Fallout 4 looks absolutely amazing, but it will have a voiced player character. Those of you that watched Bethesda's E3 conference already know that. If this were to happen to the next TES game, would you be fine with it?

Personally I think it decreases the role-playing value of the game. One of the things I like about Bathesda's games is that the player character is not voiced, so I get to imagine what he or she would sound like. Yes, you could argue Bethesda has already voiced a TES protagonist with Skyrim, but apart from the shouting which obviously had to be voiced, your character doesn't say a word. I think of the shouting-voice of my Dragonborn as a mere fill-in voice.

Also, what would you think of previously unvoiced characters from earlier TES games like Morrowind making a return? While I love the idea of characters like Divayth Fyr and Vivec returning, or of Tiber Septim himself showing up, I fear Bethesda would not get their voices right. To be honest, there is hardly a way to get their voices right at this point as people already have their own ideas of what they should sound like.

What's your opinion on this?

Having a voiced protagonist works in Fallout, because it's characters are typically more clearly defined. You have a set family, a set past, a set 'path' and a more concrete identity. It also has the advantage of only having Human PCs, and far less social and cultural diversity than a from-the-ground-up fantasy setting.

TES builds off an entirely different foundation, and it's one which i think prevents that type of voiced interaction. For now, anyway, technology is moving in that direction... but not yet...

It's great in games like Redguard, which have a concrete, set personality driving their plot, but in the main, numbered games, it would do far more damage than it would benefit them.

I'd have no problem with old characters returning as voiced NPCs mind you.

Lachdonin explains my position perfectly. TES characters are less defined, just a person who was in this jail etc. Fallout on the other hand is in 3 your the 19 year old child of James.

Strictly spoken the main character was voiced in Oblivion - although only for two sentences in the cave with the Mehrunes Dagon cultists... But for antything more than perhaps some battlecries or similar, or maybe one or two fixed cutscenes, I doubt it'd work in TES.. Unless perhaps they eliminated all the playable races and made you only able to play one or two races, but that'd likely cause a riot...

'Ol Pitchy hasn't been hauled out since... Cpt. Deudermont was killed by a big bird... The old boy is well overdue for some blood letting...

As something of an aside... I hadn't considered this before, but there is something of a risk in voicing old characters. Inevitably, someone is going to get upset because Helseth doesn't sound exactly like they imagined. You'd be surprised how much ire such an innocuous thing can cause, far more than plot or gameplay issues.

There are 10 playable races in Star Wars: The Old Republic and all dialogue is voiced for both male and female characters. If Bioware can do it, surely Bethesda can do it?

They have limited voice options that aren't race specific, though. My Chiss Bounty Hunter and my Human Jedi sounded exactly the same. They have different lines of dialogue, of course, but their voices were the same. Unless, of course, they've diversified their voice acting since i quit.

It's a non-issue to me. When I play Elder Scrolls games I have all voices turned off and subtitles turned on. So if there is a voiced player character I won't be hearing it.

Voiced. This whole i'm imagining im talking in a mysterious voice is for the birds

Gotta imagine that elves, orcs, cat-folk, and humans would all need separate voices. if there were voices for each race i wouldn't mind

If Bethesda decides that a voiced protagonist is a good idea for the Elder Scrolls, they'll do it. They have cut down on variety to achieve greater depth before, and a voiced protagonist is commonly perceived as showing greater depth than a non-voiced one. Numerous people have commented on how odd it feels when they are the only mute person in the world, and how strange it is when they appear to communicate by telepathy.

Beginning with Oblivion, with its introduction of Radiant AI and fully-voiced NPCs, and continuing with Fallout 3, and then Skyrim, and now Fallout 4, Bethesda has shown an ever-increasing tendency to emphasize the show. Their quest designers appear to fancy themselves playwrights, or screenwriters. They believe that what makes quests most compelling is the fine performance of the actors delivering an entertaining play.

If the voiced protagonist in Fallout 4 convinces Bethesda that a voiced protagonist works well (and it already has, else they wouldn't have done it), we'll probably see one in the next Elder Scrolls game.

Yeah, forget "do whatever, be whatever" that the series was built upon, next game you're "whatsizface", no more choice in the matter.

If there were provided a fairly wide variety of voice choices, I might be able to accept the idea. Even old games like Baldur's Gate gave the player-character a voice, and provided us with a fairly decent range of voice choices.

On the other hand, if Bethesda was doing the the choosing, I doubt that I would be pleased, as their track record is dismal. I do not like Skyrim's shout voices, and I intensely dislike the "pain screams" and "power attack grunts" that my female characters utter during combat, in all the games.

I have no interest in a voiced protagonist. I suppose I could turn voices off and just read subtitles, but I probably just wont buy anything that has a voiced protagonist, at least not until mods are made to delete the protagonist voice while leaving other voices intact.

A voiced protagonist would grate on my nerves like nails on a chalkboard, unless it sounded exactly like what I imagined the voice to sound like, which is impossible. It would also mean that all my characters of a certain race would sound exactly the same, which is also problematic for roleplaying different characters. Different characters should sound different. That's possible with a silent protagonist since you can imagine what they are sounding like.

Absolutely no! Especially when considering that Bethesda have a bad history with totally inappropriatly voiced characters. They should spend their resources for more important things, like more designers to make a bigger world. And having Lynda Carter as the announcer in that showcase yesterday is a bad omen for TES 6 by the way.

Voiced. Silent protagonist is so 1994.

I happen to like Lynda Carter, Thank you very much. I think she would make a good Barenziah.

Actually the Barenziah from Daggerfall looks a little bit like her. But her voice (and accent for that matter) is really terrible, as simple as that, even if she was a very good looking woman back in the seventies (which doesn't make that series of hers more sensible...)

Presumably you are aware that Lynda Carter is the wife of the CEO of Zenimax (Bethesda). Given that she's a professional voice actress, who would be more likely to be chosen?

I kind of like her too. She does a lot of Nord and Orc voices in Oblivion. I think she does Else God Hater, which is one of my favorites.

I like her too!

As for this topic's question, I'll rather have silent. Voice protagonist make me think more of...say Shepard from Mass Effect or Hawke, or the Inquisitor, it gives the character a solid identity and gives me no possibility of roleplaying outside the set protagonist and their Nice/Neutral/Mean dialog.

I cringe any time any of her characters speak. In a game full of bad acting, she still stands out as particularly bad. Could be a lack of directing, though. I didn't mind her as the Nord females in Morrowind. Of course, she was also only delivering simple greetings in Morrowind...

At any rate, my short answer in regards to voiced characters is no. My long answer is nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

She does all of them in Oblivion. A nightmare, really...

I also suspect that they may have few qualms about dropping certain race options that they "feel" wouldn't be missed too much by the mainstream, such as "unappealing" races like Argonians and Khajiit, and may even extend to cutting some or ALL of the races of Mer as playable. After all, "Absent Aliens" settings for fantasy and science fiction are kind of a hot thing right now, and BGS sometimes likes to jump head-first into popular game design and story trends, though this one would likely generate chaos and outrage, and would even try and make the Elder Scrolls franchise into something it is not.

Then again, one can expect that TES VI will see people going into it from ESO, and since ESO did a better job overall at bridging the "visual and customization quality gap" between the ten races than either Oblivion or Skyrim, that potentially would build expectations for TES VI to improve on it further without taking steps backwards (like removing races or bringing back the quality gaps). Heck, even people going into TES VI from Skyrim are expecting improved customization options and less quality gaps between the playable races.

In case you're wondering what I mean by quality gaps, I'm talking about instances where certain races lack entire customization sliders that other races have, and often have fewer choices within the sliders they do have. Examples include how in Oblivion Argonians, Khajiit, Orcs and I think Dunmer had NO customization options for eye color of any kind, and how Argonians and Khajiit virtually always have far fewer "hairstyles" than the other races (and in Skyrim's case, the Argonian "hairstyles" were all pretty much made with less than a handful of modular parts). I mean yeah, I get that certain races are less important than others in regards to the world building, but it does get a bit ridiculous when certain races practically get the vast majority of customization options while a few might get nearly zilch in comparison, especially the case with Oblivion. They ought to consider expanding the character art department here so they can have the ten expected playable races without such a large gap in customization options.

So no, I'm not particularly enamored with the idea of a voiced protagonist in TES due to the distinct possibility of them axing race options to get them in, which has the potential of losing the Elder Scrolls feel, even more so than that TES card game for iPad and PC which is kind of an odd choice for a spin off. Race axing would likely end in a disastrous social situation not at all unlike the one that happened recently. IF they do it WITHOUT axing race options for the player, than I wouldn't care about it as much. Silent, mute or "possessed" (maybe it could have something to do with the act of Sword-Singing and use the voices of fallen warriors before you or something, I don't know if that would really fit the lore though) would be preferable choices for TES in my opinion.

None of this is to say that I don't think BGS understands the importance in having the ten playable races, either. It's just that it's VERY hard to tell what they are thinking about regarding stuff like this, and it's frustrating to not know until a few years from now when they possibly reveal TES VI.

My opinion could change but as of right now, a voiced protagonist seems to imply a fixed personality, or at least , a limited range of them, which contradicts the spirit of character creation in these games. Unless they can somehow do it well enough to convince me otherwise, or maybe if it's a spin-off sort of thing, like Redguard.