Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author and do not reflect the views of Ten Ton Hammer.

Every so often the MMOG genre moves forward with a feature that sometimes raises the standard bar. Voice-overs in MMOGs is the most recent feature gaining popularity over the old text-based models and SW:TOR (Star Wars: The Old Republic) is aiming to be the very first MMOG to feature an entire fully voiced MMOG. If they are successful, this could raise the bar of expectation for future triple A MMOG projects, but this attempt is not without its risks. Some games have attempted to launch with plenty of voiced characters only to fall short, having to patch many in after launch and sometimes with horrid voiceovers.

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style="font-style: italic;">Christopher Lee was one of the top talents brought in for Everquest 2 voice work as Lucan D'Lere.

Everquest 2

Everquest 2 launched with several voiceovers, but many characters didn’t get those voiceovers until well after launch. Luckily, Sony patched them in as time went on, but this wasn’t always a good thing. Often times when you ran by NPCs  they would beckon you over for a quest or speak in passing. This was actually pretty neat to some degree, but often times you would pass two NPCs and the voiceovers would both go off creating a jumbled mess of voice overlaps. Sony did fix this issue later and the Everquest 2 of today is much more pleasant a place to encounter voice-overs.

One thing all voice-over games need in order to make those voices fit the world is a good director that can guide the voices talent to portray their characters to fit the world. Everquest 2 had some great talent as they used Christopher Lee as the evil Lucan D’Lere and the super hot Heather Graham as his opposing counterpart, Antonia Bayle. However, the direction for the characters seemed a bit off. While I have great respect for the two actors and believe they have excellent talent, I’m not sure the guidance for the characters they were portraying was there.

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style="font-style: italic;">Heather Graham provided the voice for the Qeynos leader, Antonia Bayle.

Christopher Lee, who has an excellent voice and a commanding presence, just seemed way too laid back in his role as Lucan D’Lere. Rather than being this super evil bad ass former Paladin taken in by the dark arts, Lucan seemed more laid back and often times it really just felt like Christopher Lee was just reading the lines and going through the motions rather than bringing this super evil character to life.

Heather Graham on the other hand, and it’s hard not to love this girl, was very upbeat and overly happy sounding. While her upbeat character voice came closer to capturing the essence of Antonia Bayle than Christopher Lee did with Lucan, she still seemed to be a bit out of character.

This wasn’t limited to these two highly talented actors. Bad voice acting examples could be found in a number of characters around Norrath. Luckily, it wasn’t all bad and often times the voice acting could be pretty decent and make the game much more immersive when you hit an area where the voiceovers just seemed to be dead on.

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style="font-style: italic;">AoC didn't use a lot of high profile actors, but it still has great voice acting.

Age of Conan’s Voice-Overs

AoC (Age of Conan Hyborian Adventures) was another game that attempted to bring lots of voices with its launch in 2008. Funcom did an excellent job using voices in the newbie area of Tortage to help draw players in. The acting was great and the overall use to enhance the story was very well done. However, once you got out of Tortage that excellent content ride of greatly done voices came to an end. After launch, once you left Tortage, voice-overs were virtually non-existent except for your Destiny Quests. Funcom has since added a lot more to the game, but the game itself is still far from fully voiced and I don’t expect it ever will be as Funcom never set out with such a goal. However, what Funcom has added is an excellent example of how voice work should be done in an MMOG. The acting was dead on and the actors captured their characters well, making Funcom’s use of voiceovers a great part of the game and one of the best I have seen to date.

If vocal acting can add more to the game and enhance the immersion, why then don’t more developers use it? The answer to that is quite simple. Many major MMOGs these days operate on a development budget generally ranging from $20-$50 million dollars. More or less in some cases, depending on who is backing the project. Adding voice to that development plan can mean quite a bit more, especially if you plan to use well known actors and BioWare has never been one to shy away from using those. Some of the well-known talent BioWare has utilized in some of their past games include…

• Keith David – Chronicles of Riddick, Pitch Black, ect.
• Seth Green – Without a Paddle, Robot Chicken, ect.
• Lance Henriksen – Pumpkinhead, Aliens, already doing work on SW:TOR website vids, and much more.
• Marina Sirtis – Counselor Troy from Star Trek: the Next Generation.

SW:TOR is attempting something that hasn’t been done as of yet and that is to bring a fully voiced MMOG to the market. The real question is if they can pull it off, and if so, can they do it with the same excellent voice acting quality that they pulled off with Mass Effect? Development of an MMOG can require a great deal of resources. Everquest 2 and Age of Conan tried to launch with a fair amount of voiceovers only to have to patch a lot of them in after launch due to development time. Can BioWare do any better?

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style="font-style: italic;">BioWare's Mass Effect used many well-known actors and created a well voiced and immersive experience.

One huge advantage that they have right now is the financial backing of EA (Electronic Arts). EA is hungry for a title that can potentially capture a portion of the market the size of what World of Warcraft has and I believe they think BioWare can give that to them. While I don’t know what the budget numbers for this project are, I’m guessing EA is providing a lot of support for what they hope will be the next big thing.

If BioWare can indeed pull off a fully voiced MMOG at launch they will have something no one else in the market has. The next question is will they be able to maintain it? With free content updates and expansions that will inevitably come, will BioWare have the resources to keep the game fully voiced, or will they simply fall back into the category of the other MMOGs of the genre and take things back down to text? If BioWare can pull this off and maintain it, they will not only have a unique gaming experience, but they will also have raised the expectations bar for the MMOG genre as a whole.