TEXT OVERLOAD VS. VOICE ACTING
(Posted 2009-11-12 12:00:00 by basscomm)

We're at an interesting place in the evolution of video games. It's now
possible to have hours and hours of high-definition spoken words played
back in your game. This is a far cry from just 20 years ago when hearing a
couple of words compressed nearly to oblivion was considered pretty
amazing. Like in Blades of Steel.



So, since space was at such a premium, if you wanted lots of dialogue, you
were limited to text, lots and lots of text. Which never bothered me too
much, it was a limitation of the media.

But games have now evolved where multi-minute scenes are played out (with
varying levels of talent, but that's fodder for another discussion), and
text-heavy exchanges are becoming more and more infrequent. 

And, to be honest, I hadn't really given that a whole lot of thought
either, until I was watching some video game review show or another and one
of the reviewers actually gave the game a lower mark because he had to read
too much. He was of the opinion that technology had progressed to a point
where everything can be voiced, so everything _should_ be voiced.

But does it really add that much to the experience? Yeah, it's great to
hear what the developers think the characters should sound like so I don't
have to improvise voices in my head, but I can actually read far faster
than most people talk. So if I come across a game that has the audio
subtitled, I end up skipping over the dialog and reading the text instead.
Which ends up sounding pretty herky-jerky [
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/herky-jerky ] and unbelievable. 

So, for me, the jury's still out. I don't mind doing a lot of reading, but,
I have to admin, having big blocks of text punctuated by the occasional
voice-acted section (for the important plot points) is kind of nice.

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