Hopes for Remake & Rebirth (story/content)

[Gary Caelum]

Eh, Mass Effect manages. They could easily voice all optional dialogue if they really wanted to, everything except choosing you character names should be fine.

Not that many characters actually talk to you in Mass Effect though. It's like 1 in every 5 characters.
They're also fairly short games. You could probably fit all 3 Mass Effects inside the Witcher 3, content-wise.

Obviously they could do it, I wasn't thinking about technical constraints. I meant in terms of budget. They'd be less likely to voice it all if you have long conversation branches between characters.

The thing I really dislike is the Xenoblade approach, which a lot of games have taken, which is to just voice cutscenes but regular in-game dialog is just text.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

@Makoeyes987
@Gary Caelum
If XV is anything to go by, neither of your concerns are anything to worry about.

 

[Gary Caelum]

XV did the same thing as Mass Effect though. Only a very few characters actually talk to you.

That's not the end of the world if 7 goes for that approach. But I'd rather you could talk to everyone.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I thought your concern was whether everything would have voice acting. I guess I misunderstood.

 

[ForceStealer]

I actually have zero problem with non-cutscene stuff being unvoiced. Especially with VII since I've spent my life reading the dialogue in that game. But SE seems to agree with you and prefers to voice everything.

 

[Gary Caelum]

I thought your concern was whether everything would have voice acting. I guess I misunderstood.

It is! I don't think I've contradicted myself.

My main thing is I want everything voice acted. That means you typically either get just a few characters to talk to (like XV or Mass Effect) or you can talk to every character but they only says a few lines each (i.e no dialogue trees).

I was saying I'd prefer the latter, but the XV approach is still better than having some stuff voiced and other stuff not.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Well again, recent FF games can have fully voice acted NPCs that you talk to. So I wouldn't worry about it. XIII-2, Lightning Returns, and WoFF most recently. I dunno what made FFXV do the thing where Noctis hardly talks to anyone but he is a bit socially awkward so

The only trade off is all of the NPCs end up having the same kind of voices but hey, it's just the price to pay

 

[Gary Caelum]

I thought XIII-2 and Lightning Returns did the same thing as XV. I might be wrong?

 

[Makoeyes987]

Yeah, you talk to people in those games. And they talk back with voice acting. FFXV is the one that has you mostly just listening in on folks talking amongst themselves or just not saying anything at all.

 

[Ite]

I’m playing Witcher I right now and all my dialogue choices are fully voice acted. As a bonus, Geralt says exactly what I select, every time.

 

[leadmyskeptic]

I know it sounds dramatic, but one of the few things this remake could do to truly and utterly disappoint me would be to not maintain the level of NPC interaction contained in the original (ideally, they expand upon it). Running around and talking to people and getting sucked into the world via those conversations are the main reasons I got into these games (and RPGS in general) in the first place. The Battle system and presentation could be fucking "Earthbound" style and I wouldn't mind as long as they had the former.

 

[Gary Caelum]

That's why I was saying what I did about voice acting. I worry they'll want to save on the budget and just cut out a lot of NPC dialogue so that you only talk to like 1 in 5 people.

Midgar and Junon should both have quite large populations. It will be a massive workload for them to have every single character voiced.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

For some reason I enjoyed the interactions with NPCs more in FFVII than any other game.

 

[Gary Caelum]

I liked it because the locations are all so varied. Each different town is like a completely different culture. So talking to people is interesting to just learn about the world.
It's the polar opposite of something like Witcher 3, where all small villages are basically the same.

 

[Kain424]

Yeah, I always think of the old man in Rocket Town who wants you to look up at the rocket with him. It'd be cool to see you be able to talk to pretty much everyone, but there would be a few standout characters here and there who would talk your ear off. They did something like that in Red Dead Redemption 2, and it was all the better for it.

 

[Castiel Strife]

I don't want to lose the communication with any of the NPCs. If having certain communication through text rather than voice acting achieves that goal, then so be it. Most things will be voice acted, and obviously all of the main characters will have voice actors, so an NPC here and there that has a text dialogue won't bother me one bit.

 

[Gary Caelum]

Some games do manage to include a lot of voice acting. I was just playing the latest 3DS Fire Emblem yesterday, and that's 100% voice acted. Quite impressive for a game that I assume had a small budget.

 

[Lulcielid]

Didn't know where to put this but since this thread has "content" on its title...

I hope the remake comes with dual audio and localization on disc (FFXV set the bar with 4 language & localization options on disc), if dual audio on disc is not possible I'd like it to be a (free) DLC pack.

 

[Ite]

I hope the remake comes with dual audio and localization on disc (FFXV set the bar with 4 language & localization options on disc), if dual audio on disc is not possible I'd like it to be a (free) DLC pack.

I could not agree more. If they’re going to continue the trend of giving their VAs bollocks for pacing and gestures that only match the Japanese dialogue, let me watch it like a foreign film at least. The differences in pronounciation from my headcanon won’t seem so jarring that way, as well!

My big fear is that we’ll see even more truncated dialogue than the OG now that delivery time is the main factor rather than text boxes.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

No doubt one reason the remake is taking so long is that SE actually has to make all these decisions. And I assume that sometimes they make the wrong decision and then they see it doesn't work and they have to go back to the drawing board.

 

[pxp]

No doubt one reason the remake is taking so long is that SE actually has to make all these decisions. And I assume that sometimes they make the wrong decision and then they see it doesn't work and they have to go back to the drawing board.

Absolutely agree with this. Didn’t the interview with Biwa from Div 1 from last July (and translated at the beginning of this year) basically confirm it too?

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

They absolutely can't afford to screw up a single thing. They'll crucify themselves.

 

[Gary Caelum]

Quite a lot of people were annoyed just from ditching turn-based battles. I remember talking to someone in a comment section who was genuinely acting like their dreams were over because of this one aspect.

The only things that are sacred for me are the main plot points, the characters and the main locations. Like if you get rid of Vincent or Cosmo Canyon, we're gonna have a problem :-) (I probably wouldn't care if you ditched Cait Sith or Gongaga though)

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

But a lot of fans would. I would. I mean, I know the point of this thread is for us to express what we'd each, as individuals, like to see, but SE has to please all of us with all our contradictory hopes and expectations. To some extent they're on a hiding to nothing.

 

[Gary Caelum]

Well at least with a remake they have the guide of the original game. If in doubt, just copy that.

Also, if they're unsure a new thing will be well received, just try and make it optional.