Can't really say yet. I'm going to have to play it a bit to form an opinion - merely seeming a handful of lines, without the context of actually experiencing how the game plays/feels? Not enough for me to say.

edit: Unless the do something particularly technically wrong with it, though, I doubt I'll have an issue with it. Was just thinking about it, and I realized that I've never pictured a particular "voice" in my head for any of my unvoiced characters (digital or tabletop). They just.... are. The only characters that I think I've ever "thought" their voice in my head are when I'm reading dialogue (story/fanfic/whatever) of a character whose actual voice I'm familiar with from an audible medium like TV or movies.

Is it Ironic no one complains about voiced NPCs, i mean who wants to listen to anyone do voice overs when you can turn this game into an modernized text adventure with over a thousand hours of reading entertainment.

Well People dont complain about voiced NPCs because they werent designed by you and are external. A character which you chose, customized and given a name to and control yourself for the entire game is much more... personal. and that character having a voice which you may not even like is a big disapointment.

The anti voice crowd are a dying breed. Sales have shown that adding a voice protagonist doesn't hurt RPGs. With bethesda going voiced protagonist i think every AAA studio that does RPGs is now voiced. it has become the industry standard. The only people not doing voiced RPGs are crowd sourced smaller studios now.

The truth is most consumers are perfectly happy with voiced protagonists which is evident in the units sold numbers of voiced protagonist RPGs. I think only way Bethesda would drop this is if FO4 was a flop in sales. Given what I saw from people's reaction that just isn't going to happen.

"If I take Civilization 5 and turn it into an FPS, it will sell hundreds of percent more. This proves changing the genre to FPS doesn't hurt 4Xs".

Yeah but even BioWare gives you several voice options. I don't want my Bad Ass dude sounding exactly like my Wasteland Savior hero. So in adding a voiced PC Bethesda has already blew it just coming out of the gate by giving us only one voice.

i going to place a bet that all of you who said they do not mind will HJate a voiced protagonist after yout third playthru and keep hearing the same dull emotionless voice that completely is out of character of what you are trying to play say the same things over and over and even worse are the constan dialogue cutscene you get tired off after only a few hours

there is a reason i never finshed the mass effect trillogy or stoped playing the witcher 3 after only 10 hours not because they are bad game but because of the voiced protagonist

if there is one thing that will break this game for me than it is this voiced protagonist

It's ironic to me I just saw you arguing that there should be the option to be gay in another thread (which I agree with), but then you're ok with a voiced protagonist. The two issues are one in the same, a voiced protagonist stops you from being certain characters. You might want to imagine you have a speech impediment or hell, even a gay affect to your voice. But no with a voiced protagonist you are forced to be "generic studly dude", and that svcks. It follows naturally you then couldn't choose to make him gay or whatever else, you have already lost control of his/her identity. The sixuality is but one small aspect part and parcel of the bigger issue at play here.

No they did it ONCE in the last 5 games they made with Voiced protagonists only once did you get more than one voice per six. And that was DA:I and i am not sure that was wise. DA:I spread their dialogue budget very thin with 12 companion/advisors and 4 inquisitor voices. One of the biggest complaints people have is that the companion stories are so shallow. Sure you get a lot of companion quests as you have 12 characters but each individual story arc is very short. This is a direct result of them spreading themselves too thin. Sometimes less is more.

The gaming industry evolves it is not stagnant. As technologies improve they are added to games. The fact that every AAA studio is using voiced protagonists is a pretty strong indication that this is a natural progression for the industry. Given how expensive this is to impliment studios are nt going to add it willy nilly. The developers must see the merits of this feature. The anti voice is a dying minority, as sales clearly show most people have no problem with it. Bethesda was the last large studio hold out and they said in a nut shell that if you want to improve a games narrative you have to have a voiced protagonist.

What people are not being represented by adding voice to the protagonist vs What people are not being represented by not allowing Same six marriage? If you can't see the difference then i could never explain it to you. Also i am not blindly pro choice. i don't make arguements do X because it gives player's choice. i never made that argument in the other thread. So there is actually nothing contradictory in my positions.

Everybody. Billions of possible characters, millions of personality types.

You are being contradictory, you just don't realise it. A voiced character is exclusive in just the same way a heterosixual character is. Far more discriminatory in fact.

That's a shame - the Mass Effect games were really good, and the voicework was a part of that. Oh, well.

I have played and finished Mass Effect over a dozen times. i have finished ME2 about 20 times and ME3 about 6 times. i am currently 3 missions away from completing ME3 a seventh time. I have played and finished DA:I twice and working on my third. WE3 i haven't finished yet but i am still playing i just not working on the main quest, as I am enjoying exploring the world an doing side quests.

Well BG & DAO gave you voice options for your battle grunts and what not, DA2 I never played past the demo. I thought there were voice options in ME ... but honestly it's been a while since I played.

I'll respect your opinion, but I do not believe that FO4 would sell less copies if they had kept their PC voiceless as before, as in Skyrim ... which did sell a few copies. So voiceless works fine IMO. Bethesda is just catering to the wrong crowd ... again. But I generally play Bethesda games for thousands of hours playing many PC and every race and six and I know I'm going to get very tired of generic voice one. Obviously someone who plays the game once and then turns right to the next shiny new shooter isn't going to care one way or another. I just hope there's an option to turn it off and view the NPC dialogs in first person.

What you don't understand is that ME is a much, much more directed (read: limiting) experience than Fallout has been before (and should be). Why do you keep comparing the incomparable?

Billions of characters? What PEOPLE are not being represented?

A voiced protagonist is more discriminatory than excluding same six couples? What drugs are you on?

Mass Effect's voice option was "Jennifer Hale" or "Mark Meer" (i.e, Female or Male)

(only about 20% made the correct choice )

If I'm following it right - "Every person whose voice is not exactly the same timbre, accent, dialect, etc. Anyone with a deeper voice, higher voice, lispy voice, stutter......"

...yeah.

Having a silent protagonist didn't hurt Skyrim's sales.

I might be a member of the dying breed but I know what I prefer.

Latvians, nerds, cockneys, eccentric weirdos, dusty Rhodes, cowboys, African tribesmen, sissies, people with large tongues... So many groups are excluded by the inclusion of a voiced protagonist, the exclusion of gays is just one group this game excludes by having a breeding couple, the voice issue excludes countless groups. It's the same exact thing but people are just more conscious of excluding gays in this day and age and taught it is wrong. As it is, but not ONLY gays should be considered.

Completely disagree with Voiced Protagonist being a good thing. It will always lead to less dialoge and be more linear in conversations. Dragon Age Origins is a perfect example, compare it to DAI and no comparison. DAI has less options in Dialoge due to it being voiced where Origins had 6 different options in conversation and they were usually slightly different and while some of those may lead to the same place, your Roleplaying which doesn't make it a big deal if it ends up the same.

I will give Beth the benefit of the doubt but I have seen the evidence in other games, it always leads to a more linear, less choice dialoge system. It also leads to a more Black and White system where we have Red Option for Evil or Blue Option for good. With no Voiced Protagonist you can be as Blue or Red or Grey as you want but with Voiced your corridored into a certain personality type. I do think we will still have the wiggle room like Fallout 3 to Roleplay our Protagonist but nothing like the previous games due to how Voiced Dialoge limits Roleplaying. Is it the end of the world, no, but it's disappointing because Roleplaying a character is one of the most important things that you can do. Voiced Dialoge hurts that, a lot.

Just an FYI of the voice acting for bioware

DA2 have two voice actors Jo Wyatt & Nicholas Boulton

ME1,2 & 3 all have two voice actors, Jennifer Hale & Mark Meer

DA:I gave us four Harry Haden-paton, Alix Regan, Jon curry & Sumalee Montano This is the only title that gave 2 options per six all the other gave 1 option per six exactly like FO4.

Bethesda isn't adding voice to sell more copies. They have a vision and it isn't about catering to the wrong crowd which i laugh at because it assumes that it is a bad business choice to expand your fan base. The motivation behind the voiced protagonist was their desire to bring stronger narrative to their games. Mr. Howard stated that the have the data from skyrim on how people play their open world games and now they wanted to add a strong story without sacrificing the open world experience. That is their vision. "If you look at games today that are telling strong stories they all have a voiced protagonist." A quote from Mr. Howard. (might not be eactly word for word)

https://youtu.be/2KApp699WdE?t=2h22m27s

A recap.

They want to bring better stories to their games.

The examples in the industry of RPGs with strong stories all have a voiced protagonist.

Voiced protagonists do not hurt sales with the RPG crowd.

Voice protagonists are an industry standard.

There simply isn't any reason for them not to take this next step. It lines up with their artisitc vision and it won't hurt them finacially so why wouldn't they do it?

This all said if bethesda didn't have their current vision to bring strong story to their games then i think there would be far less insentive or reason for them to take this step. But this seems the most natual prgression for them. story is their weakest feature, at least thats is my opinion, and I think many people would agree, so it only makes sense for them to want to take this weakness and turn it into a strength. whcih natually leads them into the voice protagonist.

Bethesda has a very strong track record of making major changes to a Franchise and having pay off in sales as well..

FO3- Went to a first person perspective real time which cause a fecal storm of epic proportions All spelling the doom for the frachise and it was a huge success.

Skyrim - Streamlining this will ruin TES the game will fail and it was their best selling game ever. Apparently you actually don't need attributes to make varried characters and role play them.

FO4 - adds voice protagonist. i am pretty bloody sure this will go over like a lead balloon with a portion of their fans but will have zero impact on sales. I predict better sales than FO3 and a decent chance at better sales then Skyrim.

Bethesda has every reason to beleive the anti voice crowd will be wrong again given the fact that their vison is taken them from smaller studio to industry leader.

The options in the trailer don't look like good/neutral/evil for me. Especially since mostly there are 4...

And we have 13,000 for the protagonist of speak. That's not really few.

...honestly, the over-senstive, outrage-culture, isn't-inclusive-enough thing has gotten wildly out of control.

edit: but, then, every movement on the Internet inevitably becomes a hyper-extended caricature of itself.

Actually the dialogue tree wouldn't be too hard to change to reflect exactly what our protagonist would say, would it? You would just remove the 3 word paraphrases and put complete sentences in their place. Wish they wouldn't wait for the modders to do it and include the option themselves though.

Maybe it'll be different this time but I have my doubts and will continue to have my doubts due to what other games have done. Origins worked with Silent Protagonist, DAII and DAI didn't, maybe for other reasons as well but voiced is one of those reasons.