Originally posted by AtrusHomeboy

Originally posted by Acvivm

Not that the cutscenes for TSW are all that bad but in all honesty they just arent that necessary, you could skip them and you wouldn't be missing anything since there is no interaction or choices to be made.

 

You assume that because there is no interaction that there is nothing in the cutscenes worth hearing. That's a preeetty drastic leap in logic you're making, if not a flat out wrong assumption.

The difference between SWTOR and TSW is that the story in SWTOR is centered around the player character, whereas in TSW the spotlight is on the locations, societies, histories and personalities of the world the PC inhabits - and what a strange and beautifully-crafted world it is!

Approaching TSW as a personal epic is missing the entire point of the narrative: to further immerse you in the game world, and to ecourage the player to explore and uncover its stories, for they are ones worth being told.

I dont need to assume anything, I've seen every cut scene all the way up through the Savage Coast, I've participated in 3 betas and have seen all of them multiple times...they just aren't that necessary to become immersed, the landscape can do that all its own. I dont see how its some drastic leap in logic at all many of them boil down to "something strange is going on....we need to find out what it is" and of you go. Yes they sprinkle lore in there, so does SWTOR.

"the spotlight is on the locations, societies, histories and personalities of the world the PC inhabits" yea and SWTOR does the same thing, the Dromand Kaas storyline told through quest givers revolves around rebelling slaves at the Unfinished Colossus, the Dark Council and the many vendettas that they have against each other, Revan's cult the "Revanites", the Dark Temple and the long deceased sith lords who take over the minds of all who enter, Lord Grathan and his attempts to fight against the Dark Council. They even give you lore when you discover things of note, come on....

There is tons of lore and storyline all over SWTOR, if you don't want to read about the lore and immerse yourself then its more a matter of you not wanting to rather then there is none to do so with.

Eh, I don't like this post.

Found the story and the writing much more compelling in SW than TOR. To me the stories blended very well with the atmosphere. They added to the feeling, while in TOR too often it felt disconnected.

The NPC acting (gestures, moving, facing) is so much better too. TOR has better facial expresssions, and even...

There are two things I'd like them to improve in the future.

1) Too often the dialogs felt like a narration, not a discussion between our character and the NPC

2) The start and the ending of the dialogs need more smoothing in and out.

In short thumbs up!

Originally posted by dangle

I liked making decisions in SWTOR, and especially, making them in a group.

But overall I'm enjoying TSW cutscenes a lot more; mostly, as has been pointed out, because the script is much better.

This one...

I like how they implemented the story telling with VO cutscenes. The dont feel so generic like SWTORs, i actualy watch then and dont go for a coffee or a piss. Also they are only introducing main quests. I think they got the right balance. I think TSW is the second try of 'story-telling-mmos' and for that genre VO-Cutscenes will be pretty much the backbone. Opposed to your standart 'rush-and-flush' mmo (WoW,Tera, Rift...)

The Secret World's voice overs are great, very well done.

But they are nothing compared to The Old Republics, TSW or GW2 don't even come close to comparing to The Old Republics.

For a start there is no interaction with The Secret World's voice overs, which I consider a negative.

Secondly, your character never ever speaks, did the Bee's make everyone mutes? This ruins immersion for me.

Lastly, The Secret World has a more believable and straight forward script, but it lacks "epicness" which The Old Republic's was full of. I don't consider this a negative, but not a plus either, for either game. 

The Old Republic's voice over had you involved (even if most of the options led to the same outcome) and immersed, so does the voice overs from TSW, but not to the same extent, not even close.

Also The Old Republic incorparated group play into their voice overs, in The Secret World when you enter a voice over everyone around you just dissapears, including your group, which again ruins immersion somewhat.

So, I think The Old Republic's voice overs reign all over The Secret World's (and Guild Wars 2's) by a longshot. Voice overs were the only thing I really, really enjoyed in The Old Republic, I can name many, many more for TSW (and GW2.)

Just my two cents.

I agree with tsw having overall better vo's and cutscenes compared to swtor, even gw2 really. The fact your character  is mute i like since it gives the writer's the ability to flesh out more story, while you can rp how your character would react on your own, since really having several choices of repsonses to things in a cut-scene would take away alot of choice in how you can role play kinda your character. Like if you hade only thress opitions for responces it might actually have none that match your character's rp based personailty, where as being mute allows you as a player to insert your own responces for your character instead.

I think the acting is some of the best I have seen in an MMORPG..

I have probally gone through the kingsmouth stuff about 3-5 times now due to beta and i still dont mind watching it..

Now I only beta tested SWTOR but i fonud myself wantnig to skip everything even if ti was the first time i had seen it..

Originally posted by Atlan99

I'd say the voice-acting is on par with SWTOR.

I'd say the script for TSW is superior to SWTOR.

The reason the voice-acting sounds better in TSW all around is because they have a better script to work with imo.

The characters have more charcter in TSW.

this^

was saying to my friend yesterday that im enjoying the cutscenes and voice over so much more in tsw than i ever did in swtor. and im pretty sure that tsw voice actor budget was a fraction of swtor's

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Originally posted by Acvivm

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Originally posted by AtrusHomeboy

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Originally posted by Acvivm Not that the cutscenes for TSW are all that bad but in all honesty they just arent that necessary, you could skip them and you wouldn't be missing anything since there is no interaction or choices to be made.  

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You assume that because there is no interaction that there is nothing in the cutscenes worth hearing. That's a preeetty drastic leap in logic you're making, if not a flat out wrong assumption. The difference between SWTOR and TSW is that the story in SWTOR is centered around the player character, whereas in TSW the spotlight is on the locations, societies, histories and personalities of the world the PC inhabits - and what a strange and beautifully-crafted world it is! Approaching TSW as a personal epic is missing the entire point of the narrative: to further immerse you in the game world, and to ecourage the player to explore and uncover its stories, for they are ones worth being told.

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I dont need to assume anything, I've seen every cut scene all the way up through the Savage Coast, I've participated in 3 betas and have seen all of them multiple times...they just aren't that necessary to become immersed, the landscape can do that all its own. I dont see how its some drastic leap in logic at all many of them boil down to "something strange is going on....we need to find out what it is" and of you go. Yes they sprinkle lore in there, so does SWTOR.

"the spotlight is on the locations, societies, histories and personalities of the world the PC inhabits" yea and SWTOR does the same thing, the Dromand Kaas storyline told through quest givers revolves around rebelling slaves at the Unfinished Colossus, the Dark Council and the many vendettas that they have against each other, Revan's cult the "Revanites", the Dark Temple and the long deceased sith lords who take over the minds of all who enter, Lord Grathan and his attempts to fight against the Dark Council. They even give you lore when you discover things of note, come on....

There is tons of lore and storyline all over SWTOR, if you don't want to read about the lore and immerse yourself then its more a matter of you not wanting to rather then there is none to do so with.
 

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I always find these 'comparison' threads to be odd.

I like steak and pizza.

Do I always have to choose which one is 'better'? :(

I agree 100% with OP. I beta tested SWtOR and the thing that sent me away were the drawn out cutscenes. Now in TSW I love them. So I guess it just comes down to interest in the source material or lore.

Originally posted by SpottyGekko

 

Maybe I'm just not enough of a SW fan...

 

I found SWTOR's VO's and cutscenes very professionally done, but they never really grabbed me. It was almost as if they were too full of "epic" and ended up being lifeless and... sterile. And the "conversation options" tended to distract me, most likely because I was too focused on manipulating my dark/light ratings. Perhaps somehow the knowledge that my "answer" was only relevant to my alignment points made it all trivial.

 

I really feel that the voice acting in TSW is often better than in SWTOR. The dialogue is delivered with more emotion but less drama. There is no "epic" in TSW, it's just ordinary people talking. Perhaps it's because they are more gritty and real. If anything, the survivors in Kingsmouth could show a bit more terror, lol

 

I actually don't mind repeating quests in TSW, and I'm currently doing my second run through Kingsmouth. The XP is good, and the quests themselves are fun. I'm even happy to watch some of the cutscenes a second time, which is something I cannot say for SWTOR.

Somehow, the voice acting and cutscenes in TSW just feel a million times better than SWTOR, even though the cutscenes themselves are not technically as good. 

 Never in a million years would I have ever believed this to be the case. If someone would have made this statement as a prediction I probably would have mocked them to no end.

...and would be eating crow right now because amazingly I completely agree. Stunning that this game is leaps and bounds better in both vo and story than SWTOR. You couldn't pay me to go through those planet story lines again. In this game? I've started from scratch every time and enjoyed it.

What i really really like is rhe game approach to the story. I like the 'you are one of the many others around' that came out of the cutscenes. sure star wars voceovers and cutscenes are sure goid. As personal taste i prefer TSW approach. Make me feel more part of the game world not being THE ONE or THE ONLY SAVIOUR of the world. I find both games deliver good curxcenes, just for me the TSW theme is the preferred one.

I think the story here is better than most (Imp Agent is quite good) in SWTOR.  Voice acting is on-par and sometimes better.

If they didn't have the annoying problem of my character not speaking or showing ANY emotion, the cutscenes in TSW would DOMINATE over SWTOR (except for the excellently done Imp Agent).

I love the TSW monologue.

Originally posted by Enigmatus

 

What annoys me about the "MY CHARACTER IS THE ONLY ONE WHO MATTERS" mentality that rojo6934 is touting is that THIS IS AN MMO!

MMOs by nature already make you a one out of hundreds of thousands of people, so your personal importance in the grand scheme of things is pretty much nonexistent.

You are an average joe, that random guy down the street, a nobody, in the MMO universe.

if you read my comment again you notice i did not say "my character is the only one who matters"......

i said its the most important. Why? because thats the only character that YOU as a player is rolling and building through the story of the game and the progression overall. Theres no question about it.

Yes you are right that the main character is just another random dude in the game because its massively multiplayer. But you are just playing 1 toon that interacts with the entire world... your own created avatar so thats your most important part of the game. Actually whats more annoying is the fact that developers make a game with in depth story and where everyone can talk, except the player. Thats plain lazy. Give voice overs to everyone or dont add VO at all. For that reason i skipped all cinematics in TSW beta weekends and actually read the quest box instead.

I want to hear my character speaking with npcs, not just looking around like muted dumbbutts while the npcs are talking to themselves..... specially since TSW is a dang realistic modern day mmo. Plain lazy devs

EDIT: when i say lazy devs im refering to every developer that does that.

I have to agree that TSW's are worlds better than SWTOR.  SWTOR you did end up just wanting to skip them all.  Every cutscene in TSW I get excited to watch because I know I'm going to meet some incredibly memorable character and hear a great script.  As someone mentioned previously, there are a bunch of really great lines in TSW that you end up laughing at or just thinking they were clever.

"...all those hours spent playing Left 4 Dead and they still won't let me use a gun!"

"...they're interested in your kind of talent.  F-ing stuff up."

"You never saw this in any of the cop shows...well, maybe on cable.  Not the network ones."

"I won't tell you Kingsmouth was a slice of heaven in a snowglobe..."

Like others, I don't mind watching the scenes again, they're really well VO'd and present information about the game in a really engaging way.  I've never felt so involved in a game's lore and story before as TSW without even trying.

There are huge differences within TOR when it comes to voicework and storytelling quality. Between Republic and Empire (Empire wins out by far) and between different classes: the Trooper story really flatlined after Act 1 for me, while the Bounty Hunter and Smuggler kept up being awesome to the end.

Several of the more run-of-the-mill world quests are also of poor quality in TOR, the alien dialogue in particular got really annoying.

As for TSW, I only  have limited Beta experience, but the dialogue didn't appeal to me at all. It was well done, well written, but in almost every conversation I felt like "Oh come on, no one is ever going to talk like that to another person", it always seemed like the characters were describing something in an excessive "shakespeare" kind of way, instead of actually talking to you.

An exception would be certain of the Illuminati NPC's, I really enjoyed some of those.