If you think Sims players are casual you don't know many of them. The Sims players I have met in real life and online are more 'hardcoe' about that game than most Elder Scrolls players.

Me, I play the Sims and the Elder Scrolls series and so does my partner. I would like to see a source for this claim that Sims players are not Bethesda's target demographic.

Morrowind/Daggerfall acting. It just takes too much space. I mean, look at the lack of content in Oblivion/Fallout compared to older TES games. When I see a Bethesda style open game that doesn't lose content due to voice accting, I'll retract my claims, but until then, I'm sorry, but I can't support voice acting.

Though, I also had to vote for "robot voices". I really think we're not that far from a working system for it. Perhaps TESVI - VIII.


Looks like someone has trouble grasping the concept of a "niche" game series...

Seriously, I'd take text based dialogue anytime over voiced dialogue. It's simple, voice based dialogue always have less dialogue options, and shorter ones. You could have so many more discussions in Morrowind, some people gave you big texts to read and all, many more NPCs had something to say to you, now besides any related to quests or merchants, no one has anything to say to you. It's a shame, I loved asking rumours in Morrowind which sometimes led me to articfacts or an obscure quest. The problem with voice based dialogue, is that it gives a lot more of job for as much as dialogue, everything has to be recorded, put into disc which takes space and for it to be interesting you need a lot of voice actors, something which Oblivion lacked. But nowadays better graphics and voiced dialogue is always chosen over a more complex game.

Imaginary standard? I think it's something sad, but nowadays any reviewing website - which are trusted a lot - tend to point out every time a game uses "outdated" elements. Not just reviewing sites, MANY people expect certain things in newer games; fancy cinematics, movie-like pacing, fully voiced dialogue and real time combat. When games 'evolve', people have a hard time accepting games to settle for 'less', for what isn't the new way. Else not every first person shooter would play identically as Modern Warfare or any third person shooter would use a cover system. You bet any game not using voiced dialogue, even more if it goes from voiced dialogue to mostly written, people would go ape[censored]. I'd be highly surprised for Bethesda to go back to how it worked on Morrowind. In fact, while I'm looking forward TES V I can hardly see it being better than Oblivion, unless they fix the damn broken levelling system which made the game a pain to play. As technology advances and allows us to do new things, to refine existing systems, it's at the expense of its complexity or depth. Oblivion just sold too much for them to do anything else than the industry wants them to do. If it sold as much as Morrowind maybe, but Bethesda are now in the big leagues unfortunately, quality has been dropping in every major developer/publisher over the years.

All I see is someone having trouble grasping the concept of business. To make profit and continue growing as company they must appeal to a larger group, end of discussion.

Also, very importantly, a text based system allows for far better modability. It's far easier to create dialogue in Morrowind's system. Even those who can act well are often very out of place in a lot of Oblivion mods. It's just very hard to fit in with the TES feel. Especially with the races with more prominent accents. Anyone can see the lack of proper dialogue* in Oblivion mods. Dialogue makes the mod far better. I doubt this is just my opinion.

* Proper dialogue in Oblivion would be voiced.


End of discussion? Yeah.. I think not..

Even if, for some reason, the money Bethesda makes is the biggest priority (not even gonna get into that), you really seriously underestimate the market for a non-standard, unique game. Not everyone wants thier games to be shallow and have an explosion every 5 seconds. I mean, how much did Bethesda's past games sell? THEY where all pretty non-standard, and they all done well. I mean, Morrowind (I think) was what really got TES started. THAT was pretty RPG orientated. Sure, Daggerfall may have been superior in regards to the RPG aspects of the game, but it was long before gaming was as popular as it is now.

I didn't worked as much as how it works nowadays back in the day, it's because of how much the video game industry has grown that it all become like this. Why can't we voice our concerns and dislike for this? Anyway, I guess the day I will abandon modern games will come soon enough.

I guess music has gone there already. Gaming next. Perhaps even television? I shudder to think...

:(

Truth is all the people who use to call gamers "losers" are the ones most companies are tryin to cater to now that it's "cool".

I want voice acting, and have shared my reasons why, and although I agree that "casual" or more correctly IMO, general gamers, would prefer voice acting, I feel that text dialog is not the main thing that is gonna put them of, accessibility is the key concept, a good tutorial can easily open up a complex game to an unfamiliar audience.



I haven't really checked out any auto speakers, so don't know how good they are, do you know some in particular?

OT: Btw, where have you been?

I know you weren't asking me, but http://www.oddcast.com/home/demos/tts/tts_example.php text to speech synthesizer is really good, imo. Obviously has a long way to go, but I think it's getting there.

Wow. Seriously impressive. I didn't know they were getting that good.

Thanks for that link. ^^

Look to the previous post. Also, even the likes of Microsoft Sam isn't acctually that far off a good system. I believe we'll be working well in the way of speech synthesis in the next 10-20 years, easily.


Gaming. I forgot I actually did that.

Been playing some of Bethesda's own games, and I've also been bravely venturing outside Bethesda.

That's actually pretty impressive, it lacks the situational tone that a voice actor can provide, but it's not bad, I wonder if a mix of real voice acting for essential quest, and auto speaking for lesser quests could be successful.

EDIT:



Yeah, sometimes I find myself arguing more over a game than actually playing it.

lol I'm gonna have so much fun with this.. :shifty:

Wanted to add something else to the conversation. In my previous post, I basically said that I'd like a way to have detailed dialog system but with voice acting. For example, if they took out the quest marker(for most cases not all or at least made it toggle-able), then they'd have to give better description in the dialog right? Well not necessarily. Perhaps they could add more quest related notes, books and bring back an improved journal system. That would be the perfect solution in my opinion. It would give a better balance between reading and listening. The note, book or journal would contain the detailed instructions for you quest, and the voice acting could remain minimal, not take a long time to complete, and not cost a fortune.

I believe the system I mentioned is similar to how the creater(s) of OOO handled all its quests. I'm not sure because I don't remember all that well, but I don't believe there was much of a need to voice acting because text was used in other ways. While not exactly what I was suggesting, it was a fairly good example that you don't need 100% dialog to initiate something with the player.

Someone brings up a good point I never really thought about: gaming today has become a fad which is why it is popular. Hypothetically speaking if gaming was out by the time ES V was released it could bomb solely because of lack of casual sales due to high production costs when you factor in paying voice actors and trying to get some celebrity to voice a character. The people who come here and play the elder scrolls games will continue buying these games, but right now casuals are the lifeblood of Betheseda right now. Lower success could cause them to change their model to appeal to us, a niche market, but I don't see that happening with the next game. And to be honest I feel like Oblivion appealed to casuals because of it's graphics.

TESV should come on 2 disks, one install disk that has all the stuff for the game like the textures and models and engine and [censored] and a Play disk that has all the sound and dialogue.

All I want is in the next Elder Scrolls to have the possibility to refuse all miscellaneous quests :brokencomputer: .

I agree, to an extent. While I do personally prefer Morrowind's dialogue system, I would be more than happy to have an Oblivion esque dialogue system, if it used an extra disc. I believe that there should be two/three discs;

Disc 1: The main game. Nothing more is needed. Includes the meshes, textures, minor audio (footsteps and battle cries), and the actual game world etc.
Disc 2: Voice files. Every single voice, outside random battle cries and greetings, should be included in this disc. If this disc isn't loaded, a Morrowind style dialogue system would appear.
Disc 3: Only needed if Disc 2 is too full. This would include all the extra coding for physics and AI. A very well created realistic world would need a full disc, I'd imagine. This could help a lot.

The game would work solely with disc 1 (thinking about console users that only have a small hard drive. Although they can buy bigger ones, some people can't afford it.), disc 2 and 3 would be completely optional. Disc 1 would really be an advanced version of Morrowind, and disc 2 and 3 would improve upon it.

Unfortunatly, companies seem to have some stupid fear of allowing console users to have multiple discs. They also, even more stupidly, feel the need to cut from the PC game when things are cut from the console version of the game. I really doubt Bethesda will take this route, which, imo, is by far the best option. I just hope they come to thier senses. This is easily done.

yeah i was annoyed about that in TESIV, [censored] was cut like shadows cause they couldnt do that on the xbox, so they cut it from the PC version too.

Alternatively, try http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBZOlipfjkQ demonstration of what a specialised software (Yamaha's Vocaloid, in this case) is capable of.

Shouldn't be a problem, it's only problematic for the 360 since the ps3 has bluray discs. Mass Effect 2 used 2 discs as well as Final Fantasy 13 and they all sold well, I don't think it really bothers people. Though seeing how TES games unfold, unless using your good idea, but Microsoft unfriendly, I don't see how it would work on multiple discs for the 360, all discs are always playable.

Provided the other discs can be installed, not gonna be problematic for 360 either. One disc can be the world, another can be quests/npc's/story, then the world can be installed while the other can be needed for play.

Yes, but Microsoft wouldn't let do that since there's people without hard drives. No 360 game is limitative. Plus, we don't even know if the 360 is designed to make solely install discs possible, every game with multiple discs work on their own and installation isn't necessary. So really, I wouldn't trust too much for Microsoft to make this possible and TES games are not enough linear to have several disks working on their own.