Proposal Discussion Voice Talent in Elite: Dangerous

sfried

sfried
Do you think the game would benefit from (additional) voice talent? I appreciate the onboard computer and the stations having announcers, but I wish NPCs would be also voiced as well. It'll take time, I realize that, and was hoping this is something that can be done in-between the finalized "canned" dialogue.

Or if there are special single player "campaigns" (the planned events that are scheduled throughout the galaxy), they could recruit some reknown voice talent (for those sections only). We don't need spend the entire budget on just voice acting, but it would be pretty beneficial for the immersion factor, as its hard to read what the opposing ship says during the heat of battle (especially if they're pirates or Federation police). Besides, it would seem kind of empty without the chatter.
 

Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
Robert Maynard
sfried said:
Do you think the game would benefit from (additional) voice talent? I appreciate the onboard computer and the stations having announcers, but I wish NPCs would be also voiced as well. It'll take time, I realize that, and was hoping this is something that can be done in-between the finalized "canned" dialogue.

Or if there are special single player "campaigns" (the planned events that are scheduled throughout the galaxy), they could recruit some reknown voice talent (for those sections only). We don't need spend the entire budget on just voice acting, but it would be pretty beneficial for the immersion factor, as its hard to read what the opposing ship says during the heat of battle (especially if they're pirates or Federation police). Besides, it would seem kind of empty without the chatter.
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There will be millions / billions of NPCs - to voice them all would be an enormous task.

It might be better if standard comms messages were read to you by your onboard systems - a bit like a SatNav's instructions.
 

Shishakli

Shishakli
Npc's... No thanks. The X series turned me off voice in a space game.

Happy for the station announcements to continue with their unique voices though
..

Then one day when we get to Eva, having people in space stations and etc to have dialogue akin to what we have in gta 4 would be the icing on the cake.
 

Qpid Stunt

Qpid Stunt
I must admit and agree on your point regarding the displayed comms being missed during battle... I tend to miss them because I am usually looking around using my TrackIR to follow the path of other ships, so even though there is an alert to say you have received a message, it disapears pretty quick.

Saying that, over the last few sessions of play I have been getting better at catching whats being sent - maybe it is just a case of getting used to the system.
 

X2Eliah

X2Eliah
I don't really think it would benefit that much. Hiring many voice actors is super-expensive, and having just 4-5 actors for a game with as many different NPCs as Elite, in all over the universe, would seem very strange. Better to have as little voice as possible, imo.
 

sfried

sfried
I wouldn't mind if not all dialogue can be be voiced. Just the crucial ones like when you're being taken hostage for cargo or if your ship is being scanned... It would be nice to have the more mundane but nevertheless important scenarios be voiced for gameplay concerns.

Otherwise if every commander you come across never actually talks then the game would feel awfully "silent" so to speak.
 

Dinosawer

Dinosawer
The problem with voicing npc's is that you really need tons of voice actors in a large game universe to make them believable - I remember playing Oblivion, I was in a city, a beggar women asked me for a coin, which I gave her, I went on to ask her some questions which she answered with a completely different voice , and when I said goodbye she answered with the original voice. Really jarring.
So I think you would quickly start to notice you always run into the same voices.
Which is why I would prefer to simply have tons of (text) dialog and no voice acting.
Perhaps some form of text2speech could be embedded in the game to read the comms out loiud however?
 

Aztek1701

A
I quite like the idea of the ship reading the message but an off switch would be important for those who find it irritating
 

Kulin

Kulin
I don't need special voice actors. But no voices at all is a little bit strange, too.

I remember a scene in another space game. I went to a very populated system and it was full of distant(low volume) radio chatter. Then i went to an empty system and it was the exact opposite.

Voices and radio chatter are a very powerfull instrument in transporting the feeling that a sector is alive, or not. Think about flying in populated systems, with silent radio chatter in the distant and then flying into a empty system, surrounded by pure silence. It would be just awesome, even if this is not perfectly realistic.

Combat Chatter would be nice, too. No time to read all this messages. I played freelancer a few month ago. Yes, the voice-actors are used over and over again. But it's by far superior to no voices at all. Just add a option to silence the voices for people who don't like it. :D
 

Riandor

Riandor
My grandfather is an actor (hammer horror with Christopher Lee!), does voice stuff as well.
Hint...

Oh and I would be glad to help out too :D
 

Solace

Solace
Kulin said:
I don't need special voice actors. But no voices at all is a little bit strange, too.

Voices and radio chatter are a very powerfull instrument in transporting the feeling that a sector is alive, or not. Think about flying in populated systems, with silent radio chatter in the distant and then flying into a empty system, surrounded by pure silence. It would be just awesome, even if this is not perfectly realistic.
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Agreed on the radio chatter, I was thinking this last night. I've set up a super geeky Voice Attack command that can play The Blue Danube for my docking procedures. As I approach the station I think of this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewC4ov9HXBw

The sound was a huge part of this video for me made it feel more alive.
 

Bob_H

B
I'm not against the idea (other than the stupidly high number of NPC's and the stupidly low number of voice actors FD could afford) but I personally don't really see the point of spending any time or cash on it right now. FD will have much better ideas on how to spend the money needed for voice actors more effectively. Like bug fixing, exploit removal and loophole plugging during the Alpha and Beta phases. Until FD start some serious work on the FPA expansion, I think this should be right down on the bottom of the priority list: maybe not even on the list at all as there are much bigger fish to fry right now.
 

ElGuappo

ElGuappo
Hold a competition. Have existing players send in mp3s of themselves saying set phrases. Find voices you like, use them to say more phrases for any given station to give each a character of their own. Reward with in-game goodness/forum titles.

Save money by not using voice actors who probably want actual money rather than an imaginary spaceship etc
 

X2Eliah

X2Eliah
ElGuappo said:
Hold a competition. Have existing players send in mp3s of themselves saying set phrases. Find voices you like, use them to say more phrases for any given station to give each a character of their own. Reward with in-game goodness/forum titles.

Save money by not using voice actors who probably want actual money rather than an imaginary spaceship etc
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Hm. This might work. Especially if Frontier has a community manager or two with enough spare time to manage this. Splicing/melding mp3's into background ambient sounds - esp. with low volume and some basic filters to even out the roughness of amateur audio equipment - could actually work...
 

Kulin

Kulin
X2Eliah said:
Hm. This might work. Especially if Frontier has a community manager or two with enough spare time to manage this. Splicing/melding mp3's into background ambient sounds - esp. with low volume and some basic filters to even out the roughness of amateur audio equipment - could actually work...
Click to expand...

I thought about this, too. But as someone who practically lives in team speak for about 10 years now i can say that this is going to be very hard. Too many bad microphones, strange noises and interferences from the computer itself.

As a result the sound designer would have to improve the quality of every soundfile manually since every microphone/pc is creating other distortions and interferences. This is a huge effort you have to put into this sound files. And this would be probably atleast nearly as expensive as creating this files professionally.
 

Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
Biggest problem is that there can be literary millions of NPCs. Perfect solution would be voice synth, unfortunately it's not option yet.
 
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