Is there a reason in the lore why thier voices are different in Oblivion ?

No, there's no lore reason, it's a game mechanics reason - or more specifically, a budget consideration. They spent all their voice acting money on Sean Bean (and 10 lines by Patrick Stewart) and had to cut back on unique voices for the rest of the races.
All Elves of the same gender share a voice (High Elf)
Orcs and Nords of the same gender share a voice (Nord)
Khajiit and Argonians of the same gender share a voice (Argonian)
Imperial and Breton females share a voice (Imperial), but the males are distinct.
Redguards are the only race with a unique voice for both genders.

No lore reason - just think that they tried to be like the Imperials, but overdid it. That also explains the Bosmer.

*sigh* They all sounded the same, their faces all looked the same.

The thing about people is that we look for distinct features on a person's face. What I liked about TES III was the selection of very different-looking heads to choose from. Sure, it is limited, but it is better than having everyone look the same (unless you do something really extreme with the facegen settings, like they did to the NPCs in SI). I can't remember what Jaufre looks like, but show me a picture of Caius Cosades and I can identify him straight away.

It was probably also a disc-space consideration. Male dunmer voices are certainly the most jarring vocal change from Oblivion. Facegen can be used with a lot more finesse than Bethesda did for Oblivion. There's fan work, and beth caught up for FO3.

I wanted to cry when I first heard my awesome Dunmer character squeal like a pansy little wood elf in OB.....made me miss the smokers' lung Dunmer voices of Morrowind so bad.

But yeah, totally budget reasoning. Nothing lore based at all.

There's no official lore on the subject, but reasoning the decision with logic, it could be that the Dunmer in Morrowind talk that way because of long exposure to the Ash giving them raspy voices (and otherwise when they are out of ashy conditions, they talk like normal elves).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL8pyOP0VQI As mention above, disc space limitation may have been taken into consideration.

Hmm, it makes sense. Except why don't the other races living in Morrowind have the same effect on thier voice ?
Edit: I just realized in the title i put Drak instead of Dark. Oops. :/

They don't smoke 5 packs a day

If it wasnt for disk space reasons, I can see why they scraqed that voice; it sound good at all.

I don't think it's because of lore...

Uh... everyone in Morrowind looked the same too even more the same. There were a select few faces. And the player looked like everyone else too... people like to omit that.

The reason for their voices is probably that in Cyrodiil they aren't breathing all that damn ash.

You can't honestly tell me that hearing "Fletcher" and "N'wah" constantly being violently thrown at you by a shill piercing screech (for the females) and what sounded like the voice of a person that's been smoking five packs a day since birth (for the men) didn't annoy the hell out of you too. When I heard the voices were changing, I was elated.

Unfortunately, the females dark elf screech not only remained, but was also applied to ALL of the female elves. The male voice might have changed, but into something far, far more anoying.

Is there a lore reason? No. Lore-wise, all the characters should have their own individual voices. The only reason they don't is beacuse it just isn't practical development wise. The voices you hear in-game shouldn't matter, any good RPer should and would transpose their own idea of how the voice should sound on the character. That's one of the things that annoyed me about Oblivion. In Morrowind, the dialogue was silent, allowing you to do that. In Oblivion, the dialogue was stupidly muddled with voice-acting, ruining the immersion element.

I can honestly tell you that hearing "fetcher and "n'wah" being violently thrown at me by a shill piercing screech and the voice of a person who smokes 5 packs a day since birth did not annoy the hell out of me. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I'll agree with you although, I hate Dunmer not matter what their voice.

That's the best answer I can come up with too. However, it added a certain something that helped with their whole 'cursed race' schtick that I missed.

Although, that's an interesting explanation I haven't heard of yet: Space. It makes perfect sense. You couldn't pack as much NPC content because it is limited by the voices it is attached to. You have to fit it all onto one disk because you are releasing it onto the console. You trade an immersive method of conveying information for depth.

nah, I don't think it is lore related. I like the voices in Morrowind better though.

Im not so sure ifi ts a lore thing or not, but I believe in Morrowind they talked about Western accents being very different from Eastern.

That video pisses me off for more reasons than just the voice. It sounded like a natural conversation, for one thing, not ME HATE MUDCRAB, YES ME AM HATE THAT CREATURE YOU MENTION TOO, GOODBYE, BYE, HELLO, ME AM HATE MUDCRAB.

That is indeed true, Bethesda often used the the same voice actors for multiple races to save on budget. In this case, though, while there might not be any particular lore reason for Dunmer sounding different in Oblivion, there is a justification (though just for the voice being different, not for it being the same as other elves.) because not everyone of the same race would sound the same, in real life, listening to the voice of two people of the same race, you can probably tell they're different people even without looking at their faces. If Bethesda had the budget to accurately portray this, Dunmer of the same six would not all sound the same either. It may also be that it's mentioned that in Morrowind, non-native Dunmer can be identified by their western accent, though I doubt an accent can account for the raspy voice of Morrowind's Dunmer whereas in Oblivion they sound entirely different, maybe one could blame it on airborne ash from red mountain, but that doesn't explain why females sound the same in both games, or why non-Dunmer who have spent their entire lives on Vvardenfell don't have raspy voices, though Bethesda not being able to afford giving them unique voices might. Ultimately, though, the reason for the change of voice is for budget reasons, not lore reasons.



That's probably because it was likely specifically written for that video to show off the game's NPC conversations, and stop acting stupid. The NPC conversations in Oblivion might not be good, but the responses are at least usually grammatically correct, if you think you're acting clever, you're really doing the exact opposite.

Eh, probably Imperial eugenics.

Game mechanics that's the reason.

I highly doubt that's the same voice actor. It sounds like an eighteen year old half-heartedly straining their voice into sounding tough.

Yeah, there's no way to compress the sound into the BSA. Unless consoles go for a multi-disc changer to compensate for small Hard Drive capacity. :shrug:

And the Dunmer don't sound like they've been smoking 5 packs a day. The dunmer in the OB preview video did sound like that... but not the Dunmer voices in TES III.

@Hackworthy: there might have been limited faces, but the faces for each race were distinct. In OB, all elves looks the same, except for skin tone and eyes (for Dunmer) and height. All Nords, Imperials, Bretons, and Redguards (except for the skin tone) look the same, too. <_<