As I said before. I come from a Pathfinder, DND background. So all my characters naturally have their own voices. Provided by myself.

When I design a character, considering my background as both a player in Pathfinder and a Voice Actor myself. I design everything about the character in my Western RPGs. I give them voices. I have a vision of what they sound like based on the appearance and backstory I give them.

How is it not medicore?It is not very good....

I consider Fallout 4 a success in spite of the voice not because of it, and you really have no problem with 9 races having the same voice? I went through the game the first time with a voiced character and it was fine for the feeling out process. After that every build sounded the same way, said things the same way, I modded it out and have almost 600 hours without regret. If this a thing now, then Bethesda better use a very large portion of the TES budget on voice acting, I won't play a game where everyone sounds the same.

LOL. Defensive much? I agree the lack of branching dialogue is a problem, but it's a problem of game design, not "writing." In fact, your focus on dialogue as though it is the sum total of what constitutes the writing in this game is telling.

I.e., it's very clear you are unfamiliar with art- and literary theory, so I'll leave what I said about modernism and postmodernism as is, other than to acknowledge your implicit confirmation that you do in fact approach this game as a modernist. That isn't a slur or anything, by the way; you gotta be you. I just happen to think it's an approach ill-suited to video games.

Yes the real problem is they didn't take it to the next level and have a voice actor with a wide range of emotions. (I'm mainly talking about the male btw.)


They need to strive for the highest quality.

Nate sounds like a combination of boredom and brain damage.

lol. I have to agree with you on that one.

Yes, there can be unique characters made.

And every single one of the females is going to sound exactly the same. Whether you make her older, younger, give her a Southern background, or Virginia drawl, or Boston "the r isn't in the right place" accent it won't matter in the least because you have no control over the voice. Same for the males, too, of course.

I don't know whether "the majority" is composed of younger players or not. I have my own personal speculations about that. I know that others around my age who have done pnp d&d and the earlier games that were all silent might have different opinions about it.

Hi your fellow Pathfinder DND player here. I like Silent Protagonist

I don't see comparing a human protagonist with a cute mascot. A more fair comparison would be to Link, and I always find the silent protagonists to be annoying, especially from established protagonist like Link. It just doesn't feel natural the way the silent protagonist interact with the NPCs and how the NPCs act in general. Beth is reaching out to new fans, I'm guessing, which leans more toward voiced protagonist, and I like it. If they hire at least 2-3 voices for each protagonist, it should offer plenty of variation of each gender of the protagonist, maybe a pitch change for different variety.

I'm not being defensive, I'm just stating facts. I'm not saying that there's a problem with the story line. That isn't what I mean by the writing. I think Fallout 4 has a great story line. What I'm referring to is the depth of the writing in the actual dialog. In Fallout 3 and New Vegas, a typical conversation could last 3x longer than a typical conversation in Fallout 4, because there was far more depth. Each dialog selection would often lead to a whole new branch of dialog options and questions, which would eventually lead back to the original menu. Then you'd select the second option and go through a number of branches again. Fallout 4 lacks this. Conversations don't have this depth. There's a lot more variation to the FO4 dialog than people initially give it credit for, because it is a very different system. There are dialog options at some points that will differ depending on whether your character has high or low intelligence, high or low charisma, and other various attributes. But for the most part the dialog is very linear. In most cases, 3 of the 4 dialog options get you an essentially identical response from the person you're talking to. In some cases all 4 of them give basically the same result.

I'm reasonably familiar with art theory, at least to the extent of familiarity that one gets from the general education curriculum of an undergraduate degree. I've taken enough art history and other humanities courses to be at least familiar with it. I just don't see how it's all that relevant here.

Like I said, FO4 is my favorite game of the series so far. I'm not necessarily saying that the writing is bad. I'm just saying that it's a weak point in comparison to the rest of the game. Bethesda spent a lot of time developing and perfecting the combat mechanics and the detail of the actual world, and they totally nailed it. This game got the majority of its elements right. But I think much of this success game at the expense of the in depth detailed writing we've seen in many other Bethesda games. Now that they've ironed out some of these other new elements though, I think the writing in Fallout 5 is going to excellent, and it's going to be alongside all of the other vastly improved aspects of Fallout 4.

I'm not so sure about "facts," but I take your point. And this, by the way, is exactly what I meant originally by saying people talk about the game being poorly written without backing it up -- my point being that that's largely a subjective judgment that doesn't help anybody when all that's said is "it's not very good" or whatever.

My comments about modernism and postmodernism have to do with expectations -- what we look for from the game vs what the game looks for from us. A modernist expects the game to have covered the bases (e.g., in the writing) so that his/her job is ultimately to round those bases. A postmodernist doesn't expect that kind of coverage and recognizes that s/he is also responsible for deciding what the bases even are -- i.e., the meaning of the story, which the postmodernist is keen to have a hand in "writing." I've seen plenty of people (not you, admittedly) complain that they shouldn't have to "make things up for Bethesda." That's a modernist pounding their head against a postmodernist enterprise. Again, it's not objectively wrong. And again, it's nice when people are willing to "back up" what they mean.

The whole point of some of the people who have issues with a voiced protagonist for Bethesda's ES games especially is that there IS no "established protagonist". My Skyrim female Dragonborn isn't like anyone else's dragonborn; my backstory is different, I know what she should sound like because I created the whole package. There is no "Link". 2-3 voices aren't going to cut it.

If you look at what people are complaining about in FO4 it isn't just the voice; its the whole "Beth already made most of my character". My SS is a married lawyer with a child? Or my SS is an ex-military man who is married with a child? I have no control over what is supposed to be "my" character. I have little to no investment in the character. What little I've played so far is simply running around killing things. I don't care about a husband I didn't want and a kid I knew about for however long the intro/tutorial dragged out. Having her [or him] sound nothing like what I imagine really doesn't help at all.

I've played hundreds/thosands of hours in Morrowind/Tribunal/Bloodmoon, Oblivion, Skyrim, Bioware's NWN, even DA:O. And I still play them all. If I count everything from launch until now if I have 24 hours in FO4 I'd be surprised, and I haven't even finished the main quest. There is nothing that is prompting me to play again, to try something different, to make a new character. Building settlements might have been interesting, but without a character that I want to play it isn't worth the effort.

Fallout 3 is no different in this regard. You are a 19 year old vault dweller with one good friend, no combat training, no life beyond what we see. I don't see the difference from pre-war soilder/lawyer, at least the ss could have had any background prior to the opening and having a kid/wife/husband.

Personally i liked voiced protagonists, and thought it added to the game. Granted some of the "sarcastic" options sound groan worthy, but they would have been that way with or without a voice actor.