So since we know that our Character will be voiced is anybody else bothered that he/she will always sound the same no matter what appearance or race we will create them with? A black female will always sound the same as a white female will always sound like an asian female. One can easily tell apart the race of somebodies voice and having to listen to a white woman/man to give personhood to our multiracial protagonist seems incomplete.

*shrugs* consider how ridiculous much VA must have cost already hiring actors to work for two years straight, it's understandable it be too expensive trying to hire more VA to cover multicultural expectations.

Some players might not even notice a difference. Ive heard people say that to them everbody sounds equal, all races having some different voice archetypes which overlap and no uniqueness to race based voices. what about you?

They both have neutral voices that can pass as a voice from any race.

I thought the voice & accent were more related to the communities you belong, not just mere color skin...

Looked for some actual science on this.

Interesting article which suggests that on balance, no, different races don't particularly sound different

other than personal variations based on age, gender and social dialect.

"there's no real evidence of a characteristic physiological voice produced by people of different races. What differences there are, physiologically, are more than overwhelmed by age, health, and the deliberate use of the social voice." http://io9.com/5928125/do-people-of-different-races-have-different-voices

In short, our debate becomes influenced by knowing that the voice actor is of a particular racial background.

There's another fascinating article where a black woman shares concerns that people don't think she

'sounds black enough' http://www.nerve.com/features/being-black-and-sounding-white-and-why-no-one-speaks-correctly-anyway

In short, the protagonist's accent is more likely to be impacted by their cultural upbringing than by their race.

By all means, it's nice to have additional voice actors record parts 'for variation',

but I expect that 'nice to do' is outweighed by sheer cost.

I doubt that they were just reading lines for this game for two years. Voice acting is never a quick process, and the time it takes is also affected by rewrites, which can be extensive. Animated films frequently take years to record all of the dialogue of their main characters, but it's not a day in day out process. There are long periods in-between that the actors go off and do other work, and looking at their IMDB pages, its clear both actors were doing other work during this time span.

actually there differences in voice of races since the voice is havily impacted by how many hormones you have in your system and blacks tend to have more testosterone than whites, whites tend to have more testosterone than asians. so asian women will have the most 'feminine' voice while black man will have the deepest voice on average.

I didn't know the answer, so I went looking on the internet (a dangerous thing to do I know).

If you have a source I can read discussing the effect of hormones on voice, among different races, I'd be fascinated to read it.

I was about to type a troll thread entitled "FALLOUT 4 IS RACIST!!!!!1!!!!!"one"1!!!!!1 >: ((((( " but then you beat me to it.
And you're actually serious...

ive seen some medical charts showed in presentations on youtube but cant remember where. also its not that hard to figure out how hormones change the voice just look at male and female difference.

ok.

However, neither Brian T Delaney, nor Courtenay Taylor have 'high pitched' voices,

so their voices sit nicely 'in the middle' surely.

actually fallout 4 will be the least race concious fallout yet. we wont even have the option to choose a race like with fallout 3 or new vegas but will only be able to change our appearance/skin color. the whole option for identifying races and having presets for them is gone as you can observe in the e3 character creation.

Ridiculously expensive indeed, all that money that could have gone into other aspects of development instead of this crappy gimmick that nobody was asking for.

...I did (well Okey I didn't actively ask for it, but I do welcome it)

We seriously need more information soon. Now we're bickering that our main character isn't 'black enough'/'Asian enough'/'Hispanic enough' because of the voices.

quakecon aint far off, just hold on a little longer X3

I wish we could have multiple choices for VAs but not for racial reasons, just for variety. I really don't like the male VA's acting in the scenes we have been shown, so having alternatives would be a god send. A DLC VA pack would be awesome.

I have thought about this a lot. In fact, it is the single reason that is holding me back from pre-ordering the game. In every game that I've played with a voice protagonist (unless they're named, like Lara, Nathan or Geralt) has been an issue, along with the confounded dialogue wheel (hate this feature). I did not care for the voices in games like DA2 and Inquisition. There were even 2 choices for each gender in DA:I and I didn't care for either of them.

From what I've heard of the two voices, almost exclusively the male, he sounds like your average white (or mostly caucasian), 30-something male. I haven't heard enough of the female's voice to make a judgment on her. Personally, I do think races sound different due to many influences and this doesn't even take into account AGE. For story purposes, they have decided that their characters should sound a certain way and there's nothing to be done about it now.

I definitely feel like this is going to be a disadvantage when it comes to replay value. How many characters can you make that sound just alike? I tend to make dozens of different characters in the past Bethesda games and replay value has always been great because of silent protagonist. I enjoy imagining different voices for my characters as I read the dialogue choices. Now that is taken away.

I do enjoy games like Tomb Raider and Uncharted but those are set voiced protagonists and a different type of story. They're usually a once through and I'm done. I have come to expect something different with the 'sand-box' Bethesda games. I realize this is a problem that I will come to grips with and I will probably get the game but I can't see it as being the same experience that I was used to. Will it be better or worse, remains to be seen.

Science behind it doesn't matter. There is one male voice and on female voice. Considering the time that it took for two it is obvious why there aren't more. Just to cover the basics they'd need around 5 for each gender making a total of 10 voices. Even then someone would complain how their particular personality isn't captured in the voices available. This is just one of the times where you gotta svck it up.

To change your PC's voice go to: TV-Settings-Sound-Bass-Treble, adjust as needed.

It would be more expensive to have different voice actors do the 13,000 lines. And I think Bethesda would be at higher risk of offending their customers by having a "black" voice, an "Asian" voice, etc... which could too easily fall into stereotypes.

I would have been fine with no voice for my character, but …

First of all, this. Second of all, we don't need any trouble in regards to what someone of a specific race is suppose to sound like. Third of all, it would be expensive to hire a voice actor to suit every possible race.

Exactly. Had such a thing occurred and they used different voice actors for different races the forums would be loaded with threads like "My black PC doesn't sound black enough" or "My black PC sounds like a racist stereotype" or "My Asian PC has a southern Chinese accent, not north-east-secluded-area of Japan accent". Lets not even get into how your PC doesn't sound gay enough or butch enough. Oh thats right, they can't be gay or butch because evil Bethesda is forcing you to be straight, and now they are forcing you to be a white too!

People arent complaining that we only have 1 voice per six i doubt that they would complain alot more if you offer them greater options.