As we all know, Oblivion is rather infamous for its specific voice acting. Namely its lack of a variety of actors to do such and the rather... Interesting ways the actors tended to inflect. Basically, everyone said it was a major breaking point of the game because it was also such a major selling point as well as thrown into your face with the awful writing at every pass. We, as Elder Scrolls fans, know the importance of making a world feel big but I think we can all agree that they needed to do something differently in order to compensate for the less than numerous voice actors.

Skyrim now comes upon us and is said to have a cast of over 80 individual actors lending their voices to the project. This leads me to believe that for each race/gender combo, there will be at the very minimum two unique actors which equates to 40 voices total. I say this, in the low end of the spectrum, because I do not know how many "special" NPCs there will be nor can I definitively say there will be race/gender equality. There could be 30 "special" voice cases (I.E important NPCs, see: Sean Bean) or there could be 50, I cannot say for sure. I would think though that they would at least try to give each race/gender combo one voice in order to make things sound a lot more natural than Oblivion.

Now up there in the topic description I put "personal ties". This stems from my feverish worry that they are going to bring back the people who did the voices of the nords/orcs from Oblivion/Morrowind. I'm sure that Lynda Carter and Johnathan Bryce are nice people (and I have no problem with Bryce's Khajiit) but they are not the right people for these roles. Every time I heard a nord/orc in Oblivion it made me feel like I was being talked down to, but not in an authoritative way. It just sounded dull and neither of them seemed to have been given the context of the situation when they were told to say the line. The reason I bring this up is because Lynda had a brief segment in the Oblivion "Making Of" which makes me believe Bethesda and her have strong ties, but she is not the right person to be voicing the showcase of the game at hand. Remember the cool Dark Elf voices from Morrowind and Wes Johnson's stand-out performance in Oblivion? We want things that are memorable for the right reasons, and neither of the two above can provide from what we've heard so far.

What I've been thinking about the most is how the voice directors (or writers?) conceive the voices of the races pertaining to Morrowind/Oblivion. They got quite a few right like the Dark Elves, more noble High Elves, Khajiits, and Argonians from Morrowind as well as a few of the Imperials in Oblivion. Where can they go from here though? First off, how do you define Imperials from Bretons, Redguards, and Nords? Nords could be easy, but the Bretons and Redguard need much more scrutinizing. Orcs in many other games have had their own array of voices, but how about our cunning Argonians separate from the Khajiits? Elves as well need some hard thinking to them, with the first step probably being to bring back the Morrowind Dark Elf voice :celebration:

I guess at this point I'm just asking questions about, but what do all you voice-enthusiasts think? How are the voices going to be defined and will previous acting acquaintances get in the way of bringing in fresh talent? Thoughts below.

This will be BGS's crowning achievement.

What will exactly? Diversifying voices?

The quality and the quantity of the voicework.

as long as the acting isn't cheesey and I can clearly hear the pronunciations I don't care about voice acting, they can do with it what ever they want. I just hope they don't put so much effort into that other aspects get less attention.

BGS seems to be aware of the complaints about OB's VO. They, as you know, have hired 80 actors for Skyrim.

I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

This. Also, keep in mind that one (good and professional) voice-actor can speak more than one different roles ... so that your "40 voices total" might be a little too pessimistic.

But good thread / OP, anyway.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/04/27/elder-scrolls-skyrim-your-questions-answered/

Well even Sean Connery will sound like a fool if whoever wrote his lines is an idiot. Just imagine Mr. Connery wandering about muttering "I saw a mud crab the other day..." It's good that there's more variety in voice acting but hopefully the writer is much better this time around.

More voice actors doesn't mean more diversified voices, it merely means more actors. What sort of direction could they give Argonian to separate it from a Khajiit, for instance? How do they distinguish races through this ability? Better needs to carry all the way through.

Who was the guy who voiced the cliffracers in Morrowind? I want him to do the dragon shouts.

What is being said is much more important then how it is being said. For all of TES's wonderful world and lore, sometimes the dialogue is just too straightforward and simple. There definitely needs to be more unique characters. You can have 1 voice actor speak with the same voice, but portraying many different personalities, and you'd hardly notice anything.

I would actually like to hear that

I know this was a bit of a joke, but I think cliffracers are altered sound files of an animal like wookies.

They need to put some James Hetfield in this game. As long as he is in, I dont care.

This. Though Fallout 3 was a major step in the right direction as far as dialogue and characters went, so hopefully that will carry over to Skyrim.

I still don't think it was enough of a leap though. The fact is, both story and dialogue in a story need to compliment each other else it's just two disconnected parts. I agree that F3 was better then Oblivion from dialogue, but even the rushed story Oblivion had was better than Fallout 3's anemic plot.

Let's not bring back the Morrowind Dunmer VA - we get it. The Dunmer are taciturn, dark, and gritty. They don't need to sound like Batman for us to get the picture.

At the same time though, I could not imagine them acting like they do in Oblivion. Dark Elves are tough creatures who assert themselves onto others and hold themselves on the highest pedestal. It needs to be a deep voice though less scratchy would be a good thing. Mayhaps more along the lines of how Lawrence Fishburn did his character.

Yeah, I was happy about this....much better that the 5 or 6 they had.......

:celebration: MoRe VoiCe AcTors :celebration:

*Runs through hidden code detector*

RV CAT? Are you trying to suggest something about the usage of a recreational vehicle by a feline?

I.E A cat in a cart?

No....I just Caplitilized random letters....... sorry :unsure2:

YES!! As the Nords!