OT - Sony Playstation 2

[JacktheRabbit]

A friend has one of these but has few games. So when I went to his place this weekend I stopped and got games from the local Blockbuster.

2 of them were good. 1 was ok. The last though was "Way of the Samurai."

This game had no speaking at all. I remember an older version of Final Fantasy was like this but it really pissed me off.

Instead of true dialogue the game has bubbles that pop up that you read. Obviously this was a game designed in Japan and it was put out on the cheap by removing the voice track and putting in these lame bubbles.

Are there many PS2 games like this, basically put out on the cheap?

 

[Tsyr]

Uhhhh...

Believe it or not, voice dialoge for everything isn't really common practice. A lot of the big-huge games comming out still handle dialoge via text... Case in point, Suikoden III.

Dialoge via text is not a case of "made on the cheep".

Frankly, Voice Acting is over-rated... it too-often sucks. Witness FFX or R.A.D. And it assuredly doesn't add much of anything to my gameplay experience.

 

[Piratecat]

We have a forum for this sort of thing! I'll slide this over.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

When the game is 90% silence with a lousy soundtrack in the background that is only broken by the ocassional runt or clash of steel I certainly consider it to be on the cheap.

Uhhhh...

Believe it or not, voice dialoge for everything isn't really common practice. A lot of the big-huge games comming out still handle dialoge via text... Case in point, Suikoden III.

Dialoge via text is not a case of "made on the cheep".

Frankly, Voice Acting is over-rated... it too-often sucks. Witness FFX or R.A.D. And it assuredly doesn't add much of anything to my gameplay experience.

 

[Tsyr]

When the game is 90% silence with a lousy soundtrack in the background that is only broken by the ocassional runt or clash of steel I certainly consider it to be on the cheap.

Well, I mean, I suppose you are free to FEEL whatever you want, but when you look at the budgets a lot of these companies put into these games, I think dismissing a game as "on the cheap" because they didn't hire some crappy voice actors to record some dialoge that slows the game down because 9 out of 10 people can read faster than other people can talk is a little... I dunno... silly?

*shrug*

I'm not saying there aren't games that are made "on the cheap", but I think what you are using as a clasification is a bit shallow.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Well I do. If you don't then goody for you.

I'm not saying there aren't games that are made "on the cheap", but I think what you are using as a clasification is a bit shallow.

 

[Ristamar]

I'll echo the sentiments of Tsyr. It's a bit ignorant to claim that a lack of voice acting makes a game 'cheap.' A lot of people hate voice acting in games since it often turns out to be more cheesy than dramatic, so it isn't used as often as you think. You'd be surprised at the number of people that thought the bulk of the voice acting in FFX was rather annoying.

There are a few games that pull it off nicely, like Eternal Darkness, Sacrifice, or Fallout, but more often than not, it detracts from the game, rather than adding to it. It's one of things that unless done to near perfection, shouldn't be done at all.

 

[drothgery]

It's probably important to note that the use of voice acting for any game with a lot of non-formulatic dialog is a very new thing in console games. FFX was the first popular RPG where most of the dialog was voice-acted instead of read, and popular opinion of the practice is pretty mixed; I liked it for the most part, but I'd prefer to have subtitles and a button to skip the spoken dialog -- I don't like listening to things twice.

 

[jdavis]

I can't actually think of any rpg game I have ever owned that didn't have captions of some kind, even the ones I have owned that had voice overs had captions too. Alot of the times the captions have important clues to what is going on, I'd hate to think I missed a clue due to a bad voice actor. Most of these type games only have voice overs during the cut scenes. I think alot of the more action oriented games are going to voice overs but I can't imagine a Final Fantasy game with out readable captions, the games are just too complicated, you would have people making 10 minute speaches and if you missed part of it you couldn't just fast forward to the part you missed you would have to listen to the whole thing again.

When the game is 90% silence with a lousy soundtrack in the background that is only broken by the ocassional runt or clash of steel I certainly consider it to be on the cheap.

Many people would consider that to be the norm, and if the soundtrack is good or not is definatly a preference call. Alot of times I turn the soundtracks off and just go with the occasional clashes of steel.

 

[Ristamar]

It should also be noted that Way of the Samurai isn't exactly the most sterling piece of software. Click and note. After skimming through some of the reviews, the game apparently does not excel in the sound department (among other things).