I do like the voice acting in itself, but, if I had a choice between short voiceacting and long texts, I would chose long texts.

....except flexibility in story line, branching progression, customization options, paying Actors Guild rates for each voice actor who is a member (and you might be surprised to find out about some of the contractual clauses in things like that), multiple story paths, over investment in big names, etc.

Synthetic speech is nowhere -near- capable of bridging the uncanny valley. That option is not on the table except for a science fiction game where everyone is =expected= to sound like a robot. And you can't program synth speech in words; you have to be able to break the word into distinct phonemes that the synthesis software recognizes, and stitch those strings of phonemes together, changing emphasis as you go, to even get close. And since the characters are modeled, you would have to have the appropriate visemes animated and articulated so that the facial structure move correctly......otherwise the uncanny valley will swallow you and your efforts whole.

From a strict audio perspective, there are a lot of atmospherics that are not present. Notice that you don't hear echoes? The larger jarl chambers are all natural echo chambers......and not one reverberation. The same goes for many of the dungeons; sword on sword sounds exactly the same if in a narrow, long tunnel or a large natural cavern. If water is beneath you or stone or soft earth. All that applies to voices, as well.

Well spoken, well acted dialogue has its place......but at this stage, only in the mouths of significant characters; otherwise, it is nothing more than a gimmick that limits the storytelling ability of text based dialogue, and assures that released content can't really be added to or tweaked out with added options.

Its not a bioware game...

What? Most of sandbox elements of Skyrim have nothing to do with voice acting. It's just you being sent to a random dungeon to do X.

Obviously both have pros and cons. Personally, I prefer a mix, with a bit more voice-acting than Morrowind had. For example I could imagine people talking to each other in the street like in Skyrim, some greetings and goodbyes for you depending on disposition, and the rest text-based. I think that's a good compromise to get the best of both approaches.

Having to read the dialogue made Morrowind feel more like a novel, a world where you had to use your imagination. Full voice acting delivers everything for you, which makes the whole experience ... somehow less memorable and personal.
You know what they say. The movie is never as good as the book.

/edit
Also, voice acting without good character animation is just awful. When the character laughs manically and the lips don't move at all, you know something is wrong.

I prefer the voice acting hands down, I'm waiting for the day when the capacity of a disk will not limit the game content. I don't care if the game comes on 5 dvds, I want tons of voice acting and tons of content.

I feel there are two things going on here.
Voice Acting for western RPG's is an evolution which for me ads to the experience.
However if one looks at Skyrim (and most of the TES titles), if there is one thing lacking, imho,... it's branching. Different ways to finish Quests../ Having reputation (karma) matter, more acknowledgement of gender by npc's.. etc etc..

I think everyone enjoys spoken dialogue over text. What people that prefer text are saying is that having only a limited ammount of spoken dialogue recorded actually limits what you can do with a game.

A few examples:
- You can't spend all your DVD space on spoken dialogue for rumors for instance, so fewer rumors are available, making them repetitive.
- At this moment, you can't enable marrying bosmer or khajiit through the console probably because no one recorded the marriage dialogue for them.
- again on marriage... even if you grab a marriable npc and switch it's race to a bosmer or a Khajiit, they will sound wierd because of the different voice.
- You may want to implement several differemt dialogue options for social interaction like playing a game of chance, or starting a bar fight, or a gamble or whatever relly, and if no dialogue is recorded, it's gonna be really wierd to have just text on a few actions.
- new quests by modders will also likely be dialogue free and therefore, be wierd in a game where there's dialogue.
- You can try to record voice for the new quests modders make, but NPCs will suddenly sound different than they previously did if they already exist in the game. Plus, recorded dialogue for modder's quest, if it happens to be really crummy amateurish acting it's rather immersion breaking.
- Some quests in the game allow you only one dialogue option, or several options that all get the same reply.

When I remember games like neverwinter nights where there was mostly battle voices and greetings/farewell voices, I used to think it would be nice if all this was spoken, but in the end the game was fun and immersive without them just the same. I prefer immersive game with loads of choice and freedom over a fully spoken game with limited or linear paths.

Nowadays the 3d graphics are wonderful and no AAA game would consider doing it any other way, but when 3d firt came out, graphics took a huge step back from the best looking 2d graphics available at the time. Hopefully in time, spoken dialogue will not bog down the rest of the game for us, but for the time being, I'd prefer no spoken dialogue, or only very limited spoken dialogue to limited actions and freedom within the game.

Yeah... In a giant, open world, filled with tons of inconsequential as well as meaningful items and NPCs as opposed to a hub based, linear path game like Bloodlines.

Another good example I could make is that of LA Noire. It has nearly double the amount of vocal talent as Skyrim, is also an open world game that is fully voiced. Unlike the Grand Theft Auto and Elder Scrolls series, however, it lacks a lot of content and gameplay elements; they focused solely on the stories themselves within the game. Grand Theft Auto is also a large, open world game with a lot of content and game play elements, and is also fully voiced over; but the story lines are less detailed with more of the focus being placed on the game play elements than the story.

There is a tradeoff. You can only fit so much data into a game. This amount of content is getting bigger all the time, but so is the quality and size of each individual item because of higher poly counts, higher resolution textures, and/or higher item counts. One of the prime reasons why games have shifted from using pre-rendered cutscenes today is less about visual shock, and more about being able to fit more content into a smaller package size. Video files take up quite a bit of space, but by using real-time rendered scenes that merely execute a scripted event, you can put that same cinematic quality into your game, with a reduced cost to the overall file size.

Want proof of this? Take this entire thread, copy all the text into a .txt file. Then, record it vocally into an MP3. See which file is bigger.

I MUCH prefer text dialogue. It's more flexible, which to be honest is all the reason I need. Procedural dialogue is easy, so instead of magic markers & arrows leading you around everywhere, you can ask NPCs for directions & info, and you PLAY THE GAME rather than follow the built-in walkthrough (that quest markers & arrows represent. Yes they do )

Voice acting is also a resource-hog. Many of the same lines need to be voiced by different people, in order to simulate flexibility, and where it is not, there is no flexibility. Once that dialogue is used, it's solid. Cannot be changed, altered, revised etc.

I don't mind the incidental dialogues you hear as a result of simply walking about, those add to the atmosphere IMO, and much more incidental dialogue could recorded used if the conversation dialogue is moved to text, but actual conversations need to be more flexible. Ever wondered why your quest/guild choices are limited in what you can do? At least a third of that is down to voice-acted dialogue being simply not flexible enough.

However, it's not likely to happen. It simplifies a lot of things for the development team, and adds apparent production-value, so I guess it stays.

Voice acting removes the need/possibility for complex quests. Delete as necessary

Is a book better than a movie based on a book?

I admit it is one of the things I like about the game as well. I prefer voice acting to text, as ong as it isn't bad voice acting. Overall, I don't think it is bad in Skyrim.

"Ah used to fahght Predahtohs and Terminatohs, then..."

I prefer text. Not only does it allow for a lot more content, but also leaves a lot more to the imagination. Unfortunately, younger gamers are probably so used to voiced dialogue that written dialogue would be intolerable for them.

it is very, very simple.

text makes the game more like a book. dialogue makes it more like a movie.

and as we all know, the book is better. its really that simple.

text-based dialogue, IMO, fits video games a lot better because they are much more akin to the pacing of a book than a movie. but that doesnt matter, because we will never have text-based dialogue again. modern standards have killed any chance of that. because video games are so closely tied to technology and the addition of voices was a technological advancement, we wont be seeing text as an artistic choice until we reach the point where the technology gets diminishing returns and isnt a big part of what we expect from video games, which wont happen until we invent the matrix, something i assume will take awhile :sadvaultboy: .

I agree. I feel it makes the world seem much more alive also. When I go back and play Morrowind I really miss it.

For the same reason a book is always better than the movie, text is always better than voice acting.
With text you dont have the immersion breakers of someone saying something wrongly, or like a dullard.
Your own mind fills in the voice, the intonation, the colouration and will always fit the character better than someone elses idea of how it should sound.
Not to mention that with text quests would be able to become less linear and we wouldnt be stuck with NPC's repeating their one line ad nauseum.
I am not, and have never been, a fan of full voice acting.

Imo:

voice Acting is a perk. We should first concentrate on more content (Voice Acting DOES reduce content. There are no "opinions" about it. Taking lots of space = less content) and then add voice acting IF we can. Of course, this doesn't appeal to the face bashing ADD gamers out there because it requires a few seconds to read.

Voice acting all the way. Text can still be cleverly implemented in the form of books, letters, journal notes etc. to supplement voice dialogues, and Skyrim does that well except for the journal part. But voice acting, when properly done, is way better than text.

I bought this game fro three reasons:

- it's a TES game,
- I'm fluent enough in English to buy the original version (translated versions svck),
- it's voice acting! You have formidable actors on this game.

:thumbsup:

Read more.

Well, I won't tell someone they're wrong when that is their taste. But, using a voiced PC takes away dialogue content, while having to add cinematics, which can take away gameplay content. Not only that, you typically see your PC doing the talking and trying to make facial expressions and gestures in attempts to take on the mood of the conversation. The problem with all of that is, it isn't me doing it, or projecting my own voice in my head, using my own inflections and tonality; it is that of another actor. Give me a silent protagonist all of the time using text choices in dialogue, where I cannot see myself doing the acting, that is best, IMO. I understand people like what you like, and Bioware needs gamers like you, since they have now ditched the SP, to the chagrin of a huge part of their fan base, I am one of them.

It would be an adjustment for sure but if a game as good as MW implemented it I would be okay. However I think we overestimate how much dialogue MW had, it seems most of the things they say could be wrapped up in the same couple of options we had for dialogue in OB and even Skyrim contains the same sort of lines, but without the requirement for opening dialogue(don't like it, but I've come to accept it) also Skyrims dialogue seems a lot more contextual which is nice.

Overall either way works for me. But in this era of game design a game with no spoken word is usually reserved for artsy arcade titles or Indie games and Zelda. It simply isn't a good design choice to have loads of text in a game. Not my opinion but indicated by the market.

Text isn't necessarily the be all, end all, but I'd prefer it to having every line voice acted *IF* it increased complexity.

Thinking back to Baldur's Gate games:

Me: Hi
NPC: OMG, my husband!

Me:
1) He's a loser. Talk to the hand!
2) I'll save him, fair maiden!
3) Pay up or get out!

NPC:
1) W-e-e-e-ll, you go save him anyways.
2) Thanks!
3) Ok--I was going to pay you nearly the same amount anyways, but--ok.

***save hubby quest begins***

If dialogue and quests work like that, I'll take VA any day of the week.

No, you're not alone.

It's supposebly an RPG, in an RPG I want dialogue, having the amount of characters they want and fully voice acted means it's severely limited.
And if they ever wanted to change a dialogue to give it more options or branch it out they can't, cause then they'd have to rehire the voice actor and spend a lot more money on it, not to mention the new facial animations and lipsyncing.

I prefer text over voice acting if it's a branching dialogue cause it means a lot more content can fit in.
But on the other hand, Skyrim looks pretty nice, and having texted dialogue only would look ugly as hell.

Anyway, yes to textbased dialogue with tons of dialogue options and complex and delicate branching trees.