David Gaider
Lead Writer
Joined: 17 Oct 2001
From: Edmonton, AB
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 Posted: Thursday, 27 May 2004 04:40PM
Quote: Posted 05/27/04 15:49:05 (GMT) by Orik
The trouble with full VO is that the writers will find themselves suddenly limited to what they can write. For example, specific references to the PCs race/gender/class etc. will have to be avoided as each change would require different VO. What would have been a simple engine-handled substitution becomes expensive multiple VO recordings.
This is true. However, read ahead...
Quote: So use of VO will inevitably lead to simpler dialogue. It will also lead to less dialogue and less forks through a conversation, as VO is much more expensive than the cost involved in typing extra words.
This is not necessarily true. It was not true in KotOR, for instance, and for a very good reason. Would you believe that KotOR had a first draft? It was a completely written game at one point, with the shortest dialogue we could possibly get away with because we were under a very draconian word count limit due to the cost of VO. It was also terrible. Awful. If a character had more than one line it, out of necessity, both introduced itself and gave it's quest by the time the second line was done. When you have a 10,000-word limit on a chapter, though, there's not much wiggle room.
And the Powers That Be acknowledged the problem. That version of KotOR was scrapped and we started over... with complete carte blanche to write dialogues as long as we felt were necessary. I think it showed in KotOR's writing and we're doing DA the same way. Indeed, we're actually going out of our way to make extra paths the standard.
And while we can't do character names, we *do* intend to do such references as he/she and him/her, only sparingly. As you can imagine, doing one of those requires two seperate lines, but when you have another line for an elf and one for a nobleman and one for a barbarian and... well, you get the picture... then it doesn't seem like such a big deal.
In short, I would agree that VO can be a huge limiting factor on the writing... but only when it is done cheaply. If the Powers That Be are willing to put the writing first and the VO second there really shouldn't be a problem (beyond having no NPC ever actually say the player's name, which is a bit of a trick to get around... but they didn't do it in KotOR, either, and I don't think it was actually missed.)
It should also be noted that less VO does not equate to more writing/more story. Us writers do not work on VO, so it's not as if having less VO means more time for us to write.
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Zevran: "Hello my stocky little friend!"
Oghren: "Huh. You got small breasts for a gal."
Zevran: "Ah. This is where we begin the typical dwarven/elven rivalry, is it?"
Oghren: "Nahhh."
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