Suggestion: soldier talk

(I thought I saw a pussycatthread about it some time ago, but now I can’t find it)

I guess there will be some voice acting for the soldiers, similar to the FXCom “hits”, “misses” and “grenade” action commentary.
But I was wondering if we could have some additional contextual dialogues (or “thoughts”) for our soldiers, to perceive them more like living beings. But not audio chatting but rather text bubbles that sometimes appear over soldier’s head every few turns.

Some other game inspirations:

  • Dragon Age Origins - has a lot of dialogues when party members start to chat with each other, joke or argue, which gives them some personality, makes them more believable - of course Phoenix Point is not RPG and I don’t expect this kind of scope, just bringing this as a illustration of “making the player care for his characters”;
  • Darkest Dungeon - has just the short text bubbles appearing over characters, mostly concerning their mental health and stress level changes, with negative/positive perks triggering, damage dealt/received or visiting various town facilities, however this simple method introduces an interesting feedback where game characters comment about the things that happen to them just like a real person would.

How I see this could work in PP?
Because this is a “gimmick” and not an important feature, it should be a non-intrusive text popup that appears only for a few seconds and happen not more than every few turns/minutes just as a visual effect in the background of playing the mission, without the need of moving camera, pausing or confirming anything.

Soldiers can react in a different way depending on the situation, so we may have some groups or categories for it:

  • Mission location:
    – “I wish I could travel here before the invasion”, “This place has changed… a lot”, etc.
  • Soldier specific:
    – “My family uset to live nearby”, “I’ve been stationed here before the war”, etc.
  • Close environment:
    – “Let’s grab those supplies”, “I think I knew this guy”, etc.
  • Combat related:
    – “Too far for a headshot, rookie”, “Watch out for that grenadier”, etc.
  • Hints for the player:
    – “Better shred that armor with a grenade”, “Let’s flank it from the side”, etc.
  • Lore related:
    – “I heard this virus is thousands of years old”, “So those Anu guys have a way to control it?”, etc.

For sure I don’t want this to happen too often and get annoying, but in small amounts it could be an interesting layer in the game.

2 Likes

It’s always a risky thing as some longer comments would quickly become repetitive and annoying. On the other hand I would like to hear my soldiers - not only their screams of pain but maybe also some warcries and command confirmations, some observation or health statements. I think it is nicely resolved in both XCOMs. Also I like loadout and ship-base narratives in XCOMs, too. It gives depth to the game and isn’t intrusive at all, and for those who don’t like it can be interrupted/toggled off.

3 Likes

This can really improve a game and some of the ideas above may work. Older, 2d fallout games had a lot of non voiced comments displayed as one walked around.

In any case, assuming that work on voice acting can’t be too extensive, a good thing to bear in mind that voice packs are quite popular in moddable games. If the dev team can make voice packs easy to integrate, you at least have decent building blocks for community improvement.

It will cost a lot of workhours, i’d rather see allocated to core features bugs, to implement, maybe a future dlc, but definitely not in core.

1 Like

I agree there are more important things to implement but expecting voices in core game isn’t something unusual. Expecting them to be added later in DLC is.

I think that standard voice acting will be implemented in core game, but this contextual messages… not really. Maybe in predefined missions, but not in those random.

I have being playing the Backer Build for around 10 minutes and i can totally get behind this suggestion, without “soilders talk” the game feels so lifeless, i relly hope they put this in the final build of the game, also trash talking the aliens is a perk i can really enjoy in repetitive playthrough, if not at least can we add a mod for it if the developers can’t aford some good voice acting for the soldiers ?.

in “SomeOtherGame” - DLC Legacy Pack, i had a fun time just becouse bradford talking in the mission camping and the soilders interactions with things happening in the map, yeah i know we are just months away from the release but i relly hope the surprice us with this feature.

Best regards.