 

I personally don't mind, if the dialogue choices have more to them, allowing for better story telling - as they did in the KOTOR games. Since those games were made roughly 20 years or more ago, I'd like to think more can be done with the system now. So far, it's not really different than the 3 choices in the voiced SWTOR system. 

This is my only major issue here. They could drop all pcva completely for all I care,  if it resulted in depth and rp opportunities of old school rpgs such as kotor. So far, dialogue without pcva has been just as..stingy with content as voice acted dialogue is.

[Sarova]

On 6/1/2024 at 10:17 PM, TheScorpionQueen said:

Why not use Artificial Intelligence to create new game voice.

If they already have the persons voice, it can be done.

I bet game developers are taking note.  I'd rather have AI-generated character voices than have no voice acting in the main story.  

[supertimtaf]

9 hours ago, Sarova said:

I bet game developers are taking note.  I'd rather have AI-generated character voices than have no voice acting in the main story.  

Definitely not that easy, both on a technical aspect and legal aspect, AI is very tricky to use in games.

 

18 hours ago, arunav said:

I personally don't mind, if the dialogue choices have more to them, allowing for better storytelling - as they did in the KOTOR games. Since those games were made roughly 20 years or more ago, I'd like to think more can be done with the system now. So far, it's not really different than the 3 choices in the voiced SWTOR system. 

It is different, in the sense that the cutscenes are much more static. I don't know if you've noticed but every cutscene that required heavy animations used the swtor-style dialogues with the 3 choices. Every other cutscene with the kotor style one seems even more jarring in comparison because nothing really moves. The person you're talking to does some speech gestures but that's it. I think that until they can solve this issue (as well as the hideous black bars on top and bottom of the screen) I'll prefer the swtor-style choices. It's more static and bland than XIV at that point and that's saying something considering that the main character is just doing nods for 90% of the game

[Sarova]

I finally played the new storyline - I was putting it off based on this thread.  

Anyone else worried about the lack of voice acting DON'T BE!  I thought it was fine; our character is voiced when needed.  The story immersion is not affected one bit.  Yes, it's a bit different from previous storylines, however I really enjoyed it.

[FlatTax]

On 6/7/2024 at 6:25 PM, Sarova said:

I finally played the new storyline - I was putting it off based on this thread.  

Anyone else worried about the lack of voice acting DON'T BE!  I thought it was fine; our character is voiced when needed.  The story immersion is not affected one bit.  Yes, it's a bit different from previous storylines, however I really enjoyed it.

It's a profound drop in production quality, with no communication from the devs. The lack of communication is more alarming than the product itself.

@JackieKo, you're invited to the conversation.