I just got finished playing (my 5th play-through) of the ME series. And I'm a little concerned that adding a voice to FO4 might not be the best idea. In ME (especially ME3) most of the things that came out of Shepard's mouth I would have never said. I mean, you select "No" on the wheel and Shepard launches into a diatribe about how "no one is going to quit fighting the Reapers", when all I wanted him to say was "No".

I feel the devs are opening a door to being criticized. I mean, how could they know what I want my hero to say? Are the choices going to be literal? Or are they gonna take a similar approach that Bioware takes?

Any more information available about our voice?

I wouldn't mind the option for the responses to be like in previous Fallout games where it shows you everything you will say. Even if it does take up half the screen to show all the words.

Judging from what we seen at the E3 demo it looks like Beth will go a ME style approach, beyond this we only know some vague points surrounding the VA

* both protagonist VA have been involved for two years, a noteworthy long time for game VA
* 13000+ lines of dialogue have been recorded by the actors
* different kind of voice tone and "personalities" have been recorded, giving different personality to the different dialogue options throughout the game.

What you want your hero to say and what the hero has to say to advance the narrative of the game are two wildly different things. Yeah, Shepard monologues a "No" response...but as a consequence the motivations and feelings of the game and character are revealed.

So pick your poison - be a dense idiot with simplistic responses that has to have exposition force fed...or contend with a character that isn't fully yours in the confines of the story the studio is wanting to tell, presented in a manner that can be engaging.

Even though there's almost 14K lines of text that were recorded for the game (per gender), I don't think it will be outside the realm of possibility to re-record those lines (with someones own voice), and swap out the audio files for their own if someone wanted to.

Not saying it'll be a walk in the park, just not impossible.

You'd be surprised how much time it takes to record fourteen hundred lines of dialogue.

In an unvoiced RPG you have no choice about what your protagonist will say, the lines are up there on the screen, so that is what they are 'saying'.

This is identical to a voiced protagonist where you have no less choice about the words, still none.

The only difference is that a voiced protagonist will not list the full text, else you will read the text, then hear the text:

'You piece of scum, I'm going to blow your brains out!...'

'You piece of scum, I'm going to blow your brains out!...'

That would get irritating in about 30 seconds.

Bethesda have been at pains to point out the extensive recorded dialogue.

This does not prove but implies that FO4 will achieve or come close to the mixture of choices that a non-voiced protagonist achieves.

Sure, you can head canon tone with text so you could say:

(with a jokey sarcastic tone) 'You piece of scum, I'm going to blow your brains out!...'

Though they may still open fire on you despite your 'reading' of the line.

That leaves the last potential issue that a 'short text' could mislead you about where the 'line' will take you.

but that's a small price to pay for higher levels of emotional engagement.

Sure, there will be some criticism, but that's just down to the passing of a gaming mechanic

that for reasons of fashion and technology is transitioning.

In short:

Don't worry about it, it will be fine.

(and politely, it ain't changing...)

Alternatively, we could actually see what the full response is, which gives us a greater ability to shape our character within the confines of the narrative.

I'm kinda put off by having a voiced player character on account of making dialog in mods more complicated.

I like the voiced character.

I just don't like not being able to fully see what my character will say with dialogue options.

I don't like summarized dialogue options while my character goes on to speak a novel.

maybe im just werid but i don't have any issues figuring out the jest of what my character will say from summarized dialogue options.

in fact i am usually reduced laughing out loud hysterically when dialogue exceeds my exceptions

examples that spring to mind are female trooper from SWTOR.

that being said i think they should someday industry as whole should make option for people to see good portion of the text to make more informed choices.

Echoing above sentiments, not knowing what "I" will be saying is the main concern. This can be alleviated by showing us what we'll say, which is impractical for long speeches we may make.... or by allowing us to "back out" of a conversation and choose a different dialog option if it turns out to be not at all what we thought it would be.

The latter can be done by reloading a save game. The problem is that suppose you're like five minutes into a long expository discussion with an NPC and you choose the dialog option "Sure" and your character says, "By all means, I swear my fealty to you and will murder anyone you tell me to kill!".... then you could always load up a save game before the conversation but then you'd have to wade through the entire conversation to get to that point again.

One thing I'm pretty sure they will do is have subtitles. That won't help you avoid saying the wrong thing since you won't see them until your character is already speaking them, but if there is a way to mute JUST your player character's voice, then modders could use the subtitles to stage conversations without having to actually record dialog to fill the void where your character would normally speak. Of course, even then, modders would have to give you the terse prompts to select and THEN display the longer dialogs....

This what I'm worried about.

Concerning modding; I'm hoping the recorded dialog is done in such a way where us modders can pick and choice. With 13,000+ lines (or is it words?) I'm sure I can pick out words, string them together, and make it work. This is assuming they are recorded in that way first.

I gotta say I hated how your choice and what is said is completely different in ME 1. I got used to it after that though. I actually started liking trying different options just to find out what would be said and how it would be said. Sofa has a good point about how it would get annoying if they just say what you pick but a lot of games I played growing up used that format and I didn't find it to annoying.

The times they are a changing.

Having a voiced player character makes it impossible to do quest mods as well. A modder will never have access to the original voice actors.

or it would just be silent, like 90% of the quest mods are with the NPCS in all the other bethesda games............

Until you see what dialog tools are provided with the Creation Kit (or whatever it's named) editor how do you know this? At the very least, the editor will provide something similar to how old game dialogs were done in add on content.

I tend to agree with others here that I'm not sure how RPers are satisfied with a list of text replies they have no real content control over and are upset over a selection of voiced replies they have the same amount of control over (none). When it comes down to the story in most video games, the player has almost zero control over the actual plot and narrative and the fact that most players do not recognize this is a testament to how well the game developers wove the illusion of control into the game itself.

A single player rpg without voice is like watching porm with the sound turned off.

I agree. As irritating as it might be to both read and hear the same dialogue twice, it's much better than getting what we're getting now.

For all we know, something like “I won't give up” might turn into “Not gonna happen”, or the reversal of what you said might happen. There might be an option that says, “No, George, we will not let the Institute take you away. We'll protect you.” will turn into, “Stick with me.”

I like to know exactly what my character is going to say, even if I have to read exactly what he/she is going to say when I click it.

I want to cry every time I think about Fallout 4 having a voiced protagonist. As far as I know there is no new information in this since BE3.

edit *on this

So it's a good thing not to have a voiced PC.

I HATE vague and inaccurate dialogue paraphrases. At least in SWtOR you can press esc to start the conversation again when your character says something you didn't intend. I expect a lot of reloading saves in Fallout 4

I reloaded a ton in ME 1. It got to the point I just said "[censored] it I'm just going to pic the first option every time"

*looks at the poor, poor, dead horse* why do they keep beating you?