the only thing im concerned with the new "talk-system" is that - like you said, its not always clear what your prota will answer. i hope they make it absolutely clear so there will be no missunderstanding and maybe highlight special actions like "killing" (or engaging combat).

but oh well ... the voiced character discussion. i think most people will really appreciate the addition of voiceacting for the prota. i actually think there are only very few people
who prefer a deaf, emotionless mute zombie over "the modern" way. and i absolutely hope it stays that way.
For most people (like me) its just way more natural if you hear your own character talking. i think it adds way more immersion to the game than just pretending he just said that.
its a game and not a book. games do what books cant, they visualize, audiovisualize (if thats the word?), and let you take control. its just way more natural.

So I guess people should listen to audio books instead because they they're too soulless to have a genuine inner voice. "Everyone else is doing it" is not a good excuse. I just LOVE generic voice overs depicting my character's tone!

Polygons and textures are artificial. Real human voices speaking FOR ME isn't.

I approve of this message.

not as good because in ME you couldn't have just a conversation with everyone?

I'm just saying your responses were no less because of voice acting.

If you guys are really hard core why not do away with voiced NPCs and replace the it with text for you to read also?

My reservations in the beginning were largely regarding how limited the leaked script made the dialogue seem. Initially, interactions between the PC and Preston Garvey were just one line responses, and they all seemed to come off as sympathetic and endearing to their predicament.

Now, we've seen the dialogue wheel and I'm still unimpressed by it because it makes all the mistakes Dragon Age, Mass Erect, or LA Noire made(this was admittedly OK because LA:N had some LONG winded dialogue by the player. But, some dialogue went from being sympathetic to full on attack mode in the span of 2 seconds. I'm hopeful that Pete Hines is correct about them still making adjustments to the UI, and that they adopt Deus Ex's conversation wheel. It would really clear up the issue of knowing what we're about to say before we say it.

On the subject of the VA in general, I want to give it a chance because I never felt a sense of attachment or resonance to my character in previous titles. Yeah, I could create that inner voice but nothing reinforced the delivery. It can be argued that having a plethora of dialogue options in "the last of us," but no voiced character, would have removed the emotional impact of the dialogue entirely. Maybe the voiced PC will help reinforce both the player's emotional connection to the main character and also to the story that is being told. TLOU was proof that we didn't need to know a character (Joel's daughter) for a tremendous amount of time in order to care about them.

With a voiced protagonist, you will tend play a variation of the characters the dev. has created rather than the character you have in your mind because the delivery of the lines by the voice actors has a big part in defining the character. Inflection, cadence, hesitation, etc. have alot to do with who a character is.

If I want to play as a Clint Eastwood type tough guy, I am going to read the dialog options and imagine my character saying them in a certain way. Then I am going tomake a dialog selection and hear it delivered how the voice actor and voice acting director wanted it delivered. At some point I will give up on the specific character I have imagined and go with what the dev. has given me.

Wife's voice actor is the same as Jack in Mass Effect, so I'm ok with that. And at least husband is not Troy Baker or Nolan North.

This is understood; this is also the contention of some. Specifically, it's talk roulette; you might have no idea what the PC says from the abridged (or only abstracted) choice.

To me it means that the developer's don't expect the player to care what is said in advance; presumably as long as it makes sense or sounds clever/cool.
To me that implies that no subtlety of language exists in the game, and that the PC's choice will only amount to "Yes", "No", "Maybe later".

And as I stated before,I don't mind the silent protagonist,I never even thought about them adding a voiced protagonist when I played previous titles.Now that it has come to this though i just don't mind.Since you do mind however I Hope they can perhaps add an option to somehow turn the protagonists voice off so no one needs to complain.

So by that reasoning, we can also say that the people at Bioware also don't expect people to care what they say? Since, you know, they pretty much do the same thing in all of their games.

It'd be a nice option, but I think it a shame to turn it off; we all share the consequence of its ~even optional inclusion. It shapes the scope of the game when the variable [anybody] PC has to voice all the dialog.

Yes very probably. I haven't played a Bioware game since DA:O... No special reason, I just don't have any of their recent games... Though I've heard plenty of rancor for some of them.

I did see a video of the combat in DA:2, and it didn't seem very memorable to me; indeed, I don't remember it.

Maybe they chose to do voices this time because people are too lazy to read.

..or people are too lazy to imagine.

But maybe they want the player character to be presented in a more developed way, even if it means that the player character is defined for you to some degree.

I'm okay with a voiced protagonist. I also have to believe that a voiced protagonist may help with the overall storytelling.

I'll be honest, the dialogue system of Bioware's Mass Effect/Old Republic series is one of my favorite in terms of interactive storytelling options. It'll help our characters be more vibrant as opposed to a batch of sanitized, distant responses.

Generally the way it works, and what I expect to see, is that they can't type out the entire response. It'd be too long. So instead they give you a snippet that gives you an idea of what you're going to say (agree, disagree, ask questions, etc) and the tone (nice, mean, sarcastic, etc). Then your character speaks the long version. In fact, it's be stated that you will get different types of response like that. So you can play a mean character, a nice character, a sarcastic character, etc. Is it perfect? No, it isn't, but to suggest that it means that Bethesda doesn't think players will care is extremely pessimistic and makes me wonder if you're just looking for excuses to justify your dislike of it.

Personal opinion. I thought the exchange with Codworth wasn't really worth wasting the lines on it. Neither was having the protagonist muttering to himself about every second thing he saw. Do those pointless comments made for no other reason than OMG THE PROTAGONIST HAS A VOICE count toward the total lines recorded? Really? Exchange with an npc that gives options/insights/new information equal "Sugarbombs"?

I like to know what my PC's dialog options are, and I don't mind if the UI has to copy Fallout 2 to manage it.

It was quite a peeve in Witcher 2, to click on an option and be totally caught off guard by the [then committed!] response. I remember once I chose some innocuous option in Witcher 2, and Geralt threatened to kill the guy; and then I was in combat. Someone mentioned worse about Mass Effect earlier, and I remember the same thing in Dragon Age Origins..

In Planescape you could even get duplicate options where one was the PC telling the truth (as he knew it), and the other was the PC deliberately telling a lie.

That's the kind of conversation support I'd like to see more RPGs; and not just that, there were stat checks, like the PC seeing a theif pick pocketing him, and having the option to let them, and study how they worked their methods; or the option to grab hold of them [stat checks], and not get robbed... failure would mean they wriggled away from the PC's grab at them.

That was something that kind of bugged me too, but to be completely fair, that could very well just be in as a tutorial of sorts, introducing new players to objects that can be interacted with.

What was more annoying to me was all the grunting and wheezing the PC did while climbing out of the vault later on. Sounded like an old coot who's smoked two packs of unfiltered Pall Malls a day for the past 50 years.

People did polls here. Most of the people here were definitely "no voice".

People did polls on EABioware's site. Most of the people there were "OMG YES VOICE". Of course this happened after ME.

My favorite games from Bioware were Pre-EA takeover. No voiced protagonists to grab for the biggest buck. Even the games that didn't let you create a from scratch character, like Jade Empire, still didn't have a voice. [I'm including DA:O in the pre-EA period; I followed that "un-named Bioware original ip" for years in the forums before EA ever entered the picture. If Bioware had had less time and work invested in the game I'm sure EA would have forced a voiced protagonist, like they did for DA2.]

Voiced wouldn't have been my 1st choice since I think Silent is superior to Voiced due to more choices in dialoge.

That is why I said so many people who played ME/ME2 saved their game before every conversation. That way when the "wheel o'paraphrases" gives you something you don't want, you can reload and try again. No, Dragon Age: Origins had the responses written out. You could pick what your character said. Some people didn't realize what responses triggered a romance, but that isn't the same as "I want to be a dragon" coming out as "That trick of yours looks very useful. Can you teach me?"

That was the problem in DA:O, and no, it's not the same; for the most part I was very impressed with the game, and still am. I did like that several NPCs had conversation triggers if present, and would interject, or sometimes interrupt conversations with certain NPCs.

Well, look... I'll get over it and still enjoy the game. If they just have the option to disable it then I'll be more than happy. If not, I'll have to deal with it. That's why I think having the actual dialogue written in context would be the best option, so I can see what I would say and just tap "A" once more to skip the words. Now I have listen to it.

I keep seeing the whole "More choices"...but Fallout has universally had 3-4 dialogue choices (including Skill Check responses). It's not like having a voiced protagonist is taking any responses away from what traditionally was there - which generally boiled down to "Yes" "No" "Tell Me More".

Excellent point, and I apologize if you felt I was offending you and others like you that prefer a silent protagonist. But while "Everyone else is doing it" is indeed not a good excuse, that is the way most industries (whether entertainment or not) work. While you may not like the 'generic' voice, others need it. Why? Well, I know several gamers that have problems with viewing words, mental condition (dyslexia) or they just can't see well. The voiced protagonist will help with these kinds of problems.