EQ2 Voiced By Hollywood Actors

An anonymous reader writes "Sony is going to have well known actors voicing major roles in its upcoming Massively Multiplayer Online Game. Christopher Lee is doing the voice for the Evil Lord Sir Lucan D'Lere, leader of the city of Freeport, and Heather Graham is doing the voice for Antonia Bale of the good city of Qeynos. An interview with Christopher Lee is also available on the Sony site." It will be interesting to see how this affects the fight between EQ2 and World of Warcraft, which are rumored to be coming out on the same day.

Comments

Is this a good idea?

[Aash]

What if they need to record new dialogue for this characters at some point down the road? It's not going to be easy (I would assume) to get celebrities back into the recording booth just to do a few lines every now and then. Then again I suppose they could just hire people to do impressions of the celebs, but still... seems kinda stupid to me.

Better sound and graphic? So, i don't care.

[ChiefHappyWind]

I have been playing EQ for 5 year. I play with no sound and the lowest level of graphics detail. The reason I play with no sound is because years ago the sound could cause problems or crash. So, i turned it off, and have never turned it on again. The reason i play with the lowest level of graphics is so that i can run two instances of EQ. I have more than one account. One account runs a Bazaar selling character which is in a minimized EQ window. The other is the character I am actually playing. For best results I reduce all the graphics options to the lowest level. Also, I have another computer which is fast, and has a nice graphics board with 128 megs of ram. I tried running with all the highest level of graphics options, but ultimately, in a raid situation, it's too slow. So, over time that machine got reduced to the lowest level of graphics options. The story? What story? When i do quests i don't even talk to the NPCs. Just give my my item, thanks. I know there are some people that actually follow the story, or even try role playing. But, for the most part. EQ is not about the graphics, the sound, or even the story. It's about items, items, items, guilds, raids, items, buying, selling, items, and becoming more powerful. So, why bother with EQ2? I guess only to reserve a good name and be one of the first.

Good Voice Acting

[SeanDuggan]

Honestly, yes, I do think having actors in a game is good. Voice acting, when done well, brings you deep into the game, immersing you because the audio cues are all there. Bad voice acting... yanks you out and bitchslaps you with the fact that this is just a game. There's nothing like having the princess in peril open her mouth and say, in a disinterested valley-girl voice, "Oh wise prince save me." to make you realize that these are just pixels on a screen. (Although a close second involves badly programmed voice acting where the character in question spurts the same soundbite over and over again no matter what the circumstances, sometimes stepping on his own lines if you step away and back fast enough) And honestly, voice acting tends to be pretty bad in many games. Why? Because it's one of those things that often gets put off until the end, whereupon the programmers or their friends get pressed into voicing characters.

My disagreement here is getting the name-brand actors. Honestly, I could not care less that Christopher Lee is doing the voice. I just want someone who can do good accents and put proper emotions into their performance. Heck, head out to your local theater and you can probably get voice acting just as good for the price of dinner. At that, some will do it just for notoriety and another entry for the acting resume.