The latest trailer from Star Wars: The Old Republic, focusing on the full voicing of the game, prompts a couple of observations. Firstly it suffers the traditional voiced game problem of referring to your character; games like Deus Ex and Mass Effect get around it by assigning your character name which obviously won’t work in an MMO, so we’re back to the traditional RPG staple of “… so, Bounty Hunter, you have arrived at last!”. Sadly I doubt there’ll be a reply option of “well you could call me Dennis“. Speaking of replies, it’s not just NPCs that are fully voiced but the player characters too, which makes me wonder how many options there will be; one male and one female? One voice per class? With voice being so important there’s the potential for it to jar rather if you can’t find a voice to match your idea of your character. The example in the video is agreeably Clint Eastwood-y, but I’d hope there might be at least one or two slightly more British options, especially considering some of the original actors: Alec Guinness, Peter Cushing, David Prowse (“Luke, oi am your faaather”). The video gives us hope, around three minutes in, with the voice direction: “If you could do sort of a Darth Maul thing *and* a Welsh thing”. I’m not entirely sure how that turns out… “Right, boyos, it’s the Republic scum out there, let’s give them a right chorus of Sosban Fach!”
Haha, OK I have to watch it now for the welsh thing.
The names puzzle me actually. Teamspeak can manage to read out my login name when I log in, is it that difficult to train the game to read out your character’s name? (I mean, surely you could always adjust it if it pronounces it wrong?)
Actually although David Prowse played Darth Vader the speaking was done by James Earl Jones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Prowse
The heroes of the original film included Luke Han and Leia all American. In fact it’s very much a stereotype of sci fi and fantasy films to have British character actors around an American hero (eg Hawk the Slayer).
And of course there’s always the Welsh option ;-)
Watching it again at the end he says in a British accent:
“Your only hope for survival is complete and utter loyalty.”
That possibly suggests you can set your character to different accents with one of the options being a rather plummy English villain accent. Good stuff!
Back again: just thought I’d add that the Welsh thing was brilliant in Baldur’s Gate.
“Go for the eyes, Boo, go for the eyes!”
@spinks Yeah, I was thinking about synthesised voices, especially with all the advancements in that area since the utility that came with a Soundblaster card back in 1989 or so that would have a crack at reading out text you entered. I don’t suppose it’s up to dramatic inflection yet, though, or seamlessly blending into spoken lines.
@Stabs Arr, the “oi am your faaather” line was a reference to Prowse’s westcountry accent, Bill Bailey does a neat routine about it.
Or, as I’ve seen in other games (by Bioware too), just don’t say the name, but write it.
The text reads “Oh, hello, Zoso, glad you’re here”, but you hear “Oh, hello. Glad you’re here”.
Personally I don’t find it jarring that way…
(verif word: frumious… Now, really?)