They broke Nessa :'-(.

WHAT ABOUT TARKLEIGH?!!11

Poor Nessa.

wow you stupid nerds are so obsessed with a few dialogues you hear what like 3 times in the entire day? Do you purposely go and repeatedly talk to her so you can hear a woman's voice? What's the big deal here...move on.

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RaZmAn wrote:

wow you stupid nerds are so obsessed with a few dialogues you hear what like 3 times in the entire day? Do you purposely go and repeatedly talk to her so you can hear a woman's voice? What's the big deal here...move on.

lol - go back to Zero Wing, son. Leave game appreciation to those who appreciate games.

Audio, FX, Scenery, Music, Story, Depth, Atmosphere, Programming & Design is what makes it happen. If you take anything out of this equation, you are left with a design with more to offer.

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RaZmAn wrote:

wow you stupid nerds are so obsessed with a few dialogues you hear what like 3 times in the entire day? Do you purposely go and repeatedly talk to her so you can hear a woman's voice? What's the big deal here...move on.

Yes.

Yes I do.

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Andrew_GGG wrote:

Ill make the stamp official then :P

So our reasoning for changing Nessa is something like this.

Her inflection had almost no emotion and her greeting phrases were to repetitive, we wanted to change that. I made sure to keep the MMMhmmm stuff, but now there are just a few other options.

Personally I think the new dialogue is a huge improvement!

I agree with everyone else that this change is in the wrong direction.

Nessa was memorable because her speech had a very unique melancholic and pure tonality to it (what you called a lack of emotion/inflections) that made her stand out above the sinister and mucky nature of Act 1 town and its other NPCs.

Adding a few greeting phrases is sufficient; changing the other dialogue to add unnecessary "inflections" is bad.

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Andrew_GGG wrote:

Personally I think the new dialogue is a huge improvement!

I totally disagree with this.

Before she seemed like the one sane character in an insane world. She was aware of how crazy and dangerous Wraeclast was, but she was determined to keep her head. She'd help however she could, but she wasn't going to go out and fight Merveil. She knew her place.

Now she doesn't really sound like she has a place. She could've been pulled from other game. The voice acting is "cleaner" and it doesn't really suit the messy environment she's been placed in. Sounds more now like she's reading from a storybook than telling you about things that are actually happening around her.

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realatomicpanda wrote:

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Andrew_GGG wrote:

Personally I think the new dialogue is a huge improvement!

I totally disagree with this.

Before she seemed like the one sane character in an insane world. She was aware of how crazy and dangerous Wraeclast was, but she was determined to keep her head. She'd help however she could, but she wasn't going to go out and fight Merveil. She knew her place.

Now she doesn't really sound like she has a place. She could've been pulled from other game. The voice acting is "cleaner" and it doesn't really suit the messy environment she's been placed in. Sounds more now like she's reading from a storybook than telling you about things that are actually happening around her.

This is a fair and considerate opposition, and I do agree now that I've listened to Nessa's new voice. I prefer the old one, myself. I think it was different from your idea, though. I felt like Nessa's old voice was on edge, but there still was some sanity left. I didn't think she was any more sane than anyone else, for the old voice entailed a dark and harrowing past that lead up to that one moment where she stands in this nearly abandoned area with a few people that managed to survive. The new voice doesn't fit.

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jerg wrote:

I agree with everyone else that this change is in the wrong direction.

Nessa was memorable because her speech had a very unique melancholic and pure tonality to it (what you called a lack of emotion/inflections) that made her stand out above the sinister and mucky nature of Act 1 town and its other NPCs.

Adding a few greeting phrases is sufficient; changing the other dialogue to add unnecessary "inflections" is bad.

I actually agree with those who think the earlier take of Nessa's dialogue was good. Your comment re: melancholic is much how myself and the writer felt when we heard the dialogue outside of the context of the game. We intended her performance to show a subtle fragility with an undertone of steel to her resolve, showing she was no pushover to have ended up here through no fault of her own, and still be making the best of the situation and helping others. In our opinion, the actress was able to achieve this admirably in the first version.

However, when I heard the first feedback to version one from others in the office (and I believe some of the alpha testers) I was taken aback - there was a lot of dislike for what I thought was one of our better characters and takes! However, after getting to hear it properly ingame a few things struck me:
- the music in Lioneye's had a more forlorn and bleak tone to it (imo) that made her "frail" voice disappear too much. The subtle performance she evinced was lost (to most people - not yourself and others like you, clearly).
- because I'd kept pulling the actresses' performance back to the tone of her first takes there was a sameness to the dialogue throughout that made it "boring" for some and perhaps a little 'one-note' overall.

Besides all of that, we hadn't captured any greetings for her - Andrew_GGG's insertion of outtake throat clearing was great, I thought, but we definitely had to get more.

So we did, and I personally like the new stuff we captured whilst still appreciating the old stuff in a different context.

Ultimately though, what I hope players can understand is that no matter what we do, some portion of the community are going to dislike it. So rather than crippling all development and improvements at some point we have to go with our own gut feeling as that is where the game many of you seem to enjoy has come from since the beginning. I can only hope those who don't like it will come to appreciate it in some way one day!