no, it has not, voice suits perfectly, voice acting is great, voiced characters feel more immersive and realistic, no voiced characters are just boring, but more dalog options would be better

yeah that is so wrong it hurts. you can play any old game out there with voice acting but that isn't enough for you, you need it shoehorned into every type of game no matter how much it clashes with the type of games they traditionally were.

In the context of Bethesda games from Oblivion onwards I have no problem with voiced PC, if you give NPCs voice might as well give it to the PC.

Personally I preferred Morrowind's text only. Sure, some dialogue could get samey but it allowed you to ask NPCs about a whole range of things 'cos the team didn't have to keep in mind getting everything voice acted.

"Sarcastic"

You can now guess what I said

wat?! no, yes it's obvious the ideal amount of depth is in no voices whatsoever. but just because npcs are voiced doesn't mean they need to go all in and just voice everything. there's still a massive difference in dialog depth and options between voiced and silent protagonist. this has been displayed clearly numerous times by people on these forums yet still people are in denial about this.

This makes the assumption that it's because of the voice acting that the story options are bad. That's not the case. It's just terrible writing, period. Games can have great voice acting and still have good writing as well. The two aren't mutually exclusive, it's just that Bethesda went in a bad direction with this particular game. It defeated the entire purpose of getting great voice actors like Courtenay Taylor. We have great actors reading terrible lines. It's that simple. Fix the writing, and any complaints about a voiced protagonist go away.

it's both actually.

Agreed, voiced protagonist and implications of it don't really go well with Pete "Nothing's Sacred" Hines' "do what you want, be what you want".

There's awkward phrases and strange direction, but nothing that qualifies as actually bad. They recruited some of the best voice actors in the business, actors that worked on other major titles and delivered amazing performances. It's not the actors. It's bad writing and directing.

that's one of the things that has angered me the most about all this. the way bethesda has continued to market this game despite it being very, very, very different to previous titles. you would hope "professional critics" would have called them on this shadyness, clearly they don't care.

The dialogue wheel makes it worse as well.

absolutely. it's a perfect storm of terrible idea and implementation. the dialog system is seriously basically broken the way it currently is regardless of how we feel about voiced protgonists and lack of options. i'm really shocked and disappointed so few professional critics mentioned it.

i disagree and fo1 & fo2 had very poor ingame writing, beth have gone with quality over quantity when it came conversations but you can still pick a option that leads the conversation to something different and ive talked my way out of a fair few fights and you can still say the wrong thing and the NPC won;t talk to you any more, the only differences i see is there is less fake choices and asking about a topic is confined to the context of the conversation and getting a slight different response each time from a different perspective but with previous games ask NPCs about NCR/legion BOS they would normally say exact same thing, you've been forced to CARE about stuff since fo1 eg the vault which is alot more restricting to our character than anything els in any other fallout game apart from 2 cos they just copy n pasted the story from fo1.

It's not my favorite system by any means, but I'm starting to get used to it, and I dont think it in any way 'ruins' the game.

The inclusion of voiced protagonists is one of the features that has made me enjoy the game more compared to its immediate predecessors. In fact, Fallout 4 is the first Bethesda game in which dialogue feels like dilaogue (as in, two people actually communicating with each other). Complementary, I also enjoy the way in which dialogue is presented. Instead of exclusively focussing on the NPC we are talking to, the camera alternates between the NPC and our character to give the conversation a more cinematic feel. For the first time in a Bethesda game, watching a dialogue sequence unfold is entertaining.

I hope that voiced protagonists and this more cinematic dialogue comes to the new TES game whenever it's released. Going back to muted protagonists and static cameras would certainly feel like a heavy downgrade.

I love the voice acting in this game. I feel that silent protagonists are outdated at this point. A good thing to have, though, would be an option for voiced or silent in the options.

Agree'd.

For the first time in a Bethesda game I feel like I'm playing their character and not mine.

Same here. I feel like I'm playing a customized Nate/Nora that they created, not my own character with his/her own backstory. I've a hard time justifying to myself rolling any new character besides my current female character and the male who currently waits in Red Rocket. The voice and the backstory...the plot...

I'm not playing my own character, I'm playing Bethesda's and they merely let me customize the looks, skills, perks and name.

Have you seen my cousin??

Sorry i disagree totally with this thread!! I love that my character has a voice now, i love hearing all the voice acting.. in previous games, along with most older games the fact that you have to read everything starts to get tedious and boring, and i tend to just skip through it all and never actually know the story. With a voiced character, I feel that i am getting more of the story, i LOVE watching my character in cut scenes etc...... The one main reason why SWTOR is my favorite MMO is for the voice acting questing.

For future games,possibly give players the option to have the thing voiced or readable.

Completely agree OP, dialogue wheel and voiced protag have ruined a large part of the game for me. I just try to avoid it as much as I can since they usually devolve into 4 different "options" of asking about that little [censored] shaun who I couldn't care less about.

I believe the voice has also improved the dramatic and emotional weight of various points in the story. And as somebody assumed about somebody else earlier in the thread, no, I am not a fan of Mass Effect, Dragon Age, or whatever the other one was.

The voice acting is giving me a stronger connection to the character than I've had in previous Fallout games. For me, it has enhanced the experience.

At this point, complaining about voiced protagonists in games is like complaining that movies aren't still silent. I'm sure similar criticisms were leveled at the early "talkies" ("I prefer imagining what they sound like...")

I play these games for the gameplay, leveling/progression and exploration. If you crave great writing, I recommend Nabokov's 'Lolita." Very immersive.

Thought I'd hate it but I don't. Good thing now back to game.

You still have to read the things you're able to say before you can select one to say. And since you've read it already, you've most likely already given a voice to your character, so why do you need a voice actor to repeat what you already read? Especially if it may be said differently to how you envisioned your character would say it.

Like, in Fallout 3 there's a dialog option you can tell Moira: 'On a scale of one to ten, I'd say it's a "Shut the [censored] up and fix me."' Now, even though Moira will always respond the same way to it, there's many ways your character may say it that will tell a lot about their personality; they can be incredulous, jovial, angry, forceful, etc. When you have a voiced protagonist, you predefine how that response will be said, and thus predefine the character's personality. Which is bad when it's supposed to be your character.

And of course, in Fallout 4 such a response would likely just be labelled "Sarcastic".