Volume
Okay, so this one is not as clear as I thought it’d be, so here we go: I’m the annoying one who ignores the thousands of dollars invested in voice acting and who turns all voices off in video games (if I can, of course. If I can’t, I’ll whine for the duration of the game).
I’ll be at the Salon du livre de Montréal starting today, at two different booths! I won’t have Boumeries books with me but yo can still come and see me for my other work, guys! Here’s my schedule (in French since the books I’m signing are in French…):
Hey, you do you boum.
You’re not the only one – though in my case it’s mostly because I want to listen to music of my own choice while playing
I usually at least try them for a bit first. But most of the time they’re super annoying and I turn them off. Can’t really blame you for doing it preemptively.
Voice work for most games, especially imports, has all the actors record their lines separately and then cobbles them together into a conversation. Actors are often not even given proper direction, or synopsis of the plot, just the lines. It’s why much of the dialog sounds so disjointed in conversational tone in games like XenoBlade 2.
Playing without voice work means you’ve got the entire conversation running in your own mind’s-ear, and it probably sounds a lot more natural and normal like that.
So yeah, I’m absolutely with you on this one. Even though I think properly integrated voice acting can add quite a bit, if devs handle it right.
I’ll listen in Japanese with English text if it’s an option, or actually any other language with English text, because then the words spoken are just sound with inflection. But if it’s just English, I turn it off too.
LETTIN US HUNTIN!
GOT MORE THAN YOU BARGINED FOR!