How immersion breaking will mods be that add companions/npcs as i would think it will be difficult to add speaking dialogue to fhe hero

How immersion breaking are those same mods if they don't have speaking dialogue but other NPCs do? Doesn't sound like a new problem.

Just don't use that mod, then.

Well, this. How do quest mods manage when the NPC's have been voiced in the game?

I mean if you're going to complain about the voice player character, at least come up with a legitimate reason instead of jumping on the 'anti-voiced PC' bandwagon.

It's an obstacle, but Mod Makers are a crafty sort. The only quest mods in my opinion, are the ones that take the time to do voice work. Get someone who's voice is similar to the PC's.

Fallout 4 is really inviting mod makers to up their game.

After all, the game supports mods and invites people to make them...But the game itself is not a platform for mods. It is it's own game.

Please stop using the word Immersion, it hurts me to the core. The best way to make new mods with a voiced protag, mods that require speaking that is. Just recycle the dialog found in the game and put it together as new possible dialogue, or get a voice actor/actress that sound like or close to the protags voice. The last possbility is just to use a silent protag in said quest-mods.

Perhaps modders will have to do a bit of their own voice acting for their mods. As for the Player I would have to wonder if there is enough generic dialog ("Yes, No, Tell me more") to get the quests across.

How immersion breaking will it be to have a voiced protagonist that doesn't speak with the voice that's in my head? Much.

I think there will be. Probably won't be a problem piecing together the PC dialogue and reuse it in quest-mods. It will sound abit weird perhaps, but i have played a few mods in Skyrim that used pieced together dialogue and it worked fine.

13k lines of dialogue should go a long way.

I think I will just avoid quest mods altogether

You could always have a quest mod that starts off with a note that appears in your inventory when you next sleep --- you wake up and the note says, "Ha ha! I've stolen your vocal cords! Here's a pen and paper, jerkwad! Try and find me!" Might be awkward when you ~can~ talk to non-quest-related NPCs (and if the PC talks to himself and comments on the environment, as I believe has been suggested to happen).

Or you could have an NPC who demands total silence ~toward him~ so that you can talk to other NPCs but if you talk to the quest NPC, he'll stop helping you. The fact that you CANNOT speak to the NPC is a bit of a cheat that ensures you cannot "break your word" and speak to him while on his quest.

Or you could pick-and-choose dialog from the existing game and re-purpose it (which could be a long search through those tens of thousands of sound files to find the snippets you need)... In Fallout New Vegas, existing NPCs appeared in the quest storyline and had dialog that was taken out of their existing conversations and sort of manhandled into the new quest. Of course New Vegas had the advantage that the PC could "speak" dialog lines that would let the mod-creator "set the stage" so that the existing NPC dialog would work...

I suppose you could still pick existing dialog for the PC and re-purpose it if it were generic enough... "We've got to get that, whatever-he-called it from the raiders and bring it back ASAP, Codsworth!" That line could be used in a modder's quest, especially if you had a mod-created voiceover line where the quest NPC actually SAID something unintelligible or super-complicated.

Quest mods have so many issues to balance and potential bugs to avoid, I usually avoid them and stick to texture mods and item mods.

I'm no modder (I'm instead the guy who doesn't mod but is going to give modding advice, anyway )

Is it impossible to have the mod forget the audio dialogue files all together and instead pull from some dialogue box files (either original or user written)?

I mean. It's modding. So why not mod out the voiced PC?

I do not like this voice player character thing either but that is because that was how I played all thru the 80's and 90's and most of 2000 with TES. I do not think this will hurt quest mods all that much. My very first quest mod I made for oblivion (The Old Man On The Mountain) had an NPC that could not speak (he was a mute) and instead used notes he wrote and handed to the player. I had to do this because back then there were almost NO voice actors for modders and the few good ones there was were "booked" 10 times over.

Like others have suggested, there are tricks. For example you could give the player a cold (or some other diseases) and their voice would be distorted.

see i disagree with u, i always hate that everything have voice and not my character but yeah i know modder will not have problems good one make mod with voice acting so it wont we hard.

It makes me happy that there is an increasing number of people saying that

On topic, non-issue, as far as i'm concerned


Bingo.

I support voiced PCs in all future RPG games.

Good decision on Beth's part.

What word would you have people use then? As long as video games exist the concept is going exist. And we are going to have to have a word to describe it. So what would you suggest as a replacement?

The majority of the ones I've played in OB/FO3/etc, just used written dialogue. (With the "Silent Voice" script extender plugin, so that the words stayed on screen long enough even though the NPC wasn't playing audio files.

Something that hasn't been overused into meaninglessness by every complaint thread in the last 5 years complaining that any feature they didn't like (everything from interfaces, to camera angles, to voices, to graphics options ) "ruined their immersion"?

http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/immersion

I don't care much, I would happily accept written silent dialouge for quest mods, companions, etc.. I can imagine the voice for myself. Played like that for years and I don't expect modders to work miracles nor would I hold it against Bethesda for making what they want to make. Reusing the vannila lines could support most mods but it would require more work.
Immersion ? I'm not sure I'm following. I'm aware at all times that I'm playing a game. I'm specially aware if I'm playing with/a mod. Yes there are moments when I get fully invested in games I "almost" forget they are games but when I'm reminded of it short after for whatever reason, it doesn't bother me at all.

I'm not too worried about it, but it will be weird. I hope mod authors don't try to find an impersonator, or try to splice together stuff from the existing PC dialog; that stuff is really easy for me to detect. Although tbh I'm so picky about voice quality (audio and actor) in mods that I've ultimately avoided most mods that include it, so my opinion might not really matter. But I think I could live with mods just having the "general" dialog topics and then the NPC responding as though we asked something specific. Sort of like how dialog topics feel in Oblivion; but in real-time and juxtaposed against fully voice acted player dialog... :T

I like "Enthrallment", myself.

What are people even talking about...Most of the better quest based mods are voiced, some are better then others.

Yep, works well as a work around to and as I expect, we'll see similar workarounds with Fallout 4. But did feel the need to ask the question in response to all this immersion breaking malarkey. A term that is much over used these days.

There are some great voiced, and non-voiced companion mods out there. Willow, for example, is a great voiced companion mod. Whereas Lunette is a great non-voiced companion mod. Would it be great if Lunette had voice acting? Absolutely! Does the lack of voice acting make the mod unplayable? Not in the least! It's still an excellent mod!

I expect that with Fallout 4, there will be a greater call for voice acting in mods. But I also expect that there will be a greater pool of voice actors. Mods are going from being PC-exclusive, to being ported to X-Box and Playstation. Those players will be able to enjoy the mods, and thus at least a few will likely want to contribute to mod creation. If even a small percentage of them are decent voice actors, with a relatively decent mic and recording area, we now have a much larger pool of voice actors for mods.

Maybe I'm overly optimistic. Maybe all the new features in Fallout 4 will overwhelm the modding community. But I think that, given time, and the proper tools, modders will find a way to make it work. Things will come out that Bethesda never expected and there will be some excellent (and some not so excellent) mods out there. We will certainly see come November (and especially once the G.E.C.K. is released).