And that's fine (I expect EVERYONE in Skyrim to be more rough/hard). For Cyrodiil, though, mild-mannered fit better (in my opinion).

Yeah, because we all know that all Dunmer are very cosmopolitan, they love Imperials and they can easily change their accent.

In Oblivion they sound like sissies. In Morrowind they are badass.

It's as in this Mannimarco case... http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u130/Ventus_photos/Oblivion/TheRealMannimarco.jpg

Uh... the Hlaalu Dunmer basically sum up your first statement (minus the accent part). I agree that they sound less "badass" in Oblivion, but then, there was less for them to be badass about. In Morrowind, they live in a harsher environment (if Bethesda had assigned multiple voices to each race, I'm fairly certain that the Dunmer of the lush areas of Vvardenfell and of Mournhold would have had a softer voice due to the less extreme climate, but since the majority of the island was a wasteland, it made sense for their one voice to be that of a wastelander*), while Cyrodiil is clean, lush, and vibrant, protected by the best fighters and statesmen Imperial culture has to offer. In such circumstances, it makes sense that the Dunmer tended more toward posh nobles.

*I already know somebody's going to bring up the female voices here, and probably something along the lines of "THEN WHY DIDN'T THE OTHER RACES SOUND LIKE SMOKERS, HMMM? (smugface.jpg)". As I've stated before, the developers strike me as kind of shallow (as evidenced by the vast majority of people, and especially women, being young and beautiful in that game). If they're only going to give one voice to the women, they're not going to choose Patty the Truck Driver who smokes like a chimney, drinks like a fish and eats gravel and shards of glass for breakfast. As for the other races, since they had fewer voice files overall, they could afford more diversity.**

**And this is where somebody's going to argue against full voice acting. I don't mind the decreased diversity so much. It would be nice if they could give each race its own voice in the next game, if not, it's not that high on my priority list. This is, of course, a matter of taste and you're welcome to disagree with me.

:rofl: Young and beautiful women in TES games? Where? When?

Female Dunmer voices were great in MW, too. They sounded different than the males and had different kind of GO-BOTHER-SOMEONE-ELSE attitude, but they were just as atmospheric as male ones. In Oblivion, female Dunmer have the same voices as female Altmer. Now, compare those voices in Morrowind. Altmer women were rarely friendly (as it should be), but their attitude was completely different than that of Dunmer women. They just sounded different. They were more like go-away-you-pathetic-little-creature, not move-or-I-will-cast-a-fireball-in-your-ass-nwah. At least resemblance of Morrowind's accent should be present. I'm sure that even some simple modifications in an audio-editing software would make the effect better.

I miss that diversity. You can't really appreciate voice acting so much if they use so few actors. Either do it properly or don't do voice-overs of every dialogue in the game.

I don't get why people think Dunmer would be irritating with Morrowind's voice. I mean, they did similar is Fallout 3 with all the ghouls, and that was fine. One of them even had the exact same Voice Actor.

And, actually, imo, the ghouls have the same voice as Morrowind's Dunmer, but even more. I could imagine Dunmer voices being quite smoother than the ghouls in a fully voiced game.

And I completely agree with Yngh. Even NPC's from outside Morrowind had great personality to thier voices. All Imperials sounded like they where from Cyrodiil. All Argonians sounded like they where from Black Marsh. All Altmer sounded like they where from Summerset. All Kahjiit sounded like the where from Elsweyr etc.

I loved that. Each race seemed diverse and culturally unique, even though they where from Vvardenfell.

And, actually, the Dunmer voices wouldn't have bothered me quite so much, if they didn't have the voices of happy rainbow elves. I would actually rather they had Nord voices. They sounded very... feminine. I think the women Mer all sounded far more masculine than the men. That's not right.

I agree that I don't think it would be irritating, and I suspect that the only reason Bethesda hasn't done so already is due to some payment complications or something such as that with Morrowind's male Dunmer voice actor during Oblivion's development, but they got him back.

http://images.uesp.net//thumb/5/52/MW-npc-Aurnie_Vanne.jpg/600px-MW-npc-Aurnie_Vanne.jpg
http://images.uesp.net//thumb/8/82/MW-NPC-Arielle_Phiencel.jpg/800px-MW-NPC-Arielle_Phiencel.jpg
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:MW-npc-Agrippina_Herennia.jpg
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:MW-npc-Blatta_Hateria.jpg
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:MW-npc-Cinia_Urtius.jpg
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:MW-npc-Erranil.jpg
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:MW-npc-Estoril.jpg
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:MW-npc-Aumsi.jpg
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:MW-npc-Eiruki_Hearth-Healer.jpg
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:MW-npc-Eydis_Fire-Eye.jpg
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:MW-npc-Adusamsi_Assurnarairan.jpg
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:MW-npc-Alfe_Fyr.jpg
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:MW-npc-Alvela_Saram.jpg
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:MW-npc-AlvuraOthrenim.jpg

Should I keep going? You need to be able to look past the art style and blurry graphics. Smooth, fair skin, full lips, high cheekbones, what exactly ISN'T attractive about most of these women? (especially the Nords :hubbahubba:)

You do realize that the Dunmer female had the same VA in both games, right? And the Dunmer were only hostile because you were an outlander. In Cyrodiil, it's the other way around-- they have less to be arrogant about. Altmer women are still pretty haughty in Oblivion, though (Palonirya springs to mind).

I don't know. I never play Morrowind without Better Heads anymore, but at least there I can attribute any...mmm...aesthetic deficiencies to the low resolution textures and flat faces. In the case of Oblivion, I think Tamriel NPCs Revamped proves that Facegen is fairly capable, but Bethesda's artists just hit randomize for everybody who wasn't Sean Bean or Patrick Stewart.

EDIT: Flo hit the nail on the head - Morrowind's faces, though low res, pretty much met all the widely accepted physical qualifiers for attractive face. Oh, am I supposed to be able to see the filesize at the bottom of your avatar?

Indeed. It would have been fine that way, I think, if the races themselves had been more visually distinct instead of it all coming from facegen, but the races were very samey so the faces were all very samey.

That would be Desmond Lockheart. And not only is it the same voice actor, it's pretty much the exact same Dunmer voice from Morrowind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnYMoyCpQHE (Warning: Contains Spoilers)

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There are many of those I didn't find attractive.

In regards to female Dunmer voice I posted:

That was the problem. Lack of diversity.

This sentence:

I applied to both sixes. Sorry if that wasn't obvious.

About faces:

They still look ugly when compared to modded faces. They are veeeeeery realistic when compared with women from other games (huge boobs, hot chicks etc.).

Actually, the main complaint in BOTH games was the fact that there were hardly any feminine women when it came to looks. They had very masculine bodies and rather ugly faces, in most cases. Most people played with mods that changed those things.

Many of those problems arise from the fact that we only had one, exactly the same body model per race, which suxx. Personally, I would strive for full realism. I would like to see both young and old, ugly and beautiful. You can't fully appreciate the beautiful women if there are no ugly ones - that's why I rarely played with fluffy head replacers and searched for the ones which had a variety of faces (old, ugly, pretty etc.). In The Sims 3 you could change the body of your sims - I would like to see that feature introduced in TESV.

Umm, I don't know what your on about, the Dunmer in Mournhold had the exact same voices as those on Vvardenfell? And before you say they just have rehashed voices, certain Dunmer NPCs of Tribunal have unique voice dialog, so I don't know how you can make that statement. If Bethesda wanted Dunmer in lusher areas speak softer, they would have told their voice actor to tone it down a bit for Mournhold. But they didn't, and thus the Dunmer gravelly voice is clearly genetic and has nothing to do with where they live.

Oblivion-defenders can say what they want, I'm chalking the elf voices to pure crappy design and laziness.

This is one of the things an Oblivion defender can't deny. I try to be fair with both games.

Thank you. I hate it when people try to defend stuff like that, it should be pretty obvious it wasn't intended for three races to sound the same. Any one who defends that is clearly grasping at straws.

Except using entirely new voices for Mournhold would have required new idle dialogue ("I could kill that guar" or my personal favorite, "da de da de da de da de da") and new combat noises as well, which is a lot of time and work. So, incidentally, I chalk up the Mournhold voices up to pure crappy design and laziness too. Isn't it funny how that works?

And I'm not saying that having all the elf voices sound exactly the same wasn't lazy, I'm saying that I like the general feel of the voice so it's a moot point to me. I would like the Dunmer to sound different from the other races, but I'd still like them to sound like they're related to the other mer, because it makes the most sense to me that that's how they would sound outside of Vvardenfell.

I can see Morrowind's voice getting stale rather quickly, but Oblivion's voice was just unacceptable. So, I have two words for you people: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000461/.

I thought that we agreed that they made generic voices because of the fact that all Dunmer share the same voice/body model etc. In Oblivion, however, it's much, much worse, because the diversity was reduced.


They sounded the same as the Altmer. Again - lack of uniqueness and diversity.

I still think that it's because of the voice-overed dialogue. As you said, they didn't even want to bother with different voices in Mournhold, not to mention tons of new voice-overed dialogue that would need to be recorded for different races. I call that a design flaw.

In Mass Effect (1/2) various characters had different voices and they really felt more unique than Oblivion's one. All dialogues were voice-overed and it suited the game. In Oblivion, they weren't able to achieve the same effect. Characters were still bland when compared to other cRPGs and both the number of topics available and the voice diversity were reduced. Design flaw.

I also hated the fact that they used the same actors in Fallout 3. Come on, that was just cheap.

Dunmer in Morrowind had raspy voices, but they were deep. Oblivion's should've had deep voices too, not the 'english poppycock' they speak with. And what happened to the Altmer? Their voices were much cooler in Morrowind too.

You don't seem to understand my argument. I'm not saying that in future games, I would like all the elves to use one voice. You're right, that smacks of laziness. But what I'm trying to say is that I would like that to be the general style of the voice. Deeper and gruffer than the Altmer and Bosmer, perhaps, but I would still like it to be audibly apparent that the three mer races are related. It could be the same voice actor just putting on different accents for different races (after all, even in Morrowind they had one actor for several of the races), and that would be enough for me.

What I'm saying is that unless there's ash-filled wastes in the next game, I don't want to see the return of the gravelly voices because I don't think they make sense outside of Vvardenfell. That being said, THAT DOESN'T MEAN I WANT THEM ALL TO USE THE SAME EXACT VOICE.

I was posting my opinion about the topic, not an argument to your post...assuming you're talking to me.

And I may be going out on a limb here, but I'm going to doubt Dunmer's raspy voices had anything to do with the ash. They were literally the only race who's voice was like that. Hell, females even had normal voices.

Even if it was the ash, take away the raspy-ness but keep the tone and pitch. It's a deep voice, rather manly.

EDIT: Same said for Mournhold's dunmer, who live on the mainland, away from all the ash and blight. They still have raspy voices.

I think I'd read somewhere that it was theorized that many of the male Dunmer just intentionally spoke in that threatening voice to add to their machismo. I wouldn't put it past them.

If you need to act macho to sell scribs and rats, or to run a Strider port, you need to lighten up a bit

I was talking to Yngh, but I've posted responses to a couple of your points (about females, other races and Mournhold) earlier in this thread.

I'd be fine with deep, masculine voices for Dunmer in the next game (hell, that'd be perfect), I just don't think they should sound like smokers. Also, I think it's funny that everyone's assuming that they'll sound like either Morrowind or Oblivion. Nobody seems to be considering that they could (and probably will) have a brand new voice in the next game.

Actually I'm not laughing because your counter point has nowhere near as much merit as mine. All you do is grasp at straws with this voice argument. If they went through the effort to add in unique voice greetings for every named Dark Elf NPC in Tribunal, they surely could have added idle for them too. They just chose not to, because clearly they wanted non wasteland Dunmer to sound the same.

You argue things that are clearly mistakes, in a vain attempt to defend a developer oversight, give it up man, the Dunmer are supposed to have deeper voices then Bosmer and Altmer, it's pretty obvious. And you seem to be the only person here who doesn't think they should use their voices from Morrowind, so what does that say?

If the Dunmer weren't supposed to have gravelly voices, they wouldn't have in Mournhold, I don't see what more proof you want, other than the voice actor marching down here and telling you whats up