"Fire Emblem: Awakening" and Partial Voice Acting

[Kiki]

Partial voice acting makes for a really nice touch, and like enta said it's not really that rare of a thing. I have the first and third of the Rune Factory games and they have partial voice acting, usually just characters giving timed greetings (good morning, good evening, ect) or welcoming and thanking you when shopping. The latter game had a few lines of dialogue spoken as you got further in the game. Personally, I think it can be used to help show off the personality for the characters when used right.

[Fox Lee]

Nope. Plus I decided to forgo the dramatic speaking that we hear in anime, in exchange for more natural sounding, everyday speech. May not be as cool, but it's more useful for people who are planning to visit Japan.

That seems like a really good idea. I had a friend whose work took her to Japan for a couple of years, and even though she developed a good vocabulary pretty quickly, everybody had a polite laugh at her dramatic "anime accent" :p

[FailedSanity]

It sounds like I'm on the unpopular opinion side, but I greatly disliked the Fire Emblem voice acting. And that's not because I'm against voice acting in general - I actually very much enjoy well done voice acting. I adored the english cast for Virtues Last Reward, and for smaller company standards, the Jisei/Kansei/Yousei series sounded fine and added to the characterization instead of detracting from it.

The tidbit style voice acting in FE:A felt very snipped and repetitive, to the point of annoying. I think it would have been better with a "less is more" approach, where instead of nearly every single line having a disjointed word attached to it, only ones with particularly strong emotional deliverance got a speech tidbit.

As it was, FE:A had me muting my sound sometimes out of annoyance and frustration, something I rarely do because I love background music.

[truefaiterman]

Nope. Plus I decided to forgo the dramatic speaking that we hear in anime, in exchange for more natural sounding, everyday speech. May not be as cool, but it's more useful for people who are planning to visit Japan.

That seems like a really good idea. I had a friend whose work took her to Japan for a couple of years, and even though she developed a good vocabulary pretty quickly, everybody had a polite laugh at her dramatic "anime accent" :p

I disagree with this. Is voice acting, after all, and that "natural, everyday speech" in a piece of fiction may ruin it. I don't know your project, it might be correct to do it that way somehow, but I don't recommend it. About that "dramatic anime accent"... Well xD We've gotten used to the exaggerated voices, but it sounds like going to the US and speaking like Yuri Lowenthal.

About the Fire Emblem style, I haven't played the game, but that limited voice acting is fine as long as it's well done. Full voice acting can cost a s**tload of money and time. If you have limited resources is a good bet.

[Gear]

Nope. Plus I decided to forgo the dramatic speaking that we hear in anime, in exchange for more natural sounding, everyday speech. May not be as cool, but it's more useful for people who are planning to visit Japan.

That seems like a really good idea. I had a friend whose work took her to Japan for a couple of years, and even though she developed a good vocabulary pretty quickly, everybody had a polite laugh at her dramatic "anime accent" :p

I disagree with this. Is voice acting, after all, and that "natural, everyday speech" in a piece of fiction may ruin it. I don't know your project, it might be correct to do it that way somehow, but I don't recommend it. About that "dramatic anime accent"... Well xD We've gotten used to the exaggerated voices, but it sounds like going to the US and speaking like Yuri Lowenthal.

Bear in mind that his game isn't really a piece of fiction, but an edutainment title, from what I understand, so natural everyday speech is important to the learning process...you can't have people learning excessively stylized or overdramatic language skills in something like Rosetta Stone.

[TrickWithAKnife]

Pretty much. I agree that a bit of drama makes things more interesting, it's just that it's more practical in my case to use natural sounding speech. Hence the "unfortunately" in my original post.

[truefaiterman]

There was this Spanish editorial called Plaza&Janes (There are other P&J in Latin America, I think) that released some edutainment adventure games, I just thought about them while posting about the voice acting It wasn't the best acting I've seen (nor the best games...) but they tried hard. And hey! I actually learned there what is the Rosetta Stone!

But I understand it may be more practical to you, specially if your actors don't have experience, AND if it's about teaching a language (By the way, thats a really interesting idea, I'll have to keep an eye on your project!).

[Rosstin2]

What do you guys think of using partial voice acting in a game? Where characters only have certain noises recorded like grunts, shudders, yells, and the like? We did that for "Queer Catboy Love Triangle Disaster" and I'm considering doing it for "Queen At Arms".

For "King's Ascent" we did full voice acting. That was really the only option for that game, because there was too much action to read text, but thankfully there was only a few thousand lines in that game.

[Googaboga]

I personally think partial voice acting can really work. But it is only worth it if it doesn't hinder other things and if you can really find the right voices. Still in my opinion good partial voice acting can definitely be better than no voices at all.

[Cith]

I prefer partial voice acting to full voice acting. Full voice acting tends to limit content

[Delta m.m]

I also prefer partial voice acting, it allows the player to read on their own pace without feeling that they're missing something.

Voice is a very important element in defining the personality of your characters, leaving out voice acting completely means you're leaving it to the player to "imagine" their voices, that isn't necessary a bad thing, but as game developers we love to take every opportunity to manipulate the minds of our players...err I mean increase their immersion in the world of our games.

And... since it costs less to do partial voice acting, you'll probably end up with more resources to spend on other possibly more deserving aspects of the game.

Actually DanganRonpa uses that method, they only voice act things like "Sorry", "Ahhhhh!", "Thank you" "Naegi-kun" (The protagonist's name), "My name is (whatever)", stuff like that, and it's very effective.

They also full-voice-act key moments in the game, that increases the "impact", you know everyone rarely talks and then suddenly they're in an all out speech battle.

So, generally if it's partial or nothing then go for partial, but if it's partial or full then I think it's a matter of personal preference.

[Juneberry]

I think partial voice acting can be easier to deal with as a player many times personally. I'm a fairly fast reader, and I've always preferred reading ahead over listening to someone reading- but I do admit that getting a feel for what the character sounds like is usually nice. For example, I actually like the voice clips in Rune Factory that just say simple things like "Good morning" or "Thanks!". Meanwhile, when I play Oblivion, I sorta constantly press the buttons that fast forward through the voicing of the entire monologue the character starts off with and such. I'd rather just read it and get done with it to continue with the game.

Though, full voice acting can be pretty cool at points. Many rune factory games have fully voiced opening bits, such as RF2 where you first enter town and meet Mana. I found it really fun because of the way Douglas would barge in and voice his anger loudly that someone is 'trying to steal his daughter' (AKA you're talking to her about how pretty the cherry blossoms are). So I think at times it can be fun. Just...Not all the time?

[Rosstin2]

I think partial voice acting can be easier to deal with as a player many times personally. I'm a fairly fast reader, and I've always preferred reading ahead over listening to someone reading

OMG me too. You're right, I always have this problem with voice-acting too! I read way too fast for the VAs and I usually intentionally click at the point when the first sentence ends.

Yeah Rune Factory is a good example of partial voice-acting.

[Gear]

I started a similar topic a while back. If you're interested, you can read through the responses there as well: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... =4&t=19846

[Rosstin2]

This is a beautiful thread. Tagged and resurrected.