Personally, I'd have to pick the Morrowind/Daggerfall style just because it allows for much more detail at less cost and annoyances (I think every one who's played Oblivion would know what I mean) as well as it making the game more mod friendly. True you can make a mod containing dialog in Oblivion with or without voice acting, but to make something that's on par with the game and fits the style is a very hard thing to accomplish. If it's not done right or at all it can really knock a mod down in value.

Now if it were truly plausible at this time to have really realistic and customizable speech synthesis in a game or editor for a game, then this would truly be my first choice and I think since we are talking about all future versions of TES I think it's safe to say that this definitely should happen when it becomes possible.

And for anyone who says that reading the text on a console is a tedious and annoying... Play Fable 3. (Not to down grade it at all, it is a great game and you should play it, but if you do you might realize what I'm talking about) There are also many ways in which you can make a text based dialog work quickly and effectively. (I wont list at the moment, but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out yourself)

Anyway, on to what you think, (I've enabled multiple choice in-case you think they should change it up between games)

Definitely Morrowind/Daggerfall. It was just a great system that should never of been replaced.

Loved Morrowind's - learning about new topics through related dialog, as well as simply being able to ask about so much more in general (voice acting means nothing to me) was great.

Oblivion's. I can't even stand to play mods with no voice acting

Oh good [censored], please don't tell me you compared Morrowind's system to Daggerfall's. Back the heck up!

voice act everything what will happen I bet.

I wouldn't mind a partial voice acted system like MW. My imagination fills in the voice when I read the txt. and didn't in anyway break anything.

either way I cool with it.

Voice-acting was the new standard nearly five years ago when Oblivion was released. Nothing's changed. TES V WILL be voice-acted, but as for what I prefer, I don't care too much, as long as there is some voice acting, at the very least, and no, Daggerfall did not have voice acting. "Halt" and "vengeance" aren't voice acting. Daggerfall is far too... lonely for my taste. I would prefer full voice-acting, as staring at a semi-photorealistic NPC's face all the time with no speech would be awkward and I find a nice sense of immersion with people speaking... like people. However, a lack of voice-acting wouldn't keep me from playing the game.

I enjoyed Morrowind's voice acting cause it was both modder friendly and it doesn't take 33%+ of disk space.

Morrowind. Definitely. Oblivion's voice acting was repetitive, boring, and just got tiring after a while. I even played with my speakers muted a few times just so everyone would shut up.

Full voice acting. It's standard today and will remain so. TES should not fall back they should advance and voice acting is the future.

How can voice acting be the standard today but also be the future...?

It'll be voice acted regardless of what we say here. All I hope for is that they dramatically increase the number of voice actors above those 12 people who did all of Oblivion's voicing. It makes it extremely difficult to mod in voice acting (which I can do now since I have a recorder) when every single person of the same race has the same voice. Fallout New Vegas had almost 70 voice actors. Something around that number should be the 'standard' for the next elderscrolls game.

The Morrowind/Daggerfall system.

Going to agree with MrBob. The Morrowind system really got alot of information across, but, it also wasn't the exact same voice telling it to you. I delighted in coming up with voices for people based on their background, but, I supposed BGS realized that most of today's gamers are somewhere in-between literacy and complete ignorance of written language.

From what I've seen, even those players just skip through the dialog and then look to their quest screen for support.

I changed my vote at the last minute. Instead of Morrowind style, I'm going for Oblivion full voice acting, BUT with at least 6 times more topics. Because in the end, it's not about reading or hearing the information that's most important to me, it's the amount of info I can get from that guy in front of my character.

It's interesting you put voice-synthesis up there... because some companies have come a long way to making these sound okay.

I'm sure if a game company were to try to do good voice-synthesis they could actually do it pretty well (though they'd probably want to make it a subsidiary and sell the software to other companies and game-developers as a third-party solution).

If you record a real person's voice's base phonetic elements to get the timbre... and have some advanced software able to add rhythm, inflection, and emotion... then maybe it could work... combine that with some advanced facial animation software and that would open up a lot of space on the disk for other things. Of course, maybe some of the more important characters could be fully voice-acted.

But I'd take Morrowind's text-mostly version over anything else.... the whole concept of learning topics was an awesome way to "explore" the world in a dynamic and social way. Even if you just have the character voice the first part of whatever, reading, your mind can fill in the rest.

Neither. Fallout 3's/New Vegas's was the best to me. It gave your character more personality than just choosing topics.

I just hope that they keep a lot of voices in like they did in New Vegas, and somewhat in FO3. If it would be back to Oblivion's way of a handful of actors then I say we go back to Morrowind's system.

Regardless, I want the dialogue system to be in-depth with lots to talk about.

Not sure what you mean by this, sure the interface is different but It was a good system and so was Morrowind's. They are a lot more alike than Morrowind to Oblivion was.


Technically speaking it was voice acting, very little but that doesn't make it non existent. I do agree it did feel a bit lonely with that little voice acting (unless you like to get in trouble a lot).

Remember how Daggerfall had the Mass Effect tone system before Mass Effect did? I think if they don't just go and do something new, it might be best to bring back the tone thing, instead of Oblivion's speechcraft wheel and Morrowind's "Admire Intimidate Taunt" system, much as I loved it.

I chose Oblivion's way.
I find it very hard to play Morrowind, as the text-based dialog shatters my immersion in a second. Daggerfall gets away with it because, due to the nature of the game, the willing suspension of disbelief is not dependant on some semblance of realism.

He he, being blunt, "normal", or polite sure as heck really change how the PC interact with any npc and the outcome of it depending on their rank. Good stuff.

Anyway, I vote Morrowind/Daggerfall style. Secondary would be how Fallout 3 or moreso, Fallout New Vegas, handle the dialogue.

I would prefer voice acting... with a LOT of dialogue, and a large variety of voice actors. Kinda like Oblivion, but much, much better. Even better than New Vegas dialogue.

Second best would be texted, and having a lot of dialogue content and options. Only with minor voice acting (like greetings, quest events, NPCs interacting with each other and such). Kinda like Morrowind, but with better AI, and actions between NPCs.

Dialogue could also be in realtime instead of pausing the game, and could include walking together with an NPC while having a conversation, etc. It would be cool.

Go back to the Morrowind system. :angry: I can't think of anything that I liked about Oblivion's 'full' voice acting.


:dead:

More dialogue means more immersion!

I prefer Morrowind's but its not going to happen. Any game nowadays that came out with no voice-acting would be hated immediatly. So, with that in mind, I hope they go the Fallout 3/New Vagas way of doing things.

Not exactly there are many games out there without voice acting that are incredibly popular, off the top of my head i can think of Minecraft, World of Warcraft(or pretty much any other MMO). Yes I know World of Warcraft has some voice acting but only to the same extent that Morrowind does if not less. I actually dislike most games because they try to have voice acting everywhere.. most of the time it's not very good at all. Voice acting to the extent that they tried in Oblivion and Fallout 3 has no place in an rpg(action or otherwise)! The Elder Scrolls games have always been about big adventures and traveling to distant places to complete a quest no matter how small. Voice acting in this situation is impossible to do correctly at the moment, unless they plan to hire at least 200 voice actors to do an average of over 2000 lines of dialog each, I'm not sure what the going rate is for voice acting but I can only imagine that would be pricey (And please no celebrity voice actors not only would that make it more expensive but I find it immersion breaking to say the least).

But yes I agree sadly it's not very likely this will happen. Even though I'm almost positive most people wouldn't hate it... if Morrowind came out today I'd still think it was amazing and at least 10 times better than the average game you see coming out now. I think anyone who would hate it Bethesda shouldn't want as a customer anyway since (how can I put this lightly...) they are uneducated, illiterate idiots that will bring an end to this world if fed. (Please don't feed them Bethesda)