You can play as 10 different races (I assume), in 2 genders. Do you want a generic male or female voice for whichever race you took? It would never work, and if this isn't impractical already, anything more than 2 voice overs certainly is.

Besides, I don't have the patience to wait for my player character to finish speaking lines I just read already so I'd just skip through it.

I agree. I personally also think that being called a foreign swear word (such as n'wah) has a much bigger impact, because you don't know what it means. [censored] is simple, and well-known. N'wah? As far as you know, he called you a [censored] licking [censored] [censored] svcking [censored].

"Rooster svcking" is apparently not censored when written as one word.

Because when you don't have voiced dialogue, you can imagine how, with what tone and with what exact words your character responds. With Mass Effect's system you can also never be quite sure what the character says, in few cases it was very out of character, making me wish for an undo button That is why i also prefer Oblivion system, you only have topics instead of dialogue lines, Morrowind does it even better having possible topics highlighted in the dialogue text.

As for voice acting, it's expensive and thus effectively cuts the amount, and possibly even quality of the dialogue the game can have.

i certainly didn't think the voice acting was bad for Fallout 3, the only concern I have is the amount of voice actors, as Oblivion was REALLY lacking in that aspect.

Some of them only did one voice, like Sean Bean and Patrick Stewart so it evens out.

I'm probably going to get a lot of negative responses on this one, but...

Bring in famous voice actors again.

Honestly, the performances from Patrick Stewart, Sean Bean and Terence Stamp in Oblivion and Liam Neeson in Fallout 3 are amongst the most memorable video game performances for me

but yeah budget

Well, i for one don't recognize any voice actors, famous or not. Not money well spent IMO :shrug:

Not even Patrick Stewart :confused:

Who's that? I am not kidding

OH MY GOOOOOOOOOD

No, to be honest, I've never seen any film with him in it, and I didn't recognize the voice actors either. But we're talking about their performance here. Seriously, they were the only people in-game who actually tried to sound in-character.

Really? I guess he voice acted the Emperor then? Of course, only part of his dialogue i've heard since the first time is "I was born...". Been there, done that, got the bellybutton

Patrick Stewart voiced the Emperor, Sean Bean voiced Martin Septim, Terence Stamp voiced Mankar Camoran.

Of the three, I'd say Sean Bean's performance was the best. You could really feel the emotion despite the uncanny valley face animations.











Do you need a priest?

Games need to evolve, that's right, though not every game needs a predefined hero designed with the cool factor in mind to appeal a vast demographic. Taking your example, I could ask you to keep playing Mass Effect and leave TES alone, but I wont because you would be missing a very different but very interesting and involving experience. Simply, there is room for diversity.


And on topic, I think Bethesda can do much better in respect to dialogue and conveying emotion, but I'm pretty confident they will address those problems, mainly because their latest games have been an improvement on both voice acting and writing. There is room for a lot of improvement, but for now, I remain hopeful.

Yes, any voice is better than none. Better to have 10 different races who are all mimes?

If patience is an issue for you maybe you should omit Skyrim altogether. Maybe you don't care about roleplaying, but some people do.

I sincerely did not catch that. Camoran speaking did not connect me to Stamp's voice. It sounded like someone else to me. :/

Disagreed. I'd rather no voices at all. I don't even listen to the dialogue since I can read much faster.

Oblivion took that path, "hero of cyrodill" Seems to me the Elder Scrolls does have a hero designed with a cool factor, why not take it a step further and give him/her a voice. I wasn't making comparisons..I was citing an example of an rpg that gave the protagonist a voice, and it worked out well. I agree Diversity..add voices for main characters and have instances where it's text based i.e buying/selling goods.

Wow...you're missing the point aren't you. Voice acting adds to immersion and is ideal for story telling. So I'm assuming you wouldn't want people gathered in a city block talking to one another, instead you would prefer bubbles over their heads with text because it's more convenient for you.

Funny, that's what i implied in my response :lmao:

Unless The Elder Scrolls hero is going full Commander Shepard, I see no need or point to having a voice whatsoever.

\]

You seem to assume that everyone plays TES to be the hero of Cyrodill... The game is created so you can build and play a character any way you want, so the freedom even in character creation is a design choice. In Mass Effect, I'm going to save the galaxy whether I'm a saint or a [censored], in TES, I could decide not to because it simply does to interest me or conflicts with the kind of character I'm playing. Its a totally different way of designing a main character, and like I said before, not every game needs to have it. It fits in Mass Effect because the game was designed with Shepard as a central figure in mind, while in a series like TES it just clearly out of place.

I don't expect miracle leaps in this department (as we may get in the visual and AI departments).

But with all my comments I do have an eye toward what would be best for mod added content that could come later.

I envision a mixture of Morrowind verse dialogue and Oblivion topic dialogue. Oblivion's system would have been horrendous if there were no quest markers. With Morrowind you could take your tine and even write things down.

Both Fallouts followed the Oblivion style, so that is most likely. But it would be great to have the ability to switch to the verse that Morrowind offers. So say the topic tree has 5 topics a few might be prefaced with 'dialogue about' and then it switches into verse reading. So those that want the 3 words answer can get that and those that want backstory can get that too.

I would enjoy a hybrid system like that. I think the current implementation of the dialogue system just doesn't do justice to the incredibly detailed amount of lore and detail the TES universe has. I would prefer that whatever solution they come up with can be implemented without the need of mods though, that way people on the consoles can enjoy the improvements as well. It would make for a better game for everyone that way.

That's part of the main story line, people will at one point or another play skyrim for the storyline. And in that storyline they will be a hero..yes it's built that way except you were destined to be a hero, Oblivion proves as much. You can go about roleplaying and having fun, but your role in the game as far as the storyline goes is predetermined. Umm..you can choose not the save the galaxy at all and instead just roam around the universe exploring and doing side-quests in Mass Effect also.

Voice acting can work in the same way it did for Oblivion. Every race had a generic, but unique sound for their males/females, i.e an orc didn't sound like a argonian. If you choose a male human you get a male human voice. If you choose a male orc you get a male orc voice, and so on. It doesn't at all deter from the experience of having a unique character. Your character is unique because of how you choose to play with him, not by how he sounds.

Every single elf sounded the same though. Nords and orcs sounded the same.