I would have preferred the Dragon Age (First one, haven't played the second one) system where the protagonist is not voiced but the NPCs are.

The interaction/take icon appears when hovering over the items.

Sugar Bombs and Milk, for example.

At this point I'm neither for nor against. On one hand, the dude kinda seemed snarky what with the sugar bomb comment and how he shut the door on the vault-tec salesman's face, and I might not want to play the snarky male mc every time. Even if he isn't, always having the same voice for my male characters could get old, fast if Shepard is any indication.

On the other, the old style never allowed me to play the charismatic hero who rally's the troops with a hardcoe speech before the final fight. I was always a one line character off to the side, regardless if that fit my roleplay or not.

Either way roleplay can suffer to some degree, so I'll play through the game as both a male and female a few times before I decide if I like it or not.

I can just mute voices thankfully, but it doesn't change how I feel about this. Not cool with sacrificing the ability to role-play in a role-playing game for a stronger narrative.

The voice alone will be a hindrance to role-playing; no matter how it's handled. When it's without a voice actor, inflection, emphasis, and how it was said happens in your head. When it happens with a voice actor, it's predefined. When you lack a voice, you provide one yourself - it grants you a sense of control over how your character interacts with others though a dozen options even though, mechanically speaking, you just picked between three options.

If the voice acting could be disabled, I would be ecstatic. Given the way the dialogue system works now, with the wheel, I doubt we'll receive the option.

I'm not happy about it. Not at all. But I'll try it obviously. I wasn't too impressed with the VA in the trailer. It seemed devoid of emotion, and what the character actually ended up saying, got no hint of that from the stupid 4 option words you had like "Get food" or "100 years". I can already predict a lot of quick save/reloads because my character will say something in a tone I don't want him to or with content all together that I don't want him to.

If the story is good, I'll overlook it.

With the scale of overhaul mods in Skyrim, I have no doubt that if I don't like the VA main character, there will be a mod that replaces it with the old system up on the nexus within the first few months. It's something that may take a while to make because of how much dialog is in the game, but rest assured it will probably be one of the first major mods uploaded.

Yeah, there's a reason I remember games like system shock 2 and bioshock 1 so fondly. Because those games put me, the player in the central role. Allowed me to make that character my own. The things that were happening were happening to me. Which made it real easy to empathise and feel all the nuance of being in that person's body.
With a voiced protag, we're consciously aware of the fact that its not our inner voice speaking, but some actor playing a part.

BS Infinite was much less of an experience for its voiced lead, as were the latter Dragon Age games, and pretty much every RPG i've played recently, except the Witcher 3, because I genuinely like Geralt. But that's a rare case, since most leads I tend to dislike. Pretty much everything from Mass Effect, to Far Cry to Deus Ex: HR. I just end up not really liking the main character very much.

Voiced protag is just pandering to the more casual audience. It's got nothing to do with telling a better story. The games themselves are evidence of that.

lol at how Todd Howard actually thinks a voiced protagonist with no options will magically improve their narrative and writing.

If their writing svcked before, then it won't be any different with a set protagonist and even more limited dialogue.

This. Yeah I enjoyed Mass Effect or The Witcher but non voiced protagonists gave Beth games more flexibility for roleplay, why should all the "AAA" games be the same ? I wished they would include an alternate start mode akin to mods this time, not totally hammering the character we play on us.
Muting the voice doesn't really solve the issue, because the lines were written with that voice in mind, we still have to wait and see, but this made me a little reluctant for the game :/

"AAA-standard". For me, the best games are the ones that does something different. If big-budget games are all going to follow a standard procedure for the type of game they develop, gaming will get stale fast. I'm already getting tired by how game developers now want to make everything accessible to everyone at all times. I would by far prefer if those 13000 lines given to the protagonist was given to male and female NPC/NPCs.

Also, the "strong story" effort they are making is in my opinion focusing on the wrong thing in an open world game. In my opinion, the main focus in an open world game should be the ability to create your own stories. To be able to play as evil/good, chaotic, and destructive as you want. In New Vegas, the main story drives progression, but in no way rushes it. The main story in Skyrim and The Witcher 3 gets a little ridiculous': Skyrim: a Dragon threatens to destroy the world, but first let me decorate my house. Witcher: I'm on the trail of my loved ones, but first let help an old woman get her frying pan back.

Voiced protagonist would be ok if there was a lot of voices to choose between, but again, I think those hours used to voice the main character should be used voicing and creating interesting NPCs in a game like this.

That said, a voiced character in a more linear game is no problem. Dishonored, Bioshock and similar games can have voiced characters without any problem. Those games have a story that can be replayed without getting boring for a couple of reasons: Every next step comes quickly, and different choices feels different. In larger, open world games, each step of the main story (up until now) are further in between, and are often started similarly even if you in one playthrough play evil, one good. The result is that the story becomes less and less interesting, even if the developers "focus on solid storytelling".

Edit: I do want to add that the game as a whole looks amazing though. Customization is taken way further, and weapons and housing will get a lot more personal. But as for the voice acting protagonist, less is more, and i fear the main characters voice will get annoying very fast. In the Witcher I had to ditch Triss because I found her voice annoying. Oh, and Lambert!

The game Dragon Age inquisition does a wonderful job of giving the main character a voice but still giving up options as to what you say or how you respond. So there is no reason it can't be done well in a Fallout game

at some point, i had some hope it'd be some type of computer generated at runtime voice. these can sound pretty convincing nowadays, and it'd have been awesome from a modder's perspective (which currently is pretty dark, considering quest mods vs. need for pre-recorded player dialogue

totally can't agree with this.

played through dishonored twice (and i loved it, given i'm generally more into sandbox and rpg than action titles) -

any of beth's tes or fo though kept me going for years, pretty much until the next one's out anyway since i started modding.

there's just no comparing these in matters of replayability

I'm not disappointed they chose a voice actor to play the part. BGS dialogue has never represented character development well, so going with a va just lets someone else play the bewildered [censored]. I don't have to put myself in his shoes anymore.

And of course dialogue is dynamic. Same as saying once you choose a response, the next branch of dialogue opens. Dialogue has been dynamic for a long time.

I prefer reading the text, and I know Todd said we could have dialogue in first person or thrid person, I hope that means I can make it first person entirely, I hate the camera panning back to see my character, it svcks and reeks of bioware trash.

...where i don't think fo's (or tes') stories or writing are even half as bad as many others here seem to think.

it's just that it became hard to keep continuity when you, besides the main quest, had 77 other quests going at the same time.

it's just impossible for a person to keep focus on dozens of stories at the same time without losing some of their impact, no matter how good that stories may be....

..., so, although i do share your concerns about the voice acting, since just that was mentioned in the e3 presentation - stg like "we focussed on how to tell a strong story even with dozens of quests going at the same time - i have quite some good hopes in this part.

Yes definitely although it's too late to remove Voiced Protagonist, one of the problems with having a release date in such a short span from announcement.

Would I like the option? Yes.

Will I use it? Probably. But I could change my opinion, who knows.

I really want a feature that allows me to make a character that I want to play, it's the experience I'm used to with Fallout and The Elder Scrolls.

If I want a cinematic game I have plenty to choose from - the Bethesda formula is (was) something unique, and now it isn't. Really disappointed, and hoping that we here something about more voice features. Whether it's being able to turn off the PC's voice, or perhaps other features, like voice modulation options.

I think perhaps the approach some other games take could be used here.

Allow us to start the game with Bethesda's char as normal, or allow us to make our own character in the sandbox - maybe quests that relate to Bethesdas protagonist would need to be removed from the game, that is a small price to pay for people like me that want our own characters. An example of a game that does this is X3 Reunion - you can start the game as a set character and play the main quest, or you can choose from other starts with the main quest (that references that character) disabled.

You could even make it a DLC - Alternate Start DLC. I'de like it to be free but I understand why they may have to charge for it, and i'de be fine with that.

At this point, I don't care either way anymore.

The only thing that matters, is how that preset character is able to be played (with the context of Fallout RPG in mind), how much reactivity there is to the character, and in how many ways he can be progressed (won't be expecting much on these, but....).

I wonder if there is any chance Obsidian would make another Fallout game like they did with Fallout New Vegas after Fallout 3? I don't really understand how that "deal" was made between Bethesda and Obsidian to be honest. But Obsidian seemed to be more about roleplay so maybe they would do a variant of the game without the restricting dialogue?

I really love Bethesda, but some of their actions lately have made me feel worried. It seems they lost a bit of their integrity with the Elder Scrolls series after Elder Scrolls Online and now also the trading card game with Elder Scrolls. That is so far away from what the Elder Scrolls legacy is supposed to be.

So many things look fantastic with Fallout 4, but there is also things that worries and the dialogue now makes it look more like a bioware game in that area.

Todd even said "If you take a look at how stories are being told and a lot of them have a voiced character so if you weren’t looking at our games before, you would expect the character to be voiced." It feels so weak and like they are bending to outside influence of what is "expected" instead of doing what is best for their game.

And I don't get this statement since the huge mega success with Skyrim they should know this model works, why do they think they need to go with the flow now? It is their uniqeness that makes them stick out and be special!

Btw, this poll does not make much sense. I don't think it will work well to mute the main character since the underlaying system will not work well for that anyway. Just muting it does not help in any way if we still have only 4 choices of dialogue and they are all just short hints on what the character will say.

I honestly couldn't care less. After watching the Bethesda E3 demo, I'm honestly intrigued and looking forward to how I can mold my character's background to what's given to us with the voice dialogue.

Seems like they want to try the Bioware style. Eh, it works for a game like Fallout.

It makes it better, even.

I'm happy with the voiced protagonist, as long as I never have to go to 3rd person. I want to play as my character, so being literally taken out of the role during dialogue would be terrible. If it has been confirmed that we can stay in 1st person during dialogue, I'm happy.

To me, having to hear a pre-set voice isn't the problem.

The fact that it means there will inevitably be less dialogue options total is.

As if we ever had more than 4-5 lines of sentences to choose from on average to begin with.