no it doesn't

i just hate the idea and if there is one thing that will break the game for me it is this voiced protagonist that is being forced down or throats

no disrespect for the voice actors , but this has to be the worse design descision bethesda ever made , after horse armours that is

it doesn't enchant or improve immersion , it destroys it completely .

i want to create a character i want with his own voice in my head and not being forced to play bethesda version of the all american whote home boy hero because that is how he sounds to me

a voiced protagonist broke ME for me and made me dislike the witcher 3 very much and i am afraid it will do the same for this game

either this or a stupid dog that you can never kill because they made him essential

i hate dogs

You have no idea what forced down your throat means. And I don't mean that sixually. But socially , as in take a guess.

Realllllly ? I think you need an education in what willful means.

First of all, no one is going to do that. Except maybe Uwe Boll.

Secondly, it's not about who is voice acting the characters. It's about the fact that for a story to generally be good, there needs to be some kind of perspective. Even when you're trying to role-play as a character of your own creation, you put a voice to that character in your head because it makes that character seem more real to you. Like they're a part of the world. Most people don't actually notice that they're doing it, they just read the lines in their own voice as if they're reading a book (or as you're doing right now while reading this).

When you give a character in a game a voice, then you're effectively writing a part for that character to play. Rather than playing a choose-your-own-adventure story like you do with a mute character, you're playing as an actual character that "exists" within the world.

Again, look at Mass Effect. You don't really create Commander Shepard... you mold Commander Shepard into a one of multiple forms of Commander Shepard throughout the game. But it's still Commander Shepard.

I think you're thinking about it too technically. No... adding a voice to a mute character does not objectively make the story (meaning writing in your context) better. HOWEVER, if you're trying to create a story that has a certain flow to it in which characters actually interact with each other (which is obviously what Bethesda is trying to do this time), then giving the main character a voice absolutely makes the story better.

Of course, as I said, to do that, you must also sacrifice role-playing... which is the main complain many people here have, and with good reason. Whether or not Bethesda can pull off a happy medium is the question. I hope they can. At the very least, I hope the actual conversation options are a little more expansive than what we saw in the demo, or they'll have removed quite a lot of player choice.

And then I taught those poo poo heads a lesson ... me feels so much better.

Oh wait I feel their willful attitudes creeping around the edges.

I'll agree that your reply about the prior poster missing the mark regarding voice acting for boosting strength of story is worthwhile, but your assertions regarding the market and highly regarded RPG studios is way off.

Just fyi, MOST people do not think that either Bioware or CDPR are anywhere near the best studios for RPGs. Namco-Bandai, perhaps I could see as far as MOST people, but personally I'll still place Falcom at the top. I'd love to see a cited source but even then the gaming market is global and neither Bioware or CDPR focus on roleplaying, per se, so much as they focus on action. Of course, even Namco-Bandai and other Japanese studios have gone to largely real time action, thus undermining roleplaying. C'est la vie. Falcom pretty much started the action-RPGs but did it with a strong focus on characters and story, something that I do not find in Bioware or CDPR. They attempt it, sure, but action is still paramount and characters suffer (except for the vast minority of the global market that wants to play some guy like Geralt [for CDPR] or people who want to play a very limited male/female action star with very simplistic relationships [for Bioware]).

Too bad Monolith isn't still around (well, not inside Nintendo's grasp, at least) since Xenosaga is still the pinnacle of character- and story-driven RPGs, I think.

Edit:

As a side note of some importance, people need to stop focusing on the acting because that is seldom the issue that anyone has with any work where acting is involved. The actors may be quite competent, even excellent, but their job is to follow direction, not do whatever they want to do. In other words, they follow the director, so anyone with issues with any particular work should be questioning the director's abilities first and foremost, not the actor's abilities.

Are you saying that 2X4's can't be talented? Cuz being a carpenter I often dig through stacks of 2X4's to find the right ones.

LOL ... A peice of wood is what your saying? ... well I say you have a poor understanding of wood then.

Its all good bro ... I'm messin with ya. Its been good conversing with you ; )

That's probably no good for people who don't necessarily mind the idea of a voiced protagonist in Fallout, but is concerned that a voiced protagonist might mean fewer race options for TES VI. I think doing a voiced protagonist instead of ten playable races would probably be just about one of the worst things they could do to TES VI due to how sharply divisive it would be to TES fans (though TES VI would probably sell regardless, it would still be disastrous when it comes to online forums and such). It would be better if BGS tries to go for ten playable races that are fully voiced, or stick with a silent protagonist with ten playable races for TES VI if they fail at that. Otherwise, you can definitely expect a lot of nasty arguments around the forums, since that stuff tends to happen in regards to controversial decisions.

Yeah, "missing" races could always be modded in, but it wouldn't be the same as if they were realized as a "natural" part of the game.

Fallout 4 simply isn't as big as an issue because people expect Fallout games to only feature humans as the protagonist. For The Elder Scrolls, it's expected that there be ten races to choose from.

To be honest i don't think TES VI will have voice actors. That is just my prediction. As you say it will upset the balance of races, but then again it would only conflict with Khajiit and Argonian i suppose. Fallout will always have us as human with a set background, makes it easier to try out the voiced protagonist and i think it is an exciting move. I understand why people are opposed to it, but it is not like Bethesda will change their mind at this point and scrap it. The game is only a few months away from gold, it the end phase. It will be in FO4 no matter what.

I think that having a voiced main character has the potential to make the story more compelling. Personally, I have never really thought much of the way that Bethesda has used dialogue to advance plot points or convey information in the past. Staring an NPC dead in the face while they talk at you is not usually very compelling. Adding a voice to the player's side in conversations will make the more lengthy interactions much more interesting.

Even though the female voice is exactly the type of voice I picture my legacy character to have, being voiced could mean that her mannerisms of pausing a while before speaking may be gone.

All that OP's make threads about these days: "This is MY opinion and here is why it is 100% correct and you are all just wrong!" Honestly, a lot of you act like you are a majority, when in fact you are a minority.

idk it cant make it any worse ive never cared for any of the fallout games stores

depends what native laguage you say it in

iwe all know that alot of players do not like the idea

the controversy been going on for years and not only in this franchise or the ES

for me it feels wrong to force your players to play with a character they can not connect with , todd howard is wrong here it does exactly the opposite to game immersion and replayability

and i am sure a mod that turns off the voiced protagonist and those annoying dialogue cutscenes will be one of the highest ranking mods made for this game

if it was optional or only used during the prologue / tutorial phadse of the game i wouldn t even mind but no we are stucked with one type of voice no matter what type of character you want to create and that is against everything bethesda games have stood for

to do what you want to go where you want and to be what you want ( within the limits of the game of course)

Skyrim's Thieves Guild was awful. Half of the characters' actions made no sense and the vault situation was absurd. If this is what people consider good writing, no wonder Fallout 3 actually won writing awards.

That's your opinion. I had no problems with replayability or immersion in Dragon Age, Mass Effect, the Witcher or the other games with voiced protagonists. Really... For me I can more immerse with the game if I listen to a real dialogue... Not a monolog by the NPCs with a mude PC.

I don't think voice has anything to do with story. There are games with no voiced protagonist that have excellent stories, there are also games with no voiced protagonist that have terrible stories. And the other way around.

I don't think voiced protagonist and story are related in any way really.

This should be very simple for them to make an option. Subtitles will be in for hearing the impaired. We know we can talk in first person or just not look at our faces. All they need is a player mute button.

Also, what about tweaking the vocal parameters very slightly- pitch, formant, resonant frequencies, maybe even silibance?

It would have to be subtle to avoid the pop RnB autotune effect. And it could only change tone, not emphasis, but may be worth trying.

That's actually a perfect solution for me. It'll be closer to what we have to FO3/NV, and everyone will be happy.

Even humans can sound widely different by race and/or ethnicity. I'm a white male from southern united states, and i sound a lot different from an asian male from japan, or a white male from australia.

Beth would have to have various voice options. A "one size fits all" voice design would be an epic failure, imo.

Yeah it does, depending on how you do it. DA:I was an example of it being not that good but passable (DA:II and the ME trilogy did it better, IMO). DA:O is an example of how boring it is when the lead char does not speak. If I want all voiceless I play Baldurs Gate or Fallout 1 and 2. Or I read a book.

In the end, though, it's personal opinion. I want voiced protagonists, not a silent one that stands there and look silly when npc's speak to her.

Opinions and all that.

Simple. They'll be a lot more boring.

Perhaps it will catch me by surprise and I will enjoy it. Otherwise...

There will be a mod that removes the character voice acting and I will endorse it.

- Anyone who decides to take on the task of modding the voice will have to deal with 13,000 lines of speech and be careful to lip sync their voice acting with the character animation (unless it's a first person only mod).

- A mod that removes the voice will still have to account for displaying the speech that is not normally displayed.

I wonder how many modders out there would want to take the time to do either of these.