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Devs and writers, please let your characters shut the hell up

Are developers afraid of silence?

  • Yes

    Votes: 156 95.1%
  • No

    Votes: 8 4.9%

  • Total voters
    164
Silence adds a lot when exploring a new area. The constant talking kill that. It's even worse when you get to a puzzle and the character talks out loud and spoils the puzzle like some games have been doing lately.
 
The worst part is that we can be pretty sure the AI is going to spoil all the puzzles of the whole game and we won't be able to turn it off like in Ragnarok. Where to look, what to do, how to do it etc. So infuriating. I hated that in Ragnarok.
Really feels like this:

Hey, Main Character, have you tried the reply button?
There's a reply button in the bottom right.
The reply button…that does replies.
We could move on from this area if you hit the reply button in the bottom corner.
I guess you just don't wanna hit the reply button huh?
Would be pretty cool if you could reply using a reply button.
*reply button starts glowing*
 
I miss when cutscenes were a kind of "reward" after a lengthy or extensive gameplay section instead of dumping dialogue on players every 5 minutes. This really has to be some self-indulgent shit from AAA gamedevs at this point. Its just polluting their games now.

Its like dousing and soaking your meal entirely in sauce.
 
I think it's another sign that they've got no confidence at all in their players. I mean, they literally use DSP as an example of their audience lol.

So, the character needs to be keeping you engaged constantly, and also it ties into the overbearing hint system that you can't turn off.
 
Gen Z is unable to deal with games if there is not constant stimulation. So no, I guess it's not going away.
Might be a reason yeah. I've heard of young players that aren't able to play a game unless they have something like a podcast or some music as background noise. Really weird.
 
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Keanu Reeves Matrix GIF by Peacock
 
Completely agree OP, I was also turned off by all the talking in the new God of Talk.
It felt partly like they were obsessed with overexplain everything - ex: oh, look, here's the stupid squirrel summon cinematic with a new look we have to explain why it looks different in the sequel

Guess what

YOU DON'T
 
A silent protagonist shell works for games like Bioshock/SystemShock I guess. Just different form of story telling.
And DeadSpace. But lest we forget - it was 'the audience' that somehow conviced EA to enshittify that franchise with Isaac (or other protagonists) that never shut up - and this was a decade before it was cool to do so. Also DS Remake sucks for the same reason (though not only for that reason).

NO!!!! I like the talking.
It's fine - I'm sure NVidia will release DLSS5.1 shortly after the 5.0, that will mod the Audio too - not just the character look/gender/color/clothes.
Personalized story telling for everyone!
 
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Since so many people are insecurely bringing up hellblade 2 that game is awful for this. That crazy bitch never shuts up. The first game had way less of her babble.
 
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And DeadSpace. But lest we forget - it was 'the audience' that somehow conviced EA to enshittify that franchise with Isaac (or other protagonists) that never shut up - and this was a decade before it was cool to do so. Also DS Remake sucks for the same reason (though not only for that reason).


It's fine - I'm sure NVidia will release DLSS5.1 shortly after the 5.0, that will mod the Audio too - not just the character look/gender/color/clothes.
Personalized story telling for everyone!
And then we start modding our real life conversations and interactions, at first for translation purposes, then for comfort, then into full on Black Mirror territory.

Oh that slippery slope into dystopia. It's supposed to be a logical fallacy, but too often it ends up being a map of the future when it comes to the worst kinds of human behavior.
 
replaying the tomb raider trilogy (remaster) was a revelation (no pun intended). no solo exposition, minimal background music, most of the sound is simply ambient noise. result? still as mesmerizing as it was 30 years ago...
 
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The last couple of Gears games were pretty chatty too. This is an industry-wide problem.
I dont know...

Nintendo does not have this problem
Neither does Capcom or From software

EVERY single Sony first party game HAS this problem though. Imo Sony created this issue - I mean Aloy in Horizon is the poster child for this feature
 
I dont know...

Nintendo does not have this problem
Neither does Capcom or From software

EVERY single Sony first party game HAS this problem though. Imo Sony created this issue - I mean Aloy in Horizon is the poster child for this feature
Metroid Prime 4 might be the first rumbling of a terrible trend. Hopefully the sales scared them off that approach.
 
It pretty much is the gaming equivalent to Netflix needing characters to repeat basic exposition/plot info to remind people what's going on because the assumption is they're background watching.

For the people who actually buy the product for a price, this is just a crappier experience that bogs down the experience, and hurts exploration. If the excuse is Zoom attention spans, then we're just gonna make them worse.
 
I'm old enough to remember this issue starting with CDs becoming the mainstream medium. Devs would try to convince you how much better CDs are by filling them with as much FMV and voiced audio as possible, even when not needed.

And with that, games that didn't have spoken dialog were stigmatized. Because now games had to be just like movies otherwise they were "behind the times". This stigma still exists for games with silent protagonists like Freeman, Samus, Link, etc.

This also hurt some genres like RPGs because instead of the rich text and tons of different dialog options they used to have, they got more limited because now they had to have voice acting. That meant fewer dialog options because otherwise they would have to record thousands of lines. Not to mention bad voice acting ruining immersion, tone, etc. With text, you never had these issues.

So yeah, devs are afraid to have silence in their games for more that 10 seconds. Which completely sucks IMO, voice acting is bad 9 times of of 10 and i always appreciate it when it's used minimally or not at all. Can't think of any other game other than Portal or Starfox 64 that didn't annoy me because of the constant talking.
 
It's the way it is, people no longer pay attention to what they play, they share time between a phone with a social network and a controller so they must be reminded all the time about what is happening, why they are there, what is their objective, etc. Thank 90s' Mexican soap operas for this trend.
 
I do appreciate any exposition given by the character. Even when they're just talking to themselves. But, I hate this insistence on the character narrating every banal thought. "Ah, yes. Let's grab some armor", "Oh man, that looks dangerous", or "Look at the dick on that guy". That last one may be a self-insert, but that changes nothing.
 
I dont mind if it's actually good dialogue and it supports the wordbuilding/character relationships. Like in prince of persia SoT and 2008.

Also, you could choose not to trigger the dialogue/monologue in pop 2008.

What modern writers produce is pure, boring, pointless drivel and they force it on you.
 
I've been feeling this way with FH6 and the radio/announcers recently. Just stfu!
It goes back to the early Borderlands games as well.
But I don't think they're necessarily scared of silence, it's more to do with how they perceive the attention spans of the player imo. 'Engagement metrics' and that kind of shit.
 
That's because these millennials all grew up on CW and Marvel trash. My wife tried to make me watch Gilmore Girls when they did the revival. I couldn't get past the word vomit. The same goes for the rest of the CW trash including Supernatural. It made these kids brain dead. I am an old millennial myself and I never could stand that garbage. It's everywhere now.
 
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