WotC More info on Baldur's Gate 3 coming February 27 2020

In this brief clip we see some voice acting for Volo and a quote, some motion capture, orchestra, some photography that I'm not sure how it would be used in a video game and lastly a date February 27 2020, which happens to be the date of Pax East.

Speculate away.

 

[ZeshinX]

Larian Studios has said inspired by 5e rules because just straight up using 5e rules is impossible, somethings can't be ported unmodified into a CRPG from a 5e table top D&D, the tech just isn't there. But Swordcoast Legends game wasn't inspired by 5e at all and in fact I've heard some say it was closer to 4e. Speculation on my part, but I suspect development on Swordcoast Legends started during the 4e era and they made the mistake of trying to be current by mislabelling it 5e inspired when it was 4e inspired.

I honestly believe Larian Studios will get as close to 5e D&D as they can given the limitations of computer technology.

SCL started as a generic RPG, using a ruleset inspired by Dragon Age Origins (Dan Tudge was Director/Producer on DAO and was heading SCL design at nSpace...and the rules implemented in SCL were clearly more Dragon Age than D&D). The D&D skin was slapped on it later on (dunno the specifics of how the D&D connection came to be)....have a friend that worked at the company that took over stewardship of SCL after nSpace folded (Digital Extremes)...and learned this well after SCL was ultimately abandoned and pulled from sale. The statements that it was in any way 5e (inspired or otherwise) was quintessential marketing BS and was spin of the highest order to drum up hype and interest (the studio was staked on this game being successful...and it was not remotely successful...and nSpace is now gone). nSpace bit off way more than they could chew with SCL; trying to make a game, a toolset and trying to align with a print publishing schedule to help sell the Rage of Demons story line...all by a studio that had no experience with any of those things. It was doomed from the start (high hopes, but unrealistic ones, even an experienced studio would have trouble with those concurrent goals).

In any case, I'm not looking for 1:1 rules translation into a video game. Just akin to that of it's peers, namely the way 2e (and tiny bits of 3e in BG2) were adapted for BG1 & 2.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think BG1 had a fair amount less humour than BG2 did but that's not too say it was missing.

BG1 "humour" relied quite a lot on pop culture references that you simply wouldn't notice if you weren't a product of the 80s/90s. Some you wouldn't notice if you weren't Canadian! Try repeatedly clicking on the NPCs.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Japanese VAs are incredible.

Are you a native or extremely fluent Japanese speaker? Because if not, I'd need to hear that from someone who is to believe it. Thinking a Japanese VA is super-cool when you have very little idea about what is being said does not make it "incredible".

I suspect that unless you are, what you're actually saying is, "To my completely untrained ears, and unable to understand more than about one word in in twenty or even fifty, I think the Japanese VA sounds really cool!". Which is cool. I agree. I usually switch to Japanese VA if it's available in Japanese games. But I guarantee you there's some game that you or me thinks has "good VA" in Japanese which actual Japanese people are rolling their eyes about and saying is completely awful.

You even see a similar thing but perhaps even stranger thing within Europe. Europeans have a much, much, muuuuuuuch higher tolerance for absolutely godawful English VA than primary English speakers, even though many of them are fluent in English. I've had Dutch, Polish and German people say how much they enjoyed the English VA of games which had objectively awful VA, for example. And I know other Europeans (esp. in France/Spain for whatever reason) players who switch to English VA yet retain subtitles in their language in games where they can, and are annoyed with games where they can't, even with games which are in their language, because the VA in their language is sufficiently poor.

Nope. It isn’t wildly overacted, nor is the quality especially bad.

Yeah, okay, some people will just deny deny deny, I guess, all in order to claim other people are "picky".

 

[jgsugden]

Voice acting is a talent. It is easy to get to mediocre quality where you do not necessarily note much wrong... but real artists can enhance the game and pull you in deeper with their voice and acting choices.

 

[gyor]

Are you a native or extremely fluent Japanese speaker? Because if not, I'd need to hear that from someone who is to believe it. Thinking a Japanese VA is super-cool when you have very little idea about what is being said does not make it "incredible".

I suspect that unless you are, what you're actually saying is, "To my completely untrained ears, and unable to understand more than about one word in in twenty or even fifty, I think the Japanese VA sounds really cool!". Which is cool. I agree. I usually switch to Japanese VA if it's available in Japanese games. But I guarantee you there's some game that you or me thinks has "good VA" in Japanese which actual Japanese people are rolling their eyes about and saying is completely awful.

You even see a similar thing but perhaps even stranger thing within Europe. Europeans have a much, much, muuuuuuuch higher tolerance for absolutely godawful English VA than primary English speakers, even though many of them are fluent in English. I've had Dutch, Polish and German people say how much they enjoyed the English VA of games which had objectively awful VA, for example. And I know other Europeans (esp. in France/Spain for whatever reason) players who switch to English VA yet retain subtitles in their language in games where they can, and are annoyed with games where they can't, even with games which are in their language, because the VA in their language is sufficiently poor.



Yeah, okay, some people will just deny deny deny, I guess, all in order to claim other people are "picky".

You maybe some of us enjoyed Volo's voice work.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Are you a native or extremely fluent Japanese speaker? Because if not, I'd need to hear that from someone who is to believe it. Thinking a Japanese VA is super-cool when you have very little idea about what is being said does not make it "incredible".

I suspect that unless you are, what you're actually saying is, "To my completely untrained ears, and unable to understand more than about one word in in twenty or even fifty, I think the Japanese VA sounds really cool!". Which is cool. I agree. I usually switch to Japanese VA if it's available in Japanese games. But I guarantee you there's some game that you or me thinks has "good VA" in Japanese which actual Japanese people are rolling their eyes about and saying is completely awful.

You even see a similar thing but perhaps even stranger thing within Europe. Europeans have a much, much, muuuuuuuch higher tolerance for absolutely godawful English VA than primary English speakers, even though many of them are fluent in English. I've had Dutch, Polish and German people say how much they enjoyed the English VA of games which had objectively awful VA, for example. And I know other Europeans (esp. in France/Spain for whatever reason) players who switch to English VA yet retain subtitles in their language in games where they can, and are annoyed with games where they can't, even with games which are in their language, because the VA in their language is sufficiently poor.



Yeah, okay, some people will just deny deny deny, I guess, all in order to claim other people are "picky".

Or, maybe, you’re picky.

 

[dalisprime]

It's not difficult to do voice-acting right (dialogue is a whole other discussion). You only two things:

1) A director who prevents overacting and gets the tone of the piece right. About 80% of AAA studios fairly consistently manage this. Close to 100% when we're talking AAA CRPGs - Larian however do not have a good track record.

2) To get the VA done in an appropriate environment, which usually means an actual studio.

That's really it. They didn't do that here. I wouldn't have cared, because this is an announcement for announcement (repeat ad nauseam), but I was told it was "useful info" so I paid attention to it, and the info I'm deriving is that, at least in this case, they did the two things you can do wrong with voice-acting - i.e. they went with wild overacting, and with poor sound quality from an inappropriate environment. And if I can hear that, on my TV speakers, and not being particularly sharp at that kind of thing, you can guarantee a whole lot more people would pick up on it in an actual game, where there might be countless hours of speech.

If this was some small indie studio with their first game or something, well, yeah, okay, maybe they don't have the money to deal with it. But this is Larian, who sold millions of copies of their last two games, and have multiple dev studios in multiple countries as a result, and are dealing with a licence that stands to make them $$$.

Hopefully they just did this because it's an announcement for an announcement and I only even noticed because I got pointed at it.

Or perhaps you're forgetting who Volo is and thus don't realise that he's meant to be voiced this way? His voiceover sounded perfectly fine to me.

 

[Gradine]

Yeah there's literally nothing wrong with Volo's VA in this video...

 

[gyor]

Yeah there's literally nothing wrong with Volo's VA in this video...

I found Volo's voice enticing and exciting.

 

[Quickleaf]

Again I need show from them, not tell. Mearls said the same of Sword Coast Legends.

Gotcha. Didn't know if you were up to date on the interviews, so was just trying to be helpful in case you'd missed that dialogue bit about Larian's work on the ranger informing WotC's design thinking. I found it really interesting.