Indeed, I don't want any more lifelessness like interacting with MW npcs, it was like I was reading Wikipedia instead of talking to someone, that is bad.

If you are going to have voice acting in a game you can't half-ass it with subpar acting. Far too many games have dont this and it simply ruins the game. I don't see why you can't have complete voice acting with a healthy number of quests.

in my opinion, it would be best for npcs to have like an introduction that is voice acted, but the majority of 'speech' is conveyed through text.
that would mean my quests wouldnt feel totally out of place like they did in oblivion

there are so many games with amazing and unforgettable chracters out there.... and part of that is the personality given through theirs voices.... why should only tes be a mediocre game story and chararcters wise?

ps english is not my native language bla bla bla

I prefer a wall of text. At least with text, writers are free to give a lot more detail and interesting information where as voiced tend try to fit everything into a few sentences. Plus, people tend to read things in that "characters' voice" in their head anyway.

It's a quality versus quantity thing. Without voice acting it's difficult to portray emotion and make the game more immersive. So while you could have a game that lasted you 500 hours per play through, it's sacraficing quality. Besides, we'll get plenty of quantity with voice acting still in.

Test based quest handlers make me not care about what is happening in the game.

This poll makes no sense because two different groups within the company do these two roles. One make/design/implement the quests, and another does all voice recording/editing, and placement. Cutting down on voice acting does not magically make the quest designers able to work any faster.

Especially with this new conversation system, I want voice acting. At the moment it seems as if one is able to walk around / do stuff while talking to NPC's, and I don't want to have to read a wall of text while doing these things.

Either they do voice acting right or they don't do it at all.

To me, good and varied voiceacting is important. Only text or/and bad voiceacting removes a lot of the immersion. I'd rather listen to 200 unknown/local/fresh voicactors than 15 untalented Hollywood big-names.

Your argument is starting to fall through.

Dual-layer DVDs have 9.4GB of space. An average game is about 6GB currently. Sidc space is a minor issue here.

As stated by many, the quests are made THEN voice actors are hired. So the amount of voiced parts does not translate to fewer quests.

You love reading, great. I don't, unless I have a voice to follow along with. Its how I am.


Try throwing in the "Both" option and see how it turns out. Because you are resisting putting it in shows your bias.

This poll allows nothing of taking voice quality into account. Voice Quality is very important to me, but fully, partially, (or even the complete lack of) voiced NPCs does not rank very high on my list of what's important in an RPG.

This.

I don't care much for voice acting, I can live with text. Leads to more writing and dialogue.

Maybe just a few main, and major questlines voice acting but thats it.

Voice acting is extremely important to me. I believe that if it is done right a game will prosper and if it is done poorly a game will suffer.

That being said, I feel that Oblivion did poorly with voice acting given the resources and technology available to them. I believe I have an idea on how to rectify this in Skyrim.

Nothing was more annoying or harder to get used to than several NPCs gathered together speaking the same voice! Skyrim really needs to develop a formula to get away from standardized voices. I have some ideas regarding this...

First of all, the reason for limited voice acting was due to space limitations on disc, not how many voice actors were available. This system will show how to increase the number of voice actors for certain dialogues without increasing the space necessary to hold the audio on disc:


Divide voice acting into faction/quest-line specific dialogue categories instead of race/gender dialogue categories.

For instance, in Oblivion we had:

Male Imperial voice:
Rumors
Daedra
Gray Fox
Villager 1

Female Imperial voice:
Rumors
Daedra
Gray Fox
Villager 1

...and so on, for a given town (or global dialogue option, if that be the case) You can see how this stacks up quickly... Every race must record a global dialogue option twice (once for each gender), multiplying the necessary recordings for a single subject by more than 10 times.

Now, what if we changed that so that the voices were more varied and mixed, characters seemed more distinct in dialogue, and no more space for audio than would be used before?

How? Divide the dialogue options by faction.

For example:

Peacekeepers Faction Male voice:
Directions

Peacekeepers Faction Female voice:
Directions

Nordic Commoner Male voice:
Rumors

Nordic Commoner Female voice:
Rumors

Synod Male voice:
Daedra

Synod Female voice:
Daedra

Nordic Warrior Male voice:
Enemy Combatant NPC (Quest)

Nordic Warrior Female voice:
Enemy Combatant NPC (Quest)

------------

See how this works out? The amount of dialogue recorded does not change, but the voice actors used has increased from 2 to 8! This makes the game much more varied and diverse! Depending on a faction or affiliation (which will be made more obvious through Skyrim's detailed stereotyping of races, armor and complexion), different dialogue options will be available. That way, instead of walking up to a random citizen and sorting through 10 dialogue choices they know little about and having only a handful of voice actors, you will be able to immediately know who best to ask a question by just looking at them, there will be more voice actors and a less arduous system of sorting through dialogue choices with each NPC!

Of course, there's no reason why voices couldn't be recycled across Skyrim if necessary, but the diversity here could create a much more varied speech system.

ALSO

I would like to mention that in cases when the amount of dialogue necessary for a quest seems absurd, the quest-giver could always give the player a note and say "Here, let me write it down for you." This line could be recycled for many, many quests. So could something along the lines of, "Well, it's a long story..." followed by a dialogue box that says "NPC has told me all about..." The story is imparted and voice acting is used appropriately, but the disc space for each quest has been reduced (effectively making room for more quests in the game.)

Ta-dah!
How do you like those apples, Bethesda?

Elder Scrolls is not an average game. I don't have Oblivion currently installed so I can't say the file size but I'm sure its large.
And the fact is if it was all written dialogue there would be a lot more quests and conversations. In Fallout you can't even talk to many characters, they just give a general greeting. In Morrowind you could enter in topics with every character in the game. They simply cannot take the time to record unique voices for 2 thousand NPCs. If it was all written they could just have the writers type unique scripts and topics for each NPC. I'm guessing based on your points that you never played Daggerfell.
And if you don't like to read then why do you go on forums?

I prefer writing, because thats what i grew up playing, Games that were either driven by text, or were pointless and had no real story. But like hell it's going to go that route. It's probably gonna be poorly voice acted with one or two good roles over all.

Well I'm with you man.

FIGHT THE POWER!

it's important to me. I like not talking to a box of information. besides, I like the "holy [censored] it's patrick stewart!" *twitches* or "OMFG it's borimir!!" to occasionally pop up in the game story.

I must have full voice acting. Luckily for me, that's what we're going to get.

I use my imagination more when i read text, which helps stimulate your mind and counteracts some of the brain-rot that occurs when playing video games,

however spoken dialog has been the status quo in the industry for years, and it satisfies the dumber part of my mind.

so i'm half and half on this.

The poll is indeed biased as all hell...

...which in no way changes the fact that I could not possibly care any less about voice acting myself.

And also doesn't change the fact that the game will be max-voice-acting, with probably the same mediocrity we got in Oblivion: one or two voices for each race, and a couple of overpaid celebrities (each of whose salary would have paid for several more "common" voice actors to cut the "All the NPCs sound the same!" effect) for a couple of "main" characters. It's all about the eye and ear candy... :shrug:

Well, having synasthesia, voices and soundtrack sometimes conflict and I get colors and tastes that either add significantly to the experience, or detract from it.
I am mainly a visual and kinetic learner. When things are conveyed aurally/orally, I have to mentally transcrible the conversation in my head to distract myself. Otherwise, I'm off on a sensory tangent.
A man with a deep, rich voice makes me salivate, it's warm, salty, like au jus.
I kept tasting cotton candy when bosmers talked in Oblivion and MW.. Shameful, I know.