Unpopular opinion: I wish the commander didnt have voice acting.

While i appreciate the effort that goes into the VO for the commander, and enjoy how to brings the story more to life, i really think it limits the game more than its worth.

The main argument against branching dialogue and new playable races has both been the sheer cost of the voice acting that would be needed to cover all the new lines. Dont get me wrong, I know there are other problems but the upfront cost of the voice acting seems to be the unsolvable problem that comes up whenever 2 of my would be favorite features are discussed. I wish the commander would shut up so we can have more variety in our play styles. :#

They stopped having voice acting for most of the player characters lines for a while, around the end of Season 1 or the start of Season 2 I think (the Scarlet's Secret Room instance is the main one I remember it from). It was a bit weird because the other characters would talk normally to each other and then a dialogue box would pop up for your characters part, then disappear while the conversation carried on, then appear again next time you talked. It didn't bother me much except sometimes the transition could be a bit jarring, but I know a lot of people were happy when they switched back to fully voiced dialogue.

I find it quite weird that I don't have strong feelings on this. I like stories in RPGs and I really like ones which give you choices and branching storylines based on your choices, but it doesn't bother me if a game doesn't have that, it just makes it a different kind of RPG.

I'm actually pretty fond of the voice actors for the PC. They do a good job! Though I do take the point that it makes certain potential story design structures impractical/overly-expensive.

I love Patrick Bach's [German Male Asura] voice. He also lends Sean Austin [samwise from Lord of the Rings] his voice and is doing a very good job and has a great range. I love it when he's getting serious (especially the Deadeye lines) or when showing who's Boss in the PoF story line start.

When I ragequitted GW2 for 2 months over the Deadeye rework, the first thing coming to my mind was: "My Lalafell does not have any real soul besides AHAH, UHH, AAH and other noises." The same with my Mascu, even though he actually talks a few lines.

I think the voice acting is one of the reasons this game is so great. I am not a fan of silent heros. I want them to cheer, to yell, to scream, to be entusiastic. They are fighting for their life after all.

Excelsior.

@"Faowri.4159" said:I'm actually pretty fond of the voice actors for the PC. They do a good job! Though I do take the point that it makes certain potential story design structures impractical/overly-expensive.

every so now and then i cringe, but overall i agree.For example of cringe: the "SO MUCH DEATH" In LW3. Just..oh god so bad.

I like your point, but I also enjoy voice acting sometimes for the commander. Maybe a blend of both would help with more branching dialogue while at the same time allow us to still hear the commander. For example, in situations like the last living world where you select an option and then the player character says basically the option you selected, voice acting seems repetitious and unnecessary. But when your character gives a speech or talks in situations where there isn't a dialogue box option already, that is nice too.

I think the game would lose in quality without the VO for the commander.For one you'd lose a lot of the overworld dialog in the midst of all the other player interference. Even VO sometimes gets drowned, imagine if you have to read dialog bubbles.Also it might mean going back to the old "cutscene" format where you see the two characters facing each other.Although, i can see a clever mix of both working.

Jessica Price complained in the AMA that they constantly had to cut lines, sometimes their favourites. So a compromise that mixes VO with bubbles and cutscenes (without VO) might be a good solution if implemented cleverly.

Like they could establish a "baseline" story that gets VO (like the important story beats that have to match in all circumstances), then extra flavour text (the cut lines) could be delivered by text bubble, and finally the branching dialogues would perform on a VO-less cutscene and/or text bubble.

Even better they can write the script in a way that our choices don't necessarily lead to extra VO, but to a difference in your actions, which can more easily be contextualized without VO, or use Smaller titbits of dialogue that can be interspersed in a recording session.

There's several comics issues where they manage to tell nice stories without a single speech bubble, usually to varying degrees of praise.

For example in this last episode:

!When we breach the gate and find the infected, instead of following Braham to a side entrance, we could be given the choice of pushing forward through the plague-bearers with the ghosts.! Choosing this would lead to a scene where the camera cuts to Taimi (or Rox, or Canach) being overwhelmed by the infected (entirely silent, or with some SFX), but you're instructed to keep going forward (in the objectives tracker), they could even script something that prevents you from returning to the side of the character, and only Braham is left close to you (can recycle the "this way" dialogues they surely have for Braham).! Then instead of having to do all the tunnels part, you arrive at a different hall (that coincidentally also has one of those really rare Skill Signets ^^) that leads directly to the fight with the Beastmaster.! In that hall they could recycle some of the dialogue we have about Joko's obsession with the commander. They could also add a VO Line or a Speech Bubble from Brahm chastising the Commander for his reckless behaviour and increasing the tension on the fate of the character that was overwhelmed.! The rest proceeds as usual with all the "regular VO".! When your companions get to you after Joko's fate, they could chastise you again, the character that got overwhelmed wouldn't show up, and they'd simply have someone say something along the lines "(S)He'll be ok, but that was pure luck, and some help from Aurene! No thanks to your brilliant leadership Commander!"! Two extra lines of VO and you could have an entirely different experience in that instance.

I get the point that voice acting is expensive and creates one step of disconnection with the player character. But it also adds richness and helps develop the relationships between NPCs. If anyone remembers LS1. What would Scarlet have been without spectacular voice acting. The content was essentially kill as many X mob to get X number of champ bags. The voice acting carried that chapter.

It is a tricky one. lotro secret world and anarchy online has no PC voice acting and only implied text dialogue and it works just as well.

S2 though feels quite jarring to play through without the VA so I think it can vary a lot. Whilst gw2 pc VA isn't the greatest, I'm used to it enough where I'd miss it if it wasn't there

One of the reasons I completely stopped playing TSW was the lack of PC voice acting. Every quest was like listening to a monologue. The voice acting and script was great, don't get me wrong. But the idea that my reaction was just basically to stand there was terribad.

@zombyturtle.5980 said:While i appreciate the effort that goes into the VO for the commander, and enjoy how to brings the story more to life, i really think it limits the game more than its worth.

The main argument against branching dialogue and new playable races has both been the sheer cost of the voice acting that would be needed to cover all the new lines. Dont get me wrong, I know there are other problems but the upfront cost of the voice acting seems to be the unsolvable problem that comes up whenever 2 of my would be favorite features are discussed. I wish the commander would shut up so we can have more variety in our play styles. :#

That's not the only argument. It's just one of the easiest to explain & understand.

• The Player Character can't have too much agency in an MMO. Because it has to be played by everyone.
• Branching dialogue is expensive to write, because it means fitting the dialogue into the context of the global story arc and to flow within each episode.
• It's expensive because it's more writing and any writing has to be translated into 4 other languages.
• It's a poor use of resources if there aren't consequences to the branches, because the benefits are otherwise too short-lived. And introducing consequences means preparing, brainstorming, writing, and rewriting multiple scenarios.
• And yeah, sure, in the current scenario, someone would have to read the lines, which means additional time in the sound studio and additional coordination.

So removing the voice over would reduce one of the big costs, but not address any of the other complexities, while at the same time diminishing another part of the player experience.

I'm not saying it can't theoretically be managed. I'm saying that it's an expensive design choice. Personally, I'm just as glad that there's little branching: I'd much prefer to see more stories released more often, than fewer stories with a handful of alternative dialogues during playthrough.

Does it matter what the Commander says...it's simple to project what ever type of personality you want your Commander to be, even with voice acting...it's called imagination...or if you want, say the lines yourself in whatever voice you want to use.

@"zombyturtle.5980" said:The main argument against branching dialogue and new playable races has both been the sheer cost of the voice acting that would be needed to cover all the new lines.

While it isn't a necessity I would have to say I'd miss it now that I'm used to it.

I'd really appreciate an option to be a tag-along rather than the commander myself. Let the commander be some human and me be the force behind the scenes. As it stands, the commander is too defined to freely roleplay and too uninteresting to be likable. I get by imagining that my character is possessed by the soul of the commander. Damned commander! Get your own body! D=

@Edelweiss.4261 said:I'd really appreciate an option to be a tag-along rather than the commander myself. Let the commander be some human and me be the force behind the scenes. As it stands, the commander is too defined to freely roleplay and too uninteresting to be likable. I get by imagining that my character is possessed by the soul of the commander. Damned commander! Get your own body! D=

That's pretty much what happened during the Personal Story. Even after Fort Trinity when the PC was given the rank of Commander they were 2nd in command to Trahearne. Apparently a lot of people hated that and wanted to be the one in charge (or at least the one getting all the glory).

Although I suspect the reason it changed is more to do with the type of stories they wanted to tell, or how they wanted to tell them - it worked better with the PC as a 'free agent' who could act independently and go between seemingly unrelated events at will instead of acting within a more structured organisation like the Pact. It's not really relevant now Season 1 is gone, but at some point in Season 2 your character actually reacts to being called Commander by saying they haven't actively commanded the Pact for some time, they seem kind of embarrassed about it. Although I was glad to switch back to that title because the alternative was being called 'Boss' which just sounded weird.

That's one definite positive to not having voice acting - the player characters name can be used instead of having to find a work-around. Although even that falls short, I often wish it was possible to give your character a name and a nickname to be used in informal situations. For example my main GW2 character is called Danielle Aurorel, but by this point most of the reoccurring characters would just call her Dani (at her request). Another of my characters would have a completely different nickname if he could.

I absolutely agree with this. I got a friend really riled up about playing this game waaaay back in 2012 when it released; he was going to join a few other friends. But the problem was, as an African American, he was not really feeling much of a connection between the human voice actor and the big black dude he had made. In the end, he thanked me for the suggestion but went on to play other things.

I've felt bad about that, and kinda always hated that the voice acting was a part of the game, ever since.

@Tolmos.8395 said:I absolutely agree with this. I got a friend really riled up about playing this game waaaay back in 2012 when it released; he was going to join a few other friends. But the problem was, as an African American, he was not really feeling much of a connection between the human voice actor and the big black dude he had made. In the end, he thanked me for the suggestion but went on to play other things.

I've felt bad about that, and kinda always hated that the voice acting was a part of the game, ever since.

While I like the voice acting and prefer it to silence, I must agree that it's disappointing when the voice bears no resemblance at all to the voice you would imagine for the character. Maybe in some future Guild Wars, there will be sliders like the ones you use to adjust your face, but for voice tone, pitch, gravel, nasality, etc. Of course, it would still be be impossible to make an automatic accent/dialect control, and I suppose it's too much to expect for them to have the voice actors to do the voice ten times over with a variety of popular accents. Pity. Well, when my characters aren't talking, I am free to imagine them with the voices that fit them.

@"Cragga the Eighty Third.6015" said:

@Tolmos.8395 said:I absolutely agree with this. I got a friend really riled up about playing this game waaaay back in 2012 when it released; he was going to join a few other friends. But the problem was, as an African American, he was not really feeling much of a connection between the human voice actor and the big black dude he had made. In the end, he thanked me for the suggestion but went on to play other things.

I've felt bad about that, and kinda always hated that the voice acting was a part of the game, ever since.

I explain my characters accents as simply being the result of where they grew up. Sure one of my humans grandparents (on both sides) are from Istan and he considers himself an Elonian, but the fact remains he grew up in Divinity's Reach, so he's going to sound like someone from there. And yes I realise you can have different accents within a city. I can even tell which side of the town I grew up in a person is from by their accent. But still, a Jamaican guy from London, England is not going to have the same accent as a guy from Kingston, Jamaica.

Although it does get weird when you get into having more than 1 character of the same race and gender. So far my only duplicates are 2 sylvari females, but it's still jarring when my mesmer talks and sounds exactly like my elementalist.

It might help if it was possible to change the tone of the voice, but I've only seen that done with games that have relatively little voice acting (Sims is the main one I can think of, where everything they say is gibberish anyway). I'm not sure it would be possible to use something as simple as a set of sliders players can set at character creation to modify the voice without it sounding really weird when the same settings are applied to all the dialogue across the game. It might sound find when they're talking normally but go all weird if they're shouting or upset or whatever.

@Edelweiss.4261 said:I'd really appreciate an option to be a tag-along rather than the commander myself. Let the commander be some human and me be the force behind the scenes. As it stands, the commander is too defined to freely roleplay and too uninteresting to be likable. I get by imagining that my character is possessed by the soul of the commander. Damned commander! Get your own body! D=

I'd like that option as well.Voice acting adds an amazing layer of depth to games, but it does have the downside of potentially causing playable characters to annoy the player (as was the case for me with every option other than Sylvari and Human female). When a character is written it's a lot easier to hand wave dialog that doesn't jibe with your vision of the character (as with the male Char whose voice would be fine if he wasn't using to say annoying stuff so frequently). BUT! Voice acting really does bring the story and world to life and there is so much good about it that I think, on the whole, Guild Wars 2 is much better for having it (and I appreciate the time and effort that goes into, even if some of it isn't to my liking).

I've played other games with little voice acting...relying on text interaction. It's just my preference, but I prefer to hear the voices...even the commander's.

I do agree that having the set voices in gw2 does indeed limit some things when it comes to new content (story-lines or new races for example). But in regards to voice acting of the main protagonist I always wished I could either edit them or replace them with my own.... for example>>

I used to play games such as Baldurs Gate a long time ago when it first came out, I'd constantly switch out the voices with my own custom made voices & it was quite hilarious.

I even downloaded voice files that sounded like conan (Arnie) but had quite silly lines such as "I go here... now" or "I want to sit down & chomp my lunch", or "It is so pretty here I think we should stick around", and of course the>> "Agh I think I have just been terminated", I think I spent more time laughing/crying then I did actually playing the game. Ahhh yes the good ol'days LoL!

I agree with the OP.

Using relatively well known voice actors for the players' characters, as well as giving different voices for each race, was IMO a mistake. It increases immensely the cost of voicing our characters, and thus the kind of story the game can have. New races, more branching dialogues, more personality options, more agency for the player character... All those are stopped by, among other things, the cost of voice actors.

I also disagree with the (recently spotlighted) notion that the player character needs to be as bland as possible, so players could fill him/her/it with whatever they want. Frankly, that simply doesn't work - if a player wants a character who would slaughter everyone in a small village, the game simply doesn't allow it to happen. If a player wants a character who's older, or younger, it's not allowed (again due to the voice acting). If a player wants a character who hates Taimi and would have allowed Joko to kill her... Again, the game doesn't permit it.

We end with a situation that is trying to please everyone, but is just a middle ground that doesn't fully please either side: the player character is very bland and lacks agency, but at the same time has just enough of a personality for the game to restrict what players could fantasize about their characters.

I think there are two main options ArenaNet could follow to improve this:

• Go full The Witcher 3' mode. The Witcher 3 is an example of a very successful RPG in which players didn't play as a blank space; they were playing as a specific character with a very specific personality. The game still allowed for some choices, but there was a core to the main character that would not change - players couldn't slaughter innocent people because the character would never accept that. It allowed players to follow a story about someone, in a good example of an actual role-playing game. The same could be done with GW2 - give up on the idea that the characters are different for each player, and just give a specific and strong personality to the PC. It would allow ArenaNet to make improvements to the story that the current model simply doesn't allow.

("The Witcher is a single player game, no MMORPG does stuff like this". Duh. Until GW2 was released, no MMORPG relied on dynamic events instead of quests. If the idea is to be just like everyone else, it would be easier to just shut down all other MMORPGs and stick to WoW.)

• Do branching dialogue options. Not like the core GW2 game, in which there were a massive amount of options leading to different maps and different missions, only for none of it to matter since it was simply more complexity than ArenaNet could handle. There are far simpler, easier and more cost-effective ways of giving players choices. Path of Fire actually did this very well: the option of which faction to ally with (Joko, Sunspears or neutral) and the speech at the end (/vague /vague /somber) were real choices that allowed players to actually give their characters a bit of personality, with small but noticeable impacts on the game. Seeing this kind of thing more often, leading to small acknowledgements (instead of to unique map instances that would soon be forgotten), would be better than the nothing we have most of the time.

I'd really rather not go back to the LS1/LS2 thing where you just stand around silently while NPCs talk at you.

@Edelweiss.4261 said:I'd really appreciate an option to be a tag-along rather than the commander myself. Let the commander be some human and me be the force behind the scenes.Literally what they did with Trahearne in the original personal story, and people hated him for it.

Hell, that's how GW1 was as well, and I'm pretty sure there are people still mad at Kormir because of it.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@zombyturtle.5980 said:While i appreciate the effort that goes into the VO for the commander, and enjoy how to brings the story more to life, i really think it limits the game more than its worth.

The main argument against branching dialogue and new playable races has both been the sheer cost of the voice acting that would be needed to cover all the new lines. Dont get me wrong, I know there are other problems but the upfront cost of the voice acting seems to be the unsolvable problem that comes up whenever 2 of my would be favorite features are discussed. I wish the commander would shut up so we can have more variety in our play styles. :#

• The
  Player Character
  can't have too much agency
  in an MMO
  . Because it has to be played by
  everyone
  .
• Branching dialogue is expensive to write, because it means fitting the dialogue into the context of the global story arc and to flow within each episode.
• It's expensive because it's more writing and any writing has to be translated into 4 other languages.
• It's a poor use of resources if there aren't consequences to the branches, because the benefits are otherwise too short-lived. And introducing consequences means preparing, brainstorming, writing, and rewriting multiple scenarios.
• And yeah, sure, in the current scenario, someone would have to read the lines, which means additional time in the sound studio and additional coordination.

Yes, this topic is near and dear to my gamer heart and I think you have spelled it out very clearly.