And then just realize that its never going to happen, and don't captiluate. These Obsidian fans don't deserve a win! FIGHT MAN! FIGHT!

I didn't know i was a "obsidian fan" . I kinda hoped that fallout 4 would be "New Vegas" on Buffout(steroids), but it's far worse in terms of options. Like you said its big as an ocean but shallow as a puddle.

The voiced protagonist isn't the problem, nor is the dialogue system. It's the depth of choices.

I think the biggest problem with Bethesda's games is that their design philosophy is out of sync with their man-power. Todd Howard likes to brag that they keep a small team and everyone has worked together for a decade. I'm sure this is great, and their small team does some amazing work.

But they also set out to make massive games with that small team, which forces trade-offs. You can make a quest simple and linear, or you can make a quest that is deep with many possible outcomes and alternate solutions. The latter approach, though, takes a lot more man hours to accomplish. With their small team they could build a massive but somewhat shallow game, or they could build a much smaller, but much deeper game. They can't do both.

I love their big massive games, but I would naturally love to see more depth as well. They need to break down and expand the team.

Bethesda, hire more people.

Why would it be New Vegas? Bethesda and Obsidian are so very different as developers, there was really no chance ever that this game would be like New Vegas. Its a sequel to Fallout 3.

For me FNV was a great upgrade on F3. I was hoping F4 would be a great upgrade on both. Now F4 is an upgrade in some areas, but also fails at other mainly the dialogue and options altogether.

You can agree 5000% but that wouldn't change anything. No voiced PC was shown to be a minority in the last forum poll, voted by the very members here. At best, it was a split. And looking at the retail success of the game, I seriously doubt Bethesda would back out of it now. So might as well start getting to terms with it, and get used to it. I'm sure they will improve the dialogue choices and depth, but it looks like voiced protagonists are here to stay. There's always Pillars 2 and Divinity 2 to look forward to though.

The mods cause a problem though, all the mods doing is turning the voice off. It's not eliminating the process, I tried the mod it was way to awkward sitting there replying to npc's because you're still saying the lines just with no voice so there's an annoying pause every time you talk.

True, but you can turn off cinematic camera, which i guess you've done. To be honest i don't use it, like the voice, but i am glad mods give the freedom for people to get what they want.

I just turned off the cinematic view and keep the voice, as long as I have the old school line by line reply mod I'm ok, hate the default layout.

The voice really doesn't bother me TBH. Lack of lines a little bit.

For the same reason I have a long list of misc quests in this game...you get too close to a guard or talk to random people.

I'm talking about how when I picked "no" and Delaney delivered it all wrong with words that didn't match the dialogue option. He said something like "what? of course not, that would be crazy". I wanted to simply say no

I personally feel that it's easier to connect with a voiced PC. They have more of a personality.

you do realize CoD makes more than that each year without bothering to change the engine since MW1 right?

Nah, it's a major improvement over a silent PC, just like the game itself is a major improvement over 3 in every aspect.

And that is part of the problem for me.

Because it isn't the personality that I want *my* character to have. It is the personality that Beth's character has.

I'm trying to get to the point where I'm convinced that, like Shepard, I'm playing a set, defined character that I don't have a real say in, instead of a game where the character is supposed to be mine. With whatever personality and tone of voice and intent that I choose.

OPs opinion is noted. I do not agree it was all for "limitation".

I seriously fail to see how the game is any more or less limited when you are picking 4 choices from vertical list or 4 choices from a wheel type menu.

Devolution indeed. I cannot believe any fallout fan can consider this an improvement. It surely might be desirable for someone new to the series.

They probably wanted to "keep up with the times" and tried to imitate games like the ME and Witcher series. They probably didn't realize though that these games' strong points was the story and writing, which is not exactly the case for Bethesda's Fallout. By doing that they made a half-baked semi-story-driven game and undermined what Fallout and Bethesda is really good at - freedom of character and RP in a sandbox world.

Screens like these only prove how much dialog was dumbed down, sorry, meant "streamlined", compared to previous titles.

http://i.imgur.com/g0UtFZg.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Svt4P6w.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/yPcC7X6.jpg

Personally, I would be embarrassed to say that since a "?" becomes a "." or by marginally rephrasing the sentence, the "tone" changes and just like that they become different. No the tone doesn't change. At least learn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_(linguistics) before saying it, instead of desperately trying to hang on to an argument. No constructive discussion or intelligent criticism comes from abstract emotional justifications.

I may be the minority here, but I really enjoy the voice acting. I feel like my character is actually there, while mute characters just seem to feel non existent. That's just my take on it.

Yeah, thats it. We're playing a role, we're not roleplaying. That's in important distinction here. If you look at the typical way jrpgs are made, the star of the game is Cloud, or Lightning, or Estelle or whoever. Its not you. Its not your story. With wrpgs, its accepted that the player is the star. You create the character you want, and you act the way you want to through the variety of choices you're given. Its your story.

Because of the voiced protagonist, and because of the limiting diagloue options, the character you've created isn't the one you've imagined. They're saying things you didn't expect them to say, and doing things you don't want them to do. The dude I play - I have no idea who he is. I don't control what he says or the decisions he makes. He's doing his own [censored] and I'm just watching him.

Fallout 4 is closer to a jrpg than a wrpg in this respect. Its lost the player agency previous Bethesda games gave you.

I wouldn't say that, mainly because the typical JRPG has no conversation options/etc. No ways to characterize your character, unlike WRPGs where you can frequently define your character in various directions (Shepard & the various Dragon Age protagonists, for ex). That's why I feel like the problem here isn't the voice, it's the restriction to 4 dialogue options.

(But, again, like I said.... I've never defined a true "voice" for my unvoiced characters. I define their alignment, skills/playstyle/"class", outlook, etc. But beyond that, they're still the character given to me by the game: the Lone Wanderer, the Sole Survivor, the Dragonborn. It's why I've never used any of the Live Another Life/alternate start mods - never felt a need. That's why this isn't much of a change for me - the only difference is less options for outlook. But that's just me, others have obviously played differently.)

Is that what they truly say or is the mod author trying to make fun of the dialogue?

In my experience from reloading dialogue to check out the choices, that's probably what they say verbatim. Many of the choices in the game are essentially the same exact thing, just with a different tone of voice or slightly different wording.

Appeal to fanhood, never seemed as much of an argument to me. Also, isn't that just a no true scotsman fallacy?

I like the voiceacting. Now there is actually dialogue as opposed to a mute imagining things and npc monologue.

Though I fully admit, that the system could have used:

A: Real differences in choices.

B: A few more choices at times.

C: Complete transcription in the menu and better information in regards to "tone".

Yes, that was my initial reaction as well.

We assume that these were omitted in favor of voice acting. Well, tbh, they most likely were. Otherwise the voice acting by itself wouldn't be so bad - even if personally I think it is something best left to my imagination since enough tones. voices etc are very hard/impossible to emulate and certainly wouldn't fit with any budget in today's games.

The market demands voice these days. While I agree that it severely limits options, I know to be not part of the majority and so it's only logical for Beth to take that step. Everyone buying the game could know beforehand that they wouldn't be presented with the same amount of dialogue options. Everything else is just naive.

That said, since Morrowind I don't buy Bethesda games for the content they provide but for their moddability. It was always the modders turing Beth's games into something really memorable and if for nothing else, Beth deserves Kudos for encouragiong modding.