To be fair, Dunmer only have red eyes.

(Except for Karliah, who didn't exist when Oblivion was made, of course.)

Not only that, but it forces specific response types, which is unfitting for an open world game. Like in the demo, they showed the player meeting back up with Codsworth after leaving the vault, and the player sounded pretty tired and still a bit out of it. This would make sense if he was just getting out of the vault after waking up... but the obvious problem is that the player could've gone and done anything and everything else before that point, where such tired and out-of-it responses would be inappropriate. Similarly, Todd said that having a voiced protagonist allows them to make more emotionally-driven dialog, but of course the player could have been doing anything before entering into such dialog, and could go and do anything afterward, potentially making it sound way out of place.

The next obvious problem is that since they did it for Fallout 4, they'll be expected to do it again for TES 6, where the same issues will still apply (and more, given there's 10 times more playable races; and it sounded sloppy enough when some of the races shared shouts in Skyrim).

So, next game, we're not only going to be the "special snowflake" whether we like it or not, but will have a pre-set voice and attitude as well? Sorry, but that deviates pretty far from the whole "be anything, do anything" premise behind TES. Now it's "be THIS GUY, and just follow the stinking arrow". That doesn't sound like anything I have an interest in playing.

They will go Dragon age II and we will play as Nord named Falcon .

Anyway my opinion on voiced protag in rpgs ( and to certein extend in all games ) is that you should either go voiced and completly defined character, like for example Geralt in Witcher, or go silent and allow player to have full customization of his character. But for godsake do not go the bioware way. If you want to please everyone you will please none.

No, I don't need a predefined voice from Bethesda. If Bethesda goes that direction I hope they include a no voice option.

In Oblivion, I use and enjoy Bruce Vayne's PC Sound Set and another voice pack to enhance my character's feeling of life. They're limited in their scope to rather generic comments during combat, while exploring the countryside or casting spells. That is the way I like it. If I could record my own voice to mod the game maybe that would be even better. No guarantee that I would even like to hear my own voice.

My problem with Bethesda including a pre-set voice is two fold.

One, most often I don't agree with the response options given and forcing a voice would make it more difficult to ignore.

Two, In the past 15- 20 years with all the games I've played that have voiced protagonist I've found only one voice that fits how I envision my character sounding. The vast majority are very irritating. I don't think Bethesda will do any better in that regard.

I'm not a fan of voice over work, so having the protagonist (antagonist?) voiced is a big "NO!", from me.

I pretty much blame voice over work for the lessening of choices in dialogues with NPCs. I guess this would fit right in with the NPCs "canned reaction" to your dialogue choices already in place, but still not a path I want to go down

Of course, you do hear your character's voice in the Shivering Isles when you fight the copy of yourself.

I'm generally happy with the way it is now though.

Protagonist voice in mods will be impossible to do. So I vote a BIG "no!"

The biggest problem with voices is that it pigeons holes players into very certain archtypes. It works in a linear system like Mass Effect (And it is very linear), because there is very finite amount of things you can actually do with it. Ask questions, give a response, and that's about it.

The biggest loss to this system is that you lose a lot of the potential "fluff" options, which I personally think is more important then the XYZ decisions you may make in the game. They might not have BIG EXCRUCIATING impacts on the game world, but having your RP options expanded and played up on in dialogue helps a great deal, which IMO is what these games should ultimately be about. Never mind that you lose on out speech modifiers like low Intelligence and the like. It might be fluff, but its good fluff.

oblivion = blank slate character who was in imperial prison.

fallout 3 = semi defined character (19 year old child of James)

Skyrim = return to blank slate character captured on Skyrim border or something

Fallout 4 = parent from pre-war world who entered and left vault 111 (with voice)

I believe that Bethesda have a slightly different design philosophy with Fallout. Therefore i believe they will keep the blank slate aspect in TES, therefore no voice will be used for player in TES.

I'm on the fence.

On one hand I don't mind the voiced player characters in Bioware games. I wouldn't be upset over a voiced TES protagonist as long as there's a wider variety of reply options than nice/aggressive/funny.

On the other hand my favorite dialogue system is Morrowind's, for its flexibility and modability. To have a voiced anything whatsoever (player character or NPCs) makes quest and companion modders either have to use voice actors, or have silent dialogue which stands out against the spoken dialogue in the rest of the game.

^To be fair, I'm fairly confident that one of the first things that will probably be modded out and popular for a lot of people will be the removal of the voice. The only problem with that is the unhelpful, single line/phrase options in dialogue. Things like "Get food" and "Tell me" don't exactly convey a lot of emotion or what emotion the options is trying to get across.

^^Fallout has always had a different principle to how PC's are handled, yes, so I do think TES is safe from it. Its not a guarantee though. Beth does seem to be trying to have more meaningful character interactions with this, but I have a feeling they're sorta missing the mark.

I also thought TES was save from cutting Attributes.

They still have customization options for eyes for Dunmer in Skyrim, though. Just because they all have red eyes doesn't mean they all share the same shade of red.

The problem is if a voiced protagonist is implemented for TES VI, they may do it by cutting races from the playable status that they can't have voiced within their resources. I think that if TES VI is featured at E3 2018 or 2019 and they do include all ten playable races as playable, they should probably make that clear if it is the case. It wouldn't surprise me if they do attempt to do a voiced protagonist while simultaneously retaining the ten races as playable. I can also see them just simply getting more emotion into the NPC dialogue even with a silent protagonist. I think the general lack of emotional range and "disconnect from the player" is what people have an issue with for the typical NPCs, and they could probably fix that even with a silent protagonist.

That's been pretty much the core issue of Bethesda's NPC's and the thing they appear to be trying to "fix". Haphazardly mind you, but still.

The biggest problem in Beth's dialogue options is that there's no fluff in them whatsoever. Skyrim had almost nothing in the way of dialogue options for the NPC, and Fallout 3 had "Good, Neutral, Cranky.". Obsidian had a lot of neat modifiers and fluff on them to actually help roleplay our characters the way we wanted, and for what it was, it was a great system. I'd love for them to go in a direction resembling that as opposed to the Bioware method.

Yea, "fluff" gets axed for "streamlining" purposes. svcks when a player actually wants the "fluff."

I don't know. I think this might be just something to not worry too much about. In the worst case scenario, a voiced protagonist means races cut from playable status that can always be added back in through mods, but mainly function as purely cosmetic. In the best case scenario involving a voiced protagonist, we still get all ten of the classic playable races with the most extensive "player race recognition system" (there's got to be a more appealing way of wording that) in place than in any other TES game before it.

In any scenario involving a voiced protagonist, it would probably be possible to silence player dialogue through mods if desired.

Fully Voiced Player Character? No thanks. It would drain too much resources if they are going to make it wide enough to fit for all the possible characters.

However some voices on the player character could sometimes be very satisfying - like the faction related warcries my Thalmor agent used to insult his enemies. But these voices should be like they are with Skyrim: they can be added only with console commands or mods.

I'm curious why people are so afraid they'll do this. 9 of the 10 races have always been playable in every numbered TES game, with Imperials being the late-comers with Morrowind. They even tried to cut races with Morrowind (before the series hit its stride), but went back on it when fans complained.

A far more likely result, if they have a voiced protagonist with TES VI, is that they use the same voice for multiple races. There's no reason not to, especially since they'd done it with NPCs in both Oblivion and Skyrim (despite having more than enough voice actors with the latter to not need to), and for the player's shouts in Skyrim.

Both Orcs and Imperials were added as playable races in Morrowind.

You sir are correct, my mistake.

No problem. Both were technically there from the get-go, as Cyrods were a major political force in Arena, and Orcs have been an enemy since day one...

But you are correct otherwise. I think if they went the voiced PC route, we'd see something akin to the old Baldurs Gate games, where you got to select from several options that were used to all races...

Not that it would be good to do that, since Argonians, Orcs and Khajiit in particular have very distinctive voices, which can't just be covered up with cultural norms...

It's time for change, voice is a breath of fresh air in my opinion.

I would vastly prefer being able to pick a voice for the grunts and yells, a bit odd when I played an older character yet he sounded like a young advlt.

I already choose races in TES based on voice sets so more wouldn't feel restrictive to me.

I'd judge a returning characters based on an npc by npc basis. I'd rather a sparsely developed character return for further development than one of the big ones like Vivec. For example, Alfe Fyr was pretty much just Divayth's smart-mouth eldest (I'm guessing) daughter. She's the daughter most likely to go off to another province and do her own thing for a while. She can still mention how Divayth's doing, but that way we're not getting a cameo for cameo's sake. That said, I wouldn't say no to Skink-in-Tree's-Shade or Nulfaga (though I doubt she'd still be in her body even if she did stay alive somehow). Note that the two returned Telvanni characters in Dragonborn were barely based on their Morrowind appearances.

I for one don't want them to keep doing that. Voice variety matters to me almost as much as visual appearance. What they could do is provide a range of non-exclusive voice sets, but when I play an Orc, I want him to sound like an Orc, not a Nord.

I'm not sure they were. I seem to recall reading that the Imperial Province was occupied by a mixture of all races. I certainly don't remember them as a distinct race before Redguard aside from the dark skinned, single word named people of Arena's Imperial City. As for the voices, remember that the PC's accent would clearer if he had whole lines of dialogue rather than just grunts and so forth. That would make distinction between other races worth it too. It would be a shame for Nords really because they've had the greatest variety of accents in one game, since Redguard perhaps, and the next Nord PC would likely only have a choice of two of them (for the men and women) at most.