So my question is just as the topic says. All NPCs have really quiet voices and almost whispers if I am not right in front and as close as possible to their face. The way I have made it work is turn all the other sounds down half way or more. Am I the only one with this issue?

cant hear em either, their way to low with no way to make them louder without making the main character louder.

Due to the new main character voice, hope they add a slider for main voice separately so we can make the NPC's louder.

Me too. I'll turn it up to hear them and then my wife complains she can't hear her Hallmark movies. Related- why is Summer Glau an elf that falls in love? She's River for crying out loud, what is she doing on the Halmark channel?

*Bump*

yeah... I haven't even bothered with changing settings yet, but half the time the dialogue wheel comes up and I'm like... the hell am I agreeing to exactly? I didn't even hear you @_@

What bothers me about this is that even with subtitles turned on, I've noticed sometimes NPC comments are not included in the subtitles (usually it is also when they are hard to hear because you are not facing them/close enough to them, etc). I always play games with subtitles on so that I don't miss any dialog, since I usually keep the volume low on my games so as not to disturb anyone else in the house who is sleeping/doing other things, but in this case I have found them inadequate (and if there are any deaf players who rely on the subtitles, they would be totally out of luck for half of the NPC dialog and audible cues I have heard in this game). All audible dialog (even faint dialog or dialog in the distance) should be subtitled. I don't know if this is a bug or intentional, but Bethesda should really fix this.

Edit: Now I realize that maybe this means I only have dialog subtitles enabled and not general? Can anyone confirm whether general subtitles will help hear distant NPC comments? (or does it bug out too much to be worth it?)

These are all really good points! Lets hope that the few who have posted are heard and something gets done to adjust the NPC default volume if that is even possible.