Characters in pervious fallout games have been on mute for as long as I can remember, and that serves its function as well. A mute character, the theory goes, increases your immersion in the game world by allowing you to fully inhabit the first person player character. In practice, I’m not sure how well this works. It makes every conversation feel oddly one-sided, making NPCs feel staged and the main character surreal. But in The Witcher 3 they recently showed us how powerful a voiced main character in an open world game can be. All of a sudden, dialogue actually feels like dialogue as opposed to reams of exposition and instruction to be skipped over. I don’t expect the main character of Fallout 4 to be as thoroughly characterized as Geralt, but it’s still a massive change from the status quo.

I am very happy with the move they have made in voicing the PC, however be prepared to be told how wrong you are in great detail.

So the voiced protagonist is not a concern for you ? I for one have been waiting for this game for about 5 years now and this game means a lot to me I am genuinely scared because A voiced protagonist is a new thing for BGS and to be honest im all for a voiced protagonist only if it is done right luke Witcher and dragon age inqusition . The dialogue system in fallout 4 resembled mass effect 3 Wich was not a very good dialogue system.

Until the game is actually released and I can play it and make a more valid opinion, I am for now fine with it. But even if the dialogue isnt that good I doubt it will take away from the rest of the game for me personally

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1527908-we-should-be-given-the-option-to-turn-off-voiced-dialogue/

There's already several topics on this subject.

I agree to such an extent but sometimes it really affects the way you feel about your character.

If you haven't heard it yet, there's a brilliant interview with Brian T Delaney, where he explains how this will bring a unique edge to the game that wouldn't be possible by simply reading lines from the screen. The interview can be found in the link below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGnCrgw9BU0&feature=youtu.be&t=9m47s

Thank you gkk7z though I think I have already seen it is it Matty's video you are referring to ?

One anology would be the difference between the silent Warden in DAO and the voiced Hawke in DA2, while DA2 was lacking in many areas, I felt that sarcastic female Hawke was one of the highlights of the game and for the first time the protagonist was as memorable a character as the companions in Dragon Age.....love or hate Hawke as the case my be.

I suppose it depends how much you put into an unvoiced character, does the protagonist have your voice, do you read out the conversations in a different accent or just imagine a voice for the protagonist, personally I've never really done that and I've found that the silent protagonists tends to remain pretty bland as a person despite their achievements.

How much more interesting to interact with are NPCs that are voiced compared to earlier unvoiced NPCs.....while there are gamers who want the blank template RPG protagonist, there are also gamers who want an interesting memorable protagonist with good voice acting and an engaging personality.

That's the one.

Yes engaging personality and good voice acting go a long way. They have been doin it for a long time in dragon age so they know how to do it good but like I said its a new thing for BGS so we can only wait and see how it all pans out.

I'm not too worried about it. Bethesda has not let me down yet in making a high quality product, and I'm not concerned about then doing it now.

If they want to add voice I'm convinced that they will do a good job of it.

Only playing the game itself will settle this matter.

It's not just a conceptual point to prove,

but the quality of the writing and voice actors will also 'make it' (or not).

Personally I applaud the decision, I'm looking forward to it.

It's a risky move, but if you don't take risks, you stagnate.

He who risks nothing loses everything.

I'm actually a little bit surprised that they haven't made the leap before now and I say this a someone who loves TES and Fallout......however even if Fallout 4s use of a voiced protagonist is widely viewed as a complete success there will still be calls for future games to return to the silent protagonist.

Any bets on the next TES game being fully voiced.

All for it. Though with the different races, I'd be sorely disappointed if every player voice was the same.

As for people still calling for silent protags, I seem to recall people also protested the move to 3D graphics. For every change to the medium, there will be it's nay sayers.

Yes, IF the next TES is fully voiced they would need a voice for each of the races (male and female), maybe Fallout 4 is the test to see if the voiced protagonist works in these types of game. I can only imagine the anger at having to play the different TES races with a single human voice choice.

People did indeed complain about the move to 3D graphics, which for me was the thing that made me sit up and take notice upon seeing a trailer for Fallout 3. Check out the Bioware Forum for the people still complaining about the move away from the silent protagonist, while I understand the love of the original at some point you have to accept that things change (sometimes for the better, sometimes not) or your left harping on about how better things where in the old days, while the majority of gamers either don't care or are increasingly hostile towards the nostalgia of how great the original was.

On the "Mass Effect" style dialog menu; they mapped the options to face buttons because it's "contextual": you hover your crosshair over a container, you get options to take and/or transfer. You hover your crosshair over an NPC, you get four different dialog choices. Todd Howard talks about it in interviews, where you're not locked into a dialog mode and you can still move around and do other things (and rarely have multiple conversations going on at once), first-person or third-person. That aspect I personally love. There's the issue that the topics we see won't match what the character actually says, but I've never really had that problem in Mass Effect and I'm not entirely concerned. And being "limited" to only four dialog options isn't that bad; they have to be more economic about conversation topics and nested dialog options, though.

As for how it's going to work in Elder Scrolls, that's something I've been trying to figure out for a while. Even if they used one voice actor to cover similar races (the human races, another for the elven races), they'd still need unique voice actors (and even unique dialog) for Orcs, Argonians, and Khajiit. But it would all be made worth it if we got to participate in Oblivion-style random conversations.

I just hope the fact that the game has voice acting doesn't limit the type of things we're able to say. I'm sure you'll have a lot of options, but I'm worried about them removing the wacky and weird things you've been able to say in favor of a more straight and serious 'dramatic' portrayal of the character.

Still, I have faith in Bethesda! They're a lot smarter than we are and have probably considered all of this stuff.

I know I am in the minority, old-fashioned, what ever you want to call it but I would have been perfectly fine and happy if they would have kept the silent protagonist and the traditional dialogue.

These are my only two reservations and every thing else looks amazing, so I am still getting the game.

I hate when something I like is changed in any way but I'm willing to wait and see how it turns out. Maybe the added emotion from the voice actor will more than make up for the limited dialogue options that a voiced PC brings, who knows?

I would have been happy with the silent protagonist and the traditional dialogue as well, but personally I am looking forward to the attempt to make the change to a voiced protagonist.

I think that's a side effect that is possible; but not the actual reason for it.

Thanks bud. Found my next ringtone https://youtu.be/nGnCrgw9BU0?t=2550