Wow an original idea for EQII - VOICE!

[Tulenyre]

Gamespot:

EverQuest II a voice

The creator of the upcoming EverQuest II announces a brand-new, highly unusual feature to appear in its upcoming online game.

EverQuest II voice-over trailerSony Online Entertainment has announced a brand-new feature that will appear in its upcoming online role-playing sequel, EverQuest II: voice-over.

The new game will feature full-audio speech for its non-player characters; a first for online role-playing games, which have previously only featured silent characters that interact with players by sending them text chat messages. Sony Online Entertainment has also provided a new movie trailer which demonstrates how this full-audio speech will work in the actual game.

EverQuest II will be the sequel to the original EverQuest, one of the earliest and most influential graphical online role-playing games, launched in 1999. The game will take place in the original EverQuest's world of Norrath after a series of disasters have changed the world forever. Players will be able to create a character from an open-ended selection of fantasy races and classes to investigate exactly what caused the events that led up to the disasters. For more information on the game, consult our previous coverage.

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.... wonder how many other games ideas they can rip off? They don't have an originality bone left in the fat corporate body of theirs.

[Guenter]

I want the ability to talk (similar to Roger Wilco) within the group. Wouldn't you like to be able to yell "RUN!" and "ADD!" and "Not in the face!" :)

I suppose it won't happen because there are too many people who use their avatar to explore different roles in the world. It would be too obvious that the well-endowed wood elf is really a teenage boy or 50-year old man. :wink:

[Biaxin]

Hey,

It would be too obvious that the well-endowed wood elf is really a teenage boy or 50-year old man. :wink:

Are you saying that a 50-year old man can't be well endowed?

That would change my whole outlook on this aging process thing. We might need to get some researchers on to that.

[Zoldan]

I think he meant that, by the time you're 50, it doesn't matter if you're well endowed or not. :lol:

[Biaxin]

Hey,

Size won't matter, anymore? As hard as I find that to believe, it would surely take some pressure off, though there's nothing like concern in that arena to provide motivation towards the skills of foreplay.

I hope that this isn't suggesting that, at a certain relatively attainable age, one finds what was once multi-functional to have lost a considerable function taking endowment right out of the equation. Don't they have pills for that?

"I got to go, chile. Daddy done took his Niagra."

[Greebo]

Ok - um...how?

Are they going to transmit the sound over the internet using V/IP technology? Or are they going to require 10 GB of free space for the first version to hold all the voice files?

Or are we going to see, as we do too often, that except for a few NPCs, every NPC says the same thing, the same way, with the same voice?

Forgive my scepticism - but sound takes a *LOT* of space...

[leng]

I saw this a while ago. As I said then, I'm not terribly happy about it. Chat boxes I can read at my own speed (generally faster than speech) and scroll back to if I miss something. I really don't want to drone through a whole conversation time after time if I miss something important first time round.
Nor do I want to constantly listen to the same voiceovers for shopkeepers etc.

As for file size, if they are going to have a half-way reasonable selection of voices they are going to need to use voice generation technology not digitised speech.

[Lycos]

Well, we did voice for Planetside, and it can take up a lot of bandwidth. You can talk a little, but you can't read the Gettysburg address and hear it all very well.

I liked the way they did voice in Planetside with the players saying some key phrases like emotes.

[Aananla]

There will probably be an option to turn of the voice-overs. Sounds like they are just trying to include all the bells and whistles to draw in as many folks as possible. Can't blame them for that.

[attriel]

Ok - um...how?

Are they going to transmit the sound over the internet using V/IP technology? Or are they going to require 10 GB of free space for the first version to hold all the voice files?

Nah. They'll just 'recommend' that everyone go out and purchase FFT co-processors ;)

[Bregalad]

According to PC Gamer preview, they are pre-recording it - something to the tune of 70,000 lines of dialogue.

I am totally sure I don't want prerecorded stuff in MMORPG. Single-player games, where you'll hear a pre-rec maybe once or twice is one thing. Games that pester you with same line again an again can get mighty annoying. In original Diablo, I used to lower sound volume to 0 any time I went to town cause after a while shopkeepers greeting me with same exact line started to grate. Morrowind is a fine game too, but I after I visit Ald'Ruhn mage guild for Nth time, and the doorman says the same thing to me, I am ready to throttle him.

I am ok with listening to voiceovers for major quests, but if have to hear out a flowery greeting any time I click a food merchant.... volume knob all way to the left, baby.

[Greebo]

According to PC Gamer preview, they are pre-recording it - something to the tune of 70,000 lines of dialogue.
Welcome to Qeynos, please insert your EverQuest 2 DVD Disk 7 of 12 to listen to the merchant dialogue in this town, or you can install the entire sound volume on a blank 60 Gigabyte Hard Drive to avoid disk swapping...

[Yuglooc]

Having seen the EQ II demo at Fan Faire, I can confirm that the NPCs do have actual voices. You'll also see text bubbles over their heads - so I assume you'll have the option to play with sound off.

Since the game is still some months from release, it might not be a bad idea to post your thoughts on an EQ II board somewhere.

[Raveneye]

I think a better use of voice/sound in EQ 2 would be to have Sony select a few rabid fans with musical talent (like the "has anyone seen my corpse" guy) and let them record some songs to be played when you enter taverns across Norrath. I think it would be awesome to walk into a tavern in Halas and hear an actual song about a drunken Barbarian! :D
You could even key the song off an event, like someone pays the Bard NPC a plat and he starts playing.

As for the NPC voices, I agree the repetitiveness could become annoying. Perhaps talking NPCs should be few and far between? Remember the few NPCs in EQ that would occasionally utter something? Scared the crap out of me first time I went by one and it talked. :lol:

[Bregalad]

My criteria here is very simple: in any game, any NPC that I am supposed to deal with on aregular basis: unless said NPC can pass a Turing test, I do NOT want to hear it speak. Text please.

Speech bubbles... hated them in UO. I just love the fact that I can scroll back to the phrase I need in EQ.

[leng]

Yup I hated speach bubbles in AO & SWG. The one good thing about them in SWG was that they quickly pinpointed the guy asking for training, though.

[Shiz]

Speech bubbles... hated them in UO. I just love the fact that I can scroll back to the phrase I need in EQ.

Not to quibble, but you could do this in UO too by looking at your journal, not that there were key word activated quests in that game.

Text bubbles work well in an isometric, tops-down view. I am not sure they will hold the same charm for me in a first person environment. The chat box in EQ really felt like I was "hearing" after a few weeks.