LOTRO: Voice Acting
One of the most noticeable things that ages the MMORPG, The Lord of the Rings Online, is the lack of comprehensive voice acting throughout the game. If a player interacts with an NPC, they will provide generic greetings or ambient dialogue. Phrases such as “hello there” of “our mission is dire” occur regularly. However, the majority of quest text is not spoken, unless it is part of the Epic Story line. If it is, the first sentence is usually voice acted but no more than that. Cutscenes within instances have dialogue, as are those that occur at key parts of the Epic Story. Overall, LOTRO does not have the extensive voice acting that a similar MMO such as Star Trek Online has. This is a shame, considering how much time and effort has been taken with other aspects of the game.
One of the most noticeable things that ages the MMORPG, The Lord of the Rings Online, is the lack of comprehensive voice acting throughout the game. If a player interacts with an NPC, they will provide generic greetings or ambient dialogue. Phrases such as “hello there” of “our mission is dire” occur regularly. However, the majority of quest text is not spoken, unless it is part of the Epic Story line. If it is, the first sentence is usually voice acted but no more than that. Cutscenes within instances have dialogue, as are those that occur at key parts of the Epic Story. Overall, LOTRO does not have the extensive voice acting that a similar MMO such as Star Trek Online has. This is a shame, considering how much time and effort has been taken with other aspects of the game.
LOTRO was conceived and developed over the course of 2005 and 2006 and although the technology available at the time could accommodate comprehensive voice acting, its inclusion would have certainly had logistical and financial consequences upon the game’s production. Additional audio would have increased the size of the game installation and constantly maintaining and adding dialogue would have increased production costs. Due to the nature of the game, a great deal of time and effort would also have been required ensuring that all dialogue was correctly pronounced and grammatically correct. Tolkien fans are very particular about this. So it can be argued that Turbine/Standing Stone Games have dodged a bullet by deciding to limit the amount of voice acting in the game to date.
Some players will argue that the lack of comprehensive voice acting is a benefit, allowing them to focus on the text, rather than the actor’s performance. Other LOTRO players already have little or no interest in the finer points of the narrative and are focused far more on “getting the job done”. Such players would therefore be indifferent to further voice acting. However, I am in the opposite camp and enjoy LOTRO mainly due to the stories underpinning both the major and minor quests. For me, good voice acting greatly enhances a story and I often struggle to read the wall of text presented by the NPC. This problem gets worse when playing the game on a 4K monitor due to the game’s non-scaling UI. Therefore, the addition of voice acting would greatly help in keeping me apprised of the plot.
After my recent experimentation with LUA Plugins, I wondered if anyone had ever tried to develop some sort of text-to speech facility that could be added to the game. It turns out that it has already been done to some degrees of success. I found the following post on the Official LOTRO Forums by The Almighty Tater, which references a Python programme they have developed called LOTRO to Speech. For those interested in trying this service you can access all the required files and details of how to install and configure them here. Example videos can be found over at the LOTRO subreddit. Another LOTRO player, Luthryth, has indicated that they are developing a text-to-speech app. They have posted videos of their progress on YouTube, an example of which is posted below . Again, this seems to work quite well.
Obviously, with both of these programs being third party services and a workaround rather than a solution, there are inevitably some issues to consider. Relying on optical character recognition to parse the quest text can be problematic and there is scope for dialogue to be misread. Using cloud based, AI voice services to provide in-game narration introduces the possibility of lag. Also not all voices will be character appropriate, especially if you use the free text-to-speech services. Then there is the issue of pronunciation which may well bother some Tolkien fans. However, all of these negatives are outweighed by the potential benefits that text-to speech can bring to the game. Such a service makes LOTRO far more accessible. Furthermore, as technology progresses, there is scope for programs such as LOTRO to Speech to improve.
Although I wholeheartedly approve of player created apps such as these, if given a choice I’d much prefer voice acting to be officially part of the game. Sadly, although I do not consider it impossible to retrospectively add this to LOTRO, it is highly unlikely that it ever will be due to the cost involved and the law of diminishing returns as the game enters the next phase of its lifecycle (I’ll leave it to you to figure out what that may be). In the meantime LOTRO to Speech is a suitable compromise that can fill the gap. As to the future, if there is ever to be a new Middle-earth themed MMORPG, or if Daybreak Games ever intend to bankroll the creation of a LOTRO 2.0, I would expect it to be fully voiced by default. I don’t think the design choice made back in 2005 would be acceptable to modern gamers.
Video Games and Voice Acting
I think it’s a fair assessment that here are several genres of game that don’t have any requirement for in-depth voice acting. If there is no substantial narrative to tell or a necessity to deliver a lot of complex instructions, then plain text or simple audio soundbites will suffice. However, games such as an RPG or an MMORPG, which tend to have complex stories and multiple characters, benefit immensely from good quality voice acting. Now some gamers are not interested in intricate plots and find dialogue and cutscenes an impediment but I do not believe them to be a majority. If they want to skip dialogue and such like, then that is their prerogative and I support their right to do so. I actually think that both dialogue and cutscenes should wherever possible be “skippable”. But I am often heavily invested in the narratives of the games I play. I enjoy good dialogue when its available and feel that voice acting reinforces the plot and credibility of the various characters. I sorely miss it when it is not present.
I think it’s a fair assessment that here are several genres of game that don’t have any requirement for in-depth voice acting. If there is no substantial narrative to tell or a necessity to deliver a lot of complex instructions, then plain text or simple audio soundbites will suffice. However, games such as an RPG or an MMORPG, which tend to have complex stories and multiple characters, benefit immensely from good quality voice acting. Now some gamers are not interested in intricate plots and find dialogue and cutscenes an impediment but I do not believe them to be a majority. If they want to skip dialogue and such like, then that is their prerogative and I support their right to do so. I actually think that both dialogue and cutscenes should wherever possible be “skippable”. But I am often heavily invested in the narratives of the games I play. I enjoy good dialogue when its available and feel that voice acting reinforces the plot and credibility of the various characters. I sorely miss it when it is not present.
I am currently playing The Elder Scrolls Online again after a year break. What is striking is that the voice acting is very good across the board. There are several high-profile names providing voices and they certainly don’t come across that they’re just phoning in their performances. It helps tremendously that the storylines are well written and so the likes of Alfred Molina, Michael Gambon and Bill Nighy have something to work with. John Cleese adds both humour and some pathos as Sir Cadwell. Sadly, older MMORPGs such as The Lord of the Rings Online struggle with voice acting. Only a few lines of dialogue are voiced when interacting with NPC.s Cutscenes tend to be fully voiced but often the quality is variable. The actor who has consistently voiced Gandalf over the years is solid others just conviction and quality. One of the greatest assets of Star Trek Online is that many of the original cast members from the various shows have voiced their in-game avatars. It’s a far cry from the early days of the game when times were tough and the development team supplied some of the voice acting. Commander Kurland being voiced by Jeremy "Borticus" Randall.
However, simply having known voice actors involved with a video game by default, does not necessarily automatically add real value. The first two instalments of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare benefited greatly from well-cast voice actors. Actors such as Billy Murray (Captain Price), Soap (Kevin McKidd), Sargeant Foley (Keith David) and General Shepherd (Lance Henriksen) greatly enhanced the characters and gave them more depth and personality than you’d usually find in the FPS genre. But in the later iterations of the franchise, I felt that the presence of Stephen Lang, David Tennant and Kit Harrington did not improve the proceedings, mainly due to the lacklustre scripts. However, what CoD did achieve in those early games was in making celebrity voice acting respectable and not some poor relation of TV or movies. But it was Skyrim that actually made me sit up and take notice when I discerned that the voice acting talents of Christopher Plummer and Max Von Sydow. I wasn’t aware that they were involved in the game prior to playing and I was astonished that actors of their pedigree were on board.
Sadly for many games, voice acting is an expensive undertaking, especially for those developers that produce modest, lower budgets titles. Hence, you will often find variable performances or actors who are not native speakers of English which can be problematic. Poor voice performances can undermine the credibility of a game, even if every other aspect of them is sound. It instantly puts me in mind of old VHS copies of martial arts movies from Hong Kong that have been excruciatingly badly dubbed. Some of the earlier Sherlock Holmes games from Frogwares suffered in this respect. But for good or ill I feel that for certain genres of games simply must have full voice acting these days, just as I expect a sumptuous score and cinematic cutscenes. To not have such things seems a little “cheap”. It is curious how games have assimilated so many tropes and audio-visual affectations from cinema. But that is a separate blog post. Returning to the matter of ESO, I don’t know if I would be as interested if I had to digest the game’s complex lore simply via a wall of written text. Vocal performances make imparting such information far more accessible and bring it all alive.
