I might have to pinch that one myself!

I will always prefer silent protagonists. Voiced protagonists always feel jarring, limited and forced, I don't see why people think it works in a game where you create your own character. In a game where you're playing a crafted, detailed character, sure it makes complete sense, but with a created character it just shoehorns you into a limited set of personality archetypes. I've disliked it in every game I've experienced it in, I do not need to play Fallout 4 to know I will dislike it in this.

As for Elder Scrolls, I now gravely fear the possibility of Bethesda stripping the ability to play as beast/elf races in vanilla and having a single male and female voice actor for human races and Reguards. And the dissenters will simply be told "mod in races you want to play as". Maybe I'm just a pessimist, however. What is certain is that Bethesda is NOT going to record 13000 lines of dialog 20 times (10 for each race, 10 for other gender of each race).

Even if they split that between several voice actors or just the one, that's a gargantuan amount of dialog that will take up a massive amount of time, money and disc space to record, which would come at the expense of NPC dialog in the game.

I honestly don't understand why. Unless you've limited yourself to solely playing Bethesda games over the past 10 or 20 years you've no doubt experienced voiced protagonists in dozens if not hundreds of games. It's not new or remotely unique.

If you try it and hate it, mods will inevitably come out that return it back to the original style. It isn't hard to do that, it's just a lot of work. You have to shift through the dialogue and write the sentences out. If BGS releases the script, then it's a whole lot easier.

I don't think I've ever claimed it was new or unique.

What is there to understand, are voiced NPCs in a 3D game superior to silent ones communicating by text, are voiced companions superior to silent ones, are voiced protagonists superior to silent ones?

I'd expect most people would answer yes to the first two and we can argue over the third one.

I was perfectly happy to play with the silent protagonist, but to me it still feels like an upgrade to switch to voiced one I'm not sure what is hard to understand about that beyond the opinion that the protagonist must be a blank slate (even if that hasn't usually been the case in Fallout) and he/she must be silent, communicating by text because some players prefer it.

Many people also pretty heavily lamented the fact that movies would no longer be silent, thinking that much of the artisticness would be lost; but people got over that too.

Technology adapts with time and with itthe way most things work. People may not like it but its notgoing to go backwards. Might as well learn to just embrace it.

Voiced protagonists work great for fixed identities. You can have a wonderful RPG/Roleplaying experience with them ~assuming they are well cast for the part... But it's when they are the voice of every PC you make that they fall miserably short. In a way, voiced protagonists damage replay-ability with different characters; for you play the game again to get a differing experience out of it, yet it's the same conversing by the same voices in conversation. This is not so jarring if you are playing the same PC making different choices ~as it is when you are playing two wholly opposite PCs.

I'm with you on the old-fangled dialogue system, though there is a logical merit to the voiced protagonist.

I'm personally indifferent to the voiced protagonist, but most AAA games with a story centric single player have voiced player characters.

People often deride the original Fallout games for not "evolving", well now it's time for BGS games to evolve and this starts with the transition to a voiced PC.Soon people will consider this a standard BGS norm as they do with voiced NPCs, after all how many people suggest we revert back to silent NPCs, even though many of the same arguments apply?

Personally, I've played games with both voiced & unvoiced characters, and enjoyed them both. Of course, I don't believe in "immersion" and I don't try to imagine ME as the character - even in first person, it's an external character who I'm moving around on a very fancy board.

I've also never internally voiced my characters - I don't know what they sound like, when I read dialogue in my head, it's always in a flat/neutral tone (unless the dialogue is written with an obvious accent, or it's written dialogue for a strongly-accented character I've seen in a movie or TV show).

Hmm. I guess I've generally played Beth games as the stated characters - just like I can play through Mass Effect as Good Shepard, or Jerk Shepard, or Mercenary Shepard; as a psionic, a tank, or a sniper..... I play through Skyrim as The Dragonborn, whether she's Good, Evil, Mage, or Fighter. Ditto with the Lone Wanderer, the Courier, etc. (Heck, ditto with the Vault Dweller in FO1, if I'd played that game multiple times. No matter which playstyle or outlook I picked, they'd still be the Vault Dweller, looking for the water chip.)

Have you ever read a Schwarzenegger quote ~not in his voice? (It's next to impossible for some.)

It's not hard for some to latch on to a fitting voice, and read the text in that verbal style.
The same person? In Fallout the PC is at least #3 out the door on this quest they're given. If they die and the player starts anew, they can be considered #4.

I usually play different individuals with different personalities. The last one I played was a total used car salesman; while the one before could have been Frank Castle [Marvel's Punisher].

This is me! I can never read an Arnold Schwarzenegger quote and not hear his voice in my head.

Also the bold-ed part. I do this.

Well, like I said: "(unless the dialogue is written with an obvious accent, or it's written dialogue for a strongly-accented character I've seen in a movie or TV show)."

So yeah - the Terminator. Spike or Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Characters (or actors) whose distinctive voices I'm familiar with due to hearing them spoken aloud - those I'll "hear" in my head. But some random dialogue, written in unaccented words? It's just there.

False equivalencies. Voiced NPCs change significantly less from a gameplay perspective than a voiced protagonist in a game like Fallout 4 does. The most that can be argued against voiced NPCs is that it significantly limits the amount of dialog an individual NPC can contain, which I don't dispute. You can also mute NPC voices in the audio settings a lot, which effectively gives you silent NPCs, even if they still have less dialog and the dialog that does exist is more repetitive.

The dialog system in Fallout 4 is awful for numerous reasons, the contracted Mass Effect-style dialog wheel is probably the worst way they possibly could have implemented voiced protagonists into a Fallout game. Now not only do we have all the negatives that come with a voiced protagonist in such a game but we also are left with selecting contracted dialog options that often turn out to be quite different to what the option may have suggested.

For example "Let's go" becomes "Let's go bloody some raiders, pal". Now I regret selecting that option because it doesn't fit my character remotely, I don't want my character to say this, at the very least give us the full dialog in the options. This is going to be the entire damn game, and it's going to get worse and worse and worse as the conversations lengthen.

As for comparing the switch from silent movies to sound to this.. I don't even know how to begin to tackle that comparison. Someone else will tackle that one I hope.

I disagree with this. I played and replayed the hell out of Saints Row 2 with multiple custom characters of both genders ( I even did a play through as House with some internet help on the sliders) and that protagonist having a voice never took anything away from my runs. I think the issue is just that it's something new for this franchise and people fear change. At least give it a couple hours of game play before deciding you hate it.

[tired sigh].. Once again, a voiced protagonist is absolutely NOTHING new. The vast majority of games out there today feature voiced protagonists, we've ALL experienced it before and can decide for ourselves whether we prefer it in games or not. It's amazing you yourself use an example from a separate game as support for voiced protagonists in this title only to lament people declaring their disapproval of such a feature in this game based on experiences with it in other titles.

Bethesda distinguished itself in the AAA space by offering something different in terms of dialog, now they offer nothing in that regard that can't be found elsewhere.

I've not played Saint's Row; does it matter in the game what differences the PC has?

(Does this affect anything, or is it just a character skin?)

You are disagreeing with the concept that playing http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/Clipboard03_zpsa3e03c3c.jpg with the same voice doesn't adversely affect roleplay [/replay]; do I have that right?

You may have misunderstood my post. I was disagreeing that they only work with a fixed protagonist and that a custom character would be ruined by having a voice. I am 100% in favor of and looking forward to a voiced protagonist in FO4, specifically because of my experiences in other franchises. I was just suggesting a theory for why this change might be worrying to some people here on the forums.

I believe there are also multiple voices to select from in Saints Row, on top of this. Or at least there were for sure in some of the installments.

I didn't, it was fairly straightforward. As was my response to the various points you made in yours.

It mattered to my view of the game and how I viewed/ role-played each character but the game itself doesn't care if your male, female, fat or thin. A voiced protagonist has never been a bad thing in my role-playing experiences with any franchise. I have more concerns about a lack of NPC voice variation than the addition of a PC voice. It felt like every Nord was the same person because they only had a couple different voice actors.

Okay, and many others feel quite differently about that. Why attack them or attempt to disregard their views in the way you did with your idiotic sweeping statements about them "fearing change" or "not experiencing it first"?

I only dislike it in RPGs with variable PCs that can be anybody. Games like Witcher only have to script conversation for one PC, and they can go all out if they like... RPGs with variable PCs cannot go all out, because they won't do that for enough variations; and if they do attempt it, I would expect that the script would suffer.

Good god not another one of these topics

Honestly? It wasn't meant as an attack, I just do not understand how it's a bad thing and was trying to put forth the only reasoning that makes sense to me. I also feel it is something that people should try before they say it's terrible. Doesn't seem that aggressive to me.

And almost anyone who's played a game in the last 10 years HAS tried it. How are you not understanding this?

Now I'm confused. Are you saying you haven't enjoyed a game in the past 10 years because they're all voiced? Sad-boosh.