Tav/Player character voice selection

[Rapskallion]

One thing that has really gotten me discouraged with making a character in this game is the poor selection of voices for the player character. NOTE: I am not saying the voices are poor quality or don't sound good, I am saying the SELECTION available to choose from is poor. There is practically no variation, they all sound pretty much the same to me. Young, neutral/no accent and most of all BORED!

There are no voices deep or gruff enough to sound remotely right coming from a Half-Orc, Dwarf or Dragonborn on either the masculine or feminine spectrum and there appears to be no passion in the voices at all. Which is a shame because all the NPCs and Companion voices are amazing! I get that they maybe didn't want the PCs voice to be too distracting to take away from Self-inserting or player fantasy, but in comparison to earlier games BG I+II, Icewind Dale I+II, Neverwinter Nights I+II and so many other CRPGs I've played, the PC voice is so.... lame and immersion breaking!

No "Heh, time fer a bit of a rough an' tumble!"
No "I'll wash me beard in yer blood!"
No "You would do well to fear a woman's wrath."
No "Here I come... and the Hells come with me!"
No "A little fire and lightning should brighten things up!"
Not even any wordless grunts and yells like there have been in the past.


At least if I want to roleplay a passionless and aloof High Elf I have a full 8 voices to choose from, but that's literally all I can hear!

Now obviously I'm not expecting the same lines being reused, nor would I want that, but what we have is just so monotone, lifeless, boring. Just nothing that injects any sense of character, motion, action or passion at all. There's no ROLEPLAY in the roleplay character's voice acting for what should be the main focus of every campaign, the Player Character!

And I don't see anyone else talking about this either? Am I the only one who cares about this? I'm really interested in getting some replies here to see if this is just me expecting too much in this day and age? Am I just missing the point? If nothing else I would rather play a completely MUTE protagonist with no voice lines whatsoever, rather than the immersion breaking, voices that we have.

[gurugeorge]

I agree with this. I also think there's far too much gurning and exaggerated animated expression for your protagonist, which pins him/her down too much emotionally. The gurning might suit one character perfectly yet be really off-key and cringey for another. (e.g. it's perfect for my overly emotional Bard, but absolutely loathsomely horrible for my stoic Paladin).

It would have been much better to have a neutral animation character and more variety in the "tone" of the voices, even if the voices don't say much - or alternatively, the limited voices we have but a few animation set alternatives for the characters (cheerful-stoic-angry or something). Ideally both, of course.

I think modders are getting on the case with AI for voice variation though. AI voice changing isn't perfect, but it's passable enough 95% of the time if you aren't listening closely on headphones. There are quite a few sex change and voice change AI voice mods around, and I'm sure more protag voices aren't going to be far off.

[Connie]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.