Unfortunately the reality of the situation is that there will be 'full' voice acting. Since that is the case let's just hope they have the resources and wherewithal to have more than fourteen voice actors. In Oblivion you had four very expensive voice actors in Patrick Stewart, Sean Bean, Terrance Stamp, and Lynda Carter (who may have not cost too much since she's married to Bethesda's CEO). Then you had 10 other voice actors for EVERY SINGLE NPC IN THE GAME. That is not exactly the definition of immersion. It was pretty bad when you could tell one voice actor was torturing hi/her voice to 'sound' like a different NPC. Ya, none of them were exactly Dana Carvey or Frank Caliendo.

I would rather have thirty relatively unknown voice actors than a few famous ones that shatter immersion because they're so famous from prior roles. If you are going to spend a boatload at least get someone like Harry Shearer who can literally alter his voice beyond recognition so he alone can knock out half a dozen NPC's.

Immersion is not an argument, it's a noun. But I agree, Morrowind's system is much more immersive.

Something that I'd like to add about why I prefer the text based dialogue of Morrowind- immersion.

In MW, dialogue included %PCname, %PCclass, and %PCrace, so NPCs would 'say' your char's name, class (standard or custom), and race.
In OB the only time your char's race and class (standard only) is spoken is in the chargen dungeon. I think some of the dialogue was rather limited in regards to %PCsix as well. :unsure2:

So MW felt more like 'Well met, what's your name? I'll remember that friend.' while OB felt like 'Greetings insignificant insect.' :shrug:


:dead:

I'm perfectly fine with all voice acting as long as it's done right, but in Oblivion it was most ceartainly not done right. All the NPC's sounded alike. Even if each race had it's own voice actors that would have been acceptable but instead the Orsimer and the Nords all sounded alike, the Argonians and the Khajiit sounded alike, the Dunmer, Altmer and Bosmer sounded alike, for me that really went a long way twards killing immersion. The voices in Fallout 3 were far more diverse which made for a much more immersive experience, at least for me it did. So it TES V has diverse NPC voices (just give every race it's own distinct voices, that would be enough for me) then I'm fine with all voice acting. If not go with text.

I think he meant that Immersion is the good argument, because voice acting creates better immersion than text. You agreeing with him makes no sense, since Morrowinds system doesn't have full voice acting.



I find this laughable, because there have been plenty of good arguments and "everyone else is doing it", is actually the least good of them. It's less than that, it's a bad argument, it a prediction perhaps, but not an actual argument.

Text only feels lifeless, I'm glad Oblivion was all voice-acted. A text-only game in this generation is not going to sell.

Again, you DON'T know that with any degree of certainty at all. If TES V came out with mostly text based dialogue would you still buy it? I think so, and so would anyone on these forums and anyone who liked Oblivion.

Take STALKER for example. STALKER is a modern game that is wildly successful and it has a system similar to Morrowind in that it is text-based with some voice-acting for important parts of the story or to start off the reading.

So this is not a valid argument.

Text only is only lifeless if you have no imagination... it can be very very vibrant if you want it to be, you make it your own experience.

@Daydark, yet still you provide no arguments for voice-acting.

Indeed. While we're at it, graphics are only lifeless unless one has an imagination and so are AI, lore, and factions. Hell, just the video part of video games are far too limiting, unless one has no imagination, so screw video games completely! Let's just pretend we're playing games because then they can be as large as they want!

Yes, that was a gross exaggeration, but I also believe it gets its point across. Not everyone wants to imagine. If you're playing CRPGs instead of pen-and-paper RPGs, then you don't want to imagine, either, or at least you shouldn't be. Video games are for fleshing out, well, games, not for imagining them. Agree to disagree and let people be. You want to imagine voices, and that's great, but he/she doesn't, and you can't change their mind, just as I doubt I can get you to see my point of view to stop pushing your opinion over his/hers, but it was worth a try. :shrug:

oblivion had eight of the original voice actors and two new voice actors, plus the four voice actors that bethesda had to pay highly on, thats 14 voice actors. many voice actors from morrowind were not in oblivion, the high elf male, dark elf male, breton male, and the imperial female. for TESV bethesda should definitely keep 12 of the original voice actors, plus the two new voice actors in oblivion, the dark elf male voice actor should be given very little dialogue because of his difficult voice acting, so thats 16 plus two expensive voice actors not four to save money for TESV

I don't believe money to be any kind of issue with the company. Their parent organization is buying up game companies in a frenzy, and I would expect they could hire a city's worth of voice actors for the cost of some of those. Patrick Stewart is the high end of voice acting talent, and his fee would have been a minuscule fraction of Oblivion's profits.

I'd be perfectly happy with a game without voice acting. No voice acting means less restriction on dialogue options, because you can produce hundreds of lines of text dialogue for the cost of an hour of a voice actor in a studio. Voice acting limits RP choice because cost and size of files on a disk is a very limiting factor. I also hate the trend towards cinematic cut scenes in games, because it similarly bottlenecks game choice - if they have made 2 expensive and labor intensive cutscenes for one particular point in the game, then you only get 2 options of how to complete that section of the game - and that's both limiting your options for getting to that point, and taking resources away from other areas of game development. If I want to see cinematic scenes and voice acting I'll go watch a movie, I prefer games to be less restricted and to prioritize better gameplay over graphics or voiced dialogue..

In this day and age text simply is not an option. Not even cheap polish rpg's have text anymore.


I can 100% guarantee that every TES that will ever release will be fully voiced. I wish bioware didn't hire all the good Voice actors tho , monopoly imo

That's is because they are already here, on this forum, this is not the first time this has been discussed, it been discussed to death for 4-5 years now. But I guess I can repeat them.

Voice acting adds to immersion, it basically adds atmosphere and believability to whatever it touches, why? Because when you talk, you use your voice, and your voice is expressed through sound, and sound is something you hear. This imagination business is an invalid argument, it might be a personal preference, but as an argument against voice acting it is moot, which is shown by me, and again by Seti. We aren't supposed to imagine the game, because that needs to come from the minds of the developers, there imagination. Obviously this does not mean we don't like to use our imagination, I like using my imagination when I build a character, I conjure who I want to be from my imagination, I'm sure Seti does too. It just means that it is not our job, nor should it be, to imagine something which should be the developers vision. Finally voice acting takes advantage of your ability to hear, meaning you can look at something else, while still gaining information. I love walking around in Oblivion and hearing rumors while doing something else.

There are some good arguments for not having voice acting, most of them aren't in this particular thread, most of them aren't new. I'm not biased enough that I dismiss everything.

I think I've heard one new good argument in this thread:



The good part isn't "%PCclass, and %PCrace, ", those can be done with voice acting, the good part would be %PCname, this is something that can't be done with voice acting, only with text based dialog can NPCs address you by your name,

"Greetings überLeet1337IcanhazXP?!11, what can I do for you?"

I would still argue the benefits to immersion from voice acting far outweighs this contribution from text, but it is still a good point.

I would LOVE for all voice acted text

BUT a morrowind like system would be more economical and allow them to make more quests and characters, that's why I want that.

If you could get the amount of dialogue and topics from MW with the full VO of Oblivion that would be perfect I think. :hubbahubba:

Could probably do that with PC's today as space is quickly becoming a non-issue. Back in the day (god I feel old sometimes) playing games on my Commadore 64 with 5 1/4" floppies I would have never guessed that today I'd have a computer with a 1TB drive in it. That said consoles (at least the current generation) wouldn't be able to handle it. So really that option isn't realistic until (at least) the next generation of consoles comes around. If I have to choose between the two, I'd definitely go with a MW style with more depth and quantity rather than having full VO for everything where everything = less overall.

Exactly, it's a gross exaggeration to such a point that it has no bearing on what we are discussing. Again, I've said this before, dialogue is a VERY different aspect of games than something like modeling a world or creating game mechanics, which are necessarily handled by the hardware to provide the actual gameplay. Only when spoken dialogue actually introduces some sort of necessary new gameplay mechanic, can you make these extrapolations... until then, it would be more apt to compare to something more superficial. Voice acting is a superficial aspect of the game.

Whether or not you want to, you're going to be using your imagination when playing a game, your suspension of disbelief... do you see the NPC's on screen as a purely mathematical constructs, meshes textured and animated, do you see each individual frames as separate pictures generated by complex mathematical processes? No. Your mind strings together the images, your mind believes in this artificial world and forgets that these characters are just mathematical constructs and you imagine that these are real people, otherwise you would be unable to interact with it in a meaningful way.

And to everyone who refuses to actively use their imagination while playing a game, you're missing out on a lot.



STALKER, STALKER, STALKER, STALKER...

And by the way, what would you call sub-titles, if they aren't text?


I disagree. Voice acting can do more to take you out of the experience and detract from the atmosphere. Voice acting shifts focus to the NPC's face, which is the part of the human body hardest to simulate correctly due to the way humans are wired. Bad lip-syncing, eye-movement, and character models help to detract from the experience. Bad voice-acting is rampant in games with lots of it. Bad voice-acting does nothing but create inconsistencies which your mind is very apt to pick up on. Walking from one person to the next and hearing the same voice talking about things, or perhaps having the characters voice radically change in mid conversation (have you ever talked to beggars and switched to a different topic?)


And when you swing a sword you have to physically pick up your sword and swing your arm, should TES V be exclusively for the Wii? Would that necessarily add to immersion? Just because it mimics some aspect of reality does not mean it adds to immersion.



That statement is just NOT true. This is neither generally accepted knowledge nor is there any official guidelines to making games that says that players aren't supposed to use their imagination when playing a game. I've explained in this post how everyone will be passively using their imagination when playing the game. Ask any dev, I dare you.


Again, should, there is no argument for this. Using your imagination when reading a book, when playing a game is not a job, unless you are getting paid to play the game and use your imagination. It's part of the play.



When talking to someone else the game locks you into looking at their ugly mug and horrible lip-syncing... so I don't know where you are getting this from. Walking around and hearing rumors while doing something else is totally possible using a text system.

Text based with intro voice.

I didn't play any Beth games after OB, so I don't know if they've changed. But I'm betting that the dialogue won't be too in depth :shrug:

yah I had 1 gb on my oldest pc and sounds and music were a nightmare to store

You had a floppy drive on your machine? WOW! My first "personal" machine used a cassette interface, and you had to load the programs (all 100-200 bytes) from a tape. Before that, the first computer I used loaded punched cards, and spit out a printed report (the printer could easily cut through 5-part carbons, and would shake tables apart). The second machine used a set of binary switches to enter its startup program, one byte at a time; 54 bytes of code took about 10 minutes to load in, without rushing and toggling a wrong bit by accident, it then loaded its main operating system off of a magnetic tape drive (like the ones in the big glass cases in the old black & white sci-fi movies). I recall being awed by a massive Hard Drive, which held an incredible 5 Megabytes of data in something almost the size of a major appliance.

Anyway, the amount of DVD space required to load as much voiced data as MW, without having the same voice for every NPC, would involved its own disc at minimum. That's just not doable for most consoles, and not financially sound to do for PC.

Your whole argument is based on the assumption that things will be done bad, this is a poor basis for an argument, text based dialog doesn't save you from bad writing, should we then stop having dialog? of course not. We can remove anything if we assume it is gonna be done poorly, if we have to discuss anything we will have to assume it works otherwise whatever it brings to the game is irrelevant, given that we already assume it is gonna be bad.




Poor anology, firstly, your character is supposed to be customizable and come from your imagination, and needs to be something you can't be, so imitating your movement would be counter productive to the point of playing someone your can never be, the button or stick controls are simply an extension of your nerves, and so they simply need to function as a relay, that transfers whatever signal you want to give to your virtual body/ in-game character. The point is not to mimic what you do, but what you want to do. Secondly, immersion largely stems from how things react to you, not from how you react. It is the reaction to your actions that have the highest chance of breaking immersion, all those things you listed above "Bad lip-syncing, eye-movement, and character models", notice how they are reactions, it is external information which conflicts with your perception about how they should behave.



Sorry, but saying "We aren't supposed to imagine the game, because that needs to come from the minds of the developers", is not the same as saying "that players aren't supposed to use their imagination when playing a game.". There's a very important difference, one involves making the experience (developers job), another involves interacting with the experience.



There is great argument for this, because who else knows how a character sounds better than the mind who created him? What makes to think the author of the book would not give the characters inside a voice if they were able to? Just because the medium forces the author to neglect giving the characters involved a voice, does not mean that they do not have one, and if they could be given a voice, the author, would be the one best suited to do so. In essence, a book character does not have a voice because of the medium, and not because you were meant to imagine it. You imagining the voice is just a necessary premise for experiencing the book.



Subjective opinion about visuals and lip sync, as well as assumption that the next TES will have poor of both. It is possible (to do it by text), but it will require attention from the eyes which than can't be used to anything else. With voice acting I can even have my back turned on the person talking and still get the information, while looking for a street, inspecting store wares, or even fighting.

Yeah, it has hi-tech. It had a cassette drive but I didn't use it for much.



That was kinda my point about the console, though I've played plenty of games with multiple discs on PC so I don't see how you say it would be "not financially sound".

I like Oblivions dialog system

Your whole argument is based on the assumption that things will be done well, this is a poor basis for an argument.


Your character doesn't come from your imagination, it's defined by the developers... so I don't know what you are talking about. Dialogue is simply a function of information transfer, and so it simply needs to function to get information across. The point is not to mimic real life, but to create a fantasy game-world. Immersion largely stems from the imagination, and how reactive the world is. Voice-dialogue makes the player expect more information but delivers less. When voice acting, animations, etc are unrealistic (same voices) or blatantly mis-rythmed, mis-emoted, bland, and lifeless, it conflicts with game-world consistency and plausibility, reducing immersion.


Developers should create the game-world, the game mechanics, etc. -- Everyone's experience is their own.



A character is a fictional being, and can sound like whatever the active imagination wants it to sound like.



This works in a text based system too.

[quote name='Rindill' date='19 November 2010 - 02:12 AM' timestamp='1290129166' post='16698001']
Your whole argument is based on the assumption that things will be done well, this is a poor basis for an argument.[/quote]

Like I said, it is pointless to argue any implementation if the premise is that it is done bad. I don't want dialog in the next TES because it will be bad generic writing with grammar + spelling mistakes + copy pasta. <-- this is your argument reversed against you, and it is just as bad.

[quote]
Your character doesn't come from your imagination, it's defined by the developers... so I don't know what you are talking about. Dialogue is simply a function of information transfer, and so it simply needs to function to get information across. The point is not to mimic real life, but to create a fantasy game-world. Immersion largely stems from the imagination, and how reactive the world is. [/quote]

I put together my character, the developers didn't, they simply provided me with the tools to do so. If dialog was simply a function of information transfer then they wouldn't bother with good writing.

Immersion comes from how believable the world is, not how realistic it is, there's a difference here as well. The whole thing might be fantasy, but fire still burns, and ice still freezes. This makes it believable. I fireball is unrealistic, your mind hasn't seen an actual fireball, but your mind knows what fire is, and as long as the fireball behaves according to what your mind expects of ball made of fire to behave, it becomes believable, and so the your mind accepts the premise of magic.

[quote]Voice-dialogue makes the player expect more information but delivers less. When voice acting, animations, etc are unrealistic (same voices) or blatantly mis-rythmed, mis-emoted, bland, and lifeless, it conflicts with game-world consistency and plausibility, reducing immersion.

No, as I have said, a voice gives more information than simply what is being said, and the information you get from the dialog is the same. Again you premise is that it is gonna be bad, I've already explained why this is a poor choice of argument. Your acting like I want TES V to have voice acting exactly like it was done in OB + the flaws of OB, this is not the case. Of course I want better voice acting than OB.

[quote]
Developers should create the game-world, the game mechanics, etc. -- Everyone's experience is their own.[/quote]

Everyone's experience is only their own because of how they interacted with the already developer imagined world.

On the back of my Morrowind copy it says:

"The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is the most detailed game world ever created"

They don't say it, but it is pretty obvious they are talking about the developers here, the most detailed game world ever created --> by bethesda.

It continues:

"Where you can create and play, any character you can imagine", notice how your imagination only applies to your character and what he does, this is where your imagination is meant to come in.

[quote]
A character is a fictional being, and can sound like whatever the active imagination wants it to sound like.[/quote]

A character is a fictional being, and only he who made him, knows his actual voice.

[quote]
This works in a text based system too.
[/quote]

But not as well as with sound. It is not a question of whether or not it can be done with text, it's a question what is more immersive and natural. Give me enough pages and I can describe anything with text even graphics, but that is not the point, the point is that what you see is most natural (and therefore more immersive) when you use your eyes to actually see it, and someone talking is best represented when you actually hear them.

There is evidence for bad voice acting, there is no evidence for bad writing.


Good writing = better transfer of information.
You modify your character only as the developers allow you to.


And your mind accepts the premise of text-based dialogue systems.


A character is a fictional being, and has no actual voice.



For gameplay and design decisions, text is the better choice... it's not about being natural.