What kind of voice acting would you like in Overgrowth?

[Pablopa99]

I think it would kill it's charm if the animals could speak english , maybe if they just made animal noises combined with some spore/sims/magicka rubbish-but-charming talk it would work fine.

[Tarkis]

I've always found game immersion to be much stronger in games without voice acting, mostly because the current technology for facial animation during speech just isn't accurate. Also, I started on games such as OoT, FFIIV/VIII/IX, etc... where the communication was text based. That being said, my preferred method is a mixture of the two, as is used in games like the Sims series. Speech that is not of any real language, with real language text to accompany it.

I feel that this is the most effective in-game communication method for two reasons. Firstly because it doesn't sacrifice the tonal, emotional aspects of speech nor the detail which can be included in text. Secondly because it is more cost effective compared to real-language voice acting. The acting skill required is less since the actors don't have to make up for the lack of poor facial expressions with exaggerated voicing. Most animation work that would go into facial emotion could instead be focused into animating body language. While it is still a challenge to accurately portray the desired emotion through the tonal qualities of gibberish, it is still much easier than real-language voice acting when done in tandem with text and body language.

[Dahamonnah]

I personally think that each race must have his own way of communications. For example: Wolves can only communicate through growls, howls or snarls, they cannot talk at all.
Rabbits should talk but in moderation, they shouldn't be shakespeareans, always talking fluently like humans, they should be talking like animals talking, not humans talking inside animal costumes if that makes any sense.
I think the races that should talk "normally" are Cats, Rabbits, and Dogs. Rats should talk very little and with very poor grammar.
That's my honest opinion. Differences in talking shouldn't be in accents, altough I don't mind a few weird accents

[Tilas300]

I think that there should be animal sounds most in rural or poor areas, but the higher up the social chain you go, the more they actually have speeches (because dogs and rabbits can't understand cats). As in : cat city has cat background noise (hiss mroow) when the cats don't see the rabbit/dog/rat/notacat, but when they DO, they spread the word by mouth, because they might have doggy guards on the post who don't speak fluent kitty. So Cats do not understand notcats naturally, but everyone can speak both their own species' and (human) universal language.

Turner becomes wise in all languages during his travels, but other species don't know he can understand them.

This. I'd imagine that playing as Turner, when you hear something important or relevant spoken in an animal language, such as the cat language, it would either come up in subtitles or be translated to english (I'd prefer the former, personally).

[kibaoo]

Well just one commentator speaks through the cutscenes, telling the storyline of overgrowth should be enough. All the other stuff as eg "enemies are aware of your presence", could be done via Symboles or Text-lines above their heads, like it is in Fallout or Metal Gear Solid. In my opinion this would fit the charm from Old kong Fu films like the ones with Bruce Lee, where no one is talking while Fighting. You know these eye-to-eye scenes where just the pictures talk and the actors are silent.

in short:
-commentator
-Symboles and Text-one-lines as "facial expressions" and "gesture"

[Stuntddude]

I have to say I don't like the idea -- maybe animal noises, but definitely not spoken dialogue, not for overgrowth. I realize the rabbits are humanoid and all, but come on, they ought to at least retain some aspects of animality. Dialogue between characters just doesn't fit with the aesthetic.

Ugh. I feel like this is going to be villagers in Minecraft all over again. Everyone else immediately jumped on it, and I still would much rather it never have been added. :/