Seriously? Voice acting ups a game by millions?

Kind of in the 'Things they'll believe' basket.

Reading on another blog I hear a repetition of the idea that voice acting, even 40 novels worth of voice acting, upped the cost of SWTOR to 300 million dollars?

Now, I'm not saying it'd be free. But even one million dollars for some studio sound work?

I think this goes along with how many mmorpg gamers seem to believe it costs vast sums to run a mmorpg and that any tiny change is moon landing in difficulty to perform.

But I dunno, does voice acting cost that much? I recently heard of a guy who hired the narrator from a game to record some voice work for his wedding. It's not crazy expensive - and I don't think SWTOR is using actual actors for its voice work?

I think there's a culture out there that hears '40 novels of voice acting' and thinks this must be like building the pyramids or running a moon landing?

Thoughts : Just Cause

Either he's in freefall, or he is the size of a skyscraper...you decide!

I played through 'Just Cause' recently after buying it on budget. Few - at first it seemed pretty aweful - the cars drove like wet soap on a tile floor and enemies maybe chipped off a tiny sliver of health? But then the difficulty ramped up, and I enjoyed taking over towns, much like I enjoyed it in GTA San Andreas. The way to really feel the texture of a game world isn't to look at it, but to fight over it :)

It still seems a pretty clumsy effort though - in looking at Just Cause 2 videos, the first Just Cause seems almost like a practice run or rough draft.

I also picked up Batman: Arkham Asylum on budget. Wow, that's a polished game. Also pushing the specs on my computer, which doesn't get fed the newest, make money for the corporations, graphics cards/motherboards/memory.