Drawback of voice protagonists

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Do you prefer voiced or non-voiced protagonist in role-playing games?

  • Non-voiced is better.

    Votes: 16 21.9%
  • Voiced is better.

    Votes: 46 63.0%
  • Depends (please elaborate).

    Votes: 11 15.1%

  • Total voters
    73
I play again and create a different character, but they sound identical unless I change gender.

I cannot have an accent, be it Haitian, English, Russian, Southern and so on. I cannot have a deeper or higher pitched voice.

And, of course, it requires a lot of work and money recording, thus limiting options and the choice of attitudes from a pure cost point of view.

Personally I therefore often use a mod to silence the protagonist in, say, Fallout 4, allowing me to properly role-play any character I could think of in terms of how they sound -- and, with the right mods (again) -- allow a far wider range of options.

It is a mixed bag, but personally I feel it hampers role-playing. Maybe one day we will get a good enough voice-synth, built upon that of voice actors (they will still be needed). My thoughts, at least. Also take this as an opinion regardless of how much or little this actually is a role-playing game and whether the voice acting is good or not.
 
Voiced protagonist is poison to roleplaying and the opportunities of expressing different characteristics (and having apt reactivity to that) within the narrative.

I’ve been saying that for years, and it manifests in all its ”glory” in this game. You are always playing the same character.

(And it doesn’t help that even with the lifepaths, you still always end up playing a streetkid.)
 
I think voiced protagonists work well in first and third person action RPG games like Mass Effect and Fallout.

Non-voiced protagonists work great for Isometric RPG games like Pathfinder: Kingmaker or Pillars of Eternity.
 
CD RED should have done like BioWare did in Dragon Age Inquisition, have 2 voice actors for each gender. It was damn smart since you could have (Dragon Age Inquisition) a sophisticated Queens English English VO or a Rugged American VO. It was amazing how these two voice actors (female) fit everything from a big Quanari to tender Elf.

With Cyberpunk 2077 the voice actors only fit the Nomad/Street life Origin. For Corporate path the current VO's shortcomings are totally obvious. In our "real life" corporate environment you are dressed and speak properly. Period!

Also, a person from (thinking on this game) the corporate life path could never ever become such a "brute" in shuch a short time. You can take a person out of a corporation but never a corporation out of a person that have been there. I can 100% guarantee that "corporate V" would never ever have become such a proletarian brute in a "real life scenario". The most logical outcome would have been for V to join up with another corporation.

And the entire bull Corporate V is forced into inside Lizzie's Bar is not plausible. Why is Jackie not interfering directly? Things like that would never happen in real life. And the crap about Arasaka having full control of the player economy. Seriously? Every modern politician/corporate have hidden savings (gold assets, houses, et cetera). And most importantly "dirt" on former bosses/co-workers/the company.

Beside, a Japanese company, in this case "Arasaka" would never publicly do a stunt like that (even if it's a fictitious situation). As an example, a Manga artist (think of a cartoon writer) in Japan did a number on the Yakuza (it's more or less a Japanese form of mafia) where they where portrayed as idiots. To make a long story short, he was brought up to a high roof by one of the Yakuza families, and they gave him two options "jump" willingly or they would throw him. What I want to say, there is a order to the madness in Japan and every run Japanese institution offshore. The stuff portrayed with "Arasaka" is American fiction. Even in South America there was a incident where a person made some "nasty" comments about the "drug cartel". Some days later he was hanging upside down from a rope on a bridge.

The moral of the story is that not even in our current "real life" criminal underworld is things happening without a reason. Let's not forget that "V" in the corporate path is also quite high ranking, and as we see two people work directly under her, and I must presume she even have even more assets at her disposal. What happens at Lizzie's Bar is bad writing plain and simple.

Lets compare Cyberpunk 2077 (2020) with Grand Theft Auto V (2013). In GTA V the three protagonists might be a parody on themselves but at least their BIO's are believable. Cyberpunk 2077 force the player into a character creation that means NOTHING, and life paths that are poorly executed.

In fact, I find the "real life" corporate scandal CD RED is in now way more interesting with 2 looming law suits. There is for real a case here, mark my words. And that is *HOW* the in-game corporate path should have been. Billions of dollars (high stakes), Corrupts Executives and expendable cannon fodder at the bottom. RIP CD RED!
 
With Cyberpunk 2077 the voice actors only fit the Nomad/Street life Origin. For Corporate path the current VO's shortcomings are totally obvious. In our "real life" corporate environment you are dressed and speak properly. Period!
That's not so much a problem with the voice actor, but with the dialog lines.

In general, I prefer a voiced protagonist. The voice is not my own, and maybe not the voice I imagined for the character, but if I speak in real life, I don't have silence in my ears either. In my opinion it's less immersive to have no voice for the protagonist.

In the future it might be easier/cheaper to add more voices, because of voice emulation programs.
 
The voice actors both have wonderful voices, and deliver their lines very well. The problem with the voicing, is V is stuck. There is such a monotone with the personality, and you pick the nicest and sweetest looking dialog option in the entire game, when it is spoken, it still is scripted that you really are just an A-hole.
 
I play again and create a different character, but they sound identical unless I change gender.

I cannot have an accent, be it Haitian, English, Russian, Southern and so on. I cannot have a deeper or higher pitched voice.

And, of course, it requires a lot of work and money recording, thus limiting options and the choice of attitudes from a pure cost point of view.

Personally I therefore often use a mod to silence the protagonist in, say, Fallout 4, allowing me to properly role-play any character I could think of in terms of how they sound -- and, with the right mods (again) -- allow a far wider range of options.

It is a mixed bag, but personally I feel it hampers role-playing. Maybe one day we will get a good enough voice-synth, built upon that of voice actors (they will still be needed). My thoughts, at least. Also take this as an opinion regardless of how much or little this actually is a role-playing game and whether the voice acting is good or not.
My character in CP is the female actor, so can't comment on the male actor. But in regards to voice acting I think it's pretty damn good to be honest. To the point where I would say that she is probably one of, if not the best in game that I have ran into. I liked the Maelstrom in the early mission as well, Dexter, Jackie and T-bug. But in general I found all of them are doing a very good job. For me it would greatly impact the whole immersion experience if there weren't any voice acting or if it were of the quality found in games like Skyrim or Mass effect Andromeda. In such cases I prefer that there is none at all.

Also I would think that it would be possible to change or edit the sound of a voice with some sort of program, so you at least could adjust or customize it slightly. But then again, don't know a lot about how to do these things :D
 
I don't think voiced is necessarily better. It's just that if everyone else is voiced and you're mute it's a little odd.
 
I like having a voiced character, does an can it hinder rp? Absolutely, but it can be done in a way to not make it so bad.

The actress for instance that voices V does a amazing job (she was also amazing as A2 in Neir Automata if anyone interested) but whats not so amazing is the dialogue choices or what they tell you because alot of the time what the option says differs from what an most importantly how the character says it. This is a problem throughout the entire game i feel and at times has made me sit up in annoyance simply because what the dialogue option says absolutely in no way reflects what V says or how its said.

Voiced and non voiced have there places, voiced just still has away to go, not from the actors side but the developers.
 
Some scenes wouldn't have an impact if V wasn't responding and making it a dialogue. Like when Jackie is dying for example. If V was just sitting there saying nothing through all that it would just be weird dude.
 
I prefer voiced.

Honestly, I think the whole idea of RPG's as "play it your way" has been taken a bit too far generally speaking. In some games you can create your personal fictional avatar and that's fine but in others you roleplay a given role - and that's fine too.

Sure, CP2077 isn't necessarily the gold standard for RPG experience but I'd say it holds up pretty well. You play as the V guy/gal and he or she has V's personality. Voice, decision making and all that. V is not a blank slate that you can mold into whatever you wish. Yeah you can edit the physical appearance but in the end V is V and V will experience a certain story in a certain setting being V doing V things.

Just like in the Witcher you RP'd Geralt. He was who he was and like in Cyberpunk you could make some decisions how to deal with things. Kill or spare thing X, side with person A or B in their conflict, take a more altruistic approach or take a hard line with getting paid and so on.

The roleplaying element is here in the form of dialogue options and while the differences are not necessarily groundbreaking, there are different outcomes in certain situations. Just like in the Witcher.

So having a voiced V is fine for my taste. The person is who he/she is and we're just guiding V through the journey, making some choices along the way. Having a given voice adds to the character. One might (dis)agree about the dialogue lines or the voiced delivery but that's who V is, in the end.
 
I cannot have an accent, be it Haitian, English, Russian, Southern and so on.

You can't even if the protagonist is non voiced, if his background is defined. In Fallout New Vegas you are always a courier, grown up in Nevada/California, even if the protagonist has no voice over

It would be interesting if they add an option to use the different langauges for V while the rest of the world speaks the vanilla language, but...it would still be larping, flavour without consequences
 
They blew their VO budget on Keanu. Getting Hollywood celebs to do game VO always feels like a cheap PR stunt. Keanu did good but was it really worth the $ when you could have gotten a VO that could sing a little too to do Johnny?
 
I have some problems with this. Definitely in this case. Voiced is ok for me. What I don't think is okay: not being able to change your voice. I mean, not everything about the voice. That would be difficult because someone has to speak all of this. But it wouldn't have hurt anyone to implement something that let you pitch the voice higher and lower within a certain range. In character creation.

I usually play in German. I think the male V is okay. V's female voice is the worst I've ever heard. After a few hours I couldn't stand the disgusting voice that I bet 90% of all V's created don't fit. Whoever chose this woman to speak V (in German): Shame on you!
 
I think it really depends! Hard to say what's better imho... I think a mix of both would be the thing we'd get in an ideal world. Where you could choose from different archetypes and stuff, so you could be sassy, snarky, quiet - you name it. You'd be able to choose if your character participates in idle banter, if they bm enemies in combat etc. That's pretty unrealistic tho :giggle:

There have been many moments in this game where I was really glad V had stuff to say, because in my headcanon it fit the character really well! The great voice acting helped a lot ;) But y'know - it does give V a certain Personality and I understand that can be a hindrance if we're talking Immersion and RP things. In the end, it's about personal preference and/or our expectations anyway, sooo I doubt a general consensus can be reached :p

Guess I was lucky voiced V fit my headcanon really well.
 
I'm a fan of both.

That said, for a voiced protagonist to work, the dialogue and voice acting needs to be good. I think Cyberpunk for the most part succeeded on this front. An example of a bad voiced protagonist would be the main character from Fallout 4 (poor dialogue).
 
I tend to think that voiced protags are horrible in rpg's but I feel that CDPR seems to handle them very well ala Witcher. I actually enjoy the idea of not having a blankslate protagonist in an rpg if they are done well (once again, Witcher). I think the main issue in 2077, is that so much has been cut that V just has no time to develop and the story and other characters have no time to develop.
 
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