Uh. The Thieves Guild in Skyrim is one of the worst written questlines Bethesda's ever done. It's like Skyfall. Fun and cool looking, but nonsensical.

I'm just hoping that the dialogue options we saw aren't what's actually in game and are subject to change. Deus Ex HR showed you exactly what the character was going to say. That should be done here. If the dialogue choices were representative and not poorly paraphrased, then they'd be able to stand on their own and be optionally disabled.

That'd please me.

A voice actor just seems like another stepping stone for homogenization, 'casualization,' and hand holding. I play Bethesda games for thousands of hours - part of what lends to that replay value is the fact that I can craft unique characters. A voice hinders my ability to do just that.

The protagonist having a voice might be a design choice you don't agree with, but it is in no way "dumbing down" Fallout. A lot of people seem to think that any design decision they dislike these days is "dumbing down." It's not.

I wouldn't have asked for a voiced protagonist, but let's wait and see before we grab the torches and pitchforks. Sure, it 'can' svck, but it doesn't always. My biggest concern, personally, is being surprised by what my character says. I want to see, word for word, what each reply is going to be. I don't want that stupid Bioware paraphrase giving me a vague hint.

While it's not necessarily "dumbing down" it is certainly stream lining the game, restricting dialogue choices and will make it much harder for modders to make their mods with custom dialogue blend into the game.

It's dumbing down. Appealing to the unimaginative that need their hand held.

Sadly, I think this is what we're going to get. A paraphrased hint of what the topic is going to be about and hope the PC says something even remotely close to what we had envisioned in our head.

They should do it like the Saints Row series where there were several voice actors to choose from, even a stupid zombie voice.

*edit* wow, all my stars are gone, I've been away for like two years or more, I guess I'm a fallen star now.

Oh God, can you imagine that?!

GHOUL!Sole Survivor: "Wait-" *hacks* "Is that my voice?" *hacks* "Is that MY voice?!"

Godfrey: "Sir, I suggest you look in a mirror immediately..."

7 voice actors is way easier and cheaper without dialogue choices and stuff though

A great idea, but with over 13000 protagonist lines (times two) and still counting, I doubt that would have been feasible.

Maybe someone can come up with a mod to change the pitch of the protagonist's voices.

I will say that for mods involving new quests, having 13000 lines of dialog to pull from should allow the modders a lot of options if they keep it at all simple.

13000 lines is a lot of dialog to pull from.

Personally I like quest mods to be fully voiced, but a good story more than makes up for it with me.

And I expect that a good quest mod with the protagonist being only partially voiced wouldn't be that noticeable to me.

That sounds a bit like an excuse why they shouldn't try doesn't it? One voice for the male and one for the female with maybe an on par dialogue / choice system. How about multiple voice actors and a good level of dialogue / choice, and if you can't do that then don't bother to begin with. Better to bring in this voice acted player system properly then bring in something only half done.

Voiced dialogs made modding the games a lot harder, and voiced players will make it even harder, so thet is a great set back, IMHO.

What made me dissapointed was the reason Todd gave for having it voiced. He said something like it was the "new standard" and "expected" now for games. That sounds so far off everything the Elder Scrolls games have been about. They are not some of the most successful and highest ranking games in history because they where looking and imitating what the competition are doing.

Also just look at things like Dragon Age 1 and 2. The first one had a silent protagonist and was critically acclaimed. The second had a voiced protagonist and was a major let down to many. Then just look at the sales of Skyrim coming out after to see you don't need to have a voiced character. The sales and scores for that games should tell you everything you need to know about what players want.

I predict the Metacritic score for Fallout 4 will be very hurt, at least the user score (the only one that really counts for any quality), mostly, if not almost only because they choose to have a voiced main character and grouped along with it a very limited dialogue system compared to the previous games. I can't say Bethesda does not deserve that though this time. I hope they will learn from it though.

I don't think the voice actor was the reason why DA2 was a major let down to many... There are other reasons than that.

Didn't say they shouldn't do it if possible, just that it would take longer and be more expensive. Besides the ideal would be staying with no voice at all and save money.

one voice per gender < 3 voices per gender < silent PC (aka infinite voices per gender)

Just to be clear dialogue wasn't moved to third person, it was created for first person then third person was added. You can play dialogue in 1st or 3rd person.

Whether you don't get that cinematic cam effect in 1st person remains to be seen.

The changing camera angles are awful. Not on principle, but how they are presented makes them seem awful. There seems to be a bit of randomness to how the angles are chosen, and while that may sound good to prevent them from being too cutsceney or whatever, it creates the case of awful framing, such as when the PC is on the left side of the screen, looking left, with 66% of the screen filled with nothing, followed by a cut of the dog, also looking left. From a cinematic language, that implies they are looking in the same direction, rather than looking at one another. There's also the issue of chopping off pieces of the subject of the shot, like half the dog's face in one shot. It just looks like terrible cinematography by someone who doesn't know a thing about image composition, which is probably the case, because it's probably just being done by a computer picking random approximations of what to show and how to frame it.

It was a direct result of being more focused. I think everyone should worry when you take away freedom instead of adding more freedom in a sequel. Freedom is the core of both Fallout and Elder Scrolls, you should always treasure your core mechanic. Anything that takes away from that instead of adds to it is just bad. So the new dialogue system is bad. I am 95% sure it will hurt the reception of Fallout 4. At least among the real users. The jorunalists are always a bit of a wild card, they could always go full [censored] like they did with Bioshock infinite.

It would only be ideal for you... really... I don't want to listen to monologues. I have no problems with voice acting in games. And I prefer a voiced PC over a silent one. So it wouldn't be 'ideal'. It would only be ideal for you and some others.

A voiced PC don't means less freedom in a game... As I said... there are other reasons why DA2 isn't that good.

Yes it means less freedom. You can never have voices for every type of character you would want to create. On top of that it is very resource heavy so those resources have to be taken from somewhere else, that almost always means less dialogue choices.

If this was a Kickstart project with a budget under a million then yes, voiced protagonist would mean resources would have to be taken from else where.

But this is a AAA game and they are hoping to get well over 20 million in sales (like Skyrim) as compared to the 4.7 million sales of Fallout 3.

So do you really think they are going to skimp on the voice budget?

Voiced vs non voiced is a matter of personal taste.

I'll freely grant you that a poorly voiced protagonist is a serious distraction.

But the majority of people feel that a well voiced protagonist adds to the game.

Look at all the excitement when it was announced that the Lone Survivor would be voiced.

There will eventually be a mod to remove the voiced protagonist.

Bethesda looks like they will be hitting some serious home runs with Fallout 4.

I want to see how well they do with a voiced protagonist.

Especially when I hear that they have been working on it for almost 2 years already.

i can't fault them for reaching as high as they can.

In a aaa game like Fallout it's not matter of budget... Voiced PC don't mean less dialogues... *sigh*

No, what it means is that we have to listen to someone else's idea of what our character should sound like. Which is the principle reason i cannot play Witcher 3.

I'm sorry. That is on the level of not being able to eat chocolate.

No: "On top of that it is very resource heavy so those resources have to be taken from somewhere else, that almost always means less dialogue choices." He clearly said that a voiced protagonist takes resources which could have been used for more dialogue choices (=more NPC talking).

Frankly, I'm tired of having the rest of the world talk to me, but all I can do is click dialogue options on a box and apparently mindlink my responses to them. I'm tired of being a silent protagonist all the time and I don't mind my character finally having a voice.

Is it my voice? No.

Does it have to be my voice? No.

Hell, I don't even WANT it to be my voice. My voice is terrible!

If I play a female hero, I don't want her to sound like me (which is like Nick "Ron Swanson" Offerman, as I've been told by somebody I helped with a tech support issue).