Bethesda, why on earth have you made the decision to have a 4 button dialogue wheel with voiced dialogue? Sure, you get to brag about having 13,000 lines of dialogue or whatever, but what's the real benefit?

I am a longtime fan of your games. I was too young to join the Morrowind party, but Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, and Fallout New Vegas make up my list of favorite games ever -- seriously, I've never enjoyed another developer's work more. One thing I absolutely adore about these games is the intensely immersive experience. A large contributor to this experience is the fact that my character doesn't speak for me. I get to mull over dialogue options in my own voice and really feel like I am in the game. I don't want to hear somebody else's voice ruining my personal interaction with the game. I also like to see exactly what my dialogue options are; it gets very annoying in games like Mass Effect or the Witcher when I want to say one thing based off a brief dialogue option, then the character says something completely different. On that note, it makes sense for a main character in Mass Effect or the Witcher to have voiced dialogue. There aren't so many options as far as role playing goes and the characters are more pre-set, especially in the case of Geralt.

I understand you aren't going to scrap all the dialogue you've already put in, and I'm sure some people will appreciate it. But could you please, please, please not destroy the immersion for the fans who have purchased and loved your past games, like myself, by making it optional? The way you handled dialogue in Skyrim was pretty perfect in my opinion. The ability to move around kept it feeling dynamic, while the readable dialogue options and silence helped to keep me feeling like I was the Dragonborn, not like I was playing as one.

To anybody on this forum: if you know Bethesda doesn't read these, do you know how I could contact them more directly? Thanks.

Congratulations Bethesda on embracing the immersive move to voiced protagonist.

I respect that some players have concerns, though I expect they will be resolved (for most) when actually playing the game.

Oh, and please don't have a voice toggle, that will look extremely silly with 'silently mouthing' cinematics.

good point.

I do not bother with the voice, but this system with only four answers is absolutely terrible.

well, it is already done.

and op, there's not much to say that hasn't been said on the 5000000 clones of this post besides the unanimous answer of 'deal, or vote with your wallet and don't buy it' that everyone says

not much else to say on it

don't knock it till you've tried it... and even then, if a voice completely ruins the game for you, it just might not be a game for you in the first place if the rest wasn't enough to make up for that displeasing aspect in your eyes

i'm not a total fan of it, but i'm definitely not gonna let it ruin anything for me ( plus there'll be a classic dialogue mod on down the road)

the only thing i'm worried about in dialogue is the small descrips which could lead to response i didn't want, but the voice itself? no biggy (again a mod can tackle that, so don't fret)

posting a bethesda plea is kinda silly though, the whole 'talking directly to beth' in the forums is a little 5th grade'y, or at least my-little-first-post level

just chillax brothah and breath deep

To SofaJockey: I understand that some people may want this, but it just doesn't make sense for Fallout to me. You're supposed to play as a mysterious character with a murky past that forges his or her future. This is why I think options are good, especially for an RPG game. If you want the dialogue as it stands, you should have it. If you don't, you shouldn't be forced into it. Also, the cinematics are already optional to my knowledge, so you wouldn't have to see silently mouthing cinematics.

To Yan L: It's done so far, but there is still plenty of time to add features! I just hope Bethesda does its best to accommodate players who enjoy the gaming spirit they have cultivated for years.

Speedy, I recommend taking a few deep breathes and working down the stages of grief. Because them voices ain't goin nowhere, and it's many moons till Fallout 5.

To Xerxan: It's not a matter of letting it ruin the game for me. It's an aspect of the game that I do not and will not like. I think I can knock it, because I have tried it. I like it for Mass Effect and I like it for the Witcher, but I don't for Fallout. I also don't understand why Bethesda wouldn't want to hear these concerns. Sure you can say I'm being naive, on what grounds? Listening to your clientele is what all successful businesses do.

I am chilaxed though haha. Not trying to start any heated arguments. Just wanted to make sure my voice was heard like everybody else posting to this forum.

To He-Who-Remains: I don't expect the voices to go anywhere. I'd just like the option to not deal with them if I don't want to.

I feel the topic is fairly evenly divided around these parts. You either like the idea or hate it.
But the general feel is...Bethesda doesn't read these...and we're tired of discussing it. The boat...has sailed.

Well poo. Modders! To arms! Upon release that is...

I hate the dialogue wheel more than anything we've seen so far but there's not much point in complaining about it, since we can't change anything, no matter how much we complain. And to some people, not liking it makes you a dinosaur who hates change .

Meh, the voiced character hardly bothers me. Besides, Courtenay Taylor is voicing the female.

I care more about what my character says than what he/she sounds like, which is why the dialogue wheel is my biggest gripe.

No, it is because some players are still stuck in the industry from two decades ago.

What has Bethesda done? They have finally decided to match the state of the industry since the late 1990s, if not earlier. Frankly, it is amazing that they have managed to be successful until this point.

Basically, having a voiced protagonist is anologous to having real time action in an RPG. Is the latter a problem? Yes, because outcomes based on player reflexes rather than character abilities indicate that such a game is not an RPG no matter how good of an action-based game it may be. Is the former a problem? No, because a "role playing game" means the player must adopt/play a role, not play themselves. Players who cannot play a role should not bother to try to play an RPG (or claim that it must suit their preference for outcomes based on their reflexes rather than the character's) just as players who desire outcomes based on character skill rather than player skill should not bother to play an action-based game (or claim that such a game should change to meet their preference for character-based outcomes).

The only real problem that Bethesda has is false marketing with claims such as "be any character you want and do anything you want" (patently false as the many mods to fix character aesthetics in their games have proven time and again, yet they continue to make this claim) as well as calling a game focused on action and player reflex-based outcomes a "role playing game". In fact, the former issue seems to be what people who complain about a "voiced protagonist" see even if they do not put it that way (i.e., they want to complain that a player character having a voice limits the characters they might create, but this has always been a problem is BGS games due to poor character aesthetics and perhaps certain other factors).

Bottom line: having a voiced PC is simply adopting an industry standard that is two decades old and does not have anything to do with a game being an excellent RPG.

Give it a chance. it's just not that big a deal.

But what if I want my big scary black man character to not sound like barista number three from Starbucks?

You can still have your big scary black man. He'll just sound like a Starbucks employee. xD

I'm not a fan of a voiced character in a sandbox game myself (actually, I don't even like voice acting--I love the Morrowind-style text-based dialogue). But that said, FO4's character isn't terribly mysterious--the game isn't even out yet and we already know a lot about the main character. For that matter, the Vault Dweller and the Courier didn't have super-mysterious pasts either. I mean, you lived the significant points of the Vault Dweller's past.

The majority of fans are fine with it so Bethesda isn't going to change it for this game and probably not for the future. Give it a try before automatically deciding you don't like it.

If that doesn't sound apealing to you then the sound option to these ga.es always havve voicevolumn. Crank it to 0 then you can imagine how all the characters sound and have no hammy read annoyying sounding lines lol. I did that for a play through of Oblivion once and it wasn't so bad.

I forget the last time I was in such effusive agreement with a post... as you and others have said the "holophrase" dialogue wheel (that's what I'm coining it) is a considerably more egregious problem to me than the voiced protagonist, Todd Howard has offered some logical arguments for it's inclusion with it being a standard for AAA story driven games.

Is that actually the case?

I'm not trying to foment an argument or anything I'm generally curious.

There is no way to tell if it is true or not. Even if you did a poll on these forums, the fans that visit here are a small minority and would not be representative of fans as a whole.

Then just name him Mike Tyson.

I'm fine with a voiced protagonist. Anyone who isn't can just get a mod at a later time that removes it because they obviously aren't going to scrap two years of work.

If we know anything about Bethesda, its that they're anything other than standard and they are defined by no industry expectation. Hell, they're held to no FAN expectation.

I can't agree that voiced protag was done just because its popular.

Bethesda didn't make such a big change just based on nothing.

Besides as I stated earlier if its that big of a deal turn the voice slider to 0 or get the game on pc and wait for mods to "fix" it because in the vanilla version its here to stay.

Maybe it will be gone by ES 6 and FO 5 but we'll see.