[carlotta von uberwald]

I'm feeling rather peeved and I have to vent my frustration at game developers who still insist on using text in a game instead of speech! If I wanted to read for an hour I would pick up a book. I don't want that when I'm playing a game! It ruins the atmosphere of a game when you have to spend ages reading the dialogue Developers PLEASE STOP???

[Dwagginz]

If you're going to pay for them to record all their lines, I'm sure they will.

Text is infinitely cheaper than voice acting.

[Sotha]

I'd rather read than listen to voice acting. Having to listen to some voice actor going, often painstakingly slow, through some lines in order to represent some sort of character just takes too much time. Plus, the voice actors are often annoying to listen to (e.g. The Whispered World). I usually just end up reading through the dialogue before the voice is even halfway through, and then I just skip it and move on to the next one.

[Crunchy in milk]

Even when they do go out of their way to provide every word as spoken, its done at the expense of re-using voice artists so much you can't associate unique voices with unique characters.

Its also too common to play a game where characters are overwritten. The poor voice artist has to say some truly long winded bunk that doesn't have any of the immediacy or brevity of conversation.

Skipping dialogue is one of the joys of games. If they took all the written lines (subtitles etc) away all together they might take that away from me too!

[zane]

I believe bad voice acting is not better than no voice acting. Especially in cases it means the game has alot more content.

[Fantasysci5]

Hmm, interesting discussion. I'm on the fence. I feel more immersed in a game when there is voice acting, but if I don't like the voice (like the narrater in GK1 for me), it detracts from the game. I like reading journals and such in games, so I don't mind reading subtitles, especially if I read faster than the voice actor (like in TLJ). All in all, I like fully voiced games, but I don't mind having to read, as long as they didn't charge as much as a fully-voiced game.

[rayvio]

I prefer having both. what really annoys me is when a game has voice but no subtitles (thankfully most voiced games do have subtitles). I remember being completely stumped on the old Valhalla games on the Amiga simply because I had no idea what half the objects were due to a combination of bad graphics and indecipherable dialogue

[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.

[Fantasysci5]

Oh, I loved the voices in "Black Mirror" also, although we're in the minority.

[Hammerite]

I loved the voices in 'Black Mirror'... but that's because Sam Gordon sounded so hilarious, it gave me and my sister much material for making jokes out of. Same with that kid who gets killed.

So I guess that makes me a general pariah of both the majority and the minority, right?

---

ANYWAY, ON-TOPIC -- I tend to prefer voice acting in games for the immersion and depth it adds. I can play games without voices and enjoy them just as much, but I generally prefer games to have voices for the same reason that I wouldn't watch a film with the volume turned down and the subtitles on.

[Burns11]

I think the problem is that sometimes games that don't use voice actors go way overboard on the dialogue, it's like there's no filter.

What I hate is when the first thing a game throws at you is a wall of text. If I wanted to read a bad short story I would go read one, I'm trying to play a game.

[Gonchi]

Unless we're talking about a full cast of talented voice actors, which is rather rare, I'd rather read than listen. I'd like more games to have the option to select voice+text or text only.

[Periglo]

Originally Posted by Burns11

I think the problem is that sometimes games that don't use voice actors go way overboard on the dialogue, it's like there's no filter.

That reminds me of Torment. The reading! It was quite good, fortunately, I think they published a book out of this material.

[Roper Klacks]

I like to read, so text is not a problem for me.

[Weare6]

mmmm... well certainly a good voice in a game is far better than none at all
but with very little out there in terms of "Good voice acting" I would much prefer
reading subtitles no matter how long the dialogue is. That said... like 'Obscurista'
said earlier most if the time I read faster than the actors can finish there dialogue so I just usually skip forward before they finish anyway.

[haptsonir]

Text is better for dialogue if there is a lot of it, with some specific bits voiced as well as commands etc for flavour. Torment style.

Game voice acting is usually so unnatural that even well written dialogue sounds stupid. Much rather just take the text. I don't think anything is lost without full voice acting, either, although when the actors are good I guess it can be fun.

It did work in Bloodlines and GK3 was funny.

[Origami]

Depends on the genre.
If it's a visual novel/text-based adventure or something on the handheld, I don't mind no voice acting.
If it's a game going for cinematic experience like Uncharted 2, then yes it's essential.

Also a lot of 3D games work without voice acting. I can't imagine Zelda to HAVE voice acting. It's part of it's charm. The 'voices' are the grunts and sound effects the characters and speech windows make.

A lot of JRPG's also have that only the cutscenes are voice acted and some essential text outside of that. Irrelevant NPC's in towns are done without voice acting and imho it works well that way.

[mrLOL]

Woooot?!
I find it interesting how many people here prefer no VO, since after Flash implemented better coding-language (AS3) and fullscreen-mode Flash has opened a high potential for adventure-games (and I myself is working on onecurrently), however one complication is still that VO takes a huge amount of bandwidth so adventure-games which are very VO-dense are not perfectly suitible for playing online.

If some people even find VO to be annoying then Flash-developers may be tempted to just skip VO all-togheter.

I myself DON'T like reading!
altho last adventure-game I played through (all the Blackwell games in a row) I must admit I (like many others in this thread) probably only listened to 5% of the lines the rest I read through before they pronounced the first word.
But I think that was just because Blackwell has excessive dialogue, I THINK that if the lines had been reduced significally I wouldn't start skipping lines and then it wouldn't have become a habit.

[millenia]

I am not terribly picky about the voice acting, if it's not horrible it's better than no voice acting. But I definitely need my subtitles, I think I actually might have some trouble hearing speech properly (I've done well on my tests but that requires huge amount of concentration and when I'm playing I don't like to put third times the energy to just listening the game.) as other people often have to tell me what someone said or singed or such.

Both ways is better and every game should have an option to turn voice and subtitles on and off separately.

[Fantasysci5]

Exactly. I hate when games don't have subtitles, or subtitles but not in cutscenes ('Longest Journey' anyone?), because I have difficulty hearing what they say.