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Just a thought I had on my mind. I finished Kingmaker last month and Wrath just now and absolutely loved both games. By far my favourite scenes were the voiced ones, Nocticula, Areelu, Iomede - simply amazing and generally, I just enjoyed the game more when it was voice acted. I'm just wondering how unfeasble it is to fully voice a game like this?

I haven't really looked it up but I imagine there is just too much dialogue to be done with their budget? Divinity 2 and Pillairs 2 did it but from what I recall they had more budget/less dialogue? I suppose one of the reasons the game is so great and so deep is because instead of wasting a ton of money on voice they spent it on other places. Anyways I'm just greatful these games exsist. Looking forward to the next Owlcat Games title.

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over 2 years ago - /u/OwlcatStarrok - Direct link

Originally posted by HexedHexley

Voice acting gets ridiculously expensive. Lets say we ignore hourly wages and say they pay VAs a ridiculously paltry fee of $0.50 per recorded line. How many lines are there in the game? Easily half a million at the very least. So thats $250,000 with our unrealisticly low pay level. Not to mention for a fully VA'd game you would need to even voice all the minor characters that exist only for like a single quest. Getting a VA to do another character/voice may make contract negotiations more expensive.
Full voice acting leads to rapidly ballooning costs. Balloon the budget and you will not make a profit.

~two millions :)

over 2 years ago - /u/OwlcatStarrok - Direct link

Extremely expensive, not only in money, but also in time invested. Plus this puts a high toll on narrative department because once something has been voiced, you can no longer polish the text. Or you have to go and pay for records again.

over 2 years ago - /u/OwlcatStarrok - Direct link

Originally posted by Ok-Huckleberry-2585

That is insanely expensive. For two million you can literally double the content the base game had or hell, even make another game. I understand now. Thank you!

I meant two million lines of text rather than half a million lines mentioned above in this case. It's quite likely that a full VO would cost even more than that total though.