I think my favorite was the bar patron [in Klamoth] that offers to teach the PC magic spells.

It makes sense to view Fallout 4 as a response to Skyrim

(and the limited commentary from Bethesda backs that us.)

Skyrim was very successful, but despite elements of god-hood, the dovahkiin was a bland protagonist.

With a step away from blandness comes the risk that not everyone likes what is presented, but there it is...

I can't imagine the voice being mutable because Bethesda obviously thinks that all the hip cool games have voiced protagonists, daddy-o, and they wouldn't spend all that time and money working with voice actors if they were just going to let you play the old way. It would speak of a lack of confidence in their decision.

As for predefining the PC's personality, I think that is a step too far. Your background does have an impact on your sensibilities and personality, but I don't think that is the same as squeezing you into a predefined character. I think both the LW and C6 were good examples of that. They both had definite backgrounds, but you still had a lot of freedom determining what kind of person they were.

The Dovahkiin had a voice. Hell, they had The Voice, the Thu'um, and they still came off as bland. Proof that giving the protagonist a voice doesn't necessarily mean they are an interesting character.

I think it's better to focus on the writing. Strong voice acting can save bad writing, but that rarely happens. On the other hand, bad voice acting can damn good writing, and I think that happens fairly often.

If the writing is terrific, pretty much every other concern is reduced.

Here's to that...

I doubt this was ever a topic of discussion in a conference room at Bethesda HQ.

They've been running the silent protagonist shindig for 6+ games now, and each iteration has outsold each other. I believe it has more to do with trying something new.

This is an major concern for me too, looking as the Oblivion and later PC gui i have reason for my concern.

Now I have an naga mouse and could easy map the 4 buttons to numerical key 1-4 on the mouse assuming they can be mapped.

There are degrees of this, and Fallout was always less defined; not like Witcher or Planescape. Characters did have fixed origins, and assumed social upbringing and education, but the rest was generally up to the player. FO4 is quite a divergence.

Todd's comments about how if it wasn't a game made by their studio, customers would just expect a voiced protagonist makes it sound like their decision is at least partially informed by a "Everyone else is doing it" argument.

Fair enough; I still doubt it.

Nothing is known of dovahkiin before the carriage ride.

Neither six nor race (species) This is the essence of all TES games.

In short they can not make an backstory past the basic, you was captured by the imperials somehow at the time they took Ulfric.

Fallout have an more set character backstory.

EDIT: Wrong Thread.

"Ya, most of what you said is just difference of opinion." Sorry, I can see how that came off as an argument or accusation. I just meant to point it out as a segue into my larger point at hand. I will say this: if Beth doesn't dramatically restructure conversations and add a ton of contextual choices, the dialogue wheel will be a failure, and I think you are very justified to worried about its execution. The difference of opinion that I have with a ton of people here is that I don't believe dialogue got neutered just because it got converted into a wheel-like system, but I fully acknowledge it can svck if Beth doesn't do it right.

This. I hope they didn't sacrifice resources and budget that would've gone into more interactive content. Personally, I'd rather have the traditionally silent protagonist. So I get superior immersion like the vanilla inclusion of an IMCN/Project Nevada nutrition overhaul of hardcoe food/nutrition, water, sleep, and temperature.

And because I'm an immersion gamer, then yes--I'd like to see a vanilla addition of a climate affecting character needs vanilla feature. I.e the likes of Chesko's brilliant Frostfall mod for Skyrim. Combine this with a personal needs mod the likes of Toilet Paper mod in both FO3 & FONV + IMCN/Project Nevada + Battlefield & Injuries mod (in Skyrim) and the gaming Immersion would be perfect.

Because I want my char do get dirty and have to bathe, do #1 & #2 on a regular basis. And soil themself if they can't find a urinal, bathroom with an unruined toilet nearby. Or fail to stoop/squat to relieve themselves in time. Accidents like that, or failing to bathe regularly, or getting bloody from being injured in combat/from traps etc should require your char to bathe regularly to avoid charisma penalties. Or becoming mortally sick from infection and disease due to poor hygiene. I'd take that level of detailed immersion over an eloquently voiced protagonist any day in the Fallout Universe

But make this feature tunable so ppl who don't care for this level of immersion can turn it off

Reduced dialogue and choice from a voiced protagonist is simply speculation at this point.

Dialogue and choice is clearly a matter of budget, so the concern simply comes down to whether Bethesda were willing to commit the cash.

In past games a 'more' option on dialogue would take you into sub-trees - the same is possible with voices dialogue.

Voice is not cheap. if you look at commercial voice over rates of around $1,000/hour and consider that each protagonist VA is said to

have recorded 50 x 3 hour sessions, then you're talking some $300,000 in protagonist VA recording costs alone.

Bethesda clearly don't think it is a 'waste' of money and it is churlish to suggest so without sight of the game itself.

The other consideration when it comes to cost, is that with each line having a $ value,

it pushes a greater focus onto well written and meaningful dialogue, because it has a cost.

The time you want to be doing any editing is when the dialogue is on the page, not in the studio, not in development.

I honestly haven't even thought about that before. What, are they going to map the dialog options to E, C, V, and F? Use the hot keys?

I don't really see how we're supposed to be able to still move around/ do stuff while talking while still keeping on the "gaming home base" of WASD, and the mouse to look around (yet still be able to "shoot them in the face as well as select options with it?).

It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

I'm guessing it's just a mouse click. You move the cursor around the edges to look around or just click on the dialogue choice you want.

And as I've already said, that "More" option's interface is likely to be a lot clunkier and restrictive than a simple dialogue box that we could scroll through and select. That's completely separate form the voiced protagonist issue, but it's another issue that makes me worry about how dialogue is going to work.

From what I've found, if you're recording dialogue for more than 2 hours at a time for video games, the standard rate goes out the window and you determine a quote between you and your voice actor. That quote can actually be lower than the usual rate of voice acting, as there are times that people are willing to take an immediate pay cut in terms of their rate because it means making more money via a greater number of recording sessions.

I agree with you that the time to edit is always on the page. All the movies I worked on in film school spent more time in pre-production than any other stage, because that's where mistakes are cheapest to correct. However, I will say that I'm not sold on Bethesda actually putting a greater focus on well written and meaningful dialogue. If they had then I don't think "Nuka-Cola. Ice cold," the line where the PC says since his robot is still at his house other people may still be alive, as if to say that his robot is human and has the same biological needs, or his babbling after deciding he wants food would have made it to the E3 presentation.

To be clear here, I'm not saying that the system is guaranteed to be awful or Fallout 4 is garbage or anything like that. All I'm saying is that the particular changes surrounding the dialogue are red flags that get me concerned. I'm hoping I'm wrong, because that means a better experience when I'm actually playing the game, but what little we've seen doesn't exactly instill me with confidence.

I'm concerned about Voiced Protagonist for a number of reasons. It's definitely going to limit Roleplaying which is probably my biggest concern. I'm hoping it's different this time since Beth likes Detail but I need to see it in order to believe it.

Pretty sure that there is probably an agreed amount that the VA's will receive beforehand, so number of sessions isn't an issue. I'm not even worried about that.

This will stop you from moving the camera, one option is the mouse wheel to select option another is buttons.

With an mmo mouse I hope I can assingn the 1-12 buttons to this.

its likely that you can use this in other settings too like command followers.

I'm thinking the best way to do this on PC is to use a PC version of an xbox controller. Works seamlessly with keyboard in shooter style games like GTAO and GTAV

The other thing that bothers me are low intelligence PCs. Having a guy with intelligence on par with a molerat, but with perfectly normal speech seems...weird. However, I will not role a low int character, so I'm not too worried.