In your opinion.

God forbid! He thinks differently than you!

Oblivion: Its main quest isn't a cinematic experience because the game allows you to even skip it if you feel like it. Its cannon, part of the lore and all, but when you load up YOUR game, its up to you what to do and how to do it. The only thing that is lore is that the Champion of Cyrodill helped avert the Oblivion crisis. The game doesn't force you to be that champion. It doesn't put you in the shoes of any specific character. The game could not care less what you spend your time on, its built so you can go about your business and forget about it if you feel like it since there is plenty of game content to support the notion. Its presented in 1st person view, intended to build immersion as you explore the world through your own eyes, not watching an avatar's back or cutscenes where you expose a point of view already predefined by the developers.

Mass Effect: It doesn't matter how much time you spend on a bar looking up at the dancers, or shooting those critters in Rex's homeworld, or how much mining you end up doing. You are still Shepard, you are still humanity's only hope, and the rest of the universe is still waiting for you to go get rid of the reapers. The only thing Shepard can be in the game is a Space Marine. Its his place in the world and the story the game tells, in a way that reflects a movie watching experience, by giving its main character, which you control, a personality and voice set in stone, and then placing the player, with very little variation, on a set course towards the end of the game. In the meanwhile, we watch a bunch of cutscenes that present the plot in a way that's very reminiscent of how its done by a film editor, and take part in carefully mounted set pieces where we shoot our way out of every game location.

I love Mass Effect for what it is, which is definitely not a TES game. The difference its like night and day.

Of course it's in my opinion..you think there are facts involved with these sort of things? Silly response. It seems Bethesda agrees partly, after all they decided to scrap the text based interactions in Morrowind in favor for a more vocal communication in Oblivion.

If you bothered to read our entire argument you wouldn't be making a silly response like that. In that case it's not opinion, but fact. Bethesda has been able to dedicate a appreciable amount of their resources and time to voicing and creating scripts for hundreds of different NPC's. One character is practically a non-issue. Please stop being a troll.

i think they should make the voice actors say lots of popular names so they can ur name. un less u want to make an elder scrolish name

In this case is the player character, and thus you'll need to create a voice file for every player interaction in the game, multiplied by 20 because of all the races? Most characters in the game have just a few lines, courtesy, in part, to how expensive and time consuming voice over work is. So we end up where we started, with a voice track for the player character made up a bunch of recycled one liners? Its simply not worth it, I would prefer deeper text dialogue to that, I'm sorry. Just my preference.

Just because you can skip it doesn't mean it's not a cinematic experience..just means you can skip it :facepalm:

The game forces you down a road that will lead to becoming champion..the first thing that happens during the prologue is that Uriel Septim approaches you and says you were destined for more..pretty much forcing you into the main story without your approval. Only then can you roam and decide how to play the game after being freed from prison. Try saying no I don't want to take part in this prologue, see what happens

No matter how much time you spend performing other tasks in Oblivion you will always be the Saviour Uriel Septim saw you in the prologue. Remember the dialogue:

You: I choose my own path

Uriel Septim: Don't we all, but who's path can be avoided whose ends are fixed by the almighty gods.

Avoiding the main storyline doesn't change that fact because in the Elder Scrolls your fate has already been decided.

Text dialogue after time will become recycled garbage as well because you would have read it already. No different than vocal responds.

Hearing a generic player voice every time your character talks is IMO more immersion breaking than not having a voiced player character.

When my character don't have a voice I can imagine what my character sounds like, and what emotions he/she puts into his/her line. If the player character was voiced, that part of my roleplaying experience would be broken.

It doesn't matter what Uriel Septim tells me, because at the end of the day he always dies and I always have the choice to ignore him, or go rob people, or murder them, or roam the game world, or go on a witch hunt against necromancers, or whatever I feel like it. The game needs a beginning obviously, and they choose a plot device that seems like the game is chaining you to it, but that's certainly not the case, and its one of my complaints against that sort of tutorial scenario. Like I said way before, its simply a matter of how you see the game, you see yourself bound to a role, I don't, and the game is perfectly playable both ways. You are the mighty Champion of Cyrodill on every playthrough, I'm the guy that just lives another life and plays a role he sees fit.

Really? You must have not played many text based rpgs then? Its entirely on the writers hand if his text is recycled garbage. That's usually a telling sign of a lack of talent.

I literally read every single one of your posts. You act as if your opinions are objective. Not everyone thinks that a voiced PC is the best way to go, stop trying to berate people for it. Saying things like, how can you not see this, is an attempt at forcing your opinion on others. Don't do it. Like I said, The Elder Scrolls (not including spin-offs) has never had a voice PC and never will. I don't think it belongs in the ES universe and would much rather it stays the way it has for the past 16 years. I would much rather imagine what my character sounds like than have him voiced. If you want to play games with voiced main characters there are plenty of others out there.

In Mass Effect you're Captain Shepard, coming to save the galaxy. You can be a nice captain, or an ass, and you can choose your skills, but other than that the player character is forced on you.

TES has always been about creating your own character, with his own personality, your own story. That's why you start out in prison every time with no background. By voicing all his lines you are shoehorned into an opinion: You click on a topic, and hope that whatever your character spits out fits with your idea of the character. Yes there's a main quest you are assumed to have completed by the time the next game comes around, but you don't have to. It's your game, and there's far more to do than the main story. And even becoming the 'champion of cyrodiil' can be done with all sorts of different characters, with different motivations.

Besides that, a voice I have to hear constantly through the entire game in every conversation would need to be really damn good. Otherwise it just gets annoying. In that case text is better than bad voice acting. There's a reason that for Oblivion mods people prefer non voiced dialogue over badly voice acted dialogue: Bad voice acting for NPCs breaks immersion, while the 'voice in your head' would be doing a better job. So mediocre voice acting won't cut it for the player character.

Essentially it's a non issue because we already know Bethesda isn't going to do it.

I agree with povuholo through most of this.

I don't want a player voice and other than main quest stuff it does not bother me to read most things. I'd still like a hytbrid though.

What I don't mind though is emoting from the character (even if race based with sub-division options) - you know like expressions when hit, power attack gotchas, 'hmm' that kind of thing.

And of course an option to turn it on and off.

Wow...you're missing the point aren't you? I don't find that voice acting adds to immersion. Immersion immersion immersion, what a buzz word.

I found the writing on both Oblivion and Fallout 3 to to range from average to plain awful. New Vegas was good enough but that wasn't developed by Bethesda, so my hopes aren't entirely raised.

OK, I'll post it here :mohawk:

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u99/B2MX/Larry02.jpg