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Re: Immersive Speech in Limit Theory

Posted: Tue May 03, 2016 12:54 pm
by N810
I'd settle for some procedural alien voices, kinda like in the first Starfox game.
and just have subtitles generated by your ships translator. :eh:

Re: Immersive Speech in Limit Theory

Posted: Mon May 09, 2016 12:55 pm
by HowSerendipitous
Needs moooooaaarrr Microsoft Sam :twisted:

Re: Immersive Speech in Limit Theory

Posted: Tue Aug 23, 2016 11:01 am
by Not Zanteogo
N810 wrote:I'd settle for some procedural alien voices, kinda like in the first Starfox game.
and just have subtitles generated by your ships translator. :eh:
Will there be foxes in Limit Theory? Thanks.

luv u

Re: Immersive Speech in Limit Theory

Posted: Tue Aug 23, 2016 5:12 pm
by Mistycica
HowSerendipitous wrote:Needs moooooaaarrr Microsoft Sam :twisted:
DECtalk you mean.
:ghost:
Not Zanteogo wrote:
N810 wrote:I'd settle for some procedural alien voices, kinda like in the first Starfox game.
and just have subtitles generated by your ships translator. :eh:
Will there be foxes in Limit Theory? Thanks.

luv u
limitless procedural furry space sim :o

Re: Immersive Speech in Limit Theory

Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2016 5:44 pm
by Hyperion
Flatfingers wrote:It's funny; we often talk about this game or that considered to have "bad" voice acting, or so-bad-it's-good-in-a-way voice acting (Two Worlds). And we sometimes mention games that we think have unusually good voice acting (Bastion, Portal).

What's the difference? That is, what makes one game sound amateurish and immersion-breaking, while another game's characters speak exactly like the people we imagine they are?

Is it just a matter of paying for professionals who do a lot of voice work and have access to high-powered recording studios? Or is there something more to getting voice acting that enhances rather than breaks immersion?

How would you apply that "something" to choosing voice actors for background chatter in Limit Theory?
I personally think the greatest difficulty for LT to have good voice acting is that as it is now (or was when we last saw it), it is so abstracted. There's no actual way of "knowing" just what sorts of beings the players are. Are they human? aliens? robotic?

If we added voices, that would almost certainly speak entirely in english, it would completely remove that open interpretation of the game. No matter how good the voice actors were, no matter the quality of it's production, filling space with English chatter would like looking at Schrodinger's cat, turn all of space into human territory and remove all other options.

The sole exception to this would be a "Ship's computer", but even that would have severe limitations given the truly infinite scope of LT. It could never read off all the names of the systems, players, stations, planets, etc. It would be limited to things like "Cargo bay 90% full" or "Docking complete" or "Target locked" or "Jumping in 3...2...1...Jump". The bland minutiae; it could never give the game character as in Bastion or Portal, could very likely never even use proper nouns.

As I said, in an ideal world, where voice synthesis could say anything in a thousand voices and languages and still sound good, where like pareidolic icons, genuinely meaningful but unintelligible-until-learned patterns of alien chatter could be produced... yes, I'd say add voices and chatter. Until then, I don't think it would do more good than harm to immersion.

Re: Immersive Speech in Limit Theory

Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2016 5:59 pm
by Silverware
Why not have garbled sounds, and then a robotic english overtop?
Then each alien can speak its own race, and the robotic english is a translation.


It'll make more sense, and then only require one or two voice actors. (two if using male/female variants)

Imagine GLaDOS translating for you, on the fly.
With the aliens voice subdued in the background...

This way each alien could eventually have a procedural "voice", simply by playing the base VO and modifying it in various ways.

Re: Immersive Speech in Limit Theory

Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2016 6:07 pm
by IronDuke
Silverware wrote:Why not have garbled sounds, and then a robotic english overtop?
Then each alien can speak its own race, and the robotic english is a translation.
Freespace did it that way.

--IronDuke

Re: Immersive Speech in Limit Theory

Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2016 4:56 am
by Mistycica
Silverware wrote:Why not have garbled sounds, and then a robotic english overtop?
Then each alien can speak its own race, and the robotic english is a translation.
I support happy campers like that