That's exactly what it is. I'm black, but my voice and speech patterns don't fall under some umbrella of "black people voices", and the same is true for anyone.

I love how people are acting as if having tons of voice choices in a fully voiced game was even financially feasible. Only two games I can think of have multiple voices. Dragon age inquisition which an English or American accent, and swtor, which has a different voice depending on class.

Both were financed, at least partly, by EA, one of, if not, THE biggest game company around

Are you sure that your voice isnt deeper than of your white peers? As i said just because there are exeptions to the rule doesnt mean the rule doesnt exist. ive heard black females that sounded high pitched but usually their voices are deeper than white or asian females... not even that its just a different style to the voice. not necessarely deeper but they just have an uniqueness to it. i cant be this delusional to notice a difference when there isnt one.

doesnt matter it just makes the game boring to replay if your character always sounds the same no matter what appearance you give to him.

How does budget not matter?

Perhaps the more pertinent question is why was the voice system implemented at-all? The whole thing was just an unnecessary money sink that could have been avoided, especially as the game would have sold like hot cakes without it and I don't think there was even a sizable minority asking for it.

you can hire people who will do this sort of thing for free. there is a mod for skyrim (skyrim unlimited i believe or something along these lines) where people volunteer without payment just to create an awesome gaming experience for the player.

You're forgetting that the protag lived in an average Suburban Boston neighborhood and probably lived comfortably like that for a lifetime.
Are you talking about accents or voice tone? You voice has less to do with race and more about how the vocal chords, nasal paths are shaped that's why you have voice ranges from high, nasal, squeaky types like Chris Rock to low and deep like this guy Ted Williams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seKGaWVWKyc.

I'm listening and I could have sworn he was a white man who looks more like the Vault Employee who greets meets you at the beginning of the game.
Now listening to his mother's accent in the video you can tell she sounds like what you'd expect a black woman to sound like because of her accent.

Yeah, because that would be such high quality voice acting. /sarcasm

If ANYTHING the issue isn't voice ~ race synchronization. It's more of not having the option for a lower or higher pitches.
I personally fall into medium high pitch like Ralph Macchio. A grown man who still sounds in his teens.

If they'd just let anyone do the voices they could end up with something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtzlKJ1dObU.

Rather than wade through three pages, I thought I'd just drop this little nugget here:

https://youtu.be/ZZGUnmWbKu8

In short, I'm fine with all races having the same voice, instead of having the ~option~ of using a stereotypical voice for a given race. This is even more "okay" because regardless of race / ethnicity, we are all shoe-horned into having the same general origin story (suburban, housewife, child, veteran's hall event suggesting the kind of community we're in).... so with similar backgrounds, it's unlikely we'd have different voices or accents. As a side effect of this stricter adherence to a story, we can't have an "urban" kid who speaks in slang all the time, or someone with a thick Scottish brogue. Yet another concession we have to live with, to have the voiced protagonist.

No, in fact at multiple times in my life I've felt like I don't fit in with those of my race because of how I sound, while fitting in elsewhere was challenging because of my skin color. You're right, it's probably not fair to say a rule doesn't exist; genetics and all that. But even so, the exceptions aren't rarities. They can actually be pretty common. So in the context of this pair of characters not having a voice that necessarily "matches" their ethnicity, it's not something worth being concerned about.

Lol he sounded like a "Good Fella"!

Considering there were 0 voices before, I doubt it. If someone thinks that no voice is better, I'm sure someone will make a mod which removes the voice of the main character.

They wanted to try it out.

I'm not a huge fan of it, but if they make a good story with it then I'll grow to love it.

This, Fallout 4 is not TES, Bosmer, Orcs and Khajiit don't sound the same as the racial difference is some magnitudes larger, Argonians are not even real mammals.

Actually you can't. Actors are part of a union and have very specific rules. I have been fortunate enough to be part of a couple commercial productions and had to be paid even though just being in a show was cool enough for me. Being interviewed for a news type program does not require payment, but any for profit work does require the actors to be paid for their time, and there is a scale for the minimum amount you can pay them. The higher quality the actor, the more above that scale he or she can command.

I don't think that's necessary at all. Since they decided to have a voiced protagonist, one is fine.

100% agree with this ^

I think the voice actor is a wonderful choice regardless of race. Maybe I try too hard differentiating slang from tone.

Still hoping for a no voice option where all we get are some grunts and stuff like before during combat and the dialog is all in first person with the options you chose.

Course the problem is the VA often says a lot more than the options given ... and sometimes not even what you thought they were going to say. DA2 was terrible about this. I hope FO's first voiced game is much better than DA's first voiced attempt.

Race has very little to do with the sound of someone's voice. Culture has everything to do with it. So you could take a black child, raise him/her in China and they will speak English with a perfect Chinese accent. Since our characters background and up bringing are set, it wouldn't matter what race they are as their voice would sound the same.

I hope the guy talks like a redneck

"Whadaya mean it's been two hunered yares? Ya stoopid row-bot, now go and git me'a beer!"

who knows, maybe they have a special low-int dialogue where he/she talks like that