Well I'm sorry that I've seemed to offend you in some way but you have ignored my point completely I never said that I considered what every NPC says as separate dialog. I know a lot of it was copy and pasted but that was the case in Oblivion to and it was even worse in Oblivion because you couldn't imagine a different voice... Instead you were limited to the same voice saying the same thing, and often the NPC's voice wouldn't even match the rest of his dialog. Getting back to my point what I meant when I said dialog was all the dialog excluding the copy paste between NPCs... and honestly you don't notice copy and paste as much when there is no voice to match it and I can give you a very scientific reason why if you'd like me to explain. And saying the topics are a search function is somewhat factual but I would never call it such, as it's a bit more in-depth because certain NPCs will give you different dialog if they have something to do with the topic or maybe know more than someone else, and some don't even know anything about it.


Yes, you not being able to pretend is very limiting and I actually feel very sorry for you.


Hey! that is like something out of a sci-fi movie... or you know almost any... movie. But we aren't talking about a movie!

You've offended me by boxing me in as someone who hasn't played morrowind, from the simple reason that I prefer voice acting, as if that was somehow impossible to have played morrowind and still prefer voice acting. You didn't have to imagine a different voice, they had a different voice, sure the races respected races had the same voice actor, but now females and males, as well as the different races actually said something different when commenting on the same topic, even when they said the same thing, they had a different voice, making it more immersive.



I don't recall voice differing from the text, you've gonna have to give me an example on that. I noticed the copy paste text, because the same long text appeared when I asked two different people about the same thing.



Yeah when the topic is special the dialog is different. This doesn't change the fact that the topics which aren't special, has only about one page of information, and different people are really just different links to that same page.



Ah, another assumption, and you didn't even address the issues. Of course I can pretend, my argument is that I shouldn't pretend. I say the argument for pretending is false, because it can be used to remove any part of the game, well any part of anything really. We aren't supposed to pretend, we're supposed to get the experience conjured from their mind.



No we're talking about a game which uses visuals and audio to transfer information to you. Kind of like it's trying to emulate reality to make it more believable.

Ive read many of the post in here, and I have to go with the voiced dialog. I mean, sure it gives us repetetive conversation (allthough oblivion went too far) it could have been 10x better. As soon as I saw the e3 demo of oblivion with the breton talking to the dunmer, I was just amaized on the voiced (link below)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL8pyOP0VQI&feature=related

Too bad they ripped us off like the other promised they had at e3. :sadvaultboy:

I disagree. You can't compare Oblivion with a new TES game if it's about voice acting and Morrowind isn't exactly the holy grail of good dialog either.
In fact, Oblivion and Morrowind have the SAME dialog system, only in Oblivion it totally blows because it's spoken.

You could only select keywords... not sentences and no branching dialog.
That was a mistake because something like that doesn't work very well with spoken dialog.

In Morrowind you had these long monologues and you just click through them if an other NPC repeats something you've already read, no annoyance.
But it would be a complete fail to keep the same style of dialog voice-acted.
Not only would it be annoying if you accidentally make someone repeat the same monologue, people just don't speak in long monologues in real life.

A realistic conversation is about both speakers steering a conversation to where they want it to go. Questions get answered with questions, short sentences, interruptions, etc...
Definitely not like in Morrowind.

Also, they can also aim for more people who simply want to put "voice acting experience" on their resume.
So getting more actors is not entirely a budget issue. It's more a question of how many actors they can manage.

Good game developers learn their lessons from the past, bad game developers live in the past. Full voice acting is the only way to go.

Unfortunately, OB's selection of voices and its selection of topics were both a lot more limited than MW's, as in close to a 2:1 and a 10:1 difference. In a couple of "worst case" OB situations which I observed in-game, two NPCs of different races (I don't recall exactly after over a year since playing OB, but probably Dunmer and Bosmer) traded rumors: "....I think it's a Galleon." Both NPCs used exactly the same voice with exactly the same words, which was really awkward to witness because of them being different races.

Another situation was when an Altmer returned the rumor "....in the land of the Altmer"; the Altmer spoke the lines in third person perspective, as if he wasn't an Altmer. THAT is a dialog "filtering" problem, where that "version" of the line of dialog should not have been available to that particular NPC. Due to constraints of either disc space or money, there was no "alternate" version of the line to use. Morrowind had its share of dialog filtering issues as well, but at least it had far more dialog to randomly choose from to limit such events to "rarities".

"Pretending" is an integral part of the experience. We're "pretending" that the bunch of pixels on the screen represent a living, breathing person. We "pretend" that we (or the person our character represents) is performing actions. The game designers merely guide and assist that process. There's always a tradeoff between presenting something in as "concrete" a manner as possible and limiting imagination, versus leaving room for the imagination to explore by presenting a less-solid picture. It sounds like each of you has a different perspective on it, but neither is necessarily "right" or "wrong". In cases where the game does something which CONTRADICTS what's already been presented, I have a problem with it, and in my option, the problem is more prevalent in OB's dialog than in MW's case.

In the "back and forth" commentary between two of you, I find BOTH to be getting a bit on the "irritable" side. I don't want to see yet another topic closed because of the appearance of a large and scary bear, and some of the comments made are starting to look like an invitation to such an event. To put it in blunter terms, "if you can't say something nice, then shut the [self-censored] up."

I can acknowledge the fact that you probably did play Morrowind, but I was not really assuming that you didn't play it I was more assuming you hadn't played it much or maybe need to play it again. You stated earlier that I did not know much about Morrowind's dialog, I'll admit I may not know everything on the topic, but I can still say for sure that you stating Morrowind did not have massive amounts of dialog, because most of it was copy paste is indead false. Excluding pasted dialog Morrowind still wins in the amount of dialog aspect when compared to games like Red Dead, Dragon Age, or Bloodlines.


Well voice differing from the text is not what I meant although I wouldn't be surprised if there actually were a few minor instances where that does happen. What I meant was the voices don't always match the voices from the rest of there dialog. Are you sure that's what happened when reading the text?

I'll give you my scientific reason why the majority of people wouldn't notice copy pasted text apposed to copied voice acting. People really on their five senses and since our memories are linked with are senses if we give more sensory information of something similar to something we have in our memory it's easier to remember where and when you remember it from. Just like giving a search engine more information, you get more refined search results. Morrowind gives you less information to search for in your memory. Oblivion gives you more and this wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if there weren't so many similar voices in the game because then the different voices would actually conflict against you remembering, but having good believable diverse voice acting is far beyond our time.

I'd like to add something else as well, if they don't do voice acting that will allow them to hire more writers thus less copy paste dialog. (More voice actors = less writers = more copy paste)


Sorry I guess I took that out of context I thought you genuinely could not pretend. I'm glad you actually can, but saying you shouldn't pretend will only lead you to not being able to. Yes someone could try to use it to remove any part of the game... but in most cases it would not fly. If there was a way to have massive amounts of different voices and dialog, but it is not plausible at that moment. Which is why I chose speech synthesis as my second choice, if it were plausible it would be my first. But using voice actors is out of the question as it would be impossible to find a good voice actor for each npc in TES game.


Yes, but to emulate reality is a near impossible task and what I'm trying to say is that for now we should pick the lesser of two evils, until another option appears.


I'm getting irritated at my self and I'm sure others are two, so I'm sorry if that's the case. I'm not meaning to make this a personal argument between anyone although I do enjoy back and forth word fighting as long as it doesn't get out of hand.

This is the perfect example of why I hate fully voiced dialogue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r10GFMJuYr4

5:10, every single person in the Mages Guild starts yapping. Dear FSM it's obnoxious.

Thats not a problem, cause now there is technology to make sounds and noise to be absorbed by the wall in diffrent rooms. Bethesda just need to find a way to use it.

I see you have no counter to my perfect logic and arguments.

Unfortunately they were, if bethesda had used the space on the disc properly it would be a lot more. Mess ups in peoples voices are something I've seen, never in the way you describe though, however, this is not something that only happens in oblivion, I've encountered people in morrowind, talking about stuff they probably shouldn't know, as well as commenting on stuff they are involved in, as if they weren't.



I don't think this is a good argument, as you say yourself it's a filtering problem, and it isn't disc space, given that oblivion is only 4.6gb large, money, perhaps, my bet is time. Either way, the problem was that it was available for a altmer to say. If I'm not mixing my memories of Morrowind and Oblivion, people in Morrowind do not talk to each other at all, only you, so obviously you wont encounter something of this nature in Morrowind.



And this gets easier, the more the bunch of pixels behaves, looks, and sounds like living breathing person. I wouldn't say pretending is integral as much as it is just necessary. The game designers essentially try to make it less necessary for the player to pretend.



In the context of games, I say that enhancing the players need to pretend (not necessarily creativity) is wrong. Imagine someone saying they'll give you a beautiful painting, and then when you get it, it's a blank canvas with the text "beautiful painting" on it, and when you rightly ask him "WTF", his reasoning is "I didn't want to limit your imagination, now you can use your imagination to make a beautiful picture!".

Game designers are artists just like a painter, and we go to them, IMO, for there imagination.



I'm just tired of people making assumption based on stuff which is mostly subjective.



1. paragraph: no one has actually done any research on this so no claims can be made. As a guess, I would say your probably right, with regards to Oblivion that is. not with dragon age or bloodlines. Bloodlines is highly social choice and consequence focused, more than the elder scrolls series. I'd say it's entirely possible that bloodlines still has at least the same amount of dialog.

2. paragraph: Oh I know what you mean now, you're talking about the beggar incidents, yeah I'm not gonna defend any of that. Simple text dialog would avoid that, but if they fixed it so it was the same voice, it would still be better than simple text. What I'm saying is that that problem is more an issue with applying correct voices, rather than voiced dialog in itself.



1. paragraph: I disagree, I think it is entirely possible to have an acceptable level of diversity in voices. I also don't think that text-only solves this problem as much either, it just avoids it, and then also avoids the gain.

2. paragraph: They better, and it has to be more than morrowind, I don't think morrowind is a good case for text-only dialoga, and without voice acting, there will be no excuses. If they don't go with voice acting, my expectations of their dialog and writing will go up proportionally, and I will fully expect them to compensate for that which was gained with voiced dialog.



I think it is fully possible, several voice actors can do multiple voices, indeed some of the races which sound differently, already have the same voice actor.



Just because it's impossible doesn't mean they shouldn't try, much of the elder scrolls charm comes from their ability to immerse the player.



Yeah, I'm not looking for a fight either, it's just I tend to snap if I think people generalize or come to quick to conclusions. This is also not the first time I've had this discussion, so maybe it's also because of having to repeat arguments again.

In any case, I didn't go in with the intention to snap at you.

Feeling left out do we? I'll get back to you

Nope, that would be counter productive, given it would produce the same weirdness of having people say the exact same thing word for word. It would be a major waste of resources just to recreate the problem.



Am I to understand that there's no information in tone, dialect, accent, sarcasm, intensity? Is a song just as good if I only read the lyrics? Will a movie be as grand muted but with subtitles? I think not. There's no difference between how you present graphics and how you present dialog, when the point is to make an immersive experience, when the point is for the developers to best express themselves through their imagination.



Only to people who can't hear. One of the best things I remember about morrowind is stepping of the boat and hearing the distant roar of a silt strider, I imagine that would not be quite so grand had morrowind gone full on no-sound mode, and I'd simple seen a textified version of that roar.



Yeah, there's also a lot more information delivered in voiced dialog, beyond that of which is actually in the line given voice.



I don't see what this is an answer to.



I disagree, given bethesda's track record, they have consistently tried to make sure I didn't have to imagine their world for them, I didn't pretend morrowind had mushroom trees, morrowind already had mushroom trees, they could easily have spend five pages describing the world for me, but it is more immersive to visualize it, there's a lot of text based rpgs out there, like an interactive book. This is the same with voiced dialog, with voiced dialog I don't have to pretend that they are talking in Oblivion, because they do talk, they also do a little in morrowind, and when they do, it is always more immersive and enthralling than when they are only talking in theory.



Yeah, it is always a good to make sure you have the volume up to an appropriate level. Alternately, you can put subtitles on to complement the voice, it will not be the same experience if you don't hear it though. Notice how subtitles are a complement, not an actual alternative to get the same experience, can you imagine if when you put subtitles on a movie it would mute the movie simultaneously? I would want my money back.

i would rather have morrowinds system, it allows for more straight-forward and understandable information, and is much less costly, therefore the devs can spend more time and money on other things, such as the soundtrack, i cant really think of much else but thing of how totally awesome it could be if they got voice acting out of the way, oblivions soundtrack was the best soundtrack for any game ive ever heard, next to halo reach (my apologies to Bethesda, but they're games are still better regardless). Anyway, Bethesda should bring back the old dialog system, ive always preferred letting my imagination fill in the blanks instead of listening to the same twelve people all the time, and i prefer reading to listening, even if the voice acting isnt twelve people.

If you read it like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy5JwYOlgvY, it's actually better.

I like the text based version with minor voice acting from Morrowind best. Made for easier modding and more character developement/lore.

The roblem with voice acting is not the size, the cost or the lack of information gained from voiceacting, it's Bethesda's incompetence to create natural conversations and hire talented voice actors. Voice acting brings a game to new heights , look at mass effect or dragon age and you will see some great voiced dialogue.

Fallout New Vegas dialogue system with skill checks and other stuff. Also, more lines of dialogue (100000 is good come on, New Vegas had 65000) , FNV did well by getting rid of useless NPC-NPC conversation and adding more PC-NPC interactive dialogue.

However, NPC-NPC dialogue adds immersion and more background to characters

I've noticed with a lot of voice acting in Fallout that it's a restatement of something they just told you. That should be reworked.

Lets be realistic here people. For the franchise to expand, it needs voice acting everywhere. Have you seen the amount of 8 year olds who cry if the graphics aren't great? What would you think they would do if there was minor voice acting?

Just my thought. Feel free to disagree.

I think most of us realize that. Those of us who prefer minimal voice acting (à la Baldur's Gate or Morrowind) don't expect our wishes to come true. We understand that, just as CGI and remakes are now standard practice in Hollywood, voice acting is now standard practice in video games. But this is a forum for discussion and we were asked our opinion - so we're giving it.

Anyone who voices an opinion on this forum expecting to change another person's opinion is a fool. Anyone who voices an opinion on this forum expecting to change Bethesda's opinion is insane.

Wrong. It's the dev's who make the design decisions, and if they decide that minimal voice acting + lots of dialogue is the better route they can take it. Reading the forums can give them an "idea" of where fans might be on this issue, as well as, what we are thinking on both sides.

Saying that they should go with voice-acting because 8-year old kids like it is ridiculous... I think TES games are rated too highly, one, and two, you should never do something because you assume other people would react negatively to other options.

So far, there have been NO good arguments for voice acting other than "everyone else is doing it,", while those expounding an enhanced Morrowind system have backed there arguments with solid design decision reasoning.

Well said.

I preferred Morrowind's dialogue system, but it certainly could have been improved upon. I'm not going to debate the merits of either system, but just express my personal taste.

LOL! Christopher Walken is the answer to all our problems

Immersion is the good argument you are looking for.