The Ultimate No/No: Close up conversations with no voice acting

I want what you want, just without the camera zoomed in. At least the option to have non-zoomed in NPC chat. See Divinity Original Sin for this option.

 

Agreed.

That said, is the challenge a lack of voice acting? If that's the case, this is a problem that we can help solve with crowdsourcing. I, for one, would be honored to lend my voice to any NPC. Anyone else?

 

Even though I doubt the devs will go for it, I'd love to lend a voice or two.

 

That's exactly what I meant to say...

 

Maybe instead of talking the NPCs could perform interpretive dance moves, so we'd have something to look at while we're zoomed in.

 

I believe in the R13 hangout it was mentioned that what we have now is a first cut at the dialogue interface, and issues like camera perspective would be improved. I suspect other things will be improved too, like decreasing the amount of time it takes to engage an NPC in conversation.

 

I still do not see anything yet. Anyone know when?
I just want the option to not have the camera zoomed in during NPC conversations.

 

Except for Nob the Stableboy. He's slow and takes awhile to process thoughts and thus responds slower.

If they're not doing this already, perhaps for those of us with gobs of memory, they should leave the overland map in memory and never unload it.

 

i would add memory if required to enable that.

 

SotA wants to be a single player RPG, too. There is a lot of focus on story in this game. Therefore this story needs to be presented somehow. Right now I am not sure how the story will be presented. Will we just reads walls of text in a chat window? If this is the case then I doubt that SotA can pull in many gamers and immerse them in the story.

"Unfortunately" the Witcher 3 set the bar for story presentation and quest design very high. Now, I am not saying that SotA needs to be on par with the Witcher 3 visually but I would expect that the story is presented in a similar way. By this I mean a presentation of the conversations with cinematic camera angles as well as things happening in the world that are presented in the game with cinematic scenes. For example a dragon coming down from the skies and attacking some people. Or when you are in a tavern, suddenly the door is opened and a bunch of soldiers come in, searching for someone. This is how a dense atmosphere is created, how a story should be presented, how a story is remembered. I don't want to experience an epic story by just looking at the back of my hero and reading walls of text in a chat window. We are in the year 2015. Even games with small budgets manage those things. I am not asking for rendered sequences but for the use of the ingame camera in a cinematic fashion in order to present the story and the conversations in an exciting way.

 

In Wasteland 2 i had to read alot too. It wasn't a problem. But right now the animation and chat window information feels abit weird in Shroud of the Avatar. Although the clicking on important text did bring me back to Ultima V, but i doubt alot of young users even played that

 

In Wasteland 2 there are portraits so that you get the sense of having a conversation with an NPC and not doing an IRC chat.

I really fear that SotA delves way too deep into traditional run-of-the-mill MMO ground and thus sacrifices immersion, atmosphere and the sense of telling and presenting an exciting story. And this up to a point where it is only just a joke trying to follow the story.

 

You seem to be under the impression that removing the zoom suddenly makes it a "wall of text" experience. Maybe there's something to do with how the dialogue is presented instead of seeing the zoom as a solution; it just brings up other problems.

Besides, isn't the chat window where players enter dialogue with each another?

Unless they're aiming to animate cut-scenes during some of the dialogue (and give us proper subtitles), I don't see the point of the zoom. The NPCs emote just like we do, and we handle our own dialogue just fine without zooming into each other.

But that's the whole point of the OP, zooming in during dialogue emphasizes the lack of voice-over and thus breaks immersion.

I love that the devs are trying new things but the uncanny valley still applies here.

My initial reaction when reading your original response was "then fix the chat window".

Take a look at Final Fantasy 14, all NPC dialogue is done through a completely different "bubble" (window). If they're looking to create set-pieces with the dialogue, then maybe they should detach their dialogue completely from the chat window.

You could argue that Final Fantasy 14 has the same issues with the close-up-with-no-audio but they're treating it differently than simply engaging dialogue 1 on 1 (like what the Elder Scrolls does). The camera is handled like a silent movie and plays with different camera angles (like what Mass Effect does) and, without necessarily knowing this for sure, this might alleviate the issue.

 

You know, in UO, all the NPC would do is turn to face the player - they wouldn't walk over. And nobody cared. Instant response from the NPC. When you closed the dialog, the NPC was still looking at you, and that was enough to know in your mind you'd just finished a conversation with them.

 

I am pushing hard for having the option to keep the camera zoomed out during conversations. Divinity Original Sin had an option called Conversation Zoom and you could check it on uncheck it.

I have sent Twitter posts to Starr and Richard about this. Hope they read it.

 

Have any devs talked about this? I am still holding out hope. I just want it as an option.

 

Two main problems with voice acting:

1) its very expensive (for anything that is actually good, both in performance and audio quality)
2) the sheer amount of required audio files would hamper load times, performance, and game development by a huge amount.

 

Voice acting in this game is pretty much off the table. You can't really have voice acting with a chat-box, type-your-response system.

What we need, despite Richard's adamant protests, is descriptions in the dialogue indicating NPC demeanor, tone, expressions and actions. We're never going to get all of that across via visuals, and even if we could get it across, most of us would never see it, because you can't watch the guy's expression and read his wall-o-text about how you can help at the same time.

The SoTA developers really need to accept the limitations inherent in this system. If you have to focus on reading, then the text needs to indicate emotion and tone, not the animated devil who is flickering in your peripheral vision while you read.

 

This is where they really need an overhaul of the presentation of NPC conversation system.

 

I found it annoying, also.
If not to enter a scene automatically then maybe just have a pop-up type thing on screen to initiate one anyway.