This gets on my nerves too. At one time I tried substituting silent sound files in Oblivion. But after a few hours I decided my character was too silent now, lol. So reluctantly I put the original files back.

There's just no pleasing me, sometimes.

I truly hope they don't add a fully voiced protagonist in TES VI (or ever). I know I, for one, don't play TES games to play some one-dimensional pre-made dude like Kratos, Dante, or Garrett the Thief. Not to knock on those games, but the whole point of TES is to create your own character and story and if they add a voice, it will automatically change the feel of that. If Bethesda wants to go this direction, they really should bring back the spinoff TES "Adventures" series and keep the main TES series as RPG as possible. They've already streamlined too many of the old games' RPG aspects away from Skyrim as it is.

I can not simply stand pre made characters in RPG after playing Daggerfall. Secondary I don't play humans, is an level 45 human now and stuff work well but its boring.

I have never played human in any TES game and have no plan stating.

I eat it in Fallout as playing an elf would be weird, an Khajiit make more sense but Fallout universe did not have advanced genetic engineering, it was pump lots of x-rays and see that you get, backup security systems are extra cost.

Liked DA:O, dropped DA2 like an grenade giving of sound 4 minutes into the demo.

Longed hard for morrowind style combat then I was forced to do quick time events against wolfs in Tomb raider. Dropped the game hard.

Played kerbal space program a lot, if you are into hard science and spaceflight you love it.

Did a re-run of FO-NV with all DLC, did it just after the FO4 announcement. and not just after FO3 then I was a bit bored of fallout.

Doing Skyirm now probably back to ESO afterwards.

Not even bothered to even pirate other games like DA:i or witcher, not because of cost but because I will get disappointed.

Spoiled old rich kids is an serious problem for developers, they want an 4x improvement in any aspect of any future games.

Graphic, features, story, npc, action, explosions, follower's, AI its an pretty simple demand.

If we don't get it we undo the big bang.

Neither can I. I bought The Witcher a couple of years ago during a Steam sale. I've tried to play it twice. Both times I lost interest after a few hours. I can't play the Two Worlds or Gothic series either. I've stopped buying these games altogether now.

On a side note: is it a co-incidence or do European developers of roleplaying games like to create fixed male protagonists more than North American developers?

Nope, I liked some aspects of Thief (stealth and other game mechanics) and The Witcher (story and graphics, etc) but they never held my attention. I only bought them at sale prices, since as a consumer I use my dollars to vote for things I know I like and support, like TES. Skyrim, I wasn't going to get at release, because I heard they had stripped alot of RPG stuff out of it in the name of streamlining play, and it seemed more action-based. However, my son begged me to get it for him, so I did, and after watching him explore the beautiful landscape and fighting off random dragon attacks, I couldn't take it anymore, so I got a copy for me, paying full price both times.

I tried Two Worlds for the co-op aspects, but it never worked well for me, and the level scaling was ridiculous (hundreds of hits to take down a pig???) Gothic was interesting but I remember something was awkward about it, maybe it was that being thrust into someone else's story thing. Idk - seems like American developers have their fair share of fixed protagonists, but I never pay that much attention to where the games are made, to be honest. I know Bethesda's studios are just north of DC, Minecraft was made by that Swedish dude, and Wurm Online is an extremely detailed sandbox game (with kinda lackluster combat) made also by Swedes, but that is probably the extent of it.For the longest time (prob until sometime before Oblivion was made) I thought Bethesda was a European company, maybe the games felt European to me or something and I thought the games were too far off the beaten path to be made by American developers. I hope they never lose too much of that darkhorse/misfit quality, even though their games are very popular now.

It seems like they have always done their best work by not doing what everyone else is doing. If they try to copy the trend of having voiced main character "like all the other kids(devs)" I think it will be to the detriment of TES series. The story choices are already limited in Skyrim than previous games, and the more you center the story line around the voice acting, the more linear the plot will have to be. You can only fit so much voice into a game, which limits the writing and I don't need or want someone to tell me what my character is saying in an RPG anyway.

I'm in the wait and see zone with Fallout 4 before I decide. A voiced protagonist IS more immersive for me but I'll need to see how the dialogue handles different approaches and personalities in fallout. Honestly the dialogue wheel looks like it gives me MORE dialogue choices than I usually had in Oblivion or Sktrim at first look but I need to see how it functions. Even if I wasn't crazy about a voiced character, if we get more options I'm good. Since I often have only two or even just one response option in the last two I'm hopeful.