I should have seen this coming. I've been playing games since 1990: all types of genres and I am not afraid to try new things. The fact the Bethesda games were different was the main reason I started playing TES and then Fallout 3. The fact that I could make my own character, that I could play as a woman, and that I could play as other races. This is the same reason I fell in love with Dragon Age: Origins but then they changed all that I loved.

No I am not afraid of change but I am afraid when a beloved franchise changes everything I love about the series. Why take away our (character's) voice and give us someone else's voice which we may not even like?

Now Fallout 4 is beginning to resemble every other game out there. I have tried playing ME (first one), DA2 and DA:I and gave up on them because of voiced protagonist. Perhaps these games just aren't for me. I don't have anything against voice protagonist in some games, such as Bioshock Infinite and Uncharted series but they are not quite the same thing.

I am willing to give them the reasonable doubt but this is going to have to tell the best story in the history of gaming to get me over the voiced protagonist.

There is something wrong with you if voiced dialogue is going to ruin the entire game for you. I don't get th e big deal, they're trying something new.

Are you serious? DA:I dialog wheel was nothing but a cluster-censored of censored for me... The Inquisitor said what I wanted him to say maybe 1/5 times, and even then the tone was off. Why in the world couldn't the 'show the actual dialog once you hover over the vague hint' option been implemented? That at least was something of an improvement, though really it was just the good old system disguised as a stupid dialog wheel.

Voice acting is needed for this generation of gamers I'm afraid. Due to them being spoiled, impatient, unimaginative, stupid and addicted to action. Aaaaand - now I feel old.

I do agree with you OP, but I have a more optimistic outlook personally. Like Kiralyn said, they want to try something else. I'm willing to complete the game before judging the VA.

Yeah. I hated it in Inquisition. There were several occasions that rivaled L.A. Noire in terms of the choice not being at all representative of what was said. I still remember one time vividly... I was conversing with Cassandra about the origins of tranquility, and an option appeared comparing the act of tranquility to castration. Only, instead of actually comparing the two, my character decided to get extremely hostile towards Cassandra and accuse her of personally mutilating mages. It was made all the more worse since she was my active love interest. There was one dialogue choice where the icon was a crying eye, and my Inquisitor sounded like he was bordering on cheerful. There was another dialogue choice where there was an exclamation point at the end, signifying 'exclamation.' My character whispered it. Whispered.

Inquisition didn't do it well. The writing for some of the options either wasn't representative of what was said or had a vocal performance that wasn't logically implied by what was written. And there's plenty of times when the game breaks the rules that it establishes throughout. The idea that question mark icons won't progress dialogue, but simply give more information is thrown out in a select few situations causing you to get screwed over for just wanting to see what other options were available.

The dialogue wheel could work well if they established a consistent rule set and had images or a color for every option to help us understand the tone of voice; and make sure it's what actually happens. However, from what we've seen in the footage, this doesn't seem to be the case.

Voiced and silent characters both can limit roleplaying.

A voiced character might be able to push a stronger sense of emotion into conversations/arguments, but it will always be the same voice for every playthrough.

Silent characters allow you to implant any voice/dialect you wish to fit the character, but you will only ever get single lines of dialogue to say. Something like giving a longer speech to rally your allies I don't see working well as delivered lines.

Both hurt roleplay in one way or another.

They want to compete with Mass Effect in that part I guess. See we have a voiced protagonist. Dumbing down the game is things like streamlining and removing skills

Hmm, appealing to a wide audience is a bad thing?
Surely it's good to be successful.

Has someone confirmed you can turn it off?

Seems unnecessary, but ok.

This is common perhaps, but not intrinsic... If anything, the Text-based PC interface offers virtually unlimited dialog length for the PC; provided they write it into the game.

Planescape has gigantic conversations ~just standing around with your NPCs; that can even level them up, and the PC as well.

It's good to be successful, but it's better to not have to homogenize and water down something unique. Granted, people who are more interested in making money than making art will disagree.

Agreed. TES will inevitably get voice acting too since it's what "gamers expect". Apparently it's also very "cool" and improves story telling.

It's only a matter of time until TES incorporates big explosions and guns as well. I mean, who doesn't think big explosions and guns aren't cool?

Seriously though, I wish it never happened to Fallout. Since it did, they will most likely use it for TESVI as well.

Steamlining is not of itself good or bad, though it can be both.

Any mechanics can be honed, with the extraneous parts removed leading to a more polished outcome,

or dumbed down, losing nuance and complexity.

We've only had a couple of short trailers, so it's far too early to judge whether any changes are good or bad.

Financial success is not incompatible with artistic or well crafted games.

Rushing the job is often the biggest culprit and Bethesda can hardly be criticised for banging these games out of the door.

If some mechanics are simplified, I'm assuming without contrary evidence that it's better that way.

I'm not sure about it to be honest. I just think it's a bit odd that of all the years I've been reading these boards, I haven't once seen anyone complaining that their character in a fallout/elderscrolls game hasn't got a voice, if it ain't broke etc.

Appealing to a wide audience is terrible; for everything but profits. Quality takes an immediate nose dive. Look at FO3, and everyone that laments how bad a shooter it is. Why would they say that of an RPG? They consider it a shooter, and poor one. If they improved the shooter mechanics, that lessens the importance PC skill; if they increase the importance of PC skill, that makes the player's actions less accurate, and they feel that the gun doesn't shoot where they point.

If they add deep extensive dialog, that ticks off every that hates the delay, and yet if they make the dialogs totally optional (as they have it does seem), then they have negated the importance of listening, and giving careful replies. It's impossible to be the best at two or more things, when they are mutually exclusive opposites. It's like a dim light in a room where some want to read, and others want to sleep... It's not good for either.

Aiming for the broadest possible market, is aiming not to please, but to be tolerable... To be just enough of one aspect not to annoy those that hate it, while having just enough of the other aspect to keep the other customers interested. It's aiming for multiple targets, and not aiming for the bullseye [best] of either; but aiming instead for where they overlaphttp://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/FO3_Arrow_to_the_Knee.jpg.

Everyone buys; nobody gets the best possible experience they would hope for; because they are all playing the same game.

I haven't played Inquisition, so I can't comment on that. But this was Bioware refining their skills over the years, not Bethesda. Bethesda has never done a dialogue wheel before, so yes, I have reasons to be worried. I'm trying to think of other developers using similar systems... DXHR showed full responses in the wheel, if you can call that a wheel. Witcher 3 used short sentences, but clearer than Bioware color-coded paraphrasing. LA Noire had some truly terrible "what did I just say?" moments. So I don't know. We'll see.

As for me, my interest in the game dropped like a rock when voiced protagonist was confirmed and I'm terrified that TES VI will get the same treatment. I hope everyone enjoys the game, but it's becoming less and less the kind of RPG I'd like to lose myself in. Mass Effect is one of my favorite games ever... but I buy TES games because they aren't Mass Effect. I hope I'm wrong and voiced protagonist stays only in Fallout.

Sorry, that made no sense at all.

Surely their target is a successful game that they feel proud of and that people want to play.

Sure, they offer choices: 1st/3rd person, shooter/VATS, but that's fine and is their tradition.

There is no such thing as a defined hardcoe audience waiting for the 'best' version, because those people also disagree on what is 'best'.

So Bethesda need to do what they feel is best.

Great, I'd delighted to leave them to it and look forward to the output in November.

Bethesda has given us some of the greatest games ever created.They have put a lot of time and effort into this game.I understand the idea that the voiced protagonist takes away from the idea that you yourself are speaking.However if you have the imagination to believe yourself to be a virtual character then why cant you imagine yourself as having a slightly different voice?When I first heard about it it certainly surprised me,but for me I am happy either way, and something as simple as a voiced protagonist shouldn't ruin a well made game for anyone.I don't see a problem with having the option to turn off the voice acting though.

i will only truly embrace voiced protagonists when there is at least 5+ voices to choose from, if i can make my own character i dont want it to sound so close to my last ones. having said that, i wont be exceptionally negative over the voice, but i will hate the dialogue system with a burning passion if it really is just what i saw (a bad version of the bioware wheel with only 4 options)

I'm on the fence to be honest. It works out mostly fine in Dragon Age for me because there is usually a option for the what I want to say and how to say it. It's more 50/50 in Mass Effect but that mostly do to Shepard pre defined personality(but admitted it's a better in Mass Effect 2.). But those are linear RPGs where Fallout isn't. I'll save final judgement for when play a few hours to see how it plays before creating my actual character. Also if we got more than voice I would work out better to like with Saints Row.

Flappy Birds was a successful game, was it not? Why is 'successful' equated with quality?

I outlined the point, it's there... It explains why you can't hit the perfect mark unless you aim for it.

It was, I enjoyed it for a (very) short time.

Not as much as I'm enjoying Fallout Shelter, I might add.

As I understand it, Bethesda has spent many years working on the best Fallout 4 they can,

and we can judge their success in November.

The trailer brings with it some exciting news:

• The voiced m/f protagonist
• An interesting sounding pre and post war plot
• All the crafting
• Settlement building
• Sharpened combat

Those sound like good things to me that past players of Fallout (and new ones) will enjoy.

I can see no evidence of Bethesda building a game simply for the purpose of appealing to the most people possible,

but if they build a good game, I can see it appealing to very many people, and what's the issue with that?

You know, Fallout 4 might actually have the first real conversations ever in a Bethesda game. Dialogue in Morrowind, back before there were any voices, often felt more like reading a hyperlinked encyclopedia. Then, in the next few games, after they introduced voiced NPCs, you could select brief little replies that made twitter posts look long while the NPCs talked volumes at you. Now that the protagonist is voiced, though, when you select that brief option, you might actually say something substantial in response to the NPCs!

Todd explained this in the presentation as well as in various interviews during E3. The fact is that pretty much any RPG has had a voiced lead (or leads for party RPGs) for many years now, certainly well over a decade, regardless of whether the RPG originated in the West or East Asia. BGS is actually lagging way behind by keeping their prior games unvoiced, so it makes sense that they'd finally try to do voiced lead(s).

Dialogue options being only four doesn't matter as that has typically been average for such games, anyway. Even Bioware's games pretty much average out to about four options.

The quantity of replies isn't important, anyway. It's the quality with any specific context that is important.

Good point.

I also like the fact that they are in real time. And now that I mention real time, I hope that other mechanics that used to involve time-stopping menus (such as lockpicking) are in real time too.