Now we know that our character is going to have a voice, at least for the purpose of the dragon shouts and the grunting and groaning in combat but will this also extend to conversations with non player characters? Now I dont know what Bethesda's point of view is on this subject but I know in this day and age having a voiced PC is a lot more common in the newer games almost to the point that many developers and gamers consider the silent protagonist a flaw. Personally I am of the opinion that the voice of the character should be left to the imagination of the player however I do have to wonder what with the introduction of Dragon Shouts and the changes being made to the conversation system if Bethesda has gone down the same route as many other popular RPG developers in regard to voice acting.

Also what are your thoughts on the subject? Would you prefer a mainly silent protagonist or a fully voiced one?

I say no for this game. This game is about our character, and only we know how we want him/her to act. Contrast this to Commander Shepard in Mass Effect which has pre-defined paths to take. There are some occasions where I will pick something to say in that series and my character will do something I completely did not expect. I only had to reload a save once over that, which shows just how well they designed the dialog in that game, but I think this wouldn't be possible when people design their own characters. There are many things that are carried by voice that are not carried in text. This means you can choose a response in dialog and it will fit your character. Give that character a voice and suddenly your nice guy acts smug, or your antagonistic lady suddenly acts all nice and cheerful, etc. That kind of thing could be jarring and unpleasant. I won't use the term immersion breaking since I hate that term.

Mainly silent. As is TES tradition. I choose what he says. I like my imagination to fill in the blanks instead of scripted dialog that just uses my option as a paraphrase.

Remember that there are 10 races and 2 genders for each to choose from; so that's 20 different possible voices for the player. Beyond the dragon shouts and other out-of-dialogue sounds, I don't think voiced player dialogue has much of a chance.

Personally, I'd rather have a huge number of non-voiced dialogue choices than just a few voiced ones (like in Mass Effect, Dragon Age, etc.).

silent. can't have complaints about the voice acting being terrible if there is no voice acting.

plus, it would be a difficult thing to do with so many different races to choose from.

Apart from the Dragon shouts, no. It's always been the aesthetic of the Elder Scrolls to have a non speaking character in terms of voices. Yes they reply via dialog options but we then imagine a voice in our own mind as to what our character sounds like, and thus, we gain a better connection to them. In some sense, we put our own voice in place of any other. Of course there will be grunts and groans too, but that a given. I think that's on the same level as the shouts though. A default voice to act out the shouts and painful screams and constipated jump sounds is enough. Let's leave the rest to imagination.

Nay. But during char creation we should be able to pick from a bunch of different pitches ect.

Silent here.

Mainly silent. Grunts and shouts are pretty specific, and there's not much deviation in how they're performed. Voicing dialog, though, would enforce a pretty specific style in how your character talks. For instance, given the lines:
NPC: Help me! My boy's been kidnapped and taken to some cave!
Choice: I will help you -or- I've got no time for this

How would you have the player character speak these lines, without forcing someone's character into a more predefined role? "I've got no time for this", for example, could be taken as a "I've got no time for your pitiful troubles. Leave me!" for a self-serving mean character, or "I've got no time because I'm on my way to save a town from getting ravaged by a dragon. I'm sorry." for a good character who wishes they could help but has bigger issues that are more pressing.

The only way to really avoid that is to make the PC dialog so generic and emotionless that it's bland and detracts more from the experience that it tries to give (and even being emotionless creates a tone you may not want for your character).

Yea like Mass Effect. Damn, Shepard has such monotonous voice it just kills me sometimes. :facepalm:

A Big NO, because it hurts roleplaying and it adds more to the memory which means that you need to cut content out which is bad. Also when has a Fully Voiced RPG main character game won GOTY.

It will never happen, with 20 race/gender combinations.

Though would I want it to happen? Hell yeah.

GotY from who?

Mass Effect 2 is one of those "fully voiced RPG main character" games that got GotY from several different publications.

I voted no on the poll, though.

Probably not quite as hard as you think, from what I have seen I assume that all of the voice actors for the different races in Oblivion all recorded dialogue from the same script regardless of whether or not their race actually used it, I think there is a video floating around on Youtube somewhere where Jauffre is speaking with the Imperial voice, for those who havent seen it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AHHk4JI2z4&playnext=1&list=PLCFB7AA7A83BAF766, the same concept could be applied when getting voice actors for the PC.

Of course I must point out that I would rather not have a voiced PC however I was just giving an example of how it could be done.

Mass Effect 2 isn't an RPG it's an action shooter that has partial RPG elements that got stupidly removed from the original version. I too voted no on the poll

Eh, I wish it had more of the RPG stuff from the first one, but plenty of people still call it an RPG.

I'm all for more in-game voice work for the combat and maybe the exploration aspect of the game, but a fully voiced player character might be too much. For one, I like to project myself into the dialogue choices and hear in my head how I would have said the line. Another big problem is that it would simply take too much time to record all those options. They would also have to adapt a real time system like Mass Effect did in order for it to look natural. While I absolutely love the Mass Effect games and their dialogue system, I just don't think they fit The Elder Scrolls series.

If they could find a way to implement a fully voiced player character, and even had the time to record all those lines for one... I'd be all for it I suppose. I'm fine with making my own immersion though.

Voted no and silent

Grunts when you get hit, swing your weapon and when you use the Dragon Shouts. Those should be the only times that the Dragonborn should talk.

Well techincally after hearing the shout in the trailer I can say I am looking forward to hearing my character perform them, unless of course the other races do a better job of it. Hopefully the dude in the trailer was an Imperial and the Nords get something a bit more suitable.

That is a good question I don't think anybody has said from Beth whether the guy in the trailer is an Imperial or a Nord. I'm guessing Nord because of Skyirm but who knows.

You couldn't really go silent cause of combat and dragon shouts but when it comes to talking to NPCs it's gotta be silent. the last thing i'd want is for my char to have some cheesy American accent (no offense) but in my opinion American accents don't work in fantasy games although it sorta works on the Redguard.