voice acting in mmos and stuff

So last night me and Angela were talking about something or other and got on the topic of The Old Republic which is a star wars mmo being made by Bioware. Angela had seen a promo movie for it and I mentioned that at E3 they had announced that every npc in the game is voice acted. People are all excited about this. But, EQ2 had *tons* of voice acting when it launched and added even more as time progressed and, while some of it is quite good, a lot of it is so bad that it isn't even comical.

Text dialog allows the player to read at their own pace and to skip things that they've already read. Text also puts some of the "story" creation into the imagination of the player which can really make a game come alive. In contrast, voice acting has to be absolutely *top notch* or it undermines the players immersion rather than strengthening it. Historically, mediocre voice acting is pretty much the best you can hope for in video games and absolutely abysmal voice acting is so common as to be unremarkable.

Bioware is talking a pretty good game for the old republic. They're hitting the points that people want to hear; focus on story, voice acting, meaningful decisions. But the problem is that in Bioware land, stark kill everyone or save everyone dichotomies are what pass for "moral choices" and the stories in their games could easily have been written by any 14 year old who's read a couple of fantasy novels and has a competent editor.

So, don't believe the hype. I mean that's always true. It's especially true in the video game industry though. We are talking about an industry that relies on selling as many copies of its newest shit as fast as they can, before the bad word of mouth spreads. Support for most games lasts almost as long as a snowball in hell in well. Video game publishers strategy is essentially a slash and burn approach and they can get away with it because there's an endless supply of new kids and teenagers who've never seen the machine in action before.

Modern game publishers are essentially snake oil salesmen.

Yeah, I'm totally not jaded or anything.

So, on other topics, Angela bought the entirety of Star Trek: The Next Generation about a month ago. We're about 3 discs in to season 2.

I've never really been a star trek fan even though I've spent many hours happily watching the various series. I watched the original series with my uncle when I was a kid. I watched occasional episodes of TNG with nate. I watched a fair chunk of both DS9 and Voyager with my roommates when they were on the air. My basic attitude towards star trek was, if I was flipping through the channels and it was on I'd watch it but I never went out of my way to see it.

Angela has turned me in to a star trek fan though.

It started when we watched DS9. I really enjoyed it but I had no idea how much until the episode where Jadzia Dax was killed. I was so pissed that I refused to watch the rest of the series for about six months. Then I realized that I was pissed because I enjoyed the characters so much that I had taken it personally.

TNG, I've basically only seen about 10 episodes of and they were all fo the last few seasons it seems. We've watched probably 20 or more episodes and the *only* one I've seen before was the one where Tasha Yar dies. I was shocked that it was so early in the series.

Star Trek is basically shitty as sci-fi. The science is *terrible* but, it is generally self consistent. And, as story telling that's focused on long term character development it's quite good. Its ham-fisted sometimes and preachy at others but there's a sense of seriousness of purpose about the shows that I really enjoy. And the fact that they even dare to take on the subjects that they do is pretty impressive for a popular tv series.

Ultimately its about the characters though. All of the series have characters that are strong, idiosyncratic, interesting and have verisimilitude as individuals.

Abe