Unique Player to NPC Interaction Mechanic (Dialogue)

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I was thinking recently.... Might just be me but...
How cool would it be to have the option of... voicing your own character?


Preface:
Obviously you can turn this on or off. If you turn it off, its the same basic thing. Your character will be voiced accordingly.
if it is turned on though... Things will be a little different.

Mechanic:

Basically, when you have a dialogue option, instead of being able to choose one, you will be required to actually speak into your mic that sentence. The game will register your response as one of the dialogue options and the NPC will reply accordingly.
Kind of like karaoke, as you read off the line, it will fill up the bar noticing you are speaking one of the dialogue options.
Unfortunately accounting for tone would be impossible without some cool AI stuff but, that's fine.

Think of it like a play, but you're just acting it out live.

Potential Problems:
As I said before, tone could be confusing. You could read the line monotonically and have the other character react with anger, without really knowing why, or just due to a misread of the situation. A solution to this could be "stage directions" where it tells you in brackets how the line should be read.

Another problem could also arise with people who have heavy accents. The game might not be able to tell what you are saying if you have a very heavy accent. Obviously, just turn this mechanic off in the menus.



I really think this new mechanic is unique, and could incredibly increase the amount of immersion it puts the player in. I personally would love to act out V's life in this futuristic world instead of feeling like a 3rd party god controlling what V has to say.

Either this or just add a damn pitch adjustment meter to the character customization screen!
 
the mod community may be able to help you record your own voice and replace the dialogue in the game with your own files

that being said, i think this may be one of the root issues of the community

Some players come into cyberpunk expecting to play "themselves" while other people come in expecting to play an "RPG"

You play a character called V, this character has a story, and a voice. You can customize that character to look how you want, you may make decisions that guide how that character acts in certain situations - but its not supposed to be cyberlife sim - you play a merc and gets caught in a unique scenario - you help play guide the character, you can also customize them to look how you want - its not an individual representation of self and how you play the game doesnt reflect on the person playing the game
 
the mod community may be able to help you record your own voice and replace the dialogue in the game with your own files

that being said, i think this may be one of the root issues of the community

Some players come into cyberpunk expecting to play "themselves" while other people come in expecting to play an "RPG"

You play a character called V, this character has a story, and a voice. You can customize that character to look how you want, you may make decisions that guide how that character acts in certain situations - but its not supposed to be cyberlife sim - you play a merc and gets caught in a unique scenario - you help play guide the character, you can also customize them to look how you want - its not an individual representation of self and how you play the game doesnt reflect on the person playing the game
Fair enough, but at least give a slight pitch modifier to the customization menu, so there's a tiny bit of variation in the voice.
 
I would be happy to hear everything you have about this topic!
I could bore you for a long time!

It starts with this essay, "Voice Acting Considered Harmful"; then go on to "the spread of knowledge in a large game world". "Sex, the Iron Maiden, and NPC repertoire" is mainly about the disturbing shallowness of NPC repertoire in voice-acted games. I wrote about the difficulty of animating characters' faces to reflect their speech acts here, but this problem seems to be solved by the JALI technology used in Cyberpunk. Finally there's the "Gossip, scripted plot, and Johnny Silverhand" essay that I think you've read.
 
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