I noticed today that the Talos preacher in Whiterun (http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Heimskr) , during one of his speeches, mentions "Earth", meaning Nirn. I am wondering, was this a simple and easy enough mistake to make by Bethesda, or has Nirn been referred as Earth before and the two names are interchangeable?

Err, no. Earth can also refer to the ground, land, soil and in this case another world, but not necessarily our planet. Perhaps giving a quote of what the old man said would help specify as to what he was referring to.

I remember hearing an NPC mention "Earth", too. The way it was spoken, and the way it was capitalized in the subtitles, made it clearly a proper noun (ie, the name of the world). It should've been "Nirn", not "Earth". Apparently some dialog also used "Friday" instead of "Freddas". They use "Morang Tong" instead of "Morag Tong", too.



Stuff like that, along with the myriad of issues with the quality of the voices and voice actors... IMO, Bethesda really dropped the ball with the dialog. In several ways, it's worse than Oblivion. Yeah, great they have 70 voice actors now, but you only hear less than a quarter of that most of the time, and by people who can barely act. The big problem Oblivion had (the lack of racial distinction in the voices) is actually worse in Skyrim. Why am I hearing a Redguard with a voice I just heard on a Breton? Why is that same voice also on a Dark Elf? It's like Imperials don't even exist anymore since there's no visual or audible difference to them compared to the other human races. Having almost 6 times as many voice actors means nothing if the ones you hear most of the time can't act well, and if they don't do anything to bring out character from the NPC or NPC's race. Just compare the Khajiit voice in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfZU7VBsXWA&t=300s to what you hear in Skyrim. The old voice clearly says "inhuman cat person" just by listening to it, with an undertone of being manipulative or honest concern, while the voice in Skyrim can be largely copy-pasted onto other races and doesn't portray emotion well.

Really, I'm loving Skyrim, but the dialog and voice work... bleh. It's like they ignored everything that was really wrong with Oblivion's voice work (lack of racial and character distinction), while only dealing with tangential problems (small number of voice actors). Sure, more good voice actors would be good, but having more voice actors does not magically give you more quality voices, especially if those actors are not that good and the voices aren't properly appropriated to races and characters. You can get a lot of good, distinctive voices from just a few good actors.

I always love it when the Whiterun evangelist tells the Cyrodiil-climate-control story. The way he says "...I do this for you, Red Legion, because I. LOVE. YOU!" is just so [censored] manic and ridiculous.

But yeah, overall, SR voice acting has the opposite problem of OB. More variety, but virtually no distinction.

And it has a vastly worse "suddenly high-class gossipy beggar" problem. I've seen NPCs switch between three different voice sets. Its just the problem with fully VA-ing a game with such a huge cast. Oh how I miss the days of text...

That voice actor is one of the better ones, really. He would've been a welcome addition to the pre-existing cast, as would a few others. But the likes of Farengar, Farkas, Aela, and the Arnold-wannabe mar the experience with their flat reading. The really sad part is they kept one of the better voice actors from Morrowind and Oblivion but only used him for three small parts (Wes Johnson reprised Sheo and Lucien, as a ghost, and did Titus II; they also brought back Lynda Carter, but she was relegated to one small role). Where's Jeff Baker, Jonathan Bryce, Michael Mack, Linda Canyon, and Elisabeth Noone? You know, the good voice actors that have been with the series since forever and provided good and iconic voices?

I can't help but wonder what Bethesda was thinking, being that the biggest complaint with Oblivion was that the races all sound the same. They nearly sixtupled the cast size, but all the races still sound the same because there's no distinction. You hear a voice and you can't tell whether it belongs to a Nord, Imperial, Breton, or Dunmer.

You people must be tone deaf.

All the races have vastly different accents.

What about whoever does the posh upper-class British accent? I can never tell if it's an Altmer, a Breton or a Redguard. Why did they use the same voice for Altmer and Redguards!?

The real crime is the absence of the gruff Dunmer voice from Morrowind. Though, the rougher British accent for the Dark Elves in this game is much better than Oblivion 's way of them sharing the same voice as the Bosmer, which is simultaneously hermaphroditic and malevolent.

Plus some of the Cockney accents that (Devon?) and a few dunmer have. It makes me lol each time I see a Dunmer speak with a Cockney accent.

That seemed to be the intent, but it's not that way when you get down to it. Farkas and Vilkas (Nords, as far as I can tell) sound nothing alike, neither in tone or accent, even though they're supposed to be twin brothers raised together. The Dark Elves seem to be going for the British thing, but there's a few that sound like Robert Picardo with distinctly no British accent (the same Robert Picardo voice also appears on some Redguards and Bretons, IIRC). The "young advlt male" (not child) voice seems to be exactly the same for Imperials, Nords, and Bretons. I can't even recall what Imperials are supposed to sound like.

See Morrowind: They're supposed to have a nice, comforting, newscaster voice because all Imperials have a knack for speaking. However, in Skyrim, it's funny to note that Imperials don't get any speech benefits.

I can see what you mean with Farkas and Vilkas.

That said, I don't sound anything like my sister? (six aside, you'd think we'd have similar speech patterns and accents, but that's not the case.)

End of the day, its a game. It doesn't really matter. So long as the content is there - though that is a different story all together.

BURN THE BLASPHEMER

The thing I personally find standing out the most is that every random drunk has the same voice as Sanguine. It doesn't matter if they're Nord, Imperial, or Redguard. They have the same voice (and lines).

... He's... He's EVERYWHERE! They're ALL Sam!

If I wasn't too tired I'd try to come up with some good story about how the process of fermentation in Tamriel mantles some aspect of Sanguine, making the booze into a myth-echo of his blood, so that drunkeness is literally taking part of Sanguine into you and coming under his influence. This is manifest most notably in having your mental state and vocal attributes modified to more closely match his.

"I am not a man, I am a weapon in human form. Just unsheathe me and point me at the enemy."

Although some of that could be chalked up to the writing there.

I don't know. You've got some legitimate points, but, voice-switching aside, your griping just sounds a little too close to "But you didn't sound black on the telephone" to ascend it to legitimate criticism.

I knew there was a reason I liked Titus II so much.