In the last stream Brad talked about voice acting and how it was a huge money sink, I couldn’t agree more. Voice acting a game is a huge expense, and for a mmo focussed on group play and exploration producing quality voice acting that fits the game is a huge task.
With that said, it would be nice to have short voice acting lines that friendly npcs say when you click them, it gives a different feel to the world. And of course voice acting for the major boss encounters would be amazing, bosses taunting you their one liners can make an encounter more memorable and enjoyable.
Using wow as a reference
I listened to all the soundtrack on the sound cloud and the music is beautiful, they all give a distinct felling, and the ones that are associated with a specific area like the “Khaga Sands” actually make it fell like you’re getting ready for war in the middle of a desert. All of the soundtrack that has been revealed until now is very serious and gives an epic orchestra vibe, I’m wondering if some light hearted/silly medieval songs will also be included?
Something like this
I think they have short lines like that, but they just recorded them themselves. I remember they had the woman crying when they showed 'picking up' the quest in town.
EDIT: I'm sure they'll have some tavern music also, and probably areas with lighter, happier music.
Regarding Music: This is essential. A distinctive, original score with loads of character goes a long way.
Regarding Voice Acting: Personally I've never cared for the half-voiced approach that you describe. It's certainly more affordable, but it feels overly gamey to me. All or nothing in my opinion, and I'd rather see the money spent elsewhere if it's a choice.
While full on voice acting won't happen, I do hope there are plenty of one liners like OP mentioned. Make the world bustle a little more than pure text, it would help with immersion. It's not something that requires an overhaul or for us to say "it's too late for that." Greetings can be added in during polishing stages I'm sure.
Give me a script I'll send you some Barry White openers for free baby.
Ye gods and little fishes, overly done voice acting in online games is a waste to me. Most of the time you're running around with your friends and listening to them in voice chat and have the game voice volume down anyway. Then you have the, "Npcs only say one or two things anyway approach" which leads to listen to Deckard Cain saying "Hello there" 4000 times and after the first 50 times you're just like "Shut up old man a'fore I beat you to death with a rose bush" which gets awkward when there are no rose bushes in game.
After reading this Dev Diary, sounds like we will need to listen to the music to discover quests. Definitely won't be listening to out-of-game music...
Dev Diaries
Music and Sound Design of Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen
Posted date / 7.13.16
When I think about the sonic landscape of Pantheon, my goal has always been to find ways to use audio to achieve new heights of authentic immersion. I want to talk about 3 specific ways I hope to achieve this:
Soundscapes
The concept behind ‘soundscapes’ is to compose iconic theme songs for major areas of the game world (major starting cities, for example), and then compose smaller, reminiscent versions of that theme to use at certain points throughout the world when we want to remind players of something, or clue them in to possible story content.
An example would be, you create a Human in the city of Thronefast and spend your first 8 levels pretty close to the city, returning often to sell and train. By the time you leave Thronefast’s vicinity, you will be familiar with its musical theme. Now, you have traveled several zones away and you see a group of massive, ancient pillars standing strangely in an open field. As you approach, music begins to play. You have not heard this particular track yet, but there is something strangely familiar about it. Then you begin to recognize echoes of Thronefast’s theme in the music, and you realize that this group of pillars has something to do with Thronefast’s ancient past, so you start looking for clues…
This naturally ties in to our Perception System - the goal of this system is to reward players with quest and story content through exploration. You see the group of pillars in the distance, you are intrigued by them so you go to them, you arrive and music begins to play which is very reminiscent to the musical theme of Thronefast (you may even get a Perception message that alerts you to this, if your Perception skill is high enough), you begin looking around and notice a figure standing by one of the pillars. She calls out to you, “Where are you from, stranger?” and you begin a conversation with her about Thronefast’s past.
The idea of Soundscapes is to use the iconic musical themes of the game to draw you in to story and point-of-interest related content around the game world. But, speaking of Perception...
Perception
Another area where we are excited to use audio as a means of immersion is with Perception hints and triggers. I’m not able to go into much detail just yet, but a few simple examples will impart the sense of how this could work. The simplest way would be: you get a Perception message that says, “An odd noise coming from inside…” With that perception message may come a 3-5 second audio clip where the player can actually hear the odd noise, simply for the sake of immersion.
However, we may also design more complicated scenarios where hearing and discerning audio cues may be the key to progression with certain quests. It’s one thing to peer through a dark window and read, “A faint whisper..?” It’s another thing to peer through a dark window and actually hear whispering, and what you hear in the whispering is a clue of what to do next! (With triggers like this, we will work out a way for players to replay the whispering if case they miss it the first time, or need to refer back to it later).
Sonic Torque
The last thing we’ll discuss in this newsletter is a little idea I call Sonic Torque. The premise is simple - as players level up, they are used to the power (and maybe the visuals) of their abilities getting bigger and better. But the way the abilities sound never changes. In Pantheon, we want to experiment with more powerful abilities having a more formidable sonic imprint. The Frail Healing of a Cleric at level 1 should not sound the same as Relentless Life at level 50! More on this coming later…
I hope you have enjoyed this brief look into the different ways we are aiming to leverage the music and sound design of Pantheon to create deeply immersive gameplay experiences. I am more excited than ever to be part of this amazing team at Visionary Realms, making the game that many of us have wanted for such a long time. While you wait, visit our Soundcloud and immerse yourself in the music of Pantheon - and as for us, we will keep working hard to make this game a reality - can’t wait to see you in Terminus!
Voices are a nice plus and I can think of quite a few ways to do them that don't cost a fortune. Of course, using those ways will give output that isn't likely to be as good.
My daughter went to an arts and music high school in Michigan for a few years. Some of those kids were quite talented - I bet one could find a lot of people outside of the developers offices that would be happy to record a few lines each just for the fun of it, and being in a game. People with better voices than some of the developers ((evil smile)).
I tend to be less interested than most players in music but even I agree that some good sound tracks will go a long way towards the success of Pantheon. In-game sounds and music are one reason I avoid voice chat like the plague. I LIKE listening to in-game music and ambient sounds.
As a reference on how not to use voice acting is Black Desert Online. It not so much the quality of the acting but when and how they used it. It became very annoying very fast when you talked with an NPC for a quest and they would start up one of their main voice lines. The problem is that the text you would need to read was not what they were saying. So when you talk to the trainer he might start talking about some problem with his new recruits but the text you were reading is about him needing you to go attack the goblin or something. This happen with almost every NPC I talked with (only played a few hours), they would always say something vocally when I needed the next part of the quest but it had nothing to do with the quest. It was like if you are trying to read something on your break and another person is trying to talk with you about something non relevant. Hard to focus on both so I usually waited for them to finish there random line and then start reading the quest text.