In her defense, she isn't the smartest apple on the tree.

I think this is the key. Voice Overs restrict the game, otherwise it gets massively expensive having all kinds of options in dialogue. Also, if something needs "fixing", it is so much easier and cheaper to add a few lines of text instead of that plus more voice over work. And on a side note, Modders would not have to worry about voice over work for their mods, which is a main reason I do not use "more content" mods

I can't use mods, but I enjoy looking them up. Some ARE well done and fit right in like Inigo's voice. But I was mildly shocked watching a certain expansion mod full of Khajiit...when this female kitty speaks up in a 'normal' human voice...that was a bit weird to hear and a shame.

This one would find that most unsettling.

The modder's have gotten very skilled at remixing existing voices to make characters say new things. I'm running several mods which do that flawlessly. It really adds to my immersion personally.

When it comes to immersion and voice acting, the most immersion breaking issue for me is how certain voice actors are simply overused. For example, if you decide to follow Ralof during the Helgen sequence, then there are three NPCs in Riverwood who use the same voice as Jarl Balgruuf. Riverwood is a tiny village and it's pretty weird to have three identical sounding NPCs there. You can even hear Ralof and Hod talking to one another and it sounds like someone is talking to himself. Or during the Thieves Guild questline where Mercer Frey and Enthir, two very prominent NPCs who you talk with throughout the questline, also sound identical. It might just be me though.

That was my first impression of the game and one of the reasons I put it aside for 3 years (along with the awful UI). I wasn't impressed. Another notable doppelg?nger voice moment is a conversation between two guards as you break into in the Thalmor embassy. It's really jarring.


In many ways Skyrim took a giant leap backwards from Oblivion and Fallout 3. Oblivion may have had potato head characters, but they still seemed more human... or bestial... than Skyrim's robots. It reached a point where I'd walk around Whiterun trying to avoid the residents so I wouldn't keep hearing the same lines. Oblivion's random conversation generator wasn't perfect, but it was better than hearing "Do you get to the Cloud District..." and "I work with my mother..." for the umpteen millionth time, from people walking the streets in a pointless loop.


The biggest immersion breaker is the amnesiac shopkeepers who keep repeating the same lines over and over when a simple 'hello' would suffice on a second meeting. I've no idea why Bethesda would leave it like that when they had a better and less repetitive dialogue system in earlier games (an intoduction said once and then several randomly chosen greetings) - result of the immovable 11.11.11 deadline, I guess.

Some modders do very well with voice over work. Unfortunately, the percentage for me is so low I do not even try anymore.

However, my point was, without so much voice acting, modders could do so much more, right? Adding lines of dialogue text is so much easier and reliable than adding in voice over work, right?

It's not just you. I find that very noticeable and jarring, too. Walk by a patrol of Imperial or Stormcloak soldiers and "Ralof" says something. Ralof is present in every city, town, and hovel, usually pulling guard duty.

It amazes me that professional voice actors cannot seem to change their voices very much. I'd think that would be a top priority in that line of work. Or maybe it is the director's fault?

They're not supposed to sound different; that would defeat the purpose of a common voice type. It allows every actor who shares the same voice type to use a pool of shared dialogue for that voice type and thus reduce file space requirements. It also cuts down on the amount of work required to create a new NPC, since that NPC will automatically inherit dialogue for their race, class, voice type, faction, et cetera.

The tradeoff for more unique voices is fewer NPCs who can be interacted with; the nature of the Elder Scrolls series means that every NPC has approximately the same amount of potential for interaction -- you can fight everyone, so everyone needs to have battle cries and reactions to being hit, you can steal from everyone, so they need to chastise you for taking their things, they all have schedules, so they need to be able to tell you that you're trespassing or that they need you to leave so they can lock up, and so on. Every actor needs to be able to respond, to some degree, to what the player is doing. If everyone has a unique voice, you're effectively cluttering up the archives with redundant files because, while any particular actor needs these responses, they don't have to be unique to that actor, per se.

wow this is very insightful I never thought about like that. Its so easy for gamers to say "hey they could do it like this or like that" with out knowing what the pros and cons of doing it that way are....my little rant is over for now.....

Yeah, a unique voice talent for every npc could be done....but the cost would be horrendous.


Part of the problem are the real life associations, I don't know what you call them in the industry, but lets say 'actors guilds'


They practically ensure you have to use 'real actors' for acting jobs.


So, Bethesda could not...or would not....for example, pull a mornings worth of by passers off the street and say like 'heres fifty bucks just say these lines into a mic for us..cheers"


If they did.....the vast number of general low interaction npcs could indeed each have a unique sound.....similar lines, but a different voice at least.


But apart from the fact that it would upset the 'lovey' acting fraternity......it would bloat the disc out too....maybe needing a two disc load. From Beths point of view....it just ain't worth the hassle.

You are close to the truth. I am a member of SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild ‐ American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and have worked alongside amateur voice actors in a few situations. It does happen. But when it does, an amateur voice actor typically does not receive credit for their work. The producers could face fines or legal consequences if the union discovered the practice.

Most voice actors are hired for a flat rate for set amount of hours, for up to three voices. We are paid more for each additional voice after three voices. Sometimes a producer may find that the costs of hiring a new actor and making the necessary arrangements to record with them means that it is cheaper to hire an actor who is already in the studio and who has a working relationship with the producers and director.

The few times I've worked with non-union voice actors they were paid less than I was for equivalent work. But, frankly, the difference wasn't much. We were getting crap pay ourselves. *grumbles*

My own feeling is that hiring non-union voice actors would probably not make a drastic difference to the overall budget of a AAA game. I'm going to guess that most of the non-celebrity voice actors who worked on Skyrim were paid a lot less than you might think.

What to say here?

Let's start with:

Hail Sithis! The Dark Brotherhood Forever!

The problem seem to be here, that the NPCs fail the Turing-Test. That means, the player lost very fast the illusion, they are real persons. In this moment, the player (we) lost the mind-block to kill them.

And then we like to make a raid in a city as werewolves or vampires and kill as many guards as we could.

And join the Dark Brotherhood... ...and are happy that the engine allows to dynamically generate victims and people to pay for it!

By its nature, a Turing test would require the player to be able to submit any sort of response and the NPC to be able to respond to it; this is precluded by the medium -- that is, the NPCs are only designed to give specific responses in specific situations, responses which human writers have written, and the player is similarly limited in their actions.

A better way to phrase your objection would be to say that the NPCs lack verisimilitude -- that is, through their dialogue and what the player can do, they do not react like a real person. Of course, "real person" is a fantastical concept -- we know how a "real person" shouldn't act, but it would be difficult to define said person's actions without the definition becoming broad and imprecise.

I, personally, have never rejected an NPC as being "unreal" through their dialogue or scripted actions, which means their other behavior must suffice. AI curiosities and other NPCs' lack of reaction to them, and the consistency of such behavior, suggest that it's not that the game's NPCs are unreal so much as what "real" is is different in Tamriel.

That's just cheek, of course, but it's interesting to think about.

voice acting and immersion..



personally, i prefer text dialogue.. it was one of my favorite things about RPGs in the 90s, it allows me to inprint my own voice on a character based off of their appearance/region they live/attitude..


however, I will admit that while i prefer text dialogue, that voiced dialogue is still more immersive..




preference =/= immersion..