The majority of games would benefit better without voice acting.
Agreed, done well it’s great, but it severely limits how far and often a story can branch.
I think it would also mean a possibility of having more dialog overall because less cost.
Plus means playing a game you don’t hear the same voice actor (like Bethesda games) on repeat. Plus your imagination could do a better job in most cases.
I would take more branching dialog over voice acting any day.
there was a coop shooter called army of two. The mechanics were kinda fun, you could lift your buddy over a wall to shoot and lower him back down to reload and stuff like that.
The dialogue could pass for a parody of 2000s dude bro culture if it wasn’t being played straight and ridden with slurs.
With the dialogue, It’s toxic masculinity the game. Say fucked up shit, do violence, fist bump while cracking a joke that’s only funny if the audience is a case deep in natty light and probably skipping class in the morning.
The story is incredibly poor as well and probably problematic (can’t be assed to look up the plot), so removing the mission briefings would also improve it.
Despite all that, if taken devoid of context the raw mechanics had potential. An inverse of spec ops: the line, a game carried entirely by the narrative choices and message, but dragged down by run of the mill mechanics.
The suppressing fire mechanic was kind of interesting. It worked like an aggro meter and when maxed out one player was all but invisible to the enemies while the other one was drawing all the attention.
It had strong gun customization for a console shooter at the time. Lots of cosmetic choices as well. It handled competently, the movement was weighty when dragging a downed ally behind cover.
Apparently the sequel improved the mechanics, but I never played it. Maybe they fixed the writers room.
Army of Two is a name I never thought I’d hear again. A friend of mine worked on that game.
It was his first, and last, video game job. The multi-month crunch prior to release was followed by downsizing. Very cool. We lost touch, but last I heard he scored a gig as a radio DJ somewhere.
They did not improve the writing
The second game was filled with “moral choices” that were very clearly designed to fuck with you, the very first one being “Do you betray the mercenary who helped you?”
If you betray him, he dies, you get a cutscene where his family is sad at his funeral
If you don’t betray him, he takes his money, abandons his family and goes to Tahiti where he’s sipping a Mai Tai on the beach when a frog man comes out of the water and shoots him
They only got weirder from there
that sounds hilarious. if it was on pc and had online co-op i’d play that with a friend
I remember those games being the gayest dudebro games imaginable
Shadow of War fun game but I couldn’t care less for their LOTR fan-fiction.
I really disliked the lore, but it’s a great assassin’s creed style power fantasy type game.
Inspired choice to take Tolkien’s work and shoehorn in a “my dead family” narrative instead of engaging with anything interesting.
I appreciate that they tried to tell their own story within the existing world. I don’t want to see LotR become a static, dead thing. A lot of their choices… were… uh… Sexy Shelob? wth? But I appreciate that they tried. The way they portrayed the Orcs was just gorgeous storytelling. Every single one of them is an irredeemably evil monster but they’re all dripping with charisma, character, humor, weirdness. The first time a Troubadour Orc showed up to sing a diss track and beat me to death with a lute I couldn’t stop laughing. It was so much better of a depiction of orcs than I’ve ever seen anywhere else. They understood and accepted that Tolkien’s Orcs were smart. Industrious. Organized. Mordor had the strongest industrial and agricultural base in Middle Earth during the War of the Ring and the game reflects that. The Orcs weren’t mindless brutes and only barely disguised racial slurs, and the game reflects that.
They had a lot of story beats that absolutely missed, but I really liked a lot of what they did. The idea of Celebrimbor building a final ring in secret to try to contest with Sauron was a very interesting idea and it ties in thematically with the existing story of the Rings; There is only one ruling Ring and Sauron is it’s master. Celebrimbor’s attempt to contest with Sauron using Sauron’s own methods was doomed to fail. While the Three were created to protect and preserve Celebrimbor’s ring was built to dominate and enslave, and so was doomed to failure according to the rules of Tolkien’s world; You cannot defeat the enemy by the enemy’s methods.
So, it’s a mixed bag, but I like a lot of what they did and I do appreciate that they tried, and in some ways succeeded, to make Arda larger and stranger in ways that understood much of what Tolkien was saying.
The orcs are without a question the ABSOLUTE highlight of these games. Everything else is just - whatever. They realllly cooked with the orcs in their games though.
The nemesis system deserves some credit, too. The orcs themselves were terrific, but the combination of the top-notch character design with a system that gave those characters a context based on the player’s interactions with them took it to the next level. It was fun seeing an orc rise in the ranks because you killed his boss, or having an orc that you thought you’d killed return unexpectedly wanting revenge. The game even made losing to an orc fun. The orcs and the nemesis system gave those games so much replay value. A truly worthy use of an open world setting.
You are right but I consider the nemesis system kinda part of the whole orc thing like thats (as you said) part of what makes the orcs so great in combination with the writing etc. Like basically everything that had to do with the Orcs was gold.
Yeah, it’s the whole experience. Everything about it works together to make the orcs the best part of the game by a mile.
I love them so much. Even if gameplay was awful the orcs would be worth it.
Yeah absolute props to the writers and the folks that did the animations/faces etc.
Sexy Shelob would’ve worked if she hadn’t been so dull.
The Shadow of War is less about the dead family, I don’t even remember if they talk about that. But nothing justify Shelob as hot brunette girl.
Cowards, give us a hot spider if you insist on making Shelob hot.
compromise something like this
I think there was a theme of Celebrimbor losing track of why he was even seeking revenge, and Talion trying to hold on to what he was fighting for, but I haven’t played it in years and I didn’t finish the game.
zelda botw and totk, the voice acting is cringe, zelda NPCs should make small canned sounds when you engage text dialogue
All games should have this or do the Animal Crossing thing where they make gibberish by having a cutesy Microsoft Sam voice speak every letter.
Modern Lego games, i miss the charm of the old games
ALL games should have long, unskippable story segments. If your new indie puzzle game doesn’t have a meta narrative, I’m not interested!
Add marvel slop dialogue to Tetris! Tetris effect but it’s a different flavor of whedon each level instead of chill vibe
Make sure each installment ends on a pretentious bullshit cliffhanger until the cliffhangers don’t even get partially resolved because the follow-ups are spinoffs and prequels!
Looking right the fuck at you, Halo.
I’m so happy we got a trilogy of games that all attempted to be the start of a new trilogy. 4,5,infinite has near zero through line.
B-bu-but if you read the books, comics and play the rts spinoff you get most of the pieces :soy:
The flavor notes in the articulated funko pop for Cortana- ocelot mentions an event!
The lore is such a fucking shitshow, so glad bungie is trapped making a game they only announced to get bought out.
I gave up on the Halo franchise a long time ago and it’s sad that it apparently never altered course away from “more pretentious cliffhangers with no payoff and make Cortana hornier and more fanservicey every time she appears” which is where I left it
If you left at 3 or reach you dropped it at the peak depending on your opinion on which game that was.
Although, 3 was also peak objectified Cortana.
I don’t know if it’s even possible to recuperate space fascism inspired by islamophobia but it has a cool OST the game.
The power of being the first console fps with a strong online component.
I was especially cursed because I didn’t like the controls of the very first Halo game; it felt too much like piloting a refrigerator with wheels and guns bolted onto it and the “space 9/11” angle of the plot was offputting even when it was new to me.
I don’t say that to be a hipster; I say that to say it’s unfortunate that I didn’t get to enjoy Halo before its own enshittification for Halo enjoyers.
Out of curiosity, was that on pc or Xbox? It was my first fps (both console and ever) so it’s always just been the default for me. In hindsight, I can totally see how a more fluid shooter would create that feeling in comparison (I took far too long to adjust to the RE tank controls, as a point of comparison).
No hipster vibes detected, probably a gamer version of being absolved by history.
I was only half joking btw I love pretentious indie games. If puyo-puyo can have anime people I’m sure we can fit that shit in Tetris somehow
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
All of them
Metroid: Other M may have been somewhat bearable without it being the personal spank bank “waifu must obey senpai or her armor falls off also she yearns for the baaaaby” dialogue/narration repository of the head of the game’s development.
Most of them, tbh. Games where the dialogue isn’t core to the gameplay or story could usually omit it entirely, and games where dialogue does have a role often have too much of it. That, or it gets implemented poorly, like when it’s unskippable, or interrupts gameplay.
I like it when dialogue, and lore in general, is either optional, or runs in parallel to the gameplay. I played Pacific Drive recently and there’s a lot of dialogue, but the game doesn’t force you to stop what you’re doing to listen. Most of the story is told in the form of NPCs talking to you over the radio, and you can listen to it while you’re moving, interacting with game elements, shuffling your inventory, etc.
I’m also a fan of the Silent Protagonist. It’s fine if NPCs are talking for my benefit, but I don’t need to sit around and watch my character talk with another character. It’s a game, not a book/movie, and odds are the writing isn’t going to be good enough for me to want to sit and passively experience the narrative.
So yeah, dialogue should only be used in games that require it for gameplay or to tell the story, it should be used judiciously, and it shouldn’t interrupt gameplay or immersion. A lot of action games that want to pretend to tell a story could benefit from getting rid of the dialogue, or making the dialogue more passive. There shouldn’t be a need for lengthy cutscenes or being forced to stop playing to listen to an NPC. If you can’t tell me the story while I’m playing then you should tell a different story.
Plenty of games make good use of dialogue, it just sucks when it’s bad or when it gets in the way.
Disco Elysium
Just stumbling around collecting cans after waking up in a trashed hotel room would certainly be a vibe
unironically every Final Fantasy game that has had voice acting (yes, including 14 if only because I can’t speed through voice acted cutscenes. Thank you Wuk Lamat I love you).
Hell, let’s throw every Fire Emblem game that has had voice acting up there with it.
The entirety of the Xenoblade series (seriously cannot stand those british mfers
)Return to ogre, peak jrpg story
Thank you Wuk Lamat I love you
spoiler
Spheeeeeeeeeene
Unironically the worst expansion the game has ever had and I say that as someone who came in at the end of Stormblood. Definitely the first expansion I’ve ever actually skipped cutscenes in and I powered through all 120+ Post-ARR quests before they downsized them without skipping a single one. It was genuinely the first area that made me think “oh I know exactly how this fucking expansion is gonna go” and lo & behold -
spoiler
“Yes, Wuk Lamat is the ideal Dawnservant because she…likes people…no stop asking me why all my children are fucking idiots Warrior of Light - also guess what all your favorite Scions are here for no reason just so you can have them in Duty Support”.
Didn’t even mind the off-screening of Krile’s whole part of the expansion (I hate her, god please can we trade her back for Lyse…) but LOL yeah the last trial was ridiculously directed for English VA and yet, even if it had been a perfectly voiced line, I’m so tired of the cringe “Wait Warrior of Light let me help you!!” final trial second phase that we’ve gotten two expansions in a row.
(actually technically three if you count a certain someone in Seat of Sacrifice LOL)To make matters worse though, I’m like 99.9% sure that with all the Wuk Lamat focused backlash, the next expansion will be even more of the Scions spoonfed to you - which uh…sure I don’t mind most of the Scions but CBU3 apparently hates having any unique characters take center stage in a dungeon or trial or the plot. I actually miss the random Scion Conjurer, Thaumaturge, Healer, etc NPCs that were used for Pre-Stormblood content because at least then it felt like I was just taking a group of actual fighters with me instead of wondering why the fuck Y’shtola is even here and why the fuck she can cast Cure as a Black Mage DPS…
You may want to put a lot of that in spoiler thingies, just in case.
That said…
spoiler
I appreciated the attempt at a “now we’re on vacation, time for some more upbeat story beats and some meeting and greeting people in their distant land” expansion approach, but considering the world gets threatened by the end again (and other worlds too for that matter, thanks Spheeeeeene), old habits in the writing did kick in by the end.
This may be fightin’ words between us, but apart from the repeated “speak to Wuk Lamat again” approach to the game play and some lackluster performances during key moments that really needed more energy, I liked Wuk Lamat overall, at least in intention and in broad strokes of the character idea and story arc, though I assume she’s going to get sidelined pretty hard because of overall player backlash. She didn’t even place 10th in the Japanese popularity poll for the expansion while the guy that apologized constantly and instantly corrected himself was near the top of the charts. Also, Bakool Ja Ja has a large and startlingly horny fandom now.
If it helps, some localizations delivered her lines pretty well when they counted. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCWF8MYARkM
Yeah it wasn’t Wuk Lamat herself that really got me, I didn’t think the character was horrible - it was just the tediousness of the 100 quests being 90% fetch/speak to X person quests, which aren’t really an issue when it is just a text cutscene because I will happy smash 0 on my numpad until every line has been uttered and the cutscene is over & read it in the chatbox - but the voice acted ones where you can only progress a single line at a time and have to wait for their animations to finish…ergh.
Like 30+ quests where you and Wuk Lamat and/or the Scions have 2 minute long cutscene to discuss something that was quite literally already mentioned. Why god why…and sadly, it is pretty par for the course for the game. Like I’ve had a bunch of people in my FC share this VG post
And every time I’m like “yeah that’s the entirety of the MSQ just switch Wuk Lamat with your choice of Scion or Zenos”.
Feels like shit just want Ysayle back…
spoiler
Feels like shit just want Ysayle back…
I feel the same way about Moenbryda, but at least there was some closure with her parents and Urianger in Endwalker.
The best characters get killed before they even see through the expansion - happens every time. At least
spoiler
Papalymo
got to see two
Since we’re on the subject, may I ask why you don’t like Krile? It’s not a loaded question, I promise.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Every Sonic game since 2010 basically
Sonic writing peaked in 2005.
hate to admit it
Any JRPG. I don’t want to sit through a YA novel, please, just give me the jank ass combat.
Borderlands, I’ve never wanted a skip dialogue button more than in Borderlands 3.
The sequels leaned hard into Reddit humor.
