Minimal Voice Actors... Lazy or Lucrative?

[XratedSippyCup]

This is not flaming, this is an honest question!

Why do they have to use the same voice actor throughout many characters? I can see having 1 or two main voices for generics, but for instance why were so many main and non main characters voiced by Stephen Russel (who i think is very talented and does all parts VERY well)? When you read a book, you imagine different voices for each character.

I am very aware of budgets with costs of casting and release dates/timing. But still, why cant Bethesda Hire more than 5 voice actors to make games more IMMERSIVE? Ive played THOUSANDS of hours into their games and will continue to... but doesnt it seem more lazy than lucrative?

[Demuriel]

i think they can't afford to pay 100+ voice actors, maybe in the next game

[fauxpas]

I'm not a fan of VO's personally as they limit conversation options, but yeah, if devs are going to go that route I'd like a little mire variety.

[Ashardalon]

but isnt paying one guy for 200 hours kindof the same as paying 100 guys for 2 hours?
never hired voice actors so no idea how their payment works
if someone knows info would be great

[fauxpas]

How many shared lines if dialog are there?

[AtoliTadaka]

90 voice actors but you have about 15 who do a large number of characters voices but there are some big names for some of it so that would explain the budget for voice actors.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1814884/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast

[MaximumEffort]

W3 had a lot of voice actors but only 5 or so character faces.

I prefer looking at different faces than hearing different voices, it bothers me much less.

[Ashardalon]

W3 bothered me too
every village was just the same line on loop infinetly

[AtoliTadaka]

Originally posted by sjrekis:

W3 had a lot of voice actors but only 5 or so character faces.

I prefer looking at different faces than hearing different voices, it bothers me much less.

Don't look at the faces on a lot of the NPC's to carefully then as this game has a lot of copy paste npc's as well.

[kaiyl_kariashi]

Lazy.

Cause they also sacrificed game depth for it. But it gives them an excuse to not do it by saying they simply couldn't afford to make a good game because it was too expensive to VA all of it. So here's a mediocre one instead. And don't worry, our slav...fans..FANS.....will fix it all for us for free later anyway (and hell we might even get some money out of their work if this Creator Club thing every takes off).

It's why every Beth dev'd game since Oblivion has been crap in terms roleplaying potential as they can't afford to expand your quest paths too much when it costs a lot to VA act everything.

They could do a lot more if they left the side-quests unvoiced, and only focused on VAing for the important main-line quests. As was done in the past, and allowed the player to get a lot more and cost less to do on the dev's part.

And it's not like they didn't just copy-paste most of their scripts anyway.


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It's the blessing and curse of modding communties IMO.

Get too big and too dedicated and the devs get lazy.


I'd much rather have a great game from the devs AND the longevity and customization of a modding community.

instead of a medicore one that NEEDs the modding community just to make it decentish.

[Cookie]

Originally posted by Ashardalon:

but isnt paying one guy for 200 hours kindof the same as paying 100 guys for 2 hours?

No. You also have to spend time and money on auditions, you might have to record lines multiple times since you don't have a good idea of what you're getting from each "male orc" voice actor, and you can't reuse things like "nuh!" and "Nah, I don't think so."

[Ashardalon]

Originally posted by Cookie:

Originally posted by Ashardalon:

but isnt paying one guy for 200 hours kindof the same as paying 100 guys for 2 hours?

No. You also have to spend time and money on auditions, you might have to record lines multiple times since you don't have a good idea of what you're getting from each "male orc" voice actor, and you can't reuse things like "nuh!" and "Nah, I don't think so."

thanks that makes sense
didnt consider the people who have to listen to all the auditions
assumed profecional voice actors would be able to do most things

[GLsimtam]

So now we can make a mod that have Jarl Balgruuf joining Stormcloaks, by using lines of Micheal Gough recorded for other male nord characters.

[JoshKillin]

I don't think 99% of the NPCs *need* professional voice actors.

Is some random fruit salesman in a town populated by like 10 people supposed to sound like a radio talk show host? Most of the people in the game are just random, average people, and they can and should be voiced as such. I don't know why they don't just take some Bethsoft employees who are already on the clock, stick a microphone in front of their face and have them read some prewritten lines off of a piece of paper.

It really kills my immersion to see hundreds of "unique" NPCs voiced by a couple dozen people.