Thread: Epic, Why did you gag the characters? **Epic's Complete Explanation**

I had to bring this up again because I can't identify with the characters. The more I play, the more the dead silence is killing me. There was so much fun dialog in Gears 2 and the beta that right now Gears 3 has lost what I can only describe as "it's verbally aggressive edge". The players in campaign are witty and funny, to turn around and gag them on dedicated servers in multiplayer makes them well.....boring. It loses it's tough edge; this edge is one of the reasons that kept me coming back to the game, it's like you took away the grittiness and their personality out of the multiplayer. Hearing them taunt players verbally or say something funny IS part what made this game fun to come back to. To only really hear the characters yelling out "arrggghhh" when chainsawing someone or yelling when they need help or some small repetitive lines is just plain boring. The only time I hear some real dialog is between rounds when we're praised or yelled at, or when the queen yells out like shes having a orgasm. "YES...YES...YES!!"

You toned down Anya too much, Cole was that loud aggressive player and now for the most part is a mute and this seems like what I can only call a "glitch". All except Griffen are pretty quite. We need to fix this problem and bring the game back to life on Verses public matches. It's weird that the beginning of CTL the leaders are mutes waving there arms to attack now LOL


Question For a Q&A on this subject:

The servers have glitched the BATTLE CRIES and OVERALL QUOTES .

When you play on P2P (Private matches or OFF SERVERS) Characters quote everything, such as when Baird spawns "See you in hell!" and Doms "So which one of you wanted to see some action for a change!?".

Will you fix or be fixing this problem with the one liners??

Here are a few examples in a video posted by Bushido to show you what you don't hear when in public matches online:
>>>CLICK HERE<<<

Here are some of those quotes also posted by Bushido:
Checkout Round 2 "Come on while where're young"! Baird
Checkout Round 3 "It's **** kicking time" Dom
Checkout Round 4 "Awhh yeahh let's Dance!" Baird

Thrashball Round 2 "Ha ha ha now the fun begins!" Marcus
Thrashball Round 3 "Uh huu I'm locked and loaded" Cole Train
Thrashball round 4 "Attack!!!!" Hoffman

Trenches Round 2 "remember what we're fighting for soldier everybody is counting on you!!" Hoffman
Trenches Round 3 "Here they come!!! watch your back!!!" Dom

Azura Round 2 "Let's get these pieces of ****" Dom
Azura Round 4"So which idiot said he wanted to see some action for a change?" Dom

LOCUST

Blood Drive Round 2 "for RAAM!!" Theron Elite
Blood Drive Round 4 "For the Horde!!" Grenadier

In this second video by Bushido when the match first starts you hear a battle cry not said while on servers

>>Click Here<<

Waffle Melon heard Sam say "the b*tch is back" in private matches but not during versus for so some reason.

Dr Venkman did a test and had this to say:

Originally Posted by Dr Venkman

I actually dd some testing a few days ago on Baird as he's the most silent. I tested all three character skins, normal, classic and mechanic on private games, p2p horde and ranked on dedicated servers.

Classic Baird is much more vocal for some reason on both p2p and ranked but there are still some quotes that just wont be said mainly " Lobotomized!" and " Little of the top there, sorry about that!" for head shots and some dialogue is being used for wrong things like getting an active reload he'll say " Come to Papa " but also says this when picking up a meat shield.

Also i have yet to hear him say either of the following when meat shielding.

"This won't hurt, you'll just die" - picking up
"It was a pleasure doing with business with you." releasing

Please Epic sort this out.

It also seems your new DLC characters don't have much to say online either:

Originally Posted by Chrizz

Today when i was playing horde. My character "Valera" dindt say ****. only uh.......... uh.... when bouncing walls... not even screaming when dies.
On private offline she rapes my ears with her orgasms and awesome quotes...

Originally Posted by BlueDodger

Headshots Locust: "Bu-bye" Love that. [...]

Originally Posted by Tonck1

Ive noticed Barrick has started to say that.. Recycled lines are not good! Also he uses one of Marcus' lines "This'll do" and he sounds like an old man saying it :/

More lines not said while on servers post by Crimson Ninja:

Originally Posted by Crimson Ninja

Here's a few lines I found in custom that I've never heard on servers.

Good news, you're sanitized! - Cole
Well you're the one with the death wish. - Sam
Aww where did he go? - Sam
Rest in pieces! - Dom
Time to earn it. - Sam
C'mon damn it, knock it off! - Carmine
Suffer b*tch! - Carmine
You have a nice sleep now. - Kim
Useless meat! - SGE
You gotta small head, why's it in the way? - Sam
BOOOOM! - Sam (it might be "burn" i cant tell with the accent)
Oh one for the album. - Sam
C'mon don't make me beg, f*cking die! - Sam
C'mon you know you wanna die. - Sam
I'm afraid this one is gone. - Cole
Walking sack of sh*t! - Anya

With characters across the board not saying much or saying stuff that has nothing to do with what's happening I think there is a definite issue. I also have a feeling there are some more hidden gems we may have not heard. Please Epic fix this problem.

Epic complete Answer

Originally Posted by Entropy

I appreciate everyone's opinions here, if for no other reason that it's great to see how connected you feel to the characters and world we've created. As a developer, that's a rare and special feeling. Without writing a huge wall of text to try and explain, I would just like to point out that this issue is nowhere near as simple as most of you make it out. The GUDS (the system that controls all the talking) is pretty darned complicated to be honest, so my previous post was really just trying to give you the simplest explanation without going into the technical details of how it works and why we made the tradeoffs we did.

(Briefly...)There is texture memory, and system memory. There are perfomance hits to streaming more dialogue from the disk, and how each sound call conflicts with all the particle fx, animations, and gameplay things that are happening at any given moment during a game. There are gameplay issues surrounding how often and under what circumstances people talk. There are rules about audio ducking, and dealing with gunfire and ambient audio. There are ESRB concerns and fiction to be maintained. There are rules for separate gameypes, and differences between SP and MP. There are rules about rules, and contingencies on top of contingencies.

Easer eggs don't affect this, adding more character options to the game doesn't affect this, giving you more weapon skins does not affect this. Memory concerns are not an excuse, they are a very, very real issue that dramatically affects game development, and its not something we can just "patch" and make go away. And, yes, there are people who already think our characters talk too much. Lastly, I should point out that the above are just some of the design-side concerns - I could go on for pages about the technical side of the issue as well.

And trust me when I say that I 100% feel your pain - I wrote a good portion of those lines myself and I personally set up each and every character in the game, making line selections, doing my best to bring out each character's personality, adjusting which lines were relevant, pushing for more variety when I could, and actively working to get as much as I could out of the system.

Anyway, the short story is in my previous post, and like I said, I'm ecstatic to see that people care because improving this system is one of my personal missions moving forward with new games and new hardware. I wish you all could have seen (and maybe some of you remember) the rage about chatter and taunts when we were working on the Unreal franchise. The Gears system is a significant step forward, and like everything else, we're always working hard to improve our systems. Hopefully, the next one will be even better!

My Reply

Originally Posted by CGOWAddict

Well that's all I wanted to hear, I can accept things as long as someone is willing to 5 minutes out to explain. In all actuality most people here will let things rest if someone there is willing to pop in, not to answer everything all the time like a Q&A (God forbid SOS reply would take all year LOL ) but just say somethings on big concerns we as a community have. I really do appreciate you taking time out to explain this to us. I'm hoping in the future there is a way found to take care of this, but for now I'm really glad to hear from someone at Epic. Thank you very, very much!

I'm glad somebody else feels this way. I'm with you, the silence is killing me!

Cant say ive noticed in MP!

Although in Beast mode i knew Cole was shooting at me with the Boomshot coz he gave his position away with his "Wooooooo" then i destroyed him

dude what game are you playing? Cole is always screaming something if you play as him, and so is everyone else, miss an active and they ALWAYS say something about it, get a headshot and 50% of the time they say the headshot line *of that character* turn ur speakers up, they yell out things a lot, target somebody they yell it out, and even in horde they say what type of locust it is and everything, very detailed stuff. I have to disagree, sometimes I feel like they are talking too much, I love Cole but dude hes always screaming stuff during a match lol try out superstar cole, he talks the most.

Mimes of War 3?

No but I agree it's a bit too quiet.

Originally Posted by Blazman83

Cant say ive noticed in MP!

Although in Beast mode i knew Cole was shooting at me with the Boomshot coz he gave his position away with his "Wooooooo" then i destroyed him

yeah that too, Cole screams wooooooooooooooo every time he shoots boomshot in Beast lol its sooo annoying after awhile. but it seems like this time around, they made the characters vocal according to important in game actions, like I said if u miss an active reload, they always say it so ppl know and might rush u.

quite = to preclude or describe

quiet = silent, lacking sound

your post is confusing.

Griffen is always talking s**t

I agree, can we have more lines?

Originally Posted by purple rayne

agreed. She's arguably the dullest character in the game now.

"Enemy Forces!"

Agree - I would LOVE more chatter. It's what gives the game personality over other shooters.

The problem is we don't have Tai anymore. No one asks the Locust if they're "suckers" and if they "like dying".

I don't really see a big problem with it, but I wouldn't mind if they upgraded.

I agree. Griffin gets tons of things to say, the others? Not so much.

Originally Posted by Savage taco

its a game live with it or play pus*y CoD

o_O????

The characters I use seem quite vocal, haven't paid to much attention though tbh.

I agree, no one says anything except Griffin.

Originally Posted by mvviking71

Griffen is always talking s**t

I take it so personally when griffen kills me, he talks so much trash.

Since they brought in these new people, Delta has lost its personality. Marcus was straight forward, Dom was always joking, Cole was up himself and loved himself and Baird was cocky and sarcastic. Now Sam and Jace have those personalities and it doesn't feel right. And Anya, Sam, Jace and Dom's dialog was really really really dumb. Like Dom's "Or we can cancel our reservation with GasBag Airways!". Also, the bright, colourful Gears doesn't make it feel gritty, more like Epic showing off the UT3's lighting effects. Like, Bulletstorm looked better anyways.

I enjoyed the constant chatter in Gears 1. What happened to 'Suck it! Suck it!!'. All I hear is Griffin saying something.

I play as Sam because I like her as a character and I feel that she talks more often than most of them. I could be wrong, and she has a serious lack of lines so she repeats the same stuff often (for example she only ever says "I love it when they do that" when you get headshots in my experience), but it's nice to not run around feeling like my character is a mime or something.

war is not for censored ears. they should always be talkin crap about the locust and vice-versa in battle

I'm glad you made this thread. Baird needs all his old school lines back in full force! I rarely hear them anymore.

Maybe after fighting for some time it's just tedious and they just want to get S**t done?

Yes I agree the characters need to start saying more stuff.

Has anyone else noticed that the characters rarely vary what they say even when they do talk?

lol ahahahahahahahah

Originally Posted by vVv Fang vVv

Has anyone else noticed that the characters rarely vary what they say even when they do talk?

yeah. sometimes they say the exact same thing over and over. its incredibly frustrating and annoying.

Originally Posted by JezuzGumball

yeah. sometimes they say the exact same thing over and over. its incredibly frustrating and annoying.

With Baird, ive heard "lobotomized!", "i really like that, id like to keep doing that.", and "so good i should charge admission!" once each. I've heard "Mmmm....juicy!" countless times. And im still yet to hear "eat sh*t and die!!"

Is there anyone out there that plays as Baird thats had better luck than me in hearing these lines?