I agree. I also disagree with several of the arguments against voice acting.

First off, to say that voice files fills more then half the DVD is ignoring the size of an actual dual layer DVD, the size of Oblivion, and the size of current single disc games. It is an understatement of epic proportions to say that Oblivion did not utilize the space of the disc.

Second off, to say that voice acting is limiting space for models and textures, is ignoring the size of models and textures. An elephant limits the number of animals you can have in a cage, but if it's gonna be with mice and ants, then no, it does not limit space.

And then I don't see how Voiced Dialog makes it harder for quest builders, I can see it if the quest builder [censored]s up and needs to change something after it has been recorded, but I see the solution to that, as...not [censored] up to begin with.

Then there's the whole thing about just making quest which doesn't involve a lot of voiced dialog, and voice is only needed to make conversation immersive, but conversation is not the only natural and normal way of conveying information, orders and information can come through letters and notes. Fighters guild porters could just come up with file and say "the boss has a case for you", and then hands you a file with all the information you need, this could take care of all the lower level quest stuff, and then voiced dialog could be focused on essential quests.

To me, this whole thing is discussing solutions to a problem that hasn't arrived.

Let's just look at Oblivion:

Total amount of data alone in Oblivion 4.6gb

AI, physics, game engine, graphics engine, and several different other parts all combined: 7.19 MB
Voice: 1709.35 MB
Textures, models, music and sound effects: 2136.05 MB. Let's be honest, it the music and sound that takes up the bulk of this.
All the other stuff (quests, NPCs, game data): 235.92 MB

Why is Oblivion only around 4.6gb, when Red Dead Redemption managed to be 6.7gb on a single disc? This means Beth managed to not use 2.1gb. I mean come on that is just ridiculous! That's room enough for double the voice acting! or whatever you want in any other field?!

My personal placement?

Now we have 2.1gb we can spend on this. Now let's say we want 3 times the amount of quests in Oblivion, that 707.76Mb, boom, now we have 1.393gb left. Now if we want those extra quest to have voice acting, we could put the rest in voice acting. I'm guess you're not gonna agree with that, so obviously if we make the quests require a minimum of voice acting, either by getting them through letters/files/posters, or by having them not all involve a [censored] load of conversation, we could put 500Mb in voice acting, because we still need some servant to say "We would like to have you look into this issue" *hands PC a file*. 893Mb left, I've already gotten what I wanted, I would probably put the rest in Textures, models, music and sound effects, because I want the weapons and skills back from Morrowind, well actually also some from Daggerfall. Now we have a fully voiced game with a lot of logical text based missions.

I like the way you think!!! Plus, who is to say ESV only has to have 1 disc? It isn't like the disc is expensive to make. This isn't the old days where the price of a floppy will practically put you out of business (ORIGIN and Ultima 7 for example!) I like voice acting, and I don't think the amount of space used by the voices, nor the cost of producing it had anything to do with Oblivion's quest/dialogue system. It was aimed at a broader audience than Morrowind from the start.

Red Dead Redemption is still failing to use At least 1.2 GB, then.

(data included for reference)
The capacity of a DVD dual layer is 8.5 GB, but my understanding is that this figure is in (misleading) hard drive manufacturer terms, meaning the real capacity is "8500000 KB", where the KB is shockingly the standard 1024 bytes. Thus, the real capacity is less. A quick session of Windows calculator tells me ~8.1 GB for a DVD dual layer is a "safe" figure. Snag a few hundred MB for whatever copy protection the 360 might use... just under 8 GB is a solid approximation.

Therefore, Red Dead Redemption is still way under spec.

Of course, Bethesda should do an "extreme PC" version on a Blu-Ray disc with ultra high-res textures and such. Because I can afford the game... and the hardware to use the 10 MB textures

All completely irrelvent. You can try to rationalize it all you want, but the facts remain:

Oblivion had over 100 less quests than Morrowind. Fallout 3, even less. And the quests didn't branch. Plus there weren't even a quarter as many misc. dialogue topics. And there were no unique race/class specific lines.

If the culprit isn't voice acting, then you tell me what it is. Because something is definitely killing content.

I don't see what can affect the amount of dialogue in a game more directly than the way the dialogue is presented.

As I said before:
If TESV has fully-voiced dialogue, and around 400 quests, and as many misc. topics as Morrowind, then I was wrong. Otherwise, voiced-dialogue kills content and all the walls of text won't change that.

EDIT: And I already told you i hate your letters and notes idea. It's much more imersive if NPCs are actually talking. Whether someone reads that dialogue to me or if I have to read it myself makes no difference. But I don't want a bunch of silent NPCs handing me notes for the rest of the game after I finish the MQ.

It's clearly the lack of time, because Oblivion quests were vastly superior to Morrowind quests in terms of quality, so the devs couldn't create as many.

Kidding.

To add another point to the anti-voice acting discussion, the fact that Bethesda games now ship with a Construction Set just serves to create even more problems for "IMMURSHUN" when modders have either silent NPCs or NPCs with voices that do not fit at all. How does that help the case for voice acting?

Voice acting = :thumbsdown:

Boo hoo. If it's a big deal, buy a microphone and record your own lines for mod-added quests.

But then it sounds like crap because I don't know about you but I don't sound like a Tamriel citizen. Voice acting is supposed to be all about immersion but that fact doesn't do much for it.

I don't know about that, my "You n'wah!" is very convincing.

So should Bethesda never make quality games because modders aren't typically as good as creating quality stuff? Shivering Isles is still unmatched in the mod department, right? Should it never have existed?

I wouldn't mind Morrowind's system of text with important topics in blue. But then again, if Bethesda has the capacity to make a game with full voice acting and many quests, I do not care. I would ask, though, that if a system similar to Oblivion's is used that they use more than white and black for text colors. I want yellow and blue.

ah, yes, I was explained the whole 1024 issue today. I agree that 9 is the "theoretical" limit.



Has there ever been unique class/race specific lines in TES? I'm taking it you mean that the character can say, and not lines towards the character, because I'm pretty sure they are in all the games, I can guarantee they are in Oblivion.



Time limit, and inexperience with a new system, also focus were on other mechanics. There were so much more that should have been in Oblivion, but did not get there, because of time limit. It is not so much that time limits dialogue directly, but it limits content, which could have utilized more dialog.



But they wont be silent, they just wont go into detail about what your supposed to do, the file will do that. I wouldn't want the NPC's to go silent after the MQ either. I also feel it is more immersive when NPCs are actually talking, to me it is also just more immersive when they are not just pretending to be.

Bah, here's a thing somewhat off topic, that I just don't understand Bethesda hasn't done yet. How about Quest DLC? I mean just a pure quest pack DLC with nothing but 1-2gb of quest, they could even be branching, webbing, intertwining quests. I mean the PC has the space, and this could utilize the consoles harddrive space. Just think about it, what do you want more, 50 more quests or horse armor? I sure as hell know what i would pick.

I'd just like a ton of quests to begin with.