You stole my line.

It's what I do.

Yes yes, blame consoles for full voice overs. We console players can't read, we obviously need them :stare:

Say what you will about content, Morrowind did not have that much more than Oblivion. Sure it had alot, big blocks of it. But 90% of it was the same, just cut and pasted to different NPC's.

Give me a full voice acted game any day, at least then the NPC's actually feel like they have a personality. I liked the voice acting in Fallout 3, a huge step up from oblivions.

Well, I mean, in a way I can see how someone could argue that voice acting is to help those who play on consoles. Not because you guys are dumb, but because text can be really hard to read on a TV screen, depending on what kind of TV you have and how big the text is.



It felt like more. To me at least. Maybe it's because I could read the stuff with different voices and inflection each time rather than having to hear it the same way every time by the same few voices. :shrug:



While I agree that the voices in Fallout 3 were handled much better than in Oblivion, there are significantly less quests. Oblivion had roughly 200 some odd quests. Fallout 3 had roughly sixty some.

Oblivions text was copy and pasted on other NPC's just as much as Morrowinds, except those blocks of text were huge in Morrowind, while Oblivions were lacking...
And just because it was repetative doesn't mean it was all bad, there were more things to talk about, some of which were useful and others just enlightening for us lore freaks

And I agree, don't put all the blame on the consoles. I played Morrowind on a console and a small tv from far away, and still loved it...

The first time I played through oblivion/Fallout 3 I turned subtitles off and let every conversation play out fully voiced simply to immerse myself, but after multiple play through's i just read subtitles and skipped through segments of dialogue when i was done reading. The text isnt hard to read, they had to make it easier to read since we use options in conversation, wouldnt know what you're saying if you can't read it after all. I never had trouble any ways, and I played oblivion on a very small TV.



I guess, but it still felt a little empty to me.


Indeed, but I still think that FO3 proved that Bethesda can handle voice acting really well when it comes down to it. Just need to convince them that the budget spent on big time actors would be better spent on extra voice actors to give the population of the game more diversity. In Fallout 3 I didnt really notice the lack of diversity in the NPC's voices as settlements were few and far between, and many of them werent highly populated -- while in oblivion, theres many more settlements with a higher count of NPC's in each.

I would be all for full voice acting if it didn't sacrifice content and the voice actors weren't terrible.

However, I doubt this will be the case. Content will be sacrificed, and I doubt the voice actors will be much better. It seems that those who are arguing for full voice overs are generally arguing "of course, why not? it's the standard." That doesn't seem to be a real argument to me.

I secede though. It's going to be voiced, and we're just going to have to live with. And they will most likely bring Lynda Carter (wonderwoman, female nords and orcs) back, since she's been doing nords since oblivion. She is terrible. Absolutely terrible. I would rather shove pencils in my ears than suffer through a conversation with female nords or orcs in OB.

See? Those of us who voted for partial-VO don't want to make that trade. I believe it's really that simple.
Less is not more in this case.

You seem to be quite pleased to settle for generic, which is something I think most people would agree is nothing to strive for. You totally dismiss the limitations that the project, by its sheer size and complexity, is bound to be marred with, and mention things like a bigger budget without an actual knowledge of its size and how its actually being used. I have no idea where do you get all this information, but I hope you are right and Bethesda is able to do a stellar job, using that pile of cash you mentioned, while addressing the long list of problems that were present on their last Elder Scrolls game. But since all we have to go with right now are previous efforts, I'm going to go ahead and keep pointing out that, so far, in every game they have done, dialogue has been either hampered by the way it was delivered, like it was in Morrowind because of the topic based text interface, or by trying to come up with a solution to the problem of voicing over 1k worth of npcs in Oblivion, and thus reusing voice tracks all over the place, or just plain generic writing and delivery on Fallout 3. So, I'm ready to be dazzled by their next effort, and I truly hope they got it together, but if they don't, it will be because in my opinion, they just keep overreaching, victims of their failure to realize where limitations lie, unable to come to a compromise that allows them the freedom to make voiced characters truly shine, unaffected by technical and budget issues.

In the end, since we all know they are doing full VO, I hope they end up doing what FNV did, we'll have way less people to actually speak to, but at least they wont be as generic...

I agree with you. The text in Morrowind and Oblivion is really easy to read on any TV. I was just saying that I see how some people could use that argument considering the text in games like Dragon Age and Fable III can be hard to read on older TVs.

God, I hope they do something about that, her voice and delivery is just awful. Her performance is truly lacking, in everything she has ever done for Bethesda.

I do not understand why people say that Oblivion did not have less depth in the amount of dialogs and quests compared to Morrowind?

In Morrowind most of quest dialogs were text only, so they could alter them as they liked and add tons and tons of it to dialogs and quests, and then change and fix them in the last minutes without much ado, and so on...

In Oblivion, they decided to add voice overs, for each dialog line, and some of them were used for all the races, foe men and women.

In this trend they had put a sever limit on the amount of text they could use in a dialog, and it would not be practical to change and fix the texts extensively in the last moment, and so on...

The NPC AI and Dialogs were severely limited and they had to save time and effort for each line added or changed, so lots and lots of detail were reduced from AI responses and dialogs.

And when there is no need for voice acting for all the spoken text by NPCs, then if there is a lack of depth for NPCs, background life and dialogs, some modders can easily fix the problem:



So voiced dialogs makes it difficult for developers to make in depth life for NPCs, and makes it even harder for modders to add their effort to the job.

And I do not want to start talking about the problems that it causes for future evolution of NPC AI and dynamic dialogs and quests.

...When I said it depends on your mindset, I'm beginning to think it's more than true. The more I think of it, the more I doubt that however perfect and deep, I would be anything else than annoyed at voices talking at me. Which has nothing to do with the game, and everything with me.

If we coupled answers - do you want partial or full voice-overs ; what do you do most in real-life, read or watch TV, I wonder if two distinct types of people wouldn't emerge.

I want the partial voice-overs like we had in Morrowind. Much more dialog than those few 2-4 lines and more than just 3 topics.

Of course, I already know I won't get them <_<

i guess reading is a little too hard for some people these says

This is 2010/11 mediocre dialogue and countless utterings of "I saw a mudcrab the other day" are a must especially because the previous game had them...
There isn't even any point in discussing this.

Looked at in that light, the argument in question looks pretty weak, eh?

Don't fret, all you "must have every line voiced" folks will most likely get your wish.

Actually, thinking about it... If Skyrim is as moddable as its predecessors, it shouldn't be hard to make a mod that removes all voicing, then another one that adds dialogue and topics to NPCs. I will consider doing that when the game is out.

I'm going to hold you to that, you know. Expect many pokes next Christmas.

I don't need full voice overs. If partial voice overs mean more dialogue and content, then that's way better.

I don't play video games to read a crap load of text, especially when it can all be fully voiced.

In terms of immersion, full voice-acting would most likely be an obvious choice.
I'd prefer the partial voice-acting that Morrowind had but Bethesda would view this as a step back.
I like to read at my own pace and if I try to do that while someone is speaking it gets distracting.
But I know there is people out there who enjoy having text read to them, particulary the ones with short attention span.
Honestly, I'd be suprised at anything but what Oblivion did in terms of voice-acting.

There's nothing to fret about:

Voice acting is here to stay, and for good reason. First thing that struck me in Mount & Blade is that it didn't have significant VA. Does it make it totally unenjoyable? No. But at the same time, it's quite obviously jarring, considering I'd played New Vegas a few days prior, and Prototype just beforehand.

Which choice do you think favors immersion in TES games the most? Oblivion but the difference isn't exactly striking. The NPCs where faceless and borring in both games.

I don't think developers of games today will even consider not having the game fully-voiced. It's like going backwards. So I believe, and hope, that Skyrim will be fully voiced. But I don't mind partly-voiced games either, like Morrowind, so I wouldn't mind much if that was the case. But what I do dislike, and which ruins some of my immersion, is to have my own character fully-voiced. That turns me off a game.

So we ended up with way less dialogue, horribly voiced for the most part, and gained what in the process?