((TL;DR at the bottom)

This has been burdening my heart for some time and I really need to get it out. Once in a while, I come back to Skyrim to tinker around with mods and have some smashing fun. Note that I say 'modded' Skyrim. I've never intended to go back to vanilla.

Before I go on a humble rant, however, I should note that I am a fairly casual gamer that isn't very knowledgeable in how the gaming industry works so excuse anything that I spout out of ignorance. I own no consoles at this time, I do all of my gaming on a PC these days but I did use to own PS1 which I believe still has the most memorable games to date. Which is sad.




Anyway... whose 'brilliant' idea was it to voice every single character in a TES game since Oblivion? It has to be the worst thing that happened to this franchise, ever. Voice acting works in action and adventure and other 'theme park' games where you have a set path and where your choices barely matter as you are guided through the game by the game developers. It also worked in Dragon Age: Origins but that game was also much much more linear than any TES game. In fact, even in DA it bothered me to a great degree. But in a TES game where you have over 300 NPCs or even more, how are you ever going to voice them all reasonably without using up too many resources?

Firstly, anybody who has ever dwelt in the TES CS for Morrowind knows the overwhelming and nearly limitless potential that Morrowind's conversation/dialogue system had. You could play around with countless variables, such as your affiliation with guilds and houses, your race, your six, your stats, your standing with that person, your journal entries, time of the day... science knows what you could do with that thing if you only had the will. Of course most of this potential was largely untapped by the developers themselves. As pointed out countless times, it felt like the NPCs were all tourist guides of some sort, not to mention all said the same thing. Still, there were quite a few unique NPCs with unique dialogue as well.

What I first expected of Oblivion was that they'd actually expand upon this vast potential Morrowind had when it came to dialogue. Instead they decided to go with full voice acting.. and that was just a grave mistake. What was the point of voice acting in the first place? To increase immersion? Ironically, it did quite the opposite, at least for me. Especially in Oblivion where the voice acting was simply atrocious(especially the elves) and they had so few voice actors too. Again, in a world filled with hundreds of NPCs among whom all should be capable of saying something, voice acting is just a bad idea... it seems to have become a new fad... a new standard among all major game franchises. Everything must be voiced. No! Please stop.

But wait! There's so much more to a game than just dialogue, right? Expansive dialogues are just for the hardcoe fans, man. Ain't nobody got time for that. We want to get right into action. That seems to be the main mentality of most consumers judging by the direction most game developers are taking these days. Okay, that's fine. I too think that combat is a huge part of the game and if I do not enjoy combat then I usually quit the game, even if it happens to have other good aspects, like story, graphics etc.

The problem is that voice acting soaks up lots of resources that could have been used to improve other aspects of the game. In case of Skyrim, for example, those resources could have been poured into making magic in combat more balanced and more fun becasue it honestly svcks. But if you think that is just my opinion then how about the atrocious companion AI? Games that were made nearly a decade ago have better AI than Skyrim... not to mention how limited your interaction with those characters(like Lydia) are if you compare it to... let's say, Baldur's Gate 2 or heck, even Dragon Age. Considering that new games are actually expected to push the limits even further this feels like an insult. Certainly, TES games have always been the 'jack of all trades, master of none' type of games but really... this was too much.

Or instead of hiring 10 voice actors, you could have had one creative coder write 20x as much dialogue for everybody in the game. Because voice acting takes money, time and space.

TES series since Morrowind(if I'm correct?) have been released on consoles as well. This means they have to take into account how much data they can fit on the DVD CD. Voice acting takes too much space. All that space could have been potentially used for more in-game areas, more quests, more... anything. A more polished game in general... as somebody who plays only on the PC I'd like it if they just cut the crap and stopped releasing the games for consoles but that's just a pipe dream.

In the end, if I was to sum up what is wrong, with Skyrim and Oblivion, aside from voice acting which I believe contributes to the problem, in one sentence is that they both feel unpolished. Morrowind had that feel too once I played the game for a while and I understand that in such huge sandbox type of games this is probably inevitable but it was nowhere near as close as glaring as with the two successors. And Morrowind had an immense amount of content.


Another point that I wanted to make which I almost forgot, related to modding.

What highly annoys me about voice acting in Skyrim is that it pretty much 'forces' modders who want to make good quality mods involving dialogue to voice act as well. This really grinds my gears. While I've downloaded countless mods that valiantly tried to match the original content, they have always fallen short. People just don't have access to professional studios nor are they professional actors. Neither are most of us even native English speakers! This issue has discouraged me from trying to mod myself and I think I'm not the only one.

Lastly, I'd really appreciate if, for once, I got my hands on a TES game that could keep my attention without me having to run off to TES Nexus after beating the game in 10 hours. Morrowind got me hooked on the series and I'd really like to experience something similar once again without the modders community having to cover up for all the mistakes and misses of the game. And console gamers are screwed over entirely. I feel sorry for them.





TL;DR - Voice acting soaks up too much time, space and money and I really wish they'd stop doing this and revert back to the classic model used by RPGs like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights where the most important characters and lines are voiced while the rest is just text so they can use all those resources on improving other aspects of the game that have been severely lacking as of late.

The flipside of the coin is now voice acting is expected in the games - and indeed, a majority of people will no longer play mods without voice acting. You may not like it, but Pandora's Box has been opened now and can never again be closed.

Personally, I'd rather have mods with no voice acting (especially with those mods which add dialogue to existing NPCs!) to poor voice acting (and by that I mean technical quality) - but there you go.

Indeed, seems like it is expected. Ironically one of the few things I liked about Final Fantasy 14 A Realm Reborn is that they did not voice anything but the most important cutscenes. And I've seen many people complain about that.

Steering back towards Skyrim though, I've had quite a few 'silent' mods myself but they just felt out of place... perhaps I am just being too picky? But it does break immersion for me when the experience isn't seamless. I don't want to know that the content I am plowing through right now is a mod, I want to think of it as part of the natural world itself. Unless I am specifically playing through some whacky mod that is intended to break the fourth wall or whatever.

New Vegas (though developed by Obsidian - on Bethesda's engine) is a prime example of how a game can be fully voiced and still have all the named NPCs be unique. You can have meaningful conversations with NPCs - even the Lonesome Drifter has his own back story while in Skyrim, he will just say "Do you need something? Hmmm?".

I think it's better that we have a few unique NPCs in each town and city who have a good backstory and the rest of the NPCs would be generic (e.g. Megaton Settler) and say generic lines. It's what Beth did in Fallout 3 and what Obsidian did in New Vegas - so why not do it in TES?

You forget about the face animations. I really like the face animations, and no voice, means no face animations. Like Sslaxx said, Pandora's box has been opened, and it's never going to close again.

Besides, sound files grow more compact every year. Who would've thought that a HD sound file of 4 minutes would only take 3.4 MB? And most NPCs only need sound files of 15 secs max.

And yes I know what you mean. It's worth less than Beth pays for it, but still.... And I've played countless non voiced mods without a problem.

http://www.gamesas.com/forum/26-the-elder-scrolls-series-discussion/%C2%A0 has in New Vegas. I'm sure you as well wanted such depth to the general in the Imperial Legion.

Voiced dialogue then the rest of the dialogue being silent is an immersion breaker. I played one mod where they had it partially voiced and it was pretty jarring. Instead, have NPCs give directions to you (like they do in the bounty quests) but instead of just a quest marker, it gives you a rough drawing of where to go or written directions like Morrowind's. If the player is stuck, have a Bioshock Infinite style quest marker when you press a button and an arrow points you the way to your quest objective.

No. probably wouldn't bother with an ES game that didn't have voice.

Actually its good to have well known voice actors, what we DON'T need are friggin expensive celebrities who aren't even great voice actors.

Nolan North, Steve Blum, Jennifer Hale, Robin Atkin Downes are examples of well known voice actors who are great and worth every penny.

Kate Beckinsale.....

Yes, voice acting can help immersion... in a theme park type of game. But in a huge sandbox game that TES is trying to be it seems night impossible seeing as you have many important characters. You've got this epic(allegedly >_>) main storyline, you've got 5 alternate storylines for guilds and brotherhoods and possibly a few other fairly important NPCs. As a fan of Morrowind it has been painful to watch them compensate entire questlines and guilds/houses for the sake of voice acting and possibly better graphics. Was it really worth it? Perhaps they achieved what they wanted to achieve - the franchise became more popular, they earned more money. I remain unsatisfied with the game in its vanilla state, however.

If they truly want to make a memorable game that does not entirely rely on mods I think they'd have to at the very least bring back as many factions that Morrowind had. In fact, I naturally expected them to have just as much, if not more, in Oblivion. Yet the number of skills and factions and choices in general have dwindled as the series moved on. I just hope that it'll stop here and they'll go back to the old formulas because those old formulas were actually far ahead in time of the ones they're using now that feel like the usual bait you'd use to get people to buy the game without caring much for quality.

Yes. Yes, they can be. But one deep voiced character comes at the expense of five deep characters that could have been defined through written text or heck... through scripts that make them act in a certain way instead of just idling around, chatting. The possibilities are endless.

And while Skyrim had its opportunities it feels like there were absolutely no memorable characters in that game. I can't honestly remember anybody... at least Oblivion,which I think was generally an inferior game to Skyrim despite its few advantages, had Lucien LaChance. Yeah, that guy was truly epic. But he was also a unique NPC and I agree, people like Lucien should be voiced. The guy who voiced the orcs and nords did a good job as well by making some characters sound rather comical and that one orc who asks you to save his daughter from ogres or something was pretty epic.

The text in Morrowind was good, definitely, but I do rather like the voice acting.
I wouldn't mind whichever way it swung, but famous voice-actors (at least for me) are not really needed.

I disagree. Imagine instead of the mighty Caesar with his voice, Caesar completely voiceless with his four lackeys. I'm sorry but it cringes me when I think about it. He is the voice of the Legion and he can tell you everything about what it stands for better than four other lackeys that he may have. The same can be applied to any faction tbh.

I'm not a tech geek but I'm pretty sure the new consoles have more "resources" to handle a fully voiced game without sacrificing anything for TES 6. Skyrim had to cater to the last gen consoles but the new ones seem to be on par with PC so I'm sure nothing will suffer to have some proper dialogue.

You can't go back once you've gone through the VA door, it would feel like taking a step backwards instead of moving forward. Is there even a newer game that's a big name and not fully voiced?
If I didn't sell my studio mic I could've helped you with all the male voices...buy me a new studio mic and I'll fully voice your town

I'd pick voice acting over text any day. And I'm a long time gamer, text RPG was my life. But that all changed with Final Fantasy 10 came out. It blew me away.

Voice acting helps you become more immersive in your game. You can be your character. Your hearing what he/she is hearing. They are not reading text options when talking to someone are they?

And I thought Bioware did a great job with the voice acting of Dragon Age. Dragon Age 2 and the Mass Effect Series. I'd say Mass Effect as the best voice acting I have ever come across in a game. Those familiar faces with remarkable acting and personality all drew me further into the game then any text could have. I was Commander Shepard and they were talking to me as though I was there. I did not feel disconnected and reading texts.

If I wanted a lot of reading I'll go get a book.

And the voice acting in Skyrim is way better the Oblivion. Hands down.

To save space I just kept the TL/DR portion

I am in 100% agreement. I think voice acting has its place in games, but developers have taken it way too far. Save it for cut scenes, or smaller "Ho There!" comments from NPCs. Voice acting takes up resources, both financial and technical that could be so much better spent in other areas.

The modding angle is also a very good point. That also bleeds over to "official patches" that may need to deal with dialogue.

Unfortunately, players today WANT voice acting in everything they play. It is "expected" and if not present, the game will get ripped by both reviewers AND players. Not only do they desire voice acting, they ALSO need the option to "click through" this aspect they can not live without. It is so slow, you know, like Hermaeous Mora's chats, especially when they've played the snot out of the game and hate "wasting time" on things they, the player (NOT the character), already know.

- "It helps with immersion!"

Well, don't click through the conversation, then. Stand there and listen like your character has never heard it before.

The wagon ride to Helgen is a prime example of this. The player may have been through that ride many times, but that particular character has not. So players mod out that ride, or make save files after they reach Helgen to start their new characters. Me? I have every character take that ride as it sets up the game very well and my new characters have never met Ralof, Ulfric, or Lokir of Rorickstead. The ride takes all of 5 minutes? If that is too much time, I feel sorry for that player.

So many players scream about "immersion" and then do everything they can to avoid it when presented to them, voice acting included, because they, the player, have gone through it before. I prefer more immersive gameplay through "other" means besides having an NPC talk to me in a voice that may, or may not sound like my mind pictures their voice.

It is the classic conundrum of players desiring something that they enjoy once or twice, and then do everything they can to skip through or avoid it afterward. I have made over 30 characters. I have enjoyed listening to the dialogues every time I play. However, I do miss the old days where the voices were only in my head, like usual

Now, to read the other replies

This pretty much sums it up. BGS would probably lose a lot of sales if they dropped voice acting, so it's here to stay.

I hate bad voice acting. I like text. I'm OK with good voice acting. And some of the pro actors in Skyrim aren't even that good. For voice acting to be immersive to me it has be unique to a character, and very well done. So for me, there's little added immersion. If anything, it has the opposite effect.

Also, one thing that I like about text, and it's part of the reason why I much prefer documents to videos for things like tutorials, is that I read much, much faster than people speak. Having to slow down to video speed drives me crazy. Not that there aren't uses for video, but these days people have gone overboard.

Is it really true that a majority of people don't download non-voice acted mods? Fair enough. Since I'm a solo act, they'll have to make do with my female characters talking like they've eaten three packs of cigarettes

I've already said this before.

Hire voice actors KNOWN to be able to do different voices. Many good Voice Actors, actual Voice Actors can do more than one multiple voice. A good voice actor is someone who can chameleon themselves into different characters.

For example

The Looney Tunes. Half the characters were voiced by the Same Guy. But they didn't always sound alike, they all had their own persona, and they had their own voices.

Good Voice Actors can do multiple voices Right.