Or it could happen at the cost of the playable status of Argonians, Khajiit, Orcs and a few other race options, because after all, the core audience probably only ever played as Nord in Skyrim anyway, so why bother wasting resources on ten playable races?

Above reason is why I'm telling people to NOT take the feature of ten playable races in TES for granted, and expect the distinct possibility that BGS might consider chopping a few races from the playable status if they don't feel they are a bigger priority than something like a voiced protagonist or a "more gripping story" or something (not that I don't want a better story, just not at the cost of race selection).

I can see a voiced protagonist working okay for Fallout, but I just get an impending feeling that for TES it'll mean chopped-down race selection and subsequent heated arguments between fans of the chopped races and fans of voiced protagonists. Hopefully they would consider having some race and gender options having unique voices or using a silent protagonist instead of chopping races from the playable status.

The in context idea sounds good,Although at this point im sure you know they cant change it,but perhaps if enough people let them know that they dislike it then maybe they will change it with future titles.I think I understand why they went with it.I think what they were trying to do is maybe appeal to those who don't want to hear the exact same thing they just read.I get that I guess,but I think most people do enjoy hearing exactly what they just said if the person is voiced.By giving you general ideas of what the person is going to say makes it feel a little bit less like you.However its not something that's game breaking for me personally though.

You have nothing to apologize for. I understand the benefits and pluses of having voice. You bring good points.

True. In some cases, the dialog can just take longer than it should. Not really intentionally dragged out, but many of those recorded lines could be either generic and bland, or obviously dramatic. Pacing also plays a part in all of that. I guess we'll see.

Eh at first this bothered me too, I could never get into games like Mass Effect or the Witcher, due to lame voice overs (except female Shepard). But since this is Fallout I've accepted it, plus the voice isn't too bad.

I just don't want him to say anything if I pull the trigger of a gun that's empty. Not a [censored] word.

I hate in games (usually 3rd person games) when the PC blurts out a line or two everytime you press the trigger like: "No ammo" "I have no bullets" "I'm out".

It's rather lame.

I'm willing to try the game first - I most certainly will - but I can't stop my reaction of "please, please, please STOP BETHESDA RIGHT NOW, dammit!". Even if the VAs are good, that is not the point. You're not playing your own person - who you want - if the voice is that of some random white guy (or girl).

Further, the dialogue menu is just ridiculous. I have no idea where they got the idea that dumbing it down to 4 options that may or may not fully represent what you're going to say was a good idea. At least show us what we're going to say! In an RPG, you've GOT to know what you're saying. I can't believe they would remove that.

Ofc, mods, but it's always best if mods don't have to fix something stupid in a game. I hope that a mod is made that'll fix it - and it gets an insane amount of endorsemants, ala SkyUI. Perhaps that will be a sign to Beth.

I don't mind the character having a voice, but the vague dialogue wheel options is a concern. It worked in Mass Effect/Dragon Age/KOTOR? Well Fallout is not a Bioware RPG, which were generally linear.

Why not? There's nothing wrong with the hero speaking his answers. It saves you the trouble of imagining him speaking the response and timing your clicks so as to sound natural in your head...lol

Anyway there will probly be a toggle to turn off voice and enable subtitles for the hearing impaired so i wouldn't worry about it.

The voiced protagonist is my biggest concern about the game. IMO switching over to this system did BioWare no favors. Your dialogue options get shaved down from a whole list that often include special options based on S.P.E.C.I.A.L., skills, perks, past actions, etc...FO:NV is one of my absolute favorite games due to the huge variety of dialogue options. Four options is so limiting and the paraphrasing is frustrating. Often the paraphrase will be a single word and you have no idea what your character is going to do or say. Each new BioWare game is more disappointing to me than the last but I would always tell myself "Bethesda (and Obsidian) still make awesome games that have what I like!" Now it feels like history is repeating itself but I hope I'm wrong

No one says one word about how voices NPC's ruined the whole era of text adventures that where masquerading as RPGs? Is this an Irony or a Travesty?

It's time to go back to when people had to read thousands of paragraphs from every NPC just to get that sweat +1 mace.

Remember how they kept saying "Dragon Age is the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate"? Look at it now.

You people think the more you repeat it the bigger chance it will eventually somehow become the truth?

I seriously doubt that would happen. Even though Howard is a bloody liar, I don't think he could excuse cutting a few race from it and kept going on about "do whatever you want, be whatever you want". I would be fun to watch though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj0iJtgHOCI
This is a clip from Mass Effect 2 showing the dialogue system. Broadly speaking, the options on the left open the conversation up and reveal more options; the ones on the right head towards "goodbye". The ones towards the top right are the "paragon" responses, the ones on the bottom right are "renegade" responses. Also, when you're in a cutscene, the paragon and renegade logos briefly flash up at key points - you then choose left or right to have the character perform nice or naughty actions. It works pretty well - if you really want to explore a character, you can chat with them for what feels like forever. If you're in a hurry, you can usually be in and out in seconds.


Yep - ultimately your responses are going to be "yes", "no", "more info, please" and "goodbye", just couched in more elaborate terms, regardless of which game you're playing.


Ha! Actually, that was my criticism of Skyrim - that when you observe conversations rather than directly talk with the character, there's no way of skipping that part of the conversation (e.g. by pressing space bar). Very annoying if it's a scene you've played 50 times already.

Because it is?

I can't think of any non-mod instance where I was presented with a dialogue choice of more then four in the Fallout franchise.

even if that is true (i swear there has been dialogue with many responses), why would you want beth to take the option of good dialogue away, even if only modders will use it? its like throwing an empty weapon away in a game, you dont lose anything by having it but you will lose the option of using it later if you just toss it

And again I strongly suggest replaying the bloody games before you start talking rubbish again.

A voiced protagonist is a pretty huge chain in the formula, but honestly his voice isn't that bad from what we see so I'm quite willing to test that out and see how it goes. If I like it, cool. If not, well, I can always voice my concerns here to give Bethesda constructive feedback.

Except it's not an empty gun.

Assuming that we only get four dialogue choices (Which I'd hasten to point out, we have no verification we will only ever have four options to each dialogue choice. Mass Effect could cater up to eight)...it's not four options total. It's four options per branch in the dialogue tree. With over 13,000 recorded lines of dialogue for our protagonist, that suggests to me that the dialogue tree isn't going to be empty or hollow.

The only real issue I'd have with the voiced protagonist is the lack of a unique game experience for super-low intelligence characters. But again, with so many lines of recorded dialogue for our character alone there's a chance there will be unique dialogue options for high/low intelligence characters. But then again, there may not be. New Vegas had some amusing options, but I've yet to top the experience of Arcanum, where a low intellect character would have verbose, highly refined conversations with other low intellect characters and the journal was written entirely in crayon.

The hostility is not required, nor is the implication that I'm not playing the games.

Seriously, all you need do is demonstrate that I'm wrong. I've got to get hopping to work, but I'll gladly demonstrate my claims when I get home this afternoon.

I'm sorry, if someone is lying to excuse blatant dumbing down with zero benefits, they deserve what they get and more.

There, parts of some of the first dialogues in each game: http://puu.sh/ix2kF/5dde59f1df.jpg, http://puu.sh/ix2wT/59b477b0c3.jpg, http://puu.sh/ix2C7/db684e9d23.jpg, http://puu.sh/ix2It/1b27b2ea67.jpg.

And in The Elderscrolls: Thumbed Down you can do whatever you want, be whatever you want..........just no Orcs, or Argonians........or Kajitt.......................................................or Elf.

Highly doubt it will ever trully happen, but i fear the next TeS will have voiced protag

PS; as the above poster (Aoyagi) has shown, there are dialogs with way more then 4 options, just the sub-options in each topic usualy wasn't verry large, or simply branched alot. The games have had character with up to 8 or more topics of interest, not including the "goodbye" button.

I'm not impressed.

Judging by the pictures, the only reason why the dialogues in Fallout 1 and 2 had more than four options was because you could choose how polite/dramatic/brow-nosing you wanted to be when giving your answer.

Take the dialogue from Fallout 1 you posted; you can reduce those six choices into three: 'Be vague' (1st option), 'Refuse to answer' (2nd and 3rd options combined). 'Explain your mission' (4th and 5th options combined). The 6th option in the dialogue was basically 'goodbye' and since you can end conversations in F4 by simply walking away it is no longer needed.

My point with the paragraph above is that 4 dialogue options are enough to choose what you want to say in a dialogue. However, I agree they are not enough if you also want to choose how to say it (i.e. how polite/dramatic/brown-nosing you want to be).

In an interview, it was confirmed that the main character had enough dialogue recorded to simulate up to 8 different personalities (good guy, cocky, evil, selfish, etc) so I'm confident we will be able to select what to say and how to say it despite having the dialogue arranged in a 4-option wheel.

There is a way, as long as you have control of your legs. If you sprint into the speaker, they will stumble and their dialogue skips. I do it all the time in those three-way conversations in the Thieves Guild.

"And that," she said dryly, "is the whole point of the exercise."

"More extensive text choices allow you to build your character's personality." She firmly emphasized "choices."

"My personal choices as to what might be appropriate to my character are part of what allows me to play "my" character," a trace of annoyance creeping in, "instead of hoping that the paraphrase chosen and the actor manage to do what I want."

"Another problem that might exist is someone else choosing their definition of "good", "cocky", "evil", "whatever". Far too many times the "cocky" is simply d o u c h e; "evil" comes over as "chaotic stupid", and "good" is the "nice no matter what angelic messiah deliverer of ultimate solutions" in a tone of final resignation.

Go back to ME/ME2/DA2; paragon upper right, d o u c h e lower right, chaotic manic/depressive/bipolar in the middle [more for DA2 than ME]. Predefined character, okay. A character I create, not so much. I know it doesn't bother some people, but just like I have my own idea of the voice of a character in a book, and can't enjoy an audio book that has a narrator for a character I "know" that doesn't fit, I can't enjoy voice actors that don't match the character I create in a game that doesn't have a predetermined character.

The book series in my sig; I was happy when I found Renee Raudman did the narration. She matches the voice I imagined for Kate. I wouldn't have gotten the whole series if I hadn't enjoyed the voice.

And since I bypassed the autocensor, even though it wasn't directed at any poster, I'm bowing out before I end up with a warning.

Look mate, that was just the first example I bothered to find, there are more varied, more branching dialogue trees than that, and they're even included in the other examples, which you chose to ignore. Just go play the bloody game, I'm not going to download each just to satisfy some zealot who thinks Todd Howard is Jesus.

Do you understand the point of RP? Of course not, otherwise you wouldn't be defending this rubbish or claim that 4 (at most 4!) options is enough to express any complex emotions/tones.

Oh, I'm sure you're confident in whatever Bethesda says. You keep defending, again, dumbing down with no benefits whatsoever as if it was something good. Absolutely sickening.

How you say something or how you do something is important to roleplayers. The more nuance you take away, the more generic and set the personality becomes.

Of course. That's why in the last paragraph of the post you quoted I said:

In an interview, it was confirmed that the main character had enough dialogue recorded to simulate up to 8 different personalities (good guy, cocky, evil, selfish, etc) so I'm confident we will be able to select what to say and how to say it despite having the dialogue arranged in a 4-option wheel.