Hopes for Remake & Rebirth (story/content)

[Gary Caelum]

The more dialogue choices you have, the less likely it is to be all voice acted. I'd rather it be all voice acted like Witcher 3 was.

 

[ForceStealer]

FFX's admittedly more minor romance options were all voiced.

"Good luck, little boy. You're going to need it."
<3 Lulu

(as a matter of personal preference, if it had to be choice, I would prioritize dialogue options over voice acting. But I wouldn't expect SE to make that a choice anyway)

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

XV has tons of optional little dialogue branches, and -- going off the top of my head -- I'm pretty sure they're all voiced.

 

[ChipNoir]

Square seems to be relying on this new trend of theirs with Fly-By dialogue rather than addressing each NPC individually. It's been around in XIII-Trilogy, XV, and now Kingdom Hearts III has it as well. I kinda don't like it since it's weirdly isolating.

 

[Clement Rage]

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.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Square seems to be relying on this new trend of theirs with Fly-By dialogue rather than addressing each NPC individually. It's been around in XIII-Trilogy, XV, and now Kingdom Hearts III has it as well. I kinda don't like it since it's weirdly isolating.

I'm getting used to it, but there are times I still prefer the old way of listening in (e.g. when I want a particular NPC or group of NPCs to repeat something immediately rather than walk around with them/stand with them until they do).

Ironically, though, I believe going back to the old way now would feel more isolating. I'm trying to imagine Lestallum in FFXV without ambient conversations and it just doesn't feel right.

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.

You don't really think you'll still be choosing their names, do you? =P

 

[Makoeyes987]

The thing is, NPC dialogue in FFVII was used to convey a lot of the world building and setting history of the game.

From explaining the movement of the Sephiroth Copies, the fate of memorable key secondary characters, the backgrounds of some party members, and how the Shinra Company works regarding its employees...

A lot of the way the world work is explained by talking its people.

So they have to try to convey that feel while also ensuring the player doesn't miss it. And a lot of the memorable charm is in the choices and unique branches of dialogue you can see depending on what you say or who you have in the party. So, I don't think that's something they can just willfully change without losing something about the setting. They arguably should do a mix of both. Some NPCs you talk to, and others you just listen to like in FFXIII-2.

 

[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.