Patrice Macmahon
Gallente
    |
Posted - 2008.09.05 17:48:00 -
[1]
Proposal: Add Diolouge (voice sound for NPCs) to Eve-Online.
Reasoning: Eve-Online is a visually beautifull universe with a rich story and increadible player driven content. Unfortunately, The sounds of eve are fairly non-engageing. There are very few audio ques that draw the player into the world and make him or her feel as though they are actually in their ship, interacting with the world. Certainly there is the 'turtorial-voice' but outside of the new player areas, and menu context help, the only time a voice is heard in eve is that of tutorial telling you when the astroid is empty, your warping to a stargate, or when your pod is breeched. The rest of the game is filled with a deeply seperated series of beeps, baulbles, pew-pews, and rocket explosions (though how in deep space, Im not sure  .) Background ranges from extremely placid calm waters mp3's, to high-tempo smooth trance-techno. All of these effects give for a wonderfull "Awe-Inspiring" game feel, but does little to truly help imerse a player into the world, to feel as though they are interacting with it.
One of the things I feel would help aliviate this problem is to add more diolouge, above and beyond what "Tutorial" currently gives us. There are some very specific areas where voice recorded diolouge would be usefull, appropriate, and imersive:
Mission Runners:
Record audio for the generic, non-specific mission diolouges that are given to players before they choose to accept or reject a mission (not the specific mission details). The player clicks on the agent window and they get to 'hear' what that agent has to say, and hear any reactions that agent gives. Would be nice to hear "Good luck, don't get shot." From my agent before I leave to take on a pack of Gurista's or half the Caldari Navy. - This diolouge should be swift and reflect the personalities of the race/gender of the agent being spoken to.
A good way to achive individuality for the various mission agents, would be to have someone record diolouge in accordance to a style, and that style be attributed to a specific race/gender. At MOST you would need 24 seperate voice actors (1 for each race and gender), but realistically you could use a particular voice style more than once if there would be no discernable difference in accents or speach patterns between one race and the next. (who knows, Female Minmitars might just sould like their male counterparts.... )
In Space NPC's: During missions and some complex runs (to my understanding) there are NPC's who will open up a com link, transmit a threat, and then do their best to pew-pew you out of sky. Rather than just have some seemingly random text pop up in local chat for you, why not actually let the players hear the audio. Give those dasterdly villians more personality with their voice as you hear
"*Kshhk!* What are you doing here! The EON will not stand for this! open fire... *Kssk!*"
"*Kshhk!* You've disabled my ship, when I reclone your going to pay. I'll get you GADGET! "Kshhk!*"
We will be able to hear, and possibly care about those story line mission npc's we love to hate. Plus this medium would open up more oportunity to script and create immersive storyline missions/events/faction warfare objectives.
A note on the technology: Sure everyone has an ansible that allows instantanious transmittions, but not everyone has the e-mail address for every ship they see, so short range transmittions (audio) are still used.
*one more post to come*
- The Intakies have the obligation to the Federation to defend citizenship and liberties. But that defence does not nessicarrily warrant an act of agression. |