Why do people like voice acting? And a point-and-click UI? Both severely limit what you can do in a game. At least with a point-and-click, the answer "consoles sell games" works, but voice acting? Really? So I have to sit there and listen (which takes substantially longer) to some people ramble on about the same few topics? Why not just have text, where I can quickly read through a huge variety of responses? Some voice acting can deepen the world and improve immersion, I'll grant you that. Some, not all or even most of dialogue.

Bethesda, you are wacky. You are known and loved for being wacky. Bethesda, you are bold. You are known and loved for being bold. Take a stand and do what you know is right. Heck, there are plenty of companies that would love you, give console users a reason to own that keyboard!

If it were up to me, we would have MW style voice acting and topics.

but its not and voice acting and consoles sell games.

I'd love it if I could use a keyboard and mouse with console games, however from my understanding it is not the game developers that have decided against this but the console manufacturers who have explicitly forbidden it.

As for a point and click UI I'm not really sure what you mean, it sounds to me like a mouse driven interface which would be decidedly un-console, if not anti-console, and that's obviously not what you're referring to. Perhaps some examples for either side?

I don't think full voice acting was chosen with platforms really in mind. Yes it does make things easier for those on non-HD TVs but I think that was a minor consideration. Before playing Oblivion I felt that fully voiced dialogue was unnecessary, since playing Oblivion I'll admit I miss it when playing similar games that aren't fully voiced. Voicing the dialogue gave the dialogue more character in my opinion - although as Bethesda learned TES IV had too few voice actors to really sell this - but FO3 took several steps forward in this regard. However I do think Bethesda needs to continue pushing forward by including facial expressions and body language as I think you need the full suite for this to work well. If you only have some elements it makes the absence of the others stand out.

If you don't like sitting there and listening I'd suggest turning on captions. Certainly when replaying the game I often find myself skimming the captions and then skipping to the next bit - it's much faster.

Voice acting makes the gameplay more casual I guess. I still stand by my suggestion that conversation would have some animation to it, and some expressive voice sounds to indicate emotion. Kinda like how Zelda does it. Of course, a lot of important points would be voice-acted in full, but this would allow for a much larger "meat" of conversation. Full voice files could be stored on a second, installable disc. Then, voice acting is optional (as to make voiced mods easier to integrate in full), doesn't take up space from the main disc, but is still there.

Voice acting added a ton to Bethesda's games. I remember renting Morrowind....I got off some prison ship and a cat humanoid was speaking with text at the bottom of the screen. All the characters did this. I played Morrowind for maybe 20 minutes and never played it again.

Oblivion, on the other hand, starts off with voice acting from Patrick Stewart explaining what in the hell is going on. Ditto with Fallout 3 and Ron Perlman/Liam Neeson. It was huge jump for Bethesda's game and made them far more interesting at first. I've purchased the GOTY editions for both Oblivion and Fallout 3 partly because of how enjoyable the first hour is compared to Morrowind's silence in terms of dialogue.

Well what it boils down to is that Bethesda is a company. Companies have the purpose of making money. A larger audience will be reached with voice acting because it is today's norm and text only would be viewed as a step backward. It's a sad truth.

Sounds like you didn't give it a chance and could possibly missing out. But hey, I guess everyone has their preferences. If you try it though, like actually start a quest line, join a great house or guild, see all the cool cultural aspects, try out unique spells like levitation, you might just get hooked. Once you learn to look past aesthetic aspects like graphics, and actually delve into a game, you will see it can be an even better experience than Oblivion. Just thought I would say that.

Edit: sorry for the double post.

Because voice acting adds immersion and a cinematic feel to the game.

If they remade Morrowind with voice dialogue (Fallout 3 caliber) and better graphics I'm sure many more people could get into it.

I see a lot of "because it sells games" but that doesn't address my point.

Why does it sell games? Why do people like it? Cinematic? Are video games supposed to be movie-like as a medium? Are these two media sufficiently similar that the same criteria ought apply to both?

games, especially RPGs, are about immersion. its more immersive to see and hear people talk than it is for time to pause and having to read a paragraph worth of exposition. of course, bad or inconsistent voice acting is not particularly immersive either, but thats a whole other matter.

Your answer: Literacy. It sure as boobs isn't due to attention span as I admit sitting through voiced dialogue tires me more than walking through the Bitter Coast.

That is just it, though. I don't see many video games as having immersive voice acting. Especially sandbox ones where conversations are pretty much necessarily going to be recycled.

I find reading dialogue contributes to, rather than detracts from, my immersion in the game. Perhaps it is a TV vs. book thing? I don't know. I hate it when I have to stop the action and listen to somebody. I can read a whole heck of a lot faster than I can listen. It gets me back to the game faster, allows for more variety, and is generally less intrusive. What isn't to like?

The first time through, maybe. After multiple times hearing the same voice acting I almost always have to turn the sound off and hit ESC to get through it. That very much hurts immersion for me.

I can't speak for anybody else but I read faster than voice actors speak dialog. Nowadays when I play Morrowind I'm bored to tears after being forced to hear Socucius Ergalla say the same words, using the same vocal inflection, over and over and over again. When I move on to Sellus Gravius, however, I am not bored. I am able to read his dialog much faster than any actor would have and I am free to "hear" these lines spoken any way I want. Using my imagination he is able to say these words in an angry tone of voice or a bored tone of voice or an excited tone of voice. I can read his dialog fifty times and it might never come out sounding the same way twice in my imagination. Socucius Ergalla's lines are always delivered exactly the same way, everytime. That is not my idea of immersion.

To me text-based games vs voice acted games are the same as reading a book vs watching TV. Reading stimulates my imagination. Voice acting rarely does.

i suppose i should have added "theoretically" to the previous post. it does get old hearing the same thing over again, or hearing the beggar's accent change, but i still find that it feels realer than morrowind. i used to be in love with morrowind's dialog, but then i went back to playing and realized that its not really more varied than OB's, theres just more of it. maybe i'm not doing it right, but when i'm reading the text i read it for information without putting any sort of tone into it (unless its strongly implied by the text) precisely because its just the same paragraph of exposition on every citizen in vivec. oblivion at least gives me some distinction in its endlessly repeated information.

Except Dagoth Ur's voice never gets old. I liked Mankar's little diatribe too. It isn't just the voice, it's the delivery and content. Even w/ voice acting, I'll reherse lines in my head that a character might say. Morrowind's insta-dialogue box, with any degree of voice acting is win.

Yes. We're a little beyond Zork here. :wink_smile:

You talk to people through sound, so voice acting is more natural and more immersive than text, the only real problem is that sound files are bigger than text.

No. I have to argue with that.

Voice acting gives us crappy voices (no mater what, there'll always be at leats one)

Waiting for a character to finish speaking, once you've read what they have to say, OR just interupting them when they're speaking to move on ISN'T immersive. It's the complete opposite.



with Morrowind's style of text, there aren't many voices. It leaves a lot to the imagination. I can always feel like I'm talking to someone who should sound the way they do, beause all I need are the initial greetings.

I don't have to wait for a character to finish speaking, or to stop them in mid speech, I move on when I've read, that's all I need.

It's easier for modders. Not all of us happen to be highly trained voice actors. Getting someone to help always ends up wrong.



I've never owned a HD TV, and I get on fine. Granted, they could offer a text scaling option, but that would be in the next game if it were text based, so it's not really an argument.


No! Voice files take up far too much space. I don't want a rubbish game with un filled worlds, puny cities, and only a hundred or so quests.

Most of what was lacking in Oblivion, imo, was due to voice acting taking so much space.


See, you shouldn't have to do that. you're supposed to get immersed, and pay attention to what someone is saying.



Morrowind, on the other hand, starts with Azura explaining who you are, what you're doing, and whtat you have to do in Morrowind. Play the game properly next time you want to complain about something.

I really enjoy the voice acting in Oblivion, especially with some of the main characters. Though, the brilliant thing with text based dialogue is that you can add as much as you need/want and not have to worry about how many hours of recording it is going to take to flesh it all out.

If the two could somehow meet harmoniously, that would be ideal.

I think that it is easier. Listening is easier then reading. It is also one of the things you can show off in a promo triler. It is a new tech, that attracts attention. And in my opinion it is rather useless. Having the dialogues toatlly silent is not too much fun, but Morrowind′s dialogues were not totally silent. The more important dialogue were voiced and people had ambient voiced lines otuside of conversation. That was grea and for meěould be ideal again for TES V.
And as far as UI goes, I fear that the consoles are what metters now. The devs even announcedthat TES V will be developed for consoles and then ported to PC, which means that like in Oblivion, we, the PC players will again suffer the limitations of consoles, which buggs me a lot. But alas! Bethesda becae big and famous, so they also became much less brave and are inevitably mainstreaming their games so that the cash flow is steady. The smaller the company, the more they will tend to risk. The bigger ones fear to do something that is nt in fashion.

then turn off subtitles, if you need to be forced to listen what people say. Who actually skips ahead when they play a game for the first time, I sure don't, I always read in about the same speed as it is being said, because then I don't misunderstand what's being said.



If they actually speak, then I don't have to pretend that it's his voice, because it IS his voice.



stopping someone in mid speech is the same as skipping a page for a quest that's you've already done.




Did you not just read that he said when he's -> replaying the game <- ? If he's replaying the game, then he already knows what's about to be said, he has listen to it before. You don't read everything in morrowind again, when you've done the quest before either.

because in real life, people talk, and sound comes out. they don't just move their lips and then hold up a card with what they just said written on it



um, budday, you're not supposed to do anything. as soon as there becomes enforced rules on the playing of ES games that's me out

I actually really liked the voice acting in Oblivion. A lot of people complained that the voice actors weren't varied enough, but I thought that because Bethesda got such good actors in with good voices, this didn't matter. So what if one Elf sounds the same as another, or all Imperials sound the same......they may sound the same to us, but not amongst themselves, eh? I always thought of that aspect as a racial thing .

It's not so much that one elf sounds like the other, it's that their dialog voices aren't consistent with the ambient voices. Not to mention that they got rid of the dark elf smoker voice, that was really disappointing. Seeing those dark things with red eyes talk in that jolly voice... eugh!

Anyway, from clients perspective, voice acting may not apparently have drawbacks but the reality is that they're significantly harder to get right, and when the devs don't get them right, the immersion they supposedly add goes down the drain.
If I remember correctly, Beth had a dev blog thing entry prior to Oblivion's release where one of them talked about how much dialog they had to record and how much of a pain it was. It makes it a bit hard to believe they can achieve proper full voice acting if the game world will have even more NPCs.