Alright, what do you prefer:
A) Complete voice acting, for every character and line of text;
B) Text only, no VA at all;
C) That small voice cue a character does before the text starts rolling (usually accompanied with an illustrating facial expression);
D) Full mumbling/gibberish sound over all the text;
I'm down with any of them but C. But A is obviously superior to the rest.
A>>>>>D>C>B
A, but I'd rather have no voice acting than bad voice acting
I'm a fan of voice acting sometimes while using differently toned beeps other times.
D = C > B >>> A
A is crippling to development in every single aspect
depends what gaem
A
And then you can end up with games like Skyrim where every word of text is spoken but they have like 5 voice actors doing every character... so you walk 10 steps and hear the same person again.
Additional question I forgot: is full VA a requirement, game design wise, for some types of games?
Good A>C>B>>>D>>>>>Funny bad A>>>>>Just bad A>>>>>Mediocre overpaid A
Unless there's something special about the voice acting, which there usually isn't, then anything but A. By the time the VA finishes a line, anyone who isn't clinically retarded could have already read that line multiple times.
A (game has big budget) > C >= B >>>>>>>>>>> D > A (game has poor budget)
Depends on the game but my preference is:
B > C > D > A
Once you do the voice acting, the writing is locked down and you can't change anything.
E) fully voiced npcs and completely silent player character with text options
Depends on the game, but I don't usually care much about VA.
this is the correct answer
Jap audio for Jap games/Welsh corgis for everyone else >>>>>>>>>>>>>> any other answer >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> American VAs
If anybody here knew how expensive and time consuming voice acting is then they would not be picking A
no one has the guts to pick D in this thread but me.
Depends on the aesthetic and art direction the game is going for. Gibberish won't work in a realistic game for example.
Good writing should precede voice acting. VA is nice but when not done well it can ruin a game, and when done well it's like eh whatever, it's not going to make the game amazing.
If gibberish means the sort of sounds in early ace attorney games and stuff then I choose that
Either A or C, depends on what type of game it is, but mostly C.