[Sept 18] Story, Voice Acting and NPC Chat

When you eventually add voice acting, please make it so I can walk away form an NPC and still hear what they have to say, ala Diablo 3. I'm sure you want players to listen to the acting and not just click through to get on with it. The best voice acting is the type that allows you to keep playing and doesn't force you to stand there twiddling your thumbs.

One of the things I loved in Act 2 was that when you asked people at the forest encampment about eachother, you got somewhat conflicting and very telling responses.

You learned that Silk was all talk, but valued himself far more than anyone else and might be plotting something drastic for advancement; that Yeena was insightful, but tended to meddle with things she didn't completely understand; Greust was a strong, capable hunter that cared about his tribe, but 'in his mind, [was] never wrong'.

I hope that we can see a subplot within the Act 3 encampment characters. Act 2 seemed like a precarious political balance waiting to fall apart, and I loved i.

This was shokking back then, and still not outdated despite of all those years...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzGTGwwUM8w

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jawsofhana wrote:

Please don't over-do it. The diablo 3 beta is a good example of just that.....

I partially agree, adding voice acting to everything could end up like Skyrim's arrow to the knee meme; however I believe that adding VA to the more important quests into/outro texts would be quite awesome. Any of the less important quests or NPC ramblings aren't really in need of voice active. ^.^ (.)

But all in all, it sounds like a great idea and so far the game is amazing. I have no intentions what so to get Diablo 3 (Even though I was a large fan-boy of the first two games and the expansion) so I am glad I found a game that brings back the good ol' game's strengths with an entirely new twist. Diablo 3 just seems boring and completely different than the rest in the series.

Path of Exile is slowly and surely coming well into it's own, meeting promises and much more.

Please do something with the initial voice acting of character creation. It's out of place and very forced sounding. I made a thread in Audio Feedback but wanted to say something here too.

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bobsbarricades wrote:

I disagree on the overdoing it. I don't want to read ANYTHING. there's already so many stats and all that - voice everything!

k, thanks!

+1 except to say that if it's not possible to voice everything, I'd rather read it than have it nonexistent. (!!!)

Like many others in this thread, I kind of like how the story works in the first two acts.

You are a new arrival, literally fresh of the boat and have no idea or care for what's going on. All you are trying to do is survive.

Regarding voice-overs, I'd suggest you skip voicing the quest info/gossip and instead just give the NPCs a greeting.
Maybe a special greeting when the player enters their camp for the first time and another, shorter one whenever they talk to them when returning to camp from outside.

That way you can save some money on voice-overs and add some more flavor text, additional side-quests and "phat lewt" instead.

Although random quotes from Player Characters would be cool.
Like when entering some areas in Diablo II.
I think such a thing would help one get a better "feel" for what a character is really like. (Not sure if that's always a good thing though. The only thing I got from the Templar video was that he is severely constipated.)
These VOs should be pretty rare though as to not overdo it.

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WarKiel wrote:

Like many others in this thread, I kind of like how the story works in the first two acts.

You are a new arrival, literally fresh of the boat and have no idea or care for what's going on. All you are trying to do is survive.

The problem with this is that you can survive by just staying in town, or by not playing the game. Without a story to drive it, it starts to get a little, well, not boring, but maybe pointless, after a while.

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Regarding voice-overs, I'd suggest you skip voicing the quest info/gossip and instead just give the NPCs a greeting.
Maybe a special greeting when the player enters their camp for the first time and another, shorter one whenever they talk to them when returning to camp from outside.

That way you can save some money on voice-overs and add some more flavor text, additional side-quests and "phat lewt" instead.

I'm not sure what you mean here, but even D1 had greetings when you talked to the NPCs and also voiced-over quest info.

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I think such a thing would help one get a better "feel" for what a character is really like. (Not sure if that's always a good thing though. The only thing I got from the Templar video was that he is severely constipated.)
These VOs should be pretty rare though as to not overdo it.

If that's all you got from the Templar video, then WTF, lol.

What would be overdoing it? And why would it be overdoing it? As long as the player characters aren't yelling weird things in the heat of battle, where's the problem?

One could always just play through the game without paying much attention to the storyline if they wanted, right? It's not like you'd HAVE to listen to it all or click on all the quests.

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EternisRequiem wrote:

Please do something with the initial voice acting of character creation. It's out of place and very forced sounding. I made a thread in Audio Feedback but wanted to say something here too.

Or it could just play one time, rather than repeating.

I personally really enjoyed the lack of hand leading at multiple points in the acts, where no quests came up and I just had to press on and find out what unspeakable horrors (or pleseant suprises) lay ahead.

For example, discovering the town in act 2 was brilliant, I was exporing a new frontier and then to discover friendly faces, it was a huge relief!

I think having a balance of driven story and unguided exploration in the main quest line would be really effective, perhaps the unguided exportaion parts could be given as quests, so people felt direction to a small degree while not knowing what lies ahead.