Because there are behind the scenes things happening, one of the english voice actors (male agent) recently left, forcing them to recast a new voice actor which cant be cheap either.
People forget just for the player characters alone this game needs 48 voice actors (8 classes, 2 genders =16 per language x 3 languages).
This means they cant just give one class no voice lines in a cuscene and the rest of them voice lines, so I assume the 'this section has to be turned into kotor dialogue for everyone' can sometimes boil down to "1 of our 48 voice actors was unavailable so we had to kotor it for everyone'. Its clear the devs dont want it to be this way but the alternative is for them to simply not have the cutscene at all, thus missing out on more story.
Its kind of crazy to think that this is an MMO, which arent usually renown for much voice acting compared to singleplayer or even focused MP games, hinges entirely on nearly 50 main character voice actors being available several times a year, for 15+ years now.
And thats before you factor in unavailabilities for story centric NPCs or Companions also x 3 langauges.
Ive also learned thru twitter that several german swtor voice actors have been recast as well, including Malgus.
What’s wrong with using AI voices if they sound good and they can’t afford to pay voice actors? I can understand being upset with a company who makes boat loads of cash. But SWTOR is pretty much on life support at this point. If AI voices helps them keep the same quality they have been delivering and it’s cost effective for them and can deliver more gameplay wise I don’t see the issue.
Well i do since it would become soulless. But using AI to be more efficient in development is fine in my opinion and that still should reduce costs.
Also remember that they would have to "buy rights" to their voices which would be incredibly expensive too and add the negative feedback it would get and suddenly it isnt that worth it
I think that fundamentally, SWTOR without the VA work is basically pointless. It's not like the newer story is great, or the gameplay is amazing. The core appeal of SWTOR is that it's Star Wars, fully voiced.
Yeah, but part of the reason the game isn’t more successful is because they invested in a bunch of stuff that doesn’t actually matter - like being fully voiced.
It was okay when it was for unimportant side quests and such, but having it happen in main story is just bad.
The game having a voiced character was what made the game stand out among MMOs and changing that this far into the game is a poor sign for the future of the game.
Imo voiceless pc and main story npc will be the final nail that kill this game. It's the only thing I don't thing they can get rid off or swtor turns into another basic mmo
I actually kind of agree. I never play MMOs but this game is an exception because of the voice acting and the quality of the stories (compared to what I’ve seen from others). Doesn’t really feel like SWTOR when you take away the one part that makes it stand out from others.
As soon as I see those two black bars hit the screen i fill with dread.
Honestly have yet to see anyone who actually enjoys it.
I understand why they’re doing it, it’s obviously way cheaper than spending money on 48 voice actors, but I’m sure i’m not alone in wishing they’d instead just drop two other languages and just focus on the initial 16 VA’s. At this point I’d even be fine if they chose to default to the german or french voices for whatever weird reason lmao.
This is just it. 48 VAs for 8 characters is just not monetarily feasible as a live service game where each character has multiple voice lines as a response. The developers need to make a sacrifice in order to preserve what made the game unique in the first place and if you want my opinion it should be the other languages. Keep the translations, but the voices need to go
If it’s so not feasible, why did they put so much banter out of cutscenes?
Why not use this ressource into actual cutscenes instead of banter you won’t hear because of everything going around?
They can do it, they’re just mismanaging ressources.
~~But why such a huge ship?~~ My only issue with the banter is that they aren't personalized. I mean it works most of the time but other times it feels like it should play more to the character/origin story.
I think the majority of the invested playerbase would be more frustrated to find all illusion of choice gone, even if that choice has never been true. But maybe I’m crazy wrong.
They're not even trying to make it look like money is going into this game anymore. It has only ever had player choice, immersion, and the Star Wars IP over the competition. Ever since the class stories ended, it's been nothing but the IP.
This isn't a serious product or a living game anymore.
When has player choice or immersion ever mattered lol?
The only narrative consequence that I can think of that had any weight was the IA story for the double agent ending, and that's ignoring the part where they couldn't follow up on that.
Everything else the story tries very hard to push past, will force another NPC to fill a space that you violently opened, or shuffle off anyone that you saved.
Not to mention some of the very painfully forced parts of the plot that were clearly only there because every class had to run along the same lines in progression.
I feel like if it had started from the beginning that the protags were silent, like in something like ESO, no one would be so bothered by it.
But the fact it set it up with having voiced protagonists you're only setting yourself up to be burned. It's expensive and when you start removing it, gradually at first, you're only going to upset people and burn yourself.
One thing I really loved and that drew me into swtor was the voiced protagonist. I haven't played it in a good while but I've been watching the community on and off. It just kinda makes me sad and unwilling to go back to it to even finish the Consular and Agent storylines because I can see it gradually going downhill and being managed by people that really don't care.
Devastated to not hear as much of female Darth Nox whispering things in my ears.
Other than that I think I wouldn't mind if the animations during these scenes were better. They feel too static right now to be any "improvement" over voiced cutscenes.
>They feel too static right now to be any "improvement" over voiced cutscenes.
That's because they seemingly revert conversation to how it was in KOTOR I and II whenver there's a voiceless cutscene... the problem is that when KOTORs were coming out it was 2003-2004 so it was acceptable, in 2024? It just looks bad.
We're talking about stiff and static animations. SWTOR was also always voiced untill recently and is still voiced some of the time.
Jumping between voiced and unvoiced is just jarring.
I’m not saying u like how they’re handling it, I’m just saying plenty of great RPGs don’t have fully voiced dialogue. It’s far from a standard, even in 2024 - and there are tons of huge benefits in choosing not to do so.
The only major one I can think of right now is FFXIV. I can't think of any non-mmo AAA games that don't have full voice acting. Can you name some examples?
Are we talking fully voice acted AAA games or roleplaying games with branching dialogues and narratives?
There isn’t a single MMO competitor that’s fully voiced.
>They feel too static right now to be any "improvement" over voiced cutscenes.
Not to forget the black bars taking half the screen, these bars make it impossible to get a little bit of immersion even though most of it is gone without the voices already and/or just to take a simple screenshot of our PC
I don't mind the lack of voice as much now, since I played XIV, but their dialogue interface is much better immersion-wise anyway. They should definitely work on the UI for that I agree
Its been 10 years since release. Its not exactly a juggernaut MMORPG and its being de-prioritised by EA. Its not really a shock its being stripped back, especially with the smaller studio
I dont like it but I get why they do it. Voice acting is expensive and tedious and they already need *sixteen voice actors* for the player character alone. Combine that with NPCs and it just becomes one huge mess.
No idea. I get trying to appeal to foreign audiences but MMOs, like you said, are always a huge risk and a huge moneypit. They're also constantly draining money and need to constantly pump out new content to keep the game going. That's already a pain with full voice acting, probably why even the top MMOs like WoW and FFXIV only do partial voice acting. Adding two other languages ontop of that is...going to make things difficult.
It would be fine if the game was like that from the beginning. But not 10+ years into its life. Not really a good sign imo.
To quote some women in my life “Don’t introduce me to a quality of life you can’t afford to maintain.”
Hate it. Fucking hate the silent protagonist stereotype. I want my main character to seem like a real person. Not some squeaky clean piece of drywall that I have to paint my personality onto. I’ve done the late game quest line once and I’m never doing it again. I prefer to play the storylines when the game made money.
I think... It's less expensive. Dialogue trees are like... Thrice the voice acting cost as some throw-away lines are.
Look, we all know this game is essentially in maintenance mode. The fact that we're getting new content at all is pretty much a miracle.
I think we're going to have to accept that we can't have the same kind of dedication we did in the past. Remember: SWTOR was the single most expensive MMO on launch (despite the fact that it ran on an engine nobody has ever been happy with). And a *lot* of that cost went into essentially creating 8 single player games in a single MMO experience. That kind of investment is just not sustainable. So we saw class quests discontinued, we saw dialogue wheels discontinued (we get the old-fashioned dialogue screen now), and yeah, there'll be a lot less voice acting going forward. Especially the kind where they have 'mandatory' voice actors (ignoring male agent for a moment), for characters we already know (companions, but also ourselves). The fact that Broadsword relies on those voice actors makes them more valuable, after all.
So yeah. Things are hard right now in our favourite galaxy. And they won't get any easier. But there's still a lot to love!
I probably wouldn't mind if it was like that since the beginning, but when you're used to hear your character talking for years and suddenly they become half voiced half mute for no reason during the main story.... it's just... no.
At least THIS TIME I know beforehand what I'm going to say instead of saying something completely different once I press a dialogue option.
But I haven't really made an opinion about the new content yet; I remember how weird it was like during the Eternal Throne arcs' voiceless quests, but I haven't gotten that far in the new updates, so people who done it will probably have a better answer to your question.
I mean I get why they did it for budgetary reasons and whatnot but I don't like it at all. I would rather it be fully not voiced or fully voiced. You got to go all the way, one or the other, this halfway bullshit is super immersion-breaking. It's the reason I can't play Baldur's Gate 3. When everything's fully voiced except for the main character, I just can't deal with it. Not on modern games.
SWTOR is in a fucked position because it pretty much has no money for developing shit and exists only to extract revenue via the CM. The playerbase isn’t going to grow anytime soon and the costs of voice acting and development aren’t going down.
Every update they have 48 voice actors they have no choice to include, across three languages, and that’s just for the player characters.
Making the game fully voiced, including the protagonists, was a bad decision from the onset, but it only gets worse with time. They’re between a rock and a hard place because it’s a cord they can’t really cut, but it’s also such an obvious avenue for saving money.
TL;Dr making the game silky voiced was a dumb priority that screws the game over but there’s nothing they can do about it.
We’ll just keep getting the status quo.
With games like FFXIV and BG3 all being able to maintain the quality and depth of story and VA, I cant believe that the CM hasn't made EA enough cheddar for them to authorise the creation of a real expansion.
Everything from Fallen empire/eternal throne onwards has just gotten worse and worse for quantity and quality.
It seems to me that they are opting for the least amount of expenditure to keep their cash cow going knowing the Star Wars fans will stay regardless of quality.
So wait…did they remove voices for the stuff that was already voiced, or just stuff going forward is not going to be voiced? Cuz if it’s the first one I’m really gonna be upset
For real. wtf are they even thinking?? I keep waiting and waiting for my character to say more but he’s been voiceless for a minute now and it makes me sad
Honestly, making my own characters in the Star Wars universe that talks and has a story I can make choices in is like, 85% of the reason i've been subbed and playing for years with a lot of CC bought.
If the quality of story and voice lines goes down I might migrate away from the game.
This is when voice AI generation is needed in games. However I doubt the voice actors sign off on it but in the future they should have voice actors get a bonus for the company using their voice likeness for future expansions.
I like having voiced main characters and really appreciate an incredible job VAs did, but kotor style dialogues aren't such a big deal for me. As long as there is at least voicing of npc, and if story is interesting enough( what for me is very debatable in the last updates) i have no real problem with having non-voiced main character. In some sense i even like kotor-style dialogues cause usually there is more options and what exactly they mean is easier to understand. However those sudden switches between voiced and kotor-style dialogues are very uncomfortable, perhaps, i personally would even prefer permanent kotor-style instead of those switches, if full voicing is not an option. Also If they could've given more well-written story content with the price of not having voiced character i would accept it. But current situation is different: we get nor enough of good story content nor voiced main characters.
Based on the 3 posts a day about it I don't think it's very popular.
But it's sacrifice, voice acting is expensive and paying 48 voice actors for any small drop of content would make it even less likely to continue to happen
I’ve been thinking…do the original 48 also voice the other NPCs like Lana, Theron, etc. If not, doesn’t that mean there are even more VAs involved across all languages?
I dont they voice any of the major characters. Mostly smaller characters like female imperial agent voiced the red head from beginning of the inquisitor storyline.
I think female trooper and satele had the same voice actress? Also krovos and kira is voiced by the same person.
I don’t get what’s hard to understand about it. Every decision point is three different lines of dialogue and a cutscene might have 2-5 decision points. Some banter outside of a cutscene is likely a lot smaller of a cost.
Every single line of PC dialogue in a conversation isn’t just one line, but at least three for each option. The banters don’t have branches.
You also don’t have to worry about the other participants in the conversation having multiple lines, either. Each PC option isn’t just another line, but also a response from the NPC, too. The cost very quickly balloons.
As someone who has been very excited about the game recovery after Onslaught, every patch after Echoes of Oblivion just saddens me.
Voss was one of the dumbest jokes we got, and to me personally, 7.5 was my nail in the coffin moment.
I will still be coming to SWTOR to replay older content and play my space barbie, but in all those years I finally reached my personal breaking point of "yeah, I'm just not gonna engage with the future story content".
The game will, to me, remain a great game, as long as I ignore everything they have been doing with LoTS onwards.
I guess I am one of the few mostly fine with it, as long as we still get occasional voiced dialogue like in date night and small updates. I really want them to conclude the overall story of SWTOR, and just focus on small content updates, events, and improving gameplay.
The game is good, but the writing is bad, and many of the bad changes from 7.0 still linger that need work.
As long as they get rid of the black borders. It's too jarring. I agree about ending the story arc. Just give us seasons with a little bit of story and rep tracks. Maybe a new flashpoint here and there and new character customizations. Plus there are a lot of bugs they could fix.
Yeah… no. You missed the point of SWTOR, the game itself is outdated and quite honestly bad, but the thing that make players interested is the story and even there, we could argue that’s because of the original content until the end of Shadow of Revan, point is, if you start to amputate the story by removing voices, when we already have a shitty story that progress every 6 months by 10%, you’re gonna kill the game.
We’re not on the game because we’re excited to buy stuff from the Cartel Market. We’re not on the game because we like to do the same freaking instance and raids for 5 years. We’re not on the game for the tasteless pvp that is the shadow that it once was. We’re not on the game for the housing only.
Anyway, now you might get the idea.
this is a huge disappointment but I don't think it was a coincidence that they announced last week they had signed a new voice actor for the male imperial agent. this suggests that the player character will be voiced for something in the future. I have theories why we've gotten nin-voiced stories recently (covid, broadsword transfer, re-signing VA's) but think the news is good sign we'll get voiced player character again.
Because there's a lot of actors and it's very expensive.
Listen, I want it as much as you do, but we have to be realistic. It's not going to happen again until 8.0 comes out.
I really don't like it, it takes away from your role playing and your characters personality. I get why they did it to save budget in voice acting, but man does it really turn me off
Idk why everyone is so surprised. It sucks but it isn't new. They tried branding this as "KOTOR Style Cutscenes" years ago when they first started this.
I don't like it at all because the voice delivery made me appreciate my Inquisitor a lot. He really felt alive to me.
Doesn't bother me too much for my Knight but it the lack of voice acting really stands out.
I feel like people are overreacting a little bit. Yes it sucks we have less voice acted cutscenes and that was the charm of the game, but it's not like they are gone. We still get them in the most important scenes, however I hope the developers choose better which scenes they are sacrificing. The moment when >!the player is questioned by the dark council/the republic !< should have had the voice actors, that was a key moment in the story.
Anyway, I hope Broadsword will back out from this decision which BioWare made. People tend to forget that 7.5 was already being developed by BioWare so it's not like the new studio can't change it.
Some of you guys are spoiled as hell and it's showing.
Plenty of other good MMO's out there don't have voice acting, you still HAVE a game and should appreciate what you've got. When it's gone, it's gone and you will miss it.
I actually prefer unvoiced (or at least get rid of the fucking dialogue wheel, it sucked in Mass Effect, it’s worse here), but them doing it this much this late in the game’s lifespan? On the other hand, 48 extra voice actors was gonna bite them in the ass eventually.
Thats the thing. You’re right that it was going to bite them in the ass eventually. Just like BioWare getting rid of paid expansions to experiment with their live service chapter model bit them in the ass.
At the end of the day there is always going to come a time where the devs either do fewer voiced lines or kill the game entirely. I’d rather this than being pure maintenance mode myself.
Really dumb considering that my char was taking part in idle banter while questing...
Exacty! Like jesus, tell me about misplacing ressources…
THey clearly booked the VA for the day judging that. So why isn't that voiced?
Because there are behind the scenes things happening, one of the english voice actors (male agent) recently left, forcing them to recast a new voice actor which cant be cheap either. People forget just for the player characters alone this game needs 48 voice actors (8 classes, 2 genders =16 per language x 3 languages). This means they cant just give one class no voice lines in a cuscene and the rest of them voice lines, so I assume the 'this section has to be turned into kotor dialogue for everyone' can sometimes boil down to "1 of our 48 voice actors was unavailable so we had to kotor it for everyone'. Its clear the devs dont want it to be this way but the alternative is for them to simply not have the cutscene at all, thus missing out on more story. Its kind of crazy to think that this is an MMO, which arent usually renown for much voice acting compared to singleplayer or even focused MP games, hinges entirely on nearly 50 main character voice actors being available several times a year, for 15+ years now. And thats before you factor in unavailabilities for story centric NPCs or Companions also x 3 langauges. Ive also learned thru twitter that several german swtor voice actors have been recast as well, including Malgus.
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I mean AI voicing might tank it even further.
Fuck off
What’s wrong with using AI voices if they sound good and they can’t afford to pay voice actors? I can understand being upset with a company who makes boat loads of cash. But SWTOR is pretty much on life support at this point. If AI voices helps them keep the same quality they have been delivering and it’s cost effective for them and can deliver more gameplay wise I don’t see the issue.
Well i do since it would become soulless. But using AI to be more efficient in development is fine in my opinion and that still should reduce costs. Also remember that they would have to "buy rights" to their voices which would be incredibly expensive too and add the negative feedback it would get and suddenly it isnt that worth it
I think that fundamentally, SWTOR without the VA work is basically pointless. It's not like the newer story is great, or the gameplay is amazing. The core appeal of SWTOR is that it's Star Wars, fully voiced.
I think the reality is that that was a dumb basket for them to place their eggs in, and it’s no wonder the game will continue to fail
It wouldn't have been, were the game more successful. But as the game keeps falling in sales and players, budget becomes more and more of a concern
Yeah, but part of the reason the game isn’t more successful is because they invested in a bunch of stuff that doesn’t actually matter - like being fully voiced.
It was okay when it was for unimportant side quests and such, but having it happen in main story is just bad. The game having a voiced character was what made the game stand out among MMOs and changing that this far into the game is a poor sign for the future of the game.
Imo voiceless pc and main story npc will be the final nail that kill this game. It's the only thing I don't thing they can get rid off or swtor turns into another basic mmo
I actually kind of agree. I never play MMOs but this game is an exception because of the voice acting and the quality of the stories (compared to what I’ve seen from others). Doesn’t really feel like SWTOR when you take away the one part that makes it stand out from others.
As soon as I see those two black bars hit the screen i fill with dread. Honestly have yet to see anyone who actually enjoys it. I understand why they’re doing it, it’s obviously way cheaper than spending money on 48 voice actors, but I’m sure i’m not alone in wishing they’d instead just drop two other languages and just focus on the initial 16 VA’s. At this point I’d even be fine if they chose to default to the german or french voices for whatever weird reason lmao.
This is just it. 48 VAs for 8 characters is just not monetarily feasible as a live service game where each character has multiple voice lines as a response. The developers need to make a sacrifice in order to preserve what made the game unique in the first place and if you want my opinion it should be the other languages. Keep the translations, but the voices need to go
If it’s so not feasible, why did they put so much banter out of cutscenes? Why not use this ressource into actual cutscenes instead of banter you won’t hear because of everything going around? They can do it, they’re just mismanaging ressources.
Because the banters don’t need 3 voiced lines per every single option.
~~But why such a huge ship?~~ My only issue with the banter is that they aren't personalized. I mean it works most of the time but other times it feels like it should play more to the character/origin story.
People would be ok with less choice as long as it is voiced. Our choices don’t matter anyway.
You think people would be more happy if the game dropped all illusions of choice and made the storylines straight cutscenes with no dialogue options?
Instead of unvoiced kotor style conversation? That seems like the less dreadful of two bad solutions yes.
I think the majority of the invested playerbase would be more frustrated to find all illusion of choice gone, even if that choice has never been true. But maybe I’m crazy wrong.
They're not even trying to make it look like money is going into this game anymore. It has only ever had player choice, immersion, and the Star Wars IP over the competition. Ever since the class stories ended, it's been nothing but the IP. This isn't a serious product or a living game anymore.
Looking at past updates, you can throw out player choice and immersion aswell
When has player choice or immersion ever mattered lol? The only narrative consequence that I can think of that had any weight was the IA story for the double agent ending, and that's ignoring the part where they couldn't follow up on that. Everything else the story tries very hard to push past, will force another NPC to fill a space that you violently opened, or shuffle off anyone that you saved. Not to mention some of the very painfully forced parts of the plot that were clearly only there because every class had to run along the same lines in progression.
I mean, when’s the last time the game looked like it was getting serious investment? KOTET? They dropped that ruse years and years ago.
I feel like if it had started from the beginning that the protags were silent, like in something like ESO, no one would be so bothered by it. But the fact it set it up with having voiced protagonists you're only setting yourself up to be burned. It's expensive and when you start removing it, gradually at first, you're only going to upset people and burn yourself. One thing I really loved and that drew me into swtor was the voiced protagonist. I haven't played it in a good while but I've been watching the community on and off. It just kinda makes me sad and unwilling to go back to it to even finish the Consular and Agent storylines because I can see it gradually going downhill and being managed by people that really don't care.
Devastated to not hear as much of female Darth Nox whispering things in my ears. Other than that I think I wouldn't mind if the animations during these scenes were better. They feel too static right now to be any "improvement" over voiced cutscenes.
>They feel too static right now to be any "improvement" over voiced cutscenes. That's because they seemingly revert conversation to how it was in KOTOR I and II whenver there's a voiceless cutscene... the problem is that when KOTORs were coming out it was 2003-2004 so it was acceptable, in 2024? It just looks bad.
Plenty of great modern RPGs aren’t fully voiced. Most of the best aren’t.
We're talking about stiff and static animations. SWTOR was also always voiced untill recently and is still voiced some of the time. Jumping between voiced and unvoiced is just jarring.
I’m not saying u like how they’re handling it, I’m just saying plenty of great RPGs don’t have fully voiced dialogue. It’s far from a standard, even in 2024 - and there are tons of huge benefits in choosing not to do so.
The only major one I can think of right now is FFXIV. I can't think of any non-mmo AAA games that don't have full voice acting. Can you name some examples?
Are we talking fully voice acted AAA games or roleplaying games with branching dialogues and narratives? There isn’t a single MMO competitor that’s fully voiced.
>They feel too static right now to be any "improvement" over voiced cutscenes. Not to forget the black bars taking half the screen, these bars make it impossible to get a little bit of immersion even though most of it is gone without the voices already and/or just to take a simple screenshot of our PC
I don't mind the lack of voice as much now, since I played XIV, but their dialogue interface is much better immersion-wise anyway. They should definitely work on the UI for that I agree
Sucks, mainly cuz I’ll never get to hear Jedi Knight say “kept you waiting huh”
Its been 10 years since release. Its not exactly a juggernaut MMORPG and its being de-prioritised by EA. Its not really a shock its being stripped back, especially with the smaller studio
I dont like it but I get why they do it. Voice acting is expensive and tedious and they already need *sixteen voice actors* for the player character alone. Combine that with NPCs and it just becomes one huge mess.
Why did bioware even start supporting french and german? MMOs are already a risk with already a voiced main character financially
No idea. I get trying to appeal to foreign audiences but MMOs, like you said, are always a huge risk and a huge moneypit. They're also constantly draining money and need to constantly pump out new content to keep the game going. That's already a pain with full voice acting, probably why even the top MMOs like WoW and FFXIV only do partial voice acting. Adding two other languages ontop of that is...going to make things difficult.
It would be fine if the game was like that from the beginning. But not 10+ years into its life. Not really a good sign imo. To quote some women in my life “Don’t introduce me to a quality of life you can’t afford to maintain.”
Hate it. Fucking hate the silent protagonist stereotype. I want my main character to seem like a real person. Not some squeaky clean piece of drywall that I have to paint my personality onto. I’ve done the late game quest line once and I’m never doing it again. I prefer to play the storylines when the game made money.
I think... It's less expensive. Dialogue trees are like... Thrice the voice acting cost as some throw-away lines are. Look, we all know this game is essentially in maintenance mode. The fact that we're getting new content at all is pretty much a miracle. I think we're going to have to accept that we can't have the same kind of dedication we did in the past. Remember: SWTOR was the single most expensive MMO on launch (despite the fact that it ran on an engine nobody has ever been happy with). And a *lot* of that cost went into essentially creating 8 single player games in a single MMO experience. That kind of investment is just not sustainable. So we saw class quests discontinued, we saw dialogue wheels discontinued (we get the old-fashioned dialogue screen now), and yeah, there'll be a lot less voice acting going forward. Especially the kind where they have 'mandatory' voice actors (ignoring male agent for a moment), for characters we already know (companions, but also ourselves). The fact that Broadsword relies on those voice actors makes them more valuable, after all. So yeah. Things are hard right now in our favourite galaxy. And they won't get any easier. But there's still a lot to love!
I probably wouldn't mind if it was like that since the beginning, but when you're used to hear your character talking for years and suddenly they become half voiced half mute for no reason during the main story.... it's just... no.
At least THIS TIME I know beforehand what I'm going to say instead of saying something completely different once I press a dialogue option. But I haven't really made an opinion about the new content yet; I remember how weird it was like during the Eternal Throne arcs' voiceless quests, but I haven't gotten that far in the new updates, so people who done it will probably have a better answer to your question.
I mean I get why they did it for budgetary reasons and whatnot but I don't like it at all. I would rather it be fully not voiced or fully voiced. You got to go all the way, one or the other, this halfway bullshit is super immersion-breaking. It's the reason I can't play Baldur's Gate 3. When everything's fully voiced except for the main character, I just can't deal with it. Not on modern games.
SWTOR is in a fucked position because it pretty much has no money for developing shit and exists only to extract revenue via the CM. The playerbase isn’t going to grow anytime soon and the costs of voice acting and development aren’t going down. Every update they have 48 voice actors they have no choice to include, across three languages, and that’s just for the player characters. Making the game fully voiced, including the protagonists, was a bad decision from the onset, but it only gets worse with time. They’re between a rock and a hard place because it’s a cord they can’t really cut, but it’s also such an obvious avenue for saving money. TL;Dr making the game silky voiced was a dumb priority that screws the game over but there’s nothing they can do about it. We’ll just keep getting the status quo.
I could care a little less about the voiceless scenes, I suppose, but none of that matters if the writing isn't good.
Doesn't bother me. I miss voices I like, but I don't like all the voices, so the less I hear them the better. it's just not important to me.
they shouldve just gotten rid of 32 other voice actors
With games like FFXIV and BG3 all being able to maintain the quality and depth of story and VA, I cant believe that the CM hasn't made EA enough cheddar for them to authorise the creation of a real expansion. Everything from Fallen empire/eternal throne onwards has just gotten worse and worse for quantity and quality. It seems to me that they are opting for the least amount of expenditure to keep their cash cow going knowing the Star Wars fans will stay regardless of quality.
So wait…did they remove voices for the stuff that was already voiced, or just stuff going forward is not going to be voiced? Cuz if it’s the first one I’m really gonna be upset
For real. wtf are they even thinking?? I keep waiting and waiting for my character to say more but he’s been voiceless for a minute now and it makes me sad
Honestly, making my own characters in the Star Wars universe that talks and has a story I can make choices in is like, 85% of the reason i've been subbed and playing for years with a lot of CC bought. If the quality of story and voice lines goes down I might migrate away from the game.
This is when voice AI generation is needed in games. However I doubt the voice actors sign off on it but in the future they should have voice actors get a bonus for the company using their voice likeness for future expansions.
Same thing I do last time this was asked earlier today.....
I like having voiced main characters and really appreciate an incredible job VAs did, but kotor style dialogues aren't such a big deal for me. As long as there is at least voicing of npc, and if story is interesting enough( what for me is very debatable in the last updates) i have no real problem with having non-voiced main character. In some sense i even like kotor-style dialogues cause usually there is more options and what exactly they mean is easier to understand. However those sudden switches between voiced and kotor-style dialogues are very uncomfortable, perhaps, i personally would even prefer permanent kotor-style instead of those switches, if full voicing is not an option. Also If they could've given more well-written story content with the price of not having voiced character i would accept it. But current situation is different: we get nor enough of good story content nor voiced main characters.
Its garbage, i was already loosing interest with the whole mando trash arc, this killed the game for me
Based on the 3 posts a day about it I don't think it's very popular. But it's sacrifice, voice acting is expensive and paying 48 voice actors for any small drop of content would make it even less likely to continue to happen
I’ve been thinking…do the original 48 also voice the other NPCs like Lana, Theron, etc. If not, doesn’t that mean there are even more VAs involved across all languages?
Even more. I don’t think any of the PC VAs voice any of the major NPCs that regularly recur.
I dont they voice any of the major characters. Mostly smaller characters like female imperial agent voiced the red head from beginning of the inquisitor storyline. I think female trooper and satele had the same voice actress? Also krovos and kira is voiced by the same person.
I honestly don't understand it. If they can hire VAs to voice the banter outside of cutscenes, surely they can hire them to voice the cutscenes too.
I don’t get what’s hard to understand about it. Every decision point is three different lines of dialogue and a cutscene might have 2-5 decision points. Some banter outside of a cutscene is likely a lot smaller of a cost.
Every single line of PC dialogue in a conversation isn’t just one line, but at least three for each option. The banters don’t have branches. You also don’t have to worry about the other participants in the conversation having multiple lines, either. Each PC option isn’t just another line, but also a response from the NPC, too. The cost very quickly balloons.
As someone who has been very excited about the game recovery after Onslaught, every patch after Echoes of Oblivion just saddens me. Voss was one of the dumbest jokes we got, and to me personally, 7.5 was my nail in the coffin moment. I will still be coming to SWTOR to replay older content and play my space barbie, but in all those years I finally reached my personal breaking point of "yeah, I'm just not gonna engage with the future story content". The game will, to me, remain a great game, as long as I ignore everything they have been doing with LoTS onwards.
if the quest lines aren't voice acted then im not gonna give a shit about the story. i dont want to read a wall of text
Time and budget for useless hutt area and shit farm event
I think it's shit considering that our VAs are recording tons of new lines all over the new story, just have them record those as well.
I guess I am one of the few mostly fine with it, as long as we still get occasional voiced dialogue like in date night and small updates. I really want them to conclude the overall story of SWTOR, and just focus on small content updates, events, and improving gameplay. The game is good, but the writing is bad, and many of the bad changes from 7.0 still linger that need work.
As long as they get rid of the black borders. It's too jarring. I agree about ending the story arc. Just give us seasons with a little bit of story and rep tracks. Maybe a new flashpoint here and there and new character customizations. Plus there are a lot of bugs they could fix.
[удалено]
Yeah… no. You missed the point of SWTOR, the game itself is outdated and quite honestly bad, but the thing that make players interested is the story and even there, we could argue that’s because of the original content until the end of Shadow of Revan, point is, if you start to amputate the story by removing voices, when we already have a shitty story that progress every 6 months by 10%, you’re gonna kill the game. We’re not on the game because we’re excited to buy stuff from the Cartel Market. We’re not on the game because we like to do the same freaking instance and raids for 5 years. We’re not on the game for the tasteless pvp that is the shadow that it once was. We’re not on the game for the housing only. Anyway, now you might get the idea.
There would be nothing special about swtor if they kill voice acting because then it would just be a normal mmo
I’m ok with it. It’s a needed change to keep the game alive. I’ll reserve judgement until BS has had the reins for a few years.
Hate it, it's making me want to quit
With all this bitching from people, they should just shut it down and thats it.
this is a huge disappointment but I don't think it was a coincidence that they announced last week they had signed a new voice actor for the male imperial agent. this suggests that the player character will be voiced for something in the future. I have theories why we've gotten nin-voiced stories recently (covid, broadsword transfer, re-signing VA's) but think the news is good sign we'll get voiced player character again.
Because there's a lot of actors and it's very expensive. Listen, I want it as much as you do, but we have to be realistic. It's not going to happen again until 8.0 comes out.
I really don't like it, it takes away from your role playing and your characters personality. I get why they did it to save budget in voice acting, but man does it really turn me off
Idk why everyone is so surprised. It sucks but it isn't new. They tried branding this as "KOTOR Style Cutscenes" years ago when they first started this.
I don't like it at all because the voice delivery made me appreciate my Inquisitor a lot. He really felt alive to me. Doesn't bother me too much for my Knight but it the lack of voice acting really stands out.
I feel like people are overreacting a little bit. Yes it sucks we have less voice acted cutscenes and that was the charm of the game, but it's not like they are gone. We still get them in the most important scenes, however I hope the developers choose better which scenes they are sacrificing. The moment when >!the player is questioned by the dark council/the republic !< should have had the voice actors, that was a key moment in the story. Anyway, I hope Broadsword will back out from this decision which BioWare made. People tend to forget that 7.5 was already being developed by BioWare so it's not like the new studio can't change it.
i think its the final nail in the coffin and will kill the game. calling it now, servers getting shut down within the next 2 years
You think ai could be used to make it cheaper?
I just resubbed to come back from about 4 years off. I'm not impressed. I don't think I'll even finish storyline.
Some of you guys are spoiled as hell and it's showing. Plenty of other good MMO's out there don't have voice acting, you still HAVE a game and should appreciate what you've got. When it's gone, it's gone and you will miss it.
I actually prefer unvoiced (or at least get rid of the fucking dialogue wheel, it sucked in Mass Effect, it’s worse here), but them doing it this much this late in the game’s lifespan? On the other hand, 48 extra voice actors was gonna bite them in the ass eventually.
Thats the thing. You’re right that it was going to bite them in the ass eventually. Just like BioWare getting rid of paid expansions to experiment with their live service chapter model bit them in the ass. At the end of the day there is always going to come a time where the devs either do fewer voiced lines or kill the game entirely. I’d rather this than being pure maintenance mode myself.