Would not bother me at all. I often turn off all the sounds in the computer games I play because I find them annoying. I appreciate having a text option.

I've been playing adventures since way before speech was an option, and while I would (and do) play non-speech adventures, the speech option adds so much to the experience. Furthermore, I am much more willing to be forgiving of the lack of speech in older games than in brand new ones.

I love to be able to speak to people in the game.
I love the music too, it adds so much more!
That's why silent movies didn't stick around. As soon as sound could be added, it stayed!! People like movies and games to be as real as in person.
Just my opinion anyway!

I prefer to have text and voices because sometimes I don't catch what the person said. I also like the background music and sounds. It helps create the right atmosphere

I'm with Jenna. I turn the music off or waaaay down. Sometimes, I turn all sound off. I always have text/subtitles on & dislike when there aren't any. I'm a visual learner, so I prefer to read things for myself rather than listen to someone tell me. However, the best combo is voice AND text together with the ability to turn them off. Serves all types of folks. Also like the conversation log so you can look back for important clues.

Love, Jen

Sure. I always use the subtitles anyway, when a game has them. I read A LOT faster than anyone could possibly act through dialog, so if a conversation is taking too long I just skip through at my own pace. And lots of games that I love convey information in a written form--journals, etc. So I don't really see much difference.

The one thing I would say, though, is, if you're going to do that PLEASE make sure of your spelling and grammar. It drives me crazy to see "it's" instead of "its" and "There" instead of "their." Hire a competent copy editor!

WW

I think that for the game to reach the widest audience, it would need to include voices. But for my personal enjoyment, it would not. I have headphones attached to my PC, not speakers, but I often don't put them on. The sad fact for game developers is that I just don't appreciate aural input from games, often finding the background music annoying or intrusive, and preferring to hear what is going on in my actual environment (with two dogs and four cats, one has to be alert!) than the virtual one.

If its a choice between no voice acting and bad voice acting, I'd choose no voice. I really appreciate having the option to turn on subtitles when there is voice acting because I read much better than I hear. I find that a conversation log that exactly reproduces the speech, or a journal that summarizes the salient points of conversations is also an extremely useful tool in games. I am content to read dialogue and other narrative exposition, but I am aware that others find that reading destroys the pacing of the game.

I am currently playing Neverwinter Nights, an RPG with lots of dialogue, and it uses a combination of spoken word and text. The major characters have speech recorded with the text also displaying on the screen; minor characters just have text displaying. Some of the minor characters will have a spoken greeting that alerts you to the fact that you need to talk to them, but then the actual dialogue is text only.

cheers,
jasper

I have only played two text games and missed the voices both times. I think you have to be more focused if you are using less of your senses to get information.

I always use the subtitles as I can often miss what the player says--I do like the voice--and really like the ambient sounds---whether or not I would play it would depend on whether the game sounded really interesting to me or not--sometimes I get so busy ready the text I miss some action---but if the game itself was of interest, had an immersive story line--then the fact that I had to read the text would be fine with me---

Voice and sound are important factors to me. This is 2005, not the days of silent movies. So I definitely would not buy a modern day adventure with text only.

Thanks, everyone!

Just to clarify for those who asked, the game would still have sound effects and music, just no voices.

This is an option I'm weighing considerably...luckily, there's still plenty of time, since Shady Brook isn't even done yet! hehe

I would definitely be interested in a game without voice acting, especially if the game still had ambient sounds. For example, if the character was wandering around inside a spooky house and the character was reading a lot of journals or diaries (my own personal favorite thing in a game--I love wading through all of the written stuff that a lot of people don't like), then it would irritate me to hear the character read them, so I would have to take off my earphones to read at my own pace. The only exception to this is with great voice acting (which is fairly rare). An example of that would be Ceremony of Innocence, where the game is composed of letters written between two people, and actors read their letters. The voices are so perfectly matched to the material that the game would lose its beauty for me without the voices. However, in a game with just normal voices, especially voices reading diaries and things like that, I usually use the enter key to skip the voices anyway. This may be because I read faster than the voice reads, or I want to re-read certain passages to note them and the character is ahead of me in reading the next passage. I also play many amateur games that do not have voices, and it doesn't bother me at all.

I guess to sum it up, I'm interested in the artistic vision of the game creator, and if the game is created in a way that is enhanced by not having voices, I prefer it that way.

You said - " might contain massive amounts of text,"

Those two little words 'MASSIVE TEXT' would make me afraid to buy the game.

Journals, letters, articles that need to be read are fine, as the game waits for you. Convesation should be heard while the game goes on. And having a pause button would REALLY screw it up.

I would prefer voice in adventure games but if it has good subs and it fits with the style of game aka lucasarts style, then yeah i could live without it i supose.

Make's a valid point.