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.

Absolutely. Sometimes I just find myself in a mood to just play a nice quiet relaxing adventure game where there is no chattering or loud noises. Rather a nice calm time after a hectic day.

Hi

Something to consider might be that the "developer" is a newie and so possibly can't afford to give us an all singin' all dancin' "everything" game first time around ??
[I've no idea how these things are costed up.]

But if we all buy the game - thus giving financial as well as moral encouragement - maybe next time round we WILL get voices ??

Just a thought
[One of those few rare ones

I am playing Divine Divinity right now and it has a mix of text and voice and it took me awhile to slow down and read the text but now I am use to it. I did think in the beginning my game was broke when it was just text so you may want to explain that right up front to players. I am very curious to play Marrowind and see what it is like to play an all text game.

I have grown very fond of music and ambient sounds and things like different foot falls in different terrain.

I like the quiet Myst type games but lately have been playing 3erd person games and getting use to the chattering, in which case I always have both voice and subtitles on. I use the subtitles to catch dialog that is slurred or hard to understand.

Black Mirror was almost ruined for me because of the bad voice acting but then I got used to it and just considered the main guy to be a little slooow and socially inadept and it worked for me.

Well enough babbling

Since you talked about text and voices that focused my thoughts to that alone. However, I have enjoyed games in which there was essentially no interaction with other characters, except in a few video clips, and in which one wandered about exploring the location and working puzzles. Examples would be MYST and SHIVERS. There was, however scene music which, if well done, makes the game even more enjoyable. I sometimes returned to SHIVERS just to catch the "room music" again.

That doesn't mean there can't be quite a bit of text to read, but it is text found in documents, books, notes, etc., but not text as conversation, although that wouldn't necessarily deter me if there weren't a great deal of it.

I would certainly play a game with just text and no voices, after all that is what games were like when I started playing

And judging by how busy the 'trading post' is, with people searching for older games, I suspect a lot of gamers would

I recently played 'Other Worlds' that was text and no voices, but I really enjoyed it, as long as it is a good story, it doesn't bother me

Sue