Of course it is. It's just text. I just think that it would be perfect if they remade the Oblivions VO. But that's impossible, it would take too much time.

Which do I prefer? And why?

I prefer full voice-acting. So I must've hated the mundane and monotonous textual reading in Morrowind, correct? Because that seems to be the correlation people have. Those who like Morrowind's hates Oblivion's VO, and those who enjoy Oblivion full voice-acting hate Morrowind's textual reading (or partial voice-acting, as they say. But it is incredibly limited voice-acting, actually.). Now, feel free to correct me on that. But that is what I feel when reading through all the pages and people speaking their opinion. That is the vibe everyone gives off.

I loved Morrowind. I still played it after Oblivion. And I do not hate reading all the text it had.

But let's compare. Morrowind relatively, IMO, had fewer choices of dialogue. Why? Because the unique conversations only came through quest dialogue, really. You had "rumours, job, history, places of interest" and so many other choices. But they were generic and bland. People mostly said the same things! Most of which were a few sentences. And everyone in a certain area gave the same exact lengthy speech about local places and etc. It was very boring, yet is lifted to be unique, and vastly superior.

Okay, so maybe I was wrong. It has about the same about of dialogue that Oblivion has. Why? Because all they did in Oblivion was remove all the crap that Morrowind threw at you that was useless. "Oh, hey, what is your [job]?" "I am a blank", or one of the other numerous generic things. So much was removed because it had no place. So Oblivion gave us more unique conversations, fully voiced. And you could overhear conversations other people had, voiced. And these were just as unique, and a lot that you couldn't hear when specifically talking to those people.

Voice-acting allows the game to "breath." The people and environment around you comes alive as they people act as if they are alive, they carry conversations with eachother, with you. And using AI, you can do tons of things with it. And really, if I remember correctly, the actual words spoken in Oblivion's fully-voiced were about the same, because a lot of dialogue carried over a couple "pages." If I were to type that out in a Morrowind screen, it may come out the same. I do not know, and I won't advertise it as truth, just an assumption.

Maybe Oblivion's voice-acting failed to you, and that's the reason you want Morrowind's. Realize, however, this is not the same time period when OBV came out. Also realize that it is easier now, and mistakes have been made and more than likely learned from. They also have more money. Yes, I, too, found the same voice used for every human males incredibly annoying. But all they have to do is add a few more actors. It's not really that hard. Or how every male mer sounded the same, for another example.

Let's look at games that use a lot of voiced dialogue. I will be only listing games I have played, by the way.

Mass Effect 1, 2, 3 (I know 3 isn't out yet, but we know it will be voiced.)
Fable 1, 2, 3
Assassin's Creed 1, and I am almost positive without playing 2, that it is indeed voiced.

I, for one, would've not liked those games as much if I had to read everything, even if Morrowind's partial voice acting, because it was so limited. Mass Effect's richness of dialogue was one of the reasons I loved it so much. And yes, for every game where subtitles is available, I turn them on. I even watch subtitles on English shows or movies. I like to listen and read. But not the point, lol. Back to my point: It made the game feel immersive, it made me feel as if the NPCs were talking to me, actually talking, not having me read what they say. It was as if it were a real person.

When playing a game, you use as many senses possible as you can. Which is only sight and sound. You already see so much, your eyes are overloaded with sensational views. Adding voice in to your ears creates another mood for you, because of the way humans learn and utilize that which we know. It is unusual if listening to something talk to you didn't make you feel as if it were real, because sounds tell us so much. And if something sounds real by talking to you, it'll become real, in a sense.

Textual dialogue is like a book. And I REALLY love a good book. I can use my imagination to create their own voices. But... this isn't a book. This is a game. A highly interactive game. And if you're really looking for an RPG, you should be looking for something that makes you feel as if you're part of the game, that the game is real. Before, we used to do this with text, because it was our only options. I played DND. I also now play DDO. DDO is low voice-acting, it is kinda like Morrowind. That doesn't mean I don't like it, because it gives me other people to play with. We can type or talk on mics, and then you have the DM that talks to you a lot. But that is also a different type of game (DDO).

But TES are single players. And, I, personally, as much as I love Morrowind and consider it generally better than Oblivion, much prefer full voice-acting as it helps the game come alive, the NPCs come alive.

And as for longer dialogue and more quests, as some have mentioned, that is more easily done now with new tech. And, do not forget, OBV actually had a lot of quests. I know, I did them all, lol. Maybe not as many as Morrowind, however. It still had a lot, though. And adding more in with new capacity available is no problem. Same for voice acting for long dialogue. And I point back to my topic about if you were to take OBV's actual text (via subtitles) and putting it in Morrowind's chat screen, how it may be the same length. But since you cannot read it like that, and is "broken up", it doesn't feel like it. Also, it is spoken, which feels smaller than reading.

Obviously I am losing my luster in typing, I am really tired and hungry. I am going over points again, lol. So I will stop for now and make a new post later, with more points, as soon as I am rested.

They're going to full voice over whether we like it or not.

Someone needs to develop a speech synthesizer that can really sound more human and do tone and whatnot. Certain characters can be voiced, sure, but with speech synthesis, dialogue could be generated based on context for lesser characters, which could be pretty interesting, even for dialogue. Imagine if one day you could actually talk with NPCs like they were people....one day.... :flamethrower:

The group of people that feel no voice acting is preferable is minute in comparsion to the people for which voice acting aids immersion. I am one of those people. I feel a good voice actor can do a better job portraying the tone of the conversation and the personality of the character than any amount of imagination on my part. But, regardless of how I feel, the fact remains: VO is now a staple of the industry. Nearly all big-budget titles have it. To NOT have it would be commercial suicide, especially in a game where you're spending a great deal of time talking to people. So - regardless of who thinks what - assuming Bethesda isn't marketing Skyrim purely to their hardcoe Morrowind fans, voice acting is a given for Skyrim.

You know why Morrowind didn't have complete VO? It certainly wasn't a design choice. It was a limitation of budget. Voice actors are expensive, and in Morrowind's time, the budget for a game was incredibly small. VO was an unecessary embellishment, a layer of polish they preferred but did not need - so, they went without. But its absence certainly wasn't an advantage.

Honestly, given the choice, I'd take 25 VO'd quests over 50 all-text quests. Nobody wants to read that much and, chances are, a good number of those quests are going to be extremely similar to one another (less is more). Even most Morrowind fans admit they skimmed a ton of the conversations for key words. Immersion? That's not immersion at all.

The main argument against VO, as I see it, is this: Oblivion's VO was fairly limited and repetition became obvious after a few hours of play, so obviously text is superior. Does anyone else understand how broken that argument is? That's like saying: "Computers are more complex and have a higher chance of failing, so obviously pen and paper is superior." Oblivion is a four year old game. There have been numerous advances in conversational dialogue since it released - including in games MADE AND PUBLISHED BY BETHESDA - that almost completely nullifies the entire argument. You don't roll back to old technology because new technology is unstable - you push forward, innovate, improve. Skyrim isn't going to ignore everything that's happened in the world of VO since Oblivion, but everyone making that argument seems to think so. They seem to think the Elder Scrolls games live in a special kind of vaccuum or something. It makes no sense.

Well put, hopefully that silences all the staunch critics of full VO's.

If the voice actors are varied and talented, I like it a lot. I think some characters wouldn't be quite the same without the voice acting (Lucien Lachance being the biggest example). However, if they went back to Morrowind style (which I haven't played), I wouldn't really mind.

EDIT: ConfusedCartman phrases it perfectly.

?. It's 2010, Of course its going to be a full-voice over. Hopefully it will be quality actors too.

Full voice acting (excluding the main character ofc.) It is always more immersive than text, when the point is to convey a someone talking.

For me full voice overs include the main character. Doesn't feel right to have a conversation entirely one-way. I want to feel like my character is communicating as well rather than absorbing all the information and relaying a response or a follow up question telepathically.

Full voice over for me. It is annoying to read when playing TES on the Xbox. Being far away from the source and having it coming out of a screen is not what I think of as fun. I like to do my reading before bed, I normally read for about 1-3 hours but I have once read for 14 hours so don't say that I don't know how to read or I am lazy because I am not.

Partial, but specifically I want quest dialogs voiced, as well as all greetings and partings. Lore and backgrounds dialogs should return in roughly the form they were in Morrowind.

I want full voice overs, and i expect that's what we'll get. But I also want more dialoge, both in topics and depth. Given how games are supposed to be going forward, I see no reason why it can't be at least somewhat deeper and more diverse then Oblivion.

lower quality voice over so they cant put longer voice over (100% voice over)

I have played Morrowind many times, and there is nothing "rich" about text that is repeated over and over again. Seems to me people forget that a huge chunk of the topics you could click on in NPC dialog was verbatim what the last guy you talked to said. Oblivion was no better in that regard, but I prefer VO repeats to text repeats.

Yes, but in Morrowind people could tell you more, and there was a lot more room for complex, non-essential dialog.

Yes there was more room, but it didn't come to fruition until the LGNPC mods, in my opinion.

Full VO of course. This is nearly 2011 and full voice acted dialogue is a staple of the industry at this point. Why are all these Morrowind fans so insistent on moving back in time? Talk about being a killjoy, bashing a game before they know anything about it. Its like anything that differs from Morrowind in any slight way will be auto-fail, even standard technological innovations like full voice overs. I'm excited for Skyrim, and will rightly look at it as its OWN game. This irrational need for comparisons to an 8 year old game are getting tedious now, especially since Skyrim hasn't even been expanded upon yet.

I have faith that Skyrim will be a fantastic game in its own right, even if its (*gasp!* god forbid!) the opposite of Morrowind (or Oblivon) in every way.

Its good to see that you are so enthusiastic about Skyrim, though I doubt it will be much of an improvement if its the opposite to its predecessors. The issue most people have with full VO is not a nostalgia issue, more like an impression that Bethesda cannot do a proper job and voice 1000+ npcs, going by Oblivion standards, in a way that doesn't end up feeling like a botched job. Some people, like myself, prefer an alternate way of doing things, that mixes both VO for important characters and quests, and text for a lot of the minor conversations, to alleviate for the daunting task that it would be to give every npc in Skyrim its own particular voice. Its been done before, in older games like Fallout 1 and 2 for example? Remember the talking heads in those games? In a perfect world, we would all like everyone to speak properly in the new TES, all vestiges of the problems with Oblivion voice acting gone, but for a game of such huge size, that's a lot to ask of the developers, even in 2011. In my opinion, a compromise using text and VO would be the best bet to keep the quality of the dialogue up to a high standard, other than doing like FNV and just have most npcs in the world say a one liner, and voice only quest related ones.

I was going to choose full VOs, but then I saw (like oblivion), and that's not how I personally would like it. I would like full VO, with more than 2 male actors and 3 female actors. Full VO would be great as long as they have a lot of variety.

As long as they do it well, as in multiple voices per race and just more lines, I'd like full voice acting like Oblivion.

Who actually listened to the voice overs much in oblivion, they were just in the way of me reading my raw text!
And the text ment longer conversations, and more details. Sure a lot of the details were repeated, it was still nice to hear about the area and dangerous places.
In Oblivion whats the best advice you get through rumors? Fighters Guild is recruiting? Well when aren't they?

Sure Morrowind had a lot of text, and a lot of reading, but it was immersive to read it all, involving.
In Oblivion the short boring conversations were, boring... And the voice was just there to annoy me with bad voices as I read the text faster than they could speak.

There is no such thing as quality of dialogue that compromises full voice casting to minimal casting. Text based conversations are inferior to live communication just as someone else explained how pencil and paper is inferior to computers. Generic voice > Generic text.

Not to mention it has been 4 years since Oblivion and Bethesda has made improvements with voice-casting, just look at Fallout 3. They are steadily getting better and are sitting on mounds of cash gathered from the profits of those games. Their budget is a lot higher for Skyrim than either of their previous games.

Attempting to be objective about Morrowind and Oblivion, from experience in Oblivion I remember short conversations, and few of them. I also fondly remember racing the voice to the end of the text, my reading winning everytime. While I do not speak for everyone, I do know that the voice overs made for less conversation, and did NOT enrich the conversations at all. I would much prefer the detail of text based conversations with some voice overs (anyone remember Morrowinds expansions, it was more voiced than Morrowind but certianly not Oblivion). Sure full voice overs are a standard, just like competeing for graphics and not gameplay are a standard too. Industry standards don't make good games, innovation and willingness to go against those norms do (sometimes)

In your opinion.