As much as I enjoy having voiced characters in Bioware games, I think I prefer having a muted character in Elder Scrolls. I saw someone else mention how they wanted a voiced character, but would that really work in the context of elder scrolls? Given that there are different races to choose from (male or female also) and some are going be big burly men while others would be small elvish creatures.. just seems like it would be difficult to come up with a voice to match all of those. The only option would be to get multiple voice actors, and well.. for multiple people to voice a character in a 200+ hour game seems like a lot of work. Bioware makes it work because they know the character is human and generally what he will be like...(their games also don't generally go over the 200 hour mark or 100, or really 50 hour mark.. for the most part) Somehow the muted character just fits within the Elder Scrolls Universe IMO... what do you guys think?

I dunno, but I think a voiced PC just isn't necessary. And then you have to take into consideration all the races, having two genders for each race, and the fact that some people will not like that voice.

I agree. Plus, if the player character was voiced in TES V, that would be more of a pain in the ass to modders than voiced NPCs.

I much prefer muted characters to voiced ones, especially in open world RPG's like ES. In my own head I can hear how I'd want my character to sound, and I don't want that ruined by a voice-over chosen by the developers.

I enjoy muted NPCs, but I don't need my character to talk in an Elder-Scrolls game. It's just not right.

Mute PC all the way. Imagination FTW, no game company has ever topped my own imagination for how my character should sound and none ever will.

To me, a mute character helps with immersion. It always annoyed me in BioWare games that my characters said things I didn't really want them too.

Besides, voicing male and female versions of 8 races and a billion different options would be preposterous, and would likely require the game to come on multiple disks.

Mute all the way. While the aspects of having a voiced character is appealing, I think it would break the role-playing ambience if my character's voice is predetermined, rather than letting me determine his/her voice. While somewhat embarrassing to admit, I find myself supplying the necessary "voice acting" to my characters; however, this allows me to delve further into the experience. If they do implement voiced characters, the only way I could see it working is if they allowed us to pick from a list of voices, but this would take up time and resources that are better spent somewhere else.

Muted PC, except for the hit detection-based grunts, etc.

Muted PC is best, though I prefer fully voiced NPCs

Voiced PCs only work, when the game tells you who to be. But in a game where you make the character it has no place at all.

QFT Muted PC all the way.

Your character has your voice, not to mention this would limit the amount of responses there would be in a conversation.

Your character should be muted. NPC's however, should have a voice. It really irritated me in Morrowind with the fact that you can't tell if the characters are scared, happy etc. Expression really helps alot.

Fully voiced PC is a feature for games with a 'cinematic' conversation system that shows the character moving and performing actions while dialogue is going on. Since we don't really see the PC during conversation in TES muted is more appropriate, it doesn't 'take over' the character.

Mute. Along with all the other characters, except for sporadic outbursts of "N'wah!", "S'wit!" and "We're watching you... Scum.".

Voiced! I have MS so my eyes are crap! I need the voices.

I vote muted. It just would be weird to have my character talking like in Mass Effect

I just don't understand the fascination with muted NPCs......... :confused:

+1

Perhaps you want your NPC standing forever in the same corner?We are talking about TES V NOT about morrowind.If you want to play with muted NPCs play morrowind

Muted NPCs allow better immersion with long dialogue and stuff. Plus, some of the Oblivon voice acting was... less than optimal.

Voice acting SERIOUSLY restricts the amount of dialogue available to NPCs. I'd rather have more dialogue and no voice acting than voice acting and scant dialogue. Further to that, the voice acting in Oblivion was frankly terrible. And waiting for the voice actor to say their lines takes longer than just reading the text. Text can be immersive, especially when there's quality behind the characters and story. Voice acting is simply unnecessary, and puts constraints on the amount of dialogue deliverable.

Not to mention problems with mods, where most characters are necessarily mute.

Agreed!

I think NPC's should have their bouts of random conversation on the streets as well as voiced greetings. One thing I particular want to see though is a larger emphasis on emotions/speechcraft voicing. I know in morrowind, when you successfully taunted an NPC into battle, they would scream something akin to "You're beaten!" I want to see more of this especially related to the playable character. If there has to be a place where the character has voice, it definitely needs to be there (and the ability to select a preset voice during character selection is a big plus!). This doesn't seem like it would be too hard to implement.

Mute PC, Non-Muted NPCs

I think Oblivion went overboard with the voices. You ever tried leveling up the mercantile skill? Having to sell things one item at a time is finger numbing however you got an annoying npc sporadically and unnecessarily talking with the added effect of being extremely creepy because when they talk the characters face is frozen when the shop menu is up.
I'd rather have the characters muted unless they have quest dialog or something random out of the text to say. Text is defaulted to be on making them talking redundant. Not to mention the more they talk (voice acted) the less they have to say makes much less interesting characters to me.