Meh. It's such a hot topic, there will eventually be a mod for it.

I'm all for more sound options in games though. Sometimes a master, voice, effect, and music slider doesn't cut it - specially when you're half deaf like me. It'd be nice if the player voice and the npc voice's had their own slider to work with.

Do you know how many were in previous games? New Vegas has somewhere around 65,000 lines total. Most of the lines in these games are in response to character choices (which wouldn't count as voiced lines). Meaning New Vegas might have had any where around 60,000 lines of dialogue for the protagonist (give or take a few thousand). Fallout 3 might have had more than double the amount of dialogue choices than Fallout 4.

Their announcement of 13k lines of dialogue for the protagonist was completely misleading PR bull crap and there is a good chance dialogue has been severely gutted.

I'd prefer no voice acting tbh. If it turns out that certain features such as a post-ending gamestate that reflects your choices was cut due to financial constraints I'd be pretty disappointed. Bethesda has sunk a huge amount of money into a feature that nobody really wanted.

On the other hand, I hated the voiced PC in Bioware games and loved it in TW3. The problem imo is that the voice actors don't have a defined role to play in. From what I heard they were trying to be relatively neutral and it just seemed to lack good delivery. The female PC definitely seems better though. I guess we'll see what happens when the game comes out.

I think the two voice actors will do a great job!!! I've liked what I heard.

I think it's also garbage because I don't prefer voice for many reasons.

The option should be there.

I agree, the whole 13k thing seems like something they had ready to address questions about the system. People usually jump on me if I claim that games are being made simple for the lowest denomination of society, but everything about this just reeks of being made easy.

Instead of reading an entire sentence, they just read one or two words. After this, they'll be told everything!!1!!1!1!1!
-Todd Howard

That's precisely what I'm worried about. They invested money in a feature where many on their forums were against (polls and threads are my source) instead of where it might have been better spent.

I also agree on this second part. It was done well in TW3 and in most story oriented games because the protagonist is a defined role. Geralt is defined by the books that preceded the games, the Master Chief is defined as John-117 by the games and novels. Opposite to these games are Dragon Age, TES and Fallout. A character that isn't defined. I personally felt that Dragon Age shot itself in the foot with a voiced protagonist.

Yup, New Vegas had a lot of lines of dialogue for all the characters (although I think the 60k figure also includes all the DLC). But the 13000 lines of dialogue was recorded by just the two main actors, that figure doesn't count the dialogue of all the other characters in the game.

Relax. There is no reason yet to be so amped-up about it. I am confident Bethesda will do well. They always have.

And yet I'm discussing the protagonist dialogue. I could care less about how much ambient dialogue there is in the game. What I care about in an RPG is my character's dialogue choices and subsequently the world's reactions to the choices.

You might feel this way, but their past two releases are the reason many are worried. They have always sold well, but I personally do not think they have done well (my opinion of course).

Bethesda is overall one of the best game devs around. They build great worlds and add a huge amount of features and detail to it.

However, this huge strength of theirs sometimes means people lose sight of their weak areas. Voice acting and dialogue has been poor in beth games for years now. So, there is reason to doubt in this area. If people were questioning the worldbuilding? I would spring to their defense. However, that is not the case right now.

Ok, so I added few more choices to the poll as Yes voters are withholding their votes due to lack of options and no voters are voting regardless of the reason presented.

I am up to my 3rd play through in TW3, and its just become another space bar stroke for my poor aching gaming fingers to skip.

BTW I think I might just be able to tolerate it if doesn't change view mode during voice over in 1st person perspective, but I will withhold from pre-purchasing till this issue has been revealed in a bit more detail.

Someone above asked earlier if there would be subtitles. A friend of mine is Deaf and also like me bought the pipboy edition. Both he and I wrote to Bethesda customer service to try and just get a clear message if there would be a subtitles system . Only he got a response (I did not), to say yes there WOULD BE a subtitles option.

To be honest, forum polls and options are a pretty average way of getting a good overview of things in regards to a game. The Majority of players may never use an online poll/webpoll and thus the natural users of a forum normally skew any poll result. I put as much faith in a poll on a webiste as I do political parties and their 'average guy on the street' in their campaign videos.

Voice acting has been in Bethesda games since 2006, you're a decade too late to complain. The only reason PCs weren't voiced over was due to budget and disk space. What's immersion-breaking was the character being a mute when every NPC talked.

Wait another 10 years for voice synthesizing if you're too bothered by having only one voice actor.

Well even a good book can only be read so many times before the content becomes dull.

A voiced protagonist is just one of many things that have me incredibly wary of this game. I'm already positive it isn't going to be a good Fallout addition, but it'll be a fun shoot-em-up probably.

Edit: I wish there was a "Should never have been added in the first place" option. Otherwise I'll let my comments back up my "vote".

Fallout 4's voice protagonist reminds me of the remake of the Star Wars trilogy, Darth Vader saying "Nooooo" at the end of #6 movie. I prefer him being silent. Just like I prefer my Fallout 4 protagonist to remain silent. I might be the minority here but oh well.

I will wait and see.

This is what I don't understand. Why wait and see? We hear the character's voice already and you already don't know if you'll like it or not. To me that's interference with enjoyment.

Silent Protagonist Master Race.

To me, 13k lines (average of 5 words per line?) of dialogue is pretty equivalent to a novel. Not an epic novel, but a novel. That's a complete story. Dialogue, description, narration- all of it. That's how much PC dialogue was recorded.
I can't be mad at that.

In all previous games you could just skip forward during dialogue, very common for the shopkeeper greeting and similar.

You can also turn on subtitles in all games.

TES has more issues with voiced PC than fallout because of all the races and also you can select age and background freely, ESO if fully voiced but not the PC.

In Fallout its much simpler, you are human and say 22-35 years old in FO4.

I have never really noticed that the player don't speak honestly, I think it will work out well enough, one issue is flow, you know that your are about to say as you selected the option, now you have to wait for your character to say it, think the switch viewpoint will be annoying, most of the dialogues are boring like talking to shopkeepers.

Also an major issue then your character says something else than the description, this is mostly caused by the stupid four option only dialogue system arranged in a cross.

4 options only is more of an issue as it will either require deep nesting, cut options or long monologues.

In short voiced PC has good and bad sides, the 4 option dialogues with 10 character texts is another genius decision like Skyrim quest log who we all love, especially the minor quests with their 5 word descriptions.

Remember that lots of that you do is answering questions and lot of repeated comments, the npc tells stories not you, Yes, No, I do it for 200 caps, go on, any rumors, what do you have to sell.

I doubt NV had 13.000 unique lines for the PC.

If the total amount of dialogue is cut its not because of voiced PC but because of the new simplified dialogue system.

On the other hand FO4 looks like being larger than FO3 / NV who was smaller than Skyrim / Oblivion.

if you look at threads years back about a voiced protagonist always there was this majority against it , you do not believe me check it out yourselves and now suddenly most of these people seems to be in favor for it because , bethesda done and every thing bethesda foes can not be bad , well you are wrong

it is the dame concept as mass rffrct or the witcher ,

no matter how you create or play the character you are playing the story of a character bethesda alreadt created for you

what is the point of a open world rpg if the designers already filled in all the blanks for you and created your character story for you

did you know the protagonist still have his wedding ring on in the pipboy , and you can be sure he is going to go all emotional on us for losing his wife and kids with that nausiating typical straight tradional married white educated true american hero voice of him, and a veteran aswell really bethesda how deeper can you sink

pretty sure that alot of who now says it is a good thing to have a voice will start to hate it once you well into the game

and if somebody ever come up with a mod that turns this feature off ithout breaking the game it will be one of the highest rated and downloaded mods of all time , i probably donate money to him

I voted yes, as an option for those who do not want listen to the protagonist. For me, I do not care, I've played both ways and learned to adapt.

Does the amount of lines for FO3 and FO:NV include DLCs? If yes, then wait until all the DLCs for FO4 are out, then judge. If not, then link. I've seen some random numbers and I would appreciate if somebody wants to throw numbers out for Fo3 and FO:NV tp provid a source. Kind of like the next quote needs a source:

Oh my, same poster. You need to source as it seems it is about 50/50 those who want voice than not. Seriously, provide evidence, otherwise I am having a time hard believing you.

And before too many lemmings are jumping off the cliff, please re-read a post of wise:

And the NPC dialogue count could be 5,000.

I mean, you never know. The PC could be a gum-flapping lunatic.

I voted yes because there should be a option. I personally welcome a voiced PC, it frankly seamed silly and a bit archeic when every other npc in 3/NV was voiced but your character was a "mute" who silently projected your text dialogue into the mind if who ya where talking to.

Now of course I still understand peoples frustration and so would hope to see the option to at least mute the voice.