| The Patton Projection: Fully Voiced MMO? Nuts! | |
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The Patton Projection is a weekly article centering on all the unique features Bioware is coming up with which could redefine the MMO genre forever. From morality decisions to companion characters to in-depth dialogue mechanics, it is clear that The Old Republic will be a game like no other... Out of all the new ideas Bioware is adding on to their grand project of a game, it's obvious that none are so ambitious as their plan to implement full voice acting throughout the entirety of the MMO. This preceding article looking at just that is somewhat of a rant, but just bare with me here and get used to it; I have a good amount to say about the matter. Oh yeah, of course we can’t forget the fact that they will have to voice the male and female character for each of what seems to be a total of eight class stories. And don’t even get me started on the problems with bringing alien species into the equation! If they do allow for a healthy choice of non-human beings, they will have to make sure that their voices won’t become annoying after a few hours of playing (i.e. Wookiee grunts). Bringing the player character to life vocally seems to just make things infinitely crazier. I think that settles the matter at about 9999 out of 10 right there. Alright, back on track. Now it is time to see why Bioware would want to get themselves caught up in something that is so ridiculous to think about that it broke my “Patton Craziness Scale™". It does seem like a big, unneeded pain to go through all that trouble in order to add something that no MMO has ever tried before. But I see two reasons that serve to explain this wacky behavior: 1) Let’s look at the need for voice acting through a scenario. Perhaps you end up confronting your long time pal and companion character one day. Unfortunately, this meeting is more or less a hostile one, as you just proved that he was in-fact planning on jacking your prized ship when you were gone. Now you go up to speak to him and suddenly you are presented with this huge wall of text dialogue! You are like “Whoa, I don’t want to read all of this! He tried to steal my ship!” and you end up gunning him down like the manly, vengeful western man that you are. Now let’s put in voice acting; this time when you talk to him, he speaks to you in his guilty-stricken voice the heartbreaking tale of his starving and poverty stricken town and his commitment to bring in wealth and supplies no matter what the cost, even if it meant selling his best bud's ship. Game immersion through the use of a living voice allows you to feel the emotion of the story and will certainly mean the difference between killing that buddy of yours in cold blood for his betrayal and generously aiding him in his personal quest which will lead to better rewards and an unbreakable relationship.
So while Bioware just got a new record on my scale, they do recognize what the difference between reading and listening can do for a story such as theirs. By making every word audible, it will allow us to care about every decision our character makes, from when he condemns someone to death or accepts their desperate cry for help. This is Bioware's masterpiece and they clearly don't want to spare anything in making it short of gaming perfection. Yet with the immense difficulty of bringing this vision to life, we shall see how they will fare with this task in the near future and if their gamble will pay off. So if you learned one thing from this article, it should that Bioware is 9999 out of 10 crazy for trying to make a fully voiced MMO along with all the other nuts ideas they are developing, but people who make reckless decisions for the purpose of making the best game ever are pure hardcore in my book… Well there you have it: another round of looking at everything Bioware is dragging to the plate in my second edition of The Patton Projection. Why did I name it that you may ask? Because it sounds much more epic than The Rommel Report; work with me people! As always, the more feedback the better, whether it be comments, suggestions, hate mail, or ideas for future article topics. Tune in next Thursday when I attempt to tackle Bioware's next leap of faith for the MMO genre (and perhaps wildest): Buddy Characters!!! blog comments powered by Disqus |
