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

EQ2

[Ziak]

I'm in the beta, so I don't want to go and break the NDA but the game is simply amasing all the NPCs have full voice and it really makes a diffrence because it feels more like your there, the graphics are simply stunning and after playing both WOW, and EQ2 I'm having the feeling that sony is gonna keep getting my money....

Re:EQ2

[WWWWolf]

all the NPCs have full voice and it really makes a diffrence because it feels more like your there, the graphics are simply stunning

...and the immersion shatters the second anyone utters anything about phAt l00t. Thanks, but I think I'll pass. MMORPGs have this nasty habit of being really cool until you let the other players in =)

Actors?

[imsirovic5]

Does anybody really want to hear actors in a game? I personally think that money could be spent in a better way. I would rather see that money go toward physics engine or graphics or anything else. Or maybe, they could just give that extra money back to us in terms of lower game pricing? Do other people think that paying actors will add that much value to the game?

Re:Actors?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would rather *see* Heather Graham in a silent movie than *hear* her voice in a video game.

Unless that voice is saying "Harder, big boy" while panting heavily.

Wow!

[Dirtside]

I'm sure that having celebrity voices will make up for Sony's historical lack of responsiveness to its players, tendency toward leaving significant bugs extant for months at a time, incredible ability to back and fill when their community representatives contradict themselves, and so on.

I played EQ for 2 years and while I did have a lot of fun, I was never especially happy with how they handled customer interaction. It didn't help that every single expansion they released had numerous, major bugs, and unfinished content that would get implemented months after launch, and then immediately get broken by players doing things the developers never thought of. Then they'd rebalance that content, and it would still be broken, merely in a new and interesting way.

Then there was the incredibly variable customer service. GMs were given an extremely wide latitude about how they could do things, which led to a lot of situations where someone did X, and was told it was okay, and someone else later also did exactly X, and was warned/suspended/banned for it. I was a Guide for six months on Brell Serilis (Tovarax Two Tone, troll bard), and we had a cool GM (Hi Oribi!) but a lot of other servers weren't so lucky. Even some of our guides were anal-retentive assholes, while others were easygoing. This kind of thing led directly to the impression that EQ customer service was capricious and cruel. It didn't help that there was no guarantee that a CS person would be online at any given time, so you might have an issue and have no chance of it being resolved before you had to log off.

Don't even get me started about the disaster that is Star Wars Galaxies. (It's not a game, it's an economy simulator with a Star Wars-themed front end.) Unless you saw it, you can't imagine the pandemonium on the beta boards when they announced that the game was launching in 9 days. Everyone thought SOE was nuts. The game was released less than half-finished, and over a year later it's still got huge problems.

I'm sure EQ2 will be pretty and flashy and have lots of cool stuff. But I have severe doubts -- well-grounded in history -- about SOE's ability to keep things good in the long run. Certainly wouldn't mind them proving me wrong.

Meanwhile, World of Warcraft in beta is already a better game than EQ was three years after it launched :)

Repetition?

[Speare]

Okay, so the voice actor comes into the studio one day, records fifty lines he or she has never thought about before, and leaves. They might sound good the first time around, but these will get so tired, so fast.

First encounter at the camp: "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead. In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage; Then lend the eye a terrible aspect; Let pry through the portage of the head Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it As fearfully as doth a galled rock O'erhang and jutty his confounded base, Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean."

The next day, arriving at the camp. "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead. ... " yeah, yeah, whatever, gramps

Ten minutes later, walking past. "Once more unto the breach, ..." shut UP already

Five minutes later, walking past. "Once more ..." mute button