[Doozy]

Have you all forgot the fact that there are deaf people that like to play games too? Without the text then really there is no point in playing if they dont know whats going on...

Im sure game devs/publishers want to capture the biggest audience and not alienate potential customers.

[Lee in Limbo]

Generally, I prefer voice acting to text-only AGs. I appreciate the technical problems with hiring and directing voice-over performances competently. I appreciate the budget constraints. However, as an aspiring game dev, I can honestly say that it seems to miss the point of the medium entirely if you forgo voice acting for any reason other than creative.

I think voiced games should have optional subtitles, for those who are hard of hearing or for whom English (or certain accents/dialects) is not their primary language. I actually, honestly believe that there should be a way to select what speed the dialogue goes by at. It doesn't take too much digital trickery to slightly speed up or slow down a vocal track without noticeable distortion or pitch shifting these days. Sadly, the tools are not as readily available as they could be, but still, I'd appreciate it, not so much for myself, because only occasionally do I find dialogue delivery so horribly slow that I get itchy looking for the fast forward button. However, I think it's long past time such features were implemented.

But ultimately, the name of the game is immersion, and while I have played some games that relied mostly or entirely on written text, and found some of those to be satisfactory, I have yet to play a game that I don't think would have been much better with appropriate voice acting.

That said, I still haven't played Planescape: Torment (though I've been meaning to for some time). I'll let you know what I think when I get to it.

[marvio]

Originally Posted by Obscurista

I can read a lot faster than people usually speak, so I like to be able to speed through dialogs/descriptions very quickly sometimes - deveopers usually allow this in the case of text, voice, or both (one of the rare exceptions would be [for instance] the main character's 'mental' observations in CoM: the Scorpio Ritual). Incidentally, I don't always appreciate the too-fast voice actor who fails to enunciate words clearly enough; I think I'm one of the rare few who adored the main character's voice in (the English language version of) Black Mirror 1.

Rare few and Insane!!

Oh my God! That guy, and the rest of the cast, are so bad I wish BM1 was a text only game!

Sorry, playing through it now, so my emotions are still fresh