[Cinematic] To voice act or not to voice act: that is the question

[darwin]

(Apologies if this is the wrong forum)

I am rounding out a campaign that I've been working on for a decade. I think I'm in my final year or two. I cannot decide whether I want to attempt to add voice acting or not, and am interested in some advice. I've listed some of the arguments I've had with myself below:

Reasons to do voice acting:

Cinematic imagery is dulled if you have to focus on reading text. I have some beautiful cinematic shots, but if you're reading text you will miss them.

Some of the dialogue is difficult to follow without enunciation. For example, I want one character to be fairly sarcastic, but that does not come across without voice acting.

Believable dialogue cannot be done well in text. (e.g. reading Quinton Tarantino's scripts doesn't work. "A royale with cheese," is not funny unless Samuel Jackson is saying it with a bit of a smirk.) Lack of voice acting necessitates plain, dull, literal dialogue.

I'm afraid the campaign will be seen as incomplete without it.

Reasons to NOT do voice acting:

The campaign is extremely long with dozens of different actors and probably two hours of cinematic scenes. Voice acting would be extremely difficult to do

The sound files would massively expand the size of the campaign.

I sound like Kermit the Frog. I couldn't do any of the voices, meaning I would be entirely dependent on others to finish the game.

I hate to say this, but voice acting (even the best voice acting I've heard here) is greatly inferior to Blizzard. This is in contrast to almost everything else. The models on the HIVE are as good as Blizzards, the terrain we make is much better, the triggers and mini-games are better than WoW even... but our voice acting is just bad...even our good voice acting. Hearing it is jarring while playing.

 

[Mechanical Man]

I'll be honest here. If you really spent so much time on your campaign, I'd choose the faster option, so I could take off this burden. Maybe if it's cinematic series, voice acting may come into play. From my perspective, the map/campaign may be so polished, but if its gameplay isn't my style then I won't play, despite the awesome cinematics and voice acting. Of course with voice acting is more complete, but it is worth?

 

[Heinvers]

Yes please, that is if you're willing to sweat some hours around finding proper actors.

Immersion brings the best in a cinematic, especially great voice acting.
It's really up to you though

 

[Deleted member 238589]

With all the arguments you have listed, I believe you shouldn't, mostly because of the filesize and trouble of getting the team together. Like Heinvers said, it's up to you.

 

[Tickles]

You'll most likely end up regretting it if you try to add voices in as a priority, because even a lack of one character being voice acted or not working out properly could throw the whole thing off. Maybe work on building up a set of vocal files on the side when you're not busy with anything else, but don't let voice acting hold you back from releasing a campaign you've put enough effort into already.

 

[Chaosy]

Voice acting is only a benefit if it's on a professional level tbh.

 

[Ujimasa Hojo]

Release your work without voice acting first. Then slowly add voices in updates.

 

[darwin]

Thanks for the advice, everyone. I looked at professional voice acting sites, but given the length of the campaign it would run me about $1000. I can't bring myself to think that is worth it.

I think I'll release it first when it's done and if people like it enough and want to lend some voices perhaps I can update it.

 

[Mechanical Man]

The problem is that if you later notice an error in the texts (voice actor can correct the error, but we're talking about semantic errors), you can throw all the voice file into bin. You will probably need to update the campaign several times anyway. It also sounds weird that hero or unit has completely different voice when in cinematic and when in game as unit responses. Speaking of unit responses, they are only worth adding if that needed tbh.

Only voice act

 

[Veritas 117]

I pondered over the same question for my campaign and what I settled on is a combination of the two. I decided to have small pieces of voice-over for the cinematics. What I mean is instead of having a voice-actor do the entire piece of dialog, I would use one or two words that appear at the beginning of the dialog (like "hello", "yes", etc) or at the end of the dialog (like "right away" "thank you" etc). I have found that this adds to the immersion a little bit so it isn't just words that you read, but you don't have to take the time to do all the voice acting. You can find a lot of great small responses in the sound editor already.