That's wrong! Just because they make the protagonist silence don't mean we would have more NPC dialogues...

.. then where would all the resources go that would otherwise have been used to give the protagonist a voice?

If you have a voiced protagonist, you need to make sure every line they have is voiced. Both male and female. If you don't have a voiced protagonist, only the NPC lines need to be voiced.

It obviously costs more time and money to make sure all those protagonist lines are voiced, so there are going to less of them than there would be if the protagonist were silent.

Not really.

if they didn't have a voiced protag planned in the first place, then their budget would have been smaller to account for that, and we would have just gotten the same number of NPC lines, but now there are no voiced PC lines.

Yeah it's majorly wonky to assume cutting dialogue from a voiced PC automatically translates into more voiced lines for NPCs. There was a similar discussion at the BSN about the inclusion of MP, people thought that that money could be utilized better for the SP but it turned out they're two completely different budgets. MP gets a budget and SP gets a budget, it's not like a lump sum the devs then can choose to utilize wherever. If MP were not included that money would not then be folded into SP. It would simply not be there. I'm thinking that's probably the same thing that's happening here yeah? Voiced protag is something new so Beth gets a higher VO budget (or an entirely separate one) to compensate for it, if there was no voiced protag you'd still wind up with more or less the same amount of lines spoken by NPCs.

No, the budget wouldn't have been smaller. They would just have spent more money to enhance other areas of the game. They came to the conclusion that Fallout 4 was likely going to earn them X, so they budgeted around X. Even without a voiced protagonist, X would be the same, or close to it.

Think of it this way: They commit to hiring the voice talent for a certain number of weeks [could be a lot of weeks, but the voice artists might have other jobs commitments. Bethesda's time is finite].

A voiced protagonist imposes a fixed script where the writers have scripted entire conversations and the sound crew records those component lines from each character. This work is now set in stone, without additional sessions.

The two that voice the PC are like a conversation hub... everyone talks to them, and they talk to everyone. If a later change to the game/quest/ or conversation requires that the PC must say something new, then they have to record additional dialog to reflect that change; that means a new [unexpected] session with the male & female character voice artists; who may or may not be available for that, depending on schedule.
(What's likely, is that either they originally scheduled a touch up session for the final wrap up for the game, and any new lines get added to the list for this last session; or the game script gets locked once they have all the lines.)

If it's locked, then they cannot add quests where the PC says any new lines, If they come up with something cool, but unsupported by the voice assets ~they probably don't use it; it costs money to add the voice assets.

Now... For a non voiced PC, with one sided verbal exchanges with NPCs, they can dedicate the entire recording session to the content and quest concepts... Those 26,000 lines mentioned would have not been studio time spent on recording responses to NPCs; they would have been NPC lines to the player/PC. 26,000 additional lines about quests and characterization. More things to do, and more personality for the NPCs. That's just benefit #1.
Benefit #2, is that they are not tied to the PC's voice assets for creating new content during development. If at any time the developers realize something new and cool to add; or a twist to existing content that would make it better, they can add it... Worst case they can sit in the recording studio themselves and say the lines they need, and it's done... The PC's dialog ~no matter how effusive or complicated, can just be typed up, and it's done.; costs them nothing.
As I recall... That's how we got "Gary?... GARY!.... GAAARRRY"

There is a trick that the Fallout 1&2 developers used for their voiced NPCs. They recoded a line that said, (more or less) "Speak with my assistant, about that". This let them add whatever they wished later, and it had the main voice talent reference it. They employed this in NCR with Tandi, and in the Hub with Butch, and with Loxely to name three. Loxely would refer the PC to Jasmine for missions, and Jasmine could say whatever they liked, because she was unvoiced. But in a voiced game like FO4, a Jasmine could have been voiced by any session artist , or a developer themselves; or a family member... The way the baby was done in FO3.

In general the non-voiced PC leads to a far more flexibly developed title. The only downside is ... those players that only accept what they see and hear.
*It's why the pipboy is seen as a teleporter.

But if you want too add a new quest after the recording... you need new recordings for the NPCs too. Not only for the PC.

This is mentioned more than once in my post, no?

Ok... the logic is still horrible. I see where you're getting to. But there's a hole in the argument that's large enough to fit the moon.

You are saying that 26,000 lines of dialogue would have gone to the NPCs to quote on quote "Make a better game" if they did not have voiced protagonist.
That alone could be sound... but you are assuming that if they didn't have the voiced protagonist, then they would have just used the resources saved up for more lines to NPC dialogue.

They could just as easily just throw away the idea of using that extra 26,000 lines of dialogue to do something else with the resources other than voicing more characters. Or just nothing at all. These two are more likely than voicing more NPCs.

Don't take this the wrong way, but...
I think this is just irrational reasoning from the dislike of a voiced protagonist... supplemented by the need to find a reason to convince others why it shouldn't happen. No matter how senseless the reason is.
I am still having problems in trying to understand the logic you're using, and the real-world case.

Well... it costs money to do anything anyways. For a large business that wanted to do something new with Fallout, they took the risk. Given the Game Studio's experience, and the experience of all it's developers, I'd say to trust their judgment and hope for the best.

They wanted to improve the story, and the mood of the wasteland, so they voiced the protagonist. And people took it personally.

Well you never really had much of a freedom of choice in the end. THere were only a handful of cases in 3 and NV where your choice mattered. But for the most part, everything you say or do pretty much leads to the same outcome. You just had choice in how to solve the mission. Via Shotgun, or cloak and dagger.

Voicing the character is pretty much nothing compared to the six different options you've had to say to one single outcome.

Yes it would have.

Why on earth would they have been given an equally large budget for a game with less content in it?

That isn't how budgeting works anywhere.

When capturing audio for voice acting ... they over do the amount needed while their in the studio. Sort of like in photography how they will shoot a few rolls of film to get 5 usable pictures. And besides specific content long lines (done multiple ways) ... they do a lot of versatile usable short phrases.

Plus with the magic of editing software ... you can cut and splice all kinds of new lines together.

Of course there would be multiple voice acting sessions in stages. But the protag dialogue compared to the NPC's for time & resources is going to be fairly small.

The story gets written , then made into a screen play , then screen tested with live people sitting around with scripts.

Then added into the game when it has atleast a functional render capacity. (still text)

Then gone over a few times for flow , probably with people saying the lines live as it renders.

Then the chosen voice actors go to a sound studio ... and it goes from there.

So in essence adding the protag voice never takes away from the creativity ... it simply gives more people jobs.

You can't shoe horn art ... it simply is good or not.

I agree.

And this is what makes me sad.

I've done that before, on my own projects... But you can only go so far, and it's still studio time with the sound engineer.

Distilled to its base essence... A conversation that requires a specific voice actor, as opposed to just any voice actor; imposes greater restrictions than one that does not.
It is that they are on the hook for providing the known voice (x2), that imposes the difficulties. If the late, but neat idea involves the PC(s) reciting part of the Gettysburg Address, they are not going to splice that together, they are just going to discard the idea ~unless it's feasible to record another session.

Take the *Gettysburg Address* to mean any specialized or complex dialog; and not 20 variations on "Yep", and spliced 'Maybe's.

Because they would have found other content to put in it.

Or they actually limited content from other areas in order to fit in a voiced protagonist. Normally they might have gone with six responses for the player character, but since they decided to shoot for a voiced protagonist, they might have settled with four. That means we lost two.

That's literally not how game development works at all.

And while we may only have 4 response per option, we could have twice as many conversations as past games, meaning we gained a lot more total conversation options then in past games.

So approx 15% of Skyrim's total dialogue lines account for our player voiced lines? Pretty impressive.

I wonder how many Skyrim players [on PC], recorded their own dragon shouts for their character?

To be clear on something ... I was not in favor of a voiced PC. But its just not a logical argument to make post-production , with us having no Idea at this point on how its going to play out. So far all we can really say , is it looks to be an attempt to minimize the text box impact of dialogue to the Players immersion , which is what they are showing off . IMO ... it's a no brainer that there will be some option to read dialogue.

Do you mean... buying more paint (studio-time)?

I'll give you a better one: You can mix your own colors with a primary set, but you cannot mix colors that are unique pigments. You cannot mix 'Manganese blue'.
(You cannot mix complex dialog.)

*BTW, how are the temps° on the Best Bank today?

Having a voiced protagonist is certainly a matter of personal taste but I don't think Bethesda had that much choice in the matter.

You have to figure they are budgeting this as a AAA game and hoping to do even better than Skyrim's 20 Million sales.

Since Skyrim was released 4 years ago, there are certain new expectations/standards for a AAA game like having a voiced protagonist.

If you want a AAA budget for Fallout 4 then you have to expect that some of that budget will be going towards meeting AAA expectations.

So I don't think the voice acting budget would have been nearly as large without a voiced protagonist.

And you have to admit that a really well done voiced protagonist does a lot to enhance the story.

You certainly get more back and forth when both the protagonist and the NPCs are voiced acted.

And they have been doing the voice work for over two year now instead of cramming it all in the last six months or so like most game do.

They even talked about how the protagonist voice actors were able to get deeper in to the role as things went on.

The protagonist voice actors are still at work and they have to already be contacted to do the DLC.

All that voice work and lines of dialog really backs up the "Fallout 4's narrative has a lot more branching paths and overlapping of "if that than this" than Fallout 3." quote.

So I expect that the Voice Acting will be very well done.

This is one of the best signs I've seen that they are trying to make Fallout 4 more than just a good FPS.

As far as I can tell... All that AAA means, or indicates, is the amount spent on advertising it. (And connotations of diluted gameplay)

No thats not exactly what I meant , but sorry ... I see how my meaning got all mixed up with the cutting/splicing being mentioned in our convo.

The point is , they had this idea to paint a picture ... And having a voiced protag is like saying they wanted to add clouds to that picture this time.

So just because they bought the various shades of white to do that ... does not mean it took away from how they utilize the colors in the pre-packaged set they had already bought. They simply said we are spending more money this time.

Of course there is limitations on mixing colors (splicing voice files) But the fact still remains , it is a possibility to do it. And with your ultimate goal in mind ... why would you not still be able to go to the paint store if need be.

Not that there would not be complex additions to dialogue later ... but I'm willing to bet its all been written and gone over long before the voice actor hits the studio. If the writer is still writing that late in the game , they probably better get a new writer. And ultimately you can keep adding , polishing forever ... but the line has to be drawn somewhere to get it packaged and out the door.

Ya Beth is not the greatest at story telling ... Like Rockstar for example. But I'm willing to bet they have done a better job than last time.

Edit: Oh ya ... weather just got cooler ... Is it raining over there ... not here yet.

Best Bank ???? LOL I can't say I heard it called that yet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_(video_game_industry)

"In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced "triple A") is a classification term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion. A title considered to be AAA is therefore expected to be a high quality game and to be among the year's bestsellers"

For a lot of AAA games that is very true.

Some how I don't think Bethesda will have to spend the majority of their budget on hyping Fallout 4.

Also the game play is usually only diluted as far as being made for the console players first and ported over to PC.

A major problem for PC players, but a fact of life if you want to play a AAA game with a AAA development budget.

And not that much of a problem if the developers properly support the modding community like Bethesda.

Fallout 3 sold 4.7 million in the first couple of months.

Skyrim sold 20 million in the first couple of months.

The Skyrim budget was 80 million and had sales of 1.2 billion.

ZeniMax Media wants to make money.

A lot of money, so they are going to put even more in to Fallout 4 hoping to get even more back.

But as I said before that means they are going to require that Fallout 4 meets certain AAA game expectations.

Bethesda wants to make an awesome Fallout game and hopefully has the track record that ZeniMax has pried open the pocket book and got the hell out of their way.

Perhaps a better way to say it, is that I want to see what Bethesda can do for Fallout with a budget that is even larger than Skyrim's (less not having to develop a new game engine).

And it sounds like Fallout 4 will have way more dialog than Skyrim or Fallout 3, be a good shooter, and have a way lot more of the wish list items that Fallout fans have been asking for than I expected to see.

Plus a well supported modding community that will now reach even the console players.

Anyway it looks good so far, and if the story telling is as good or better than Fallout NV then I'm going to be a very happy player.

I wouldn't get your hopes that high. Obsidian are some of the best writers in the business, while BGS are...not.

On the main topic, I'd be surprised if we got as many dialogue options as in 3, let alone as much as in NV.

There will probably be a noticeable amount more than 3. If the game has more than 20 quests there will probably be more than 3. New Vegas had a ton, so I doubt it will beat that.