[Melanie]

Recently I've noticed that there seems to be a lot of debates on voice-acting, so I thought it made sense to try and bring them together into one thread.

From what I'm seeing, I guess the debate is what system should be used for dialogue. 100% voice-acted (a la Oblivion) seems to be unpopular because many seem to find it limiting, that it would use up time, resources and most notably disk space better used elsewhere. There are some standing up in favour of it but they seem to be the minority, from what I've seen. Conversely, little to no voice-acting seems incredibly unlikely just based on the way the game industry is right now. So it would seem that many are trying to find a middle ground.

So: What are your thoughts?

[Sammygirl]

I just hope that Bethesda hires separate actors for each race, and no big celebrities that cost too much. Voice acting is inevitible, sadly, but at least do it good if you're going to do it.

[Skivs]

The reality of TESV is that it we be 100% voice-acted - such a high profile game wouldn't be released in this day and age without being so.

The more appropriate question is this: How can TESV be 100% voice-acted, and still manage to contain all of the content of a complete TES game?

[Megan Stabler]

I have a lot of respect for the attempts at it. If anyone has ever added the Oblivion companion mod Vilja of Emma's, she voices over a thousand lines of dialogue herself. To make a well rounded character, that is indeed some commitment.

Honestly, there are entire voice banks of people who would just love to voice for games, and I daresay many would love to here. The real problem of course is that it takes more than the want and the ability, you really have to have the talent for it.

IF they were to continue with the usage of notable names and those who have a history with it, then I would suggest Bethesda employ the help of Andrea Romano, the voice casting director who has nearly revolutionized animated features by knowing who to cast for what part. Her resume is beyond impressive, with the likes of the Animated Batman(s), Justice League, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and countless others to her credit. She doesn't seek out those on the "high budget end" (read contemporary actors), but canvassed the talent from yesteryear and beyond. Actors who you wouldn't know their faces, but have heard their voices for decades. Like Grey Delisle. She may be more known for her works as the voice of Azula from Avatar:The Last Airbender cartoon, Mandy from Billy and Mandy, PuffyAmiYumi, and a bunch others including the latest Tinkerbell movies, but Grey had some very impressive beginnings as the voice talents from the very first Baldur's Gate games, waaaaaaaaaaaay back when.

That's what Bethesda should consider, find those with the talent, history, and respect for the craft of voice acting who look at the work as something they'd want to participate in, and not just those doing it for spec or scratch.

[Your Mum]

Good god, I've already been over this mountain, and I really don't feel like going up again. *collapses*

[Emma-Jane Merrin]

Personally I'm indifferent to voice acting. I think it should be all or nothing though; I don't like the idea of essential MQ NPCs having voices, but Joe Shopkeep being a mute who can summon magic subtitles. To me that breaks immersion, whereas establishing a consistent approach (even if it's always subtitles) will keep me engaged in the world/story.

I prefer voice acted if done well. What this means to me is this:
1. Good dialog.
2. Good variety of actors (2-3 per gender per race)

They do not have to be paying established actors for this. Many young aspiring actors/actresses would happily come into the studio and do an admiral job for next to nothing. Price should not be an issue; I hope they realize that no one cares if Patrick Stewart or Sean Bean or God forbid Morgan Freeman is saying a couple hundred sentences. It's definitely not worth it to spend 100x as much money on those guys when you could hire unknowns who could do the job almost as well and provide much more variety.

As TES_Ronin said, it's a virtual certainty that the game will be fully voiced. Personally I don't think this will "waste" as much space as some people seem to think, and I think if they do it well it won't even be a waste of space at all; simply allocation of space.

[trisha punch]

Voice acting is a good thing. I'm sorry if everyone trying to turn every aspect of the new game into Daggerfall disagrees, but having NPCs actually speak is a very nice touch to make them seem alive, which adds alot of immersion. The only problem I had with the voice acting in Oblivion and FO3 was hearing the same voices in so many different characters. Get lots of unknown, cheap voice actors to come in and make sure that each actor reads lines for no more than five NPC's, and you will have a good balance.

[My blood]

I want voice acting, yes, I don't want the world to be speechless as I walk past people. But, idk. I'm torn. I love voice acting, when done properly.
But I also like the immersion that Morrowind brought to the table with reading. I think both work great, so long as they are done well.
Oblivion was definitely not a prime example of good voice acting.

[Daddy Cool!]

Books on tape! Books on tape! Also, any foreign films in game should be dubbed.

[Dragonz Dancer]

Dear God, I don't even care; just give me my Vvardenfell Dunmer back. Please, for the love of all that is good and holy, give me my Vvardenfell Dunmer back.

But seriously, I love the way Morrowind handled the voice acting. I really, really don't think that Bethesda will do anything but full voice acting in this day-and-age, but one can always dream.

[Ernesto Salinas]

I can't stand voice acting at all. I like to read and I'm able to read therefore I don't need a voice actor that sounds like he doesn't want to be there to read to me. The only voice it needs is the little ambient comments in the background and maybe discussions like in Oblivion if they can get them right instead of Oblivion's "Mudcrabs!" "Go away!" "I've heard others say the same!" "Mudcrabs!".

Of course since most gamers seem to either be unable or unwilling to hold their attention to one thing for 5 seconds to read a "wall of text" like Morrowind had, I'm sure the next game will follow the industry standard of less dialogue, less story, more voice acting.

[Aaron Clark]

The reality is, as some have already said, that there's almost no chance TES V wont have voice acting. It's not what the majority of gamers want, it's what they expect. They don't even know they want it, they just expect it to be there, just as they expect their game to work properly. Because of that, no voice acting would mean fewer sales and lower review scores. Not horrendously lower review scores, but it would certainly be listed as a bad feature.

That said, I would very much prefer limited voice acting, i.e. no voice acting for the majority of characters, but small bits of voice acting for major characters so we get an idea of what they sound like. If voice acting was done this way, TES V would have far, far more choices and would be much more like the RPGs of the late 90's, with limited voice acting but tons of choices.

If they announced that TES V had limited voice acting, I would actually be very happy. The majority of gamers out there would moan, but it would make the quality of TES V much better imo.

[Eve Booker]

I have a lot of respect for the attempts at it. If anyone has ever added the Oblivion companion mod Vilja of Emma's, she voices over a thousand lines of dialogue herself. To make a well rounded character, that is indeed some commitment.

Honestly, there are entire voice banks of people who would just love to voice for games, and I daresay many would love to here. The real problem of course is that it takes more than the want and the ability, you really have to have the talent for it.

IF they were to continue with the usage of notable names and those who have a history with it, then I would suggest Bethesda employ the help of Andrea Romano, the voice casting director who has nearly revolutionized animated features by knowing who to cast for what part. Her resume is beyond impressive, with the likes of the Animated Batman(s), Justice League, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and countless others to her credit. She doesn't seek out those on the "high budget end" (read contemporary actors), but canvassed the talent from yesteryear and beyond. Actors who you wouldn't know their faces, but have heard their voices for decades. Like Grey Delisle. She may be more known for her works as the voice of Azula from Avatar:The Last Airbender cartoon, Mandy from Billy and Mandy, PuffyAmiYumi, and a bunch others including the latest Tinkerbell movies, but Grey had some very impressive beginnings as the voice talents from the very first Baldur's Gate games, waaaaaaaaaaaay back when.

That's what Bethesda should consider, find those with the talent, history, and respect for the craft of voice acting who look at the work as something they'd want to participate in, and not just those doing it for spec or scratch.

This is perhaps one of the best well-made points I've read in a while. I concur, completely. However, Morrowind's dialogue posed no problem for me. In fact, considering that I'm an individual who loves reading, I think I would be quite welcoming of it. However, the writing in itself demands talent as well. Voice-work aside, that aspect alone makes or breaks immersion; immersion could be broken quite quickly if the writer did not know how to do their job.

[Amie Mccubbing]

I'm all for voice acting, as long as there's variety and it doesn't limit conversations like it did in Oblivion. It would be awesome to have Morrowind's amount of dialogue voice acted, with each race having, say, two voices per gender. Unfortunately I don't see this happening.

[Honey Suckle]

I don't know man.

I remember discussion recently about how Fallout 3 had even less quests than Oblivion. That's because the dialogue trees were more complex.

With full voice acting, there's only a limited amount of spoken lines you can have in the game, regardless of how good they sound. So, it's either a little bit of complex quests, or a little bit more of linear quests. Either way, they have to be conservative with dialogue.

Written dialogue means infinite sentences means as many really complex quests as the devs feel like sticking into the game. You guys are really jipping yourselves on content, just for the miniscule novelty of feeling like the little CG dude is really talking. It's not worth it.

[Big mike]

The more voice acting the better IMO.

Honestly I think Bethesda could take a hint from Bioware in this department. ME2 and Dragon age were both expertly voice acted.

[Elina]

ME2 and Dragon age were both expertly voice acted.

Yes, but they (Or at least DAO, never played ME2) were far more linear than TES. So they really only had to worry about the MQ, a few side quests, and expansions. Which, I think, roughly equals out to about the same amount of voiced dialogue that Oblivion had.

[Taylah Illies]

Recently I've noticed that there seems to be a lot of debates on voice-acting, so I thought it made sense to try and bring them together into one thread.

From what I'm seeing, I guess the debate is what system should be used for dialogue. 100% voice-acted (a la Oblivion) seems to be unpopular because many seem to find it limiting, that it would use up time, resources and most notably disk space better used elsewhere. There are some standing up in favour of it but they seem to be the minority, from what I've seen. Conversely, little to no voice-acting seems incredibly unlikely just based on the way the game industry is right now. So it would seem that many are trying to find a middle ground.

So: What are your thoughts?

I personally find the biggest issue with voice acting is simply, it limits the amount of dialogue you can put into any given character. In Morrowind the fact everything was written out aloud writers to get far more creative with, well everything

and to the argument about people comparing the great voice acting of ME2 to Oblivion, as the poster above stated, this is a mass non linear world. Voice acting in my opinion limits the ability to have an open world.

Voice acting = linear story (Mass Effect)
written dialogue = non linear story (Elderscrolls)

[Claudz]

That's straight from the file sizes of the PC version, most recent patch.



Money: No.

Time: All the voice files are all 64 kbps cbr MP3 files, in other words: There's over 60 hours of voice acting shipped with the game. Even with a ten-to-one ration of recording time to result time (which would be extremly good) and four hours of voice recording per day (which not everyone can even manage), that's something like seven to eight man-months of recording.

I think I've found our problem, 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,

Let's look at the break down again:

Total amount of data alone in Oblivion.

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
All the other stuff (quests, NPCs, game data): 235.92 MB

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 mission.

[James Smart]

Guy they can make us install on separate disc one for voice acting,one for npcs,ai,physics,meshes and textures and one disk for quests but there is a problem involving the consoles because on the consoles you don't really install.

[Da Missz]

I just have to hope that TES V will include a text "backup" to the inevitable voice-acting. In OB, I really had a lot of difficulty picking up on some of the "background" conversations, and several of the "major" lines in the game were all but drowned out by passing traffic noises or other distractions in the neighborhood, so the written info was vital to me. At the moment, I'm really struggling with another game that's fully voiced because I've apparently missed several important details in the mission instructions. (Try listening to a conversation while the nearby stadium is shooting off fireworks - happens at least once a week, inevitably on the nights that I'm free to fire up the computer.) It also doesn't help that I've probably got some loss of hearing, thanks to standing too close to a drumset and stacks of amplifiers for too long. (When asked if high-volume rock and roll causes hearing loss, 9 out of 10 rock musicians responded "Huh?")

If Bethesda goes with a fully-voiced MQ and major side-quests, and voiced "intro" lines for all NPCs, that should cover at least 90% of what you'd NEED to do in the game. Having more depth, more detail, and more background information in the form of "text walls" for those who want to dig deeper shouldn't affect those who just want to run around and kill stuff. For them, it would SEEM fully voiced, but the additional content would be there for those who want it, without having to voice-act all of that. I can see where MW's very limited voicing would be "outdated" by today's game standards, but I still believe that a better compromise could be reached, which would give "the best of both worlds".

[Deon Knight]

Ok, I'll just copy and paste from another post of mine to give my opinion.

A standard song, roughly 3 minutes long would take up roughly 3mb of space.

Now, imagine TESV has 20 hours of recorded dialogue (that's hardly anything, I may add, compared to the sheer scale a TES game should be)

That's 2gb wasted. Currently, a disc will hold 4gb (The game will be tailored for the xbox aswell, don't even bother ranting about that). That's HALF of the disc wasted on voice, and voice alone. while I'm all for voice acting, if done right, unlike Oblivion, it's just not feasible to have a fully voiced game that lacks in other areas. I feel the reason Oblivion was so small, and there where so few quests was because of voice acting. While fallout handled certain features better, it still could have been far better.

Now, also, think about all the people who rant about the limited amount of voice actors, who want 3 voices per race. I'll be kind and say 50% of the voicing is all generic greetings, rumours, etc. That's 3x the 1gb of these voices. So. By this logic, the WHOLE 4gb is now in use by voice acting, and the series has to wait for the next generation of consoles to even fit on the discs.

Voice acting takes up a crap load of space, and people don't realise it. While it's fine in a linear game, where there is one or two quest lines that has specific scripts, it doesn't work as well in a huge game world with hundreds of quests with different outcomes.

[Abel Vazquez]

Voice acting was one of the major issues I had with Oblivion, personally, I think that they should take a tip from Bioware, dont make any characters sound alike, aka dont reuse sound files for all of the random people. Its ok to re use voice actors if they change their voice up some, but at least use different sound files. Also, why not use some people at the office, that way you dont have to have as much outside voice acting (if you dont already do that). I think thats what Rockstar does.

[KRistina Karlsson]

Ok, I'll just copy and paste from another post of mine to give my opinion.

A standard song, roughly 3 minutes long would take up roughly 3mb of space.

Now, imagine TESV has 20 hours of recorded dialogue (that's hardly anything, I may add, compared to the sheer scale a TES game should be)

That's 2gb wasted. Currently, a disc will hold 4gb (The game will be tailored for the xbox aswell, don't even bother ranting about that). That's HALF of the disc wasted on voice, and voice alone. while I'm all for voice acting, if done right, unlike Oblivion, it's just not feasible to have a fully voiced game that lacks in other areas. I feel the reason Oblivion was so small, and there where so few quests was because of voice acting. While fallout handled certain features better, it still could have been far better.

Now, also, think about all the people who rant about the limited amount of voice actors, who want 3 voices per race. I'll be kind and say 50% of the voicing is all generic greetings, rumours, etc. That's 3x the 1gb of these voices. So. By this logic, the WHOLE 4gb is now in use by voice acting, and the series has to wait for the next generation of consoles to even fit on the discs.

Voice acting takes up a crap load of space, and people don't realise it. While it's fine in a linear game, where there is one or two quest lines that has specific scripts, it doesn't work as well in a huge game world with hundreds of quests with different outcomes.

The main issue is just that in reusing sound files like that god awful yet hilarious "thank you kind sir" for EVERY imperial beggar in the game breaks immersion, and instead of feeling like you are in the univers, you notice the screen in front of you and controller in your hand and realize, oh.... Im playing a game

ps. srry for double post

[Richard Dixon]

I do not think that voice acting inevitably destroys a game. Technically I do not mind. But I wish my dialogues to be plentiful, to be rich and deep. I wish for a lot of varied information, I would like to see skill, attribute and even some other checks in dialogues, and some other stuff I cannot think of right now. If Beth can do all this and still make the dialogue voice acted, while the voice acting is diverse (lot of different voices if not different actors) and actually well recorded, then why not. Should voice acting mean, however, that the dialogue, must be limited, that there will be less topics, less diversity or even decrease in some other area of the game, then I hope Beth will not bother with VA and concentrate on things that actually metter.