I think people are making the mistake of comparing it to previous games and basing their judgement on the same expectations.

It's something we've all been guilty of one way or another for a game series. However I think Bethesda prioritise new experiences, which is something that quite frankly needs to be emulated more so in the games industry.

I'm sick of every COD being basically the same with more crap added in. The same with Assassin's Creed. It's kind of fresh to have a developer where their next game is in a sense a continuation of existing ethos, but at the same time branches in new directions.

Of course there's always the fan base. We do matter and our opinion counts. Would I want the next TES game to be basically an action game? Hell no. But Bethesda don't do that.

There's an argument for both sides, I prefer to see the positives and compare their practices to other companies, because none are perfect and all of them let their "fans" down somewhere along the way.

There's a lot of truth to this. Bethesda did actually acknowledge the fact that they were sacrificing a level of player freedom (blank slate) in an effort to create a good story. I feel that the issue with the main story, the one that's typically about the player and his actions, is that the characters we meet are more interesting than the player character because they have a level of personality inflected from their voice. You can't shake that feeling of being a floating camera in previous installments.

Contrast this to some iconic characters with interesting backstories and motivations: John Marston, Shepard, Joel, Red, Max Payne, Tommy Vercetti, etc - there was this level of life and depth that each character brought to the table. The PC in Fo3, FNV, even TES 3/4/5 lacked a social reinforcement that lent itself towards not just a story but a narrative other than the main story. Take for example Joel's daughter dying in the prologue of TLOU and Joel's reaction to it. Now imagine if he was a silent protagonist - it would not have had the same emotional impact and you'd have a load of dissonance throughout the rest of the game, which relied on Joel's feelings for his deceased daughter being mirrored onto Ellie.

Every single time a Bethesda game is mentioned you can, without a moment of doubt, find someone trashing the story and/or Emil Pagliarulo. Maybe it has less to the do with bad writing and more to do with writing a silent protagonist that has no emotional reinforcement with regards to his actions. Like you said, it's a response to the criticism, and I welcome the direction. If it works, then it works. If it doesn't, then TES 6 will try something else.

The gaming demographic of the 1990's is not the same as the present demographic. I.e. there's more people.

Very well said. Bethesda are very good at innovating on what they previously create. In terms of graphics, AI, world design, scale, they always try to reach their next level and better themselves. Creating stories isn't something they've been great at, in terms of their main quest.

We're living in an age where narrative is becoming more important and carries a much higher value. Just look at last of us like you said, Valiant Hearts, Gone Home. Story, and movie quality writing has a very high value in the industry. Gamers are not stupid. We don't want every game to be about explosions and gore and throwaway story. We want to connect with our games.

Roleplayers know that more than anyone, which is why the likes of Red Dead and The Last of Us are popular amongst that demographic. We don't always want to be ourselves in games, sometimes the experience of roleplaying as a very well crafted, deep and stop driven character is worth more than just making it up in our heads.

Like you said if it doesn't work out we know they will try something else.

The quality of Bethesda's stories had nothing to do with the protagonist being voiced, but because of their writers. Giving a voice isn't going to change this.

Secondly, the primary difference between Fallout and those other games is that those other games follow a pre-set character that was created by the writers. In Fallout, the main character is you. Taking away freedom misses the entire point of the franchise.

I am worried too. About how other people worry about video games.

You're like, the 2nd most logical person ITT.........

That is the problem. Where a small restaurant can make a superb pot of stew, spiced to perfection... once they expand and try to cater a convention center... they have to make bland slop that can't offend any allergies.

What a brilliant post.

I won't disagree, but there were plenty of well written pieces within both Fallout (post-Interplay), and TES themselves. A voiced character that's not a malleable cookie-cutter can help tell a more focused story that engages the audience. Empathy is a thing.

ITT not agreeing with Porscha means you're illogical.

A better anology would be a Chinese restaurant trying to attract a larger variety of people by including different cultural foods into their chowmein.

I don't have any reservations. Mass Effect has voiced characters and it was done fantastic.

To be honest, I always felt not having a voiced character in a world filled with dialogue is more immersion breaking.

You might not realize it, but this (I think) is related... It is like offering Chinese dishes by name, and changing the recipe for those that wouldn't know, and couldn't tell the difference. Someone tells a friend they have to try this dish. They ask for it by name, and what the restaurant serves them is not what their friend suggested.

A person has a friend who has raved about the Fallout series for years, so they go out and buy FO3, and it's nothing at all like the series the friend described.

Isn't that what Fallout is doing?

What I think Bethesda is doing, is almost akin to selling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN5lXF1vgIM under the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru6wri23Ljk&t=1m41s label; exploiting its reputation, but offering a milder more mass-appeal flavor.

That is what's so disappointing about FO3, and probably FO4, when compared to Fallout and Fallout 2. It's by no means the visuals... it's the writing, and wrong gameplay.

That is a much milder anology, and that is ok. If people hate the vegemite flavored nutella they can always stop buying it.

That IS the anology... It's anologous to a company buying the Vegemite brand and reformulating it into Nutella; then you cannot buy Vegemite anymore, only the Vegemite impostor using the name; and everyone that loved Vegemite gets the rug pulled from under them, and their ~still existent favorite product, is not really existent at all anymore.

It's like if TES was bought and TES 6/7/8 reworked into https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpvJ7iBxRdQ clones from then on; and still called ElderScrolls. If that happened, I do think a lot of TES fans would suddenly understand the sentiments.

Or maybe it's code for gamers who no longer want to play as mute telepaths in the 21st century. I don't mind mute protagonists, but I don't want everybody to pretend that my character can talk when he clearly isn't saying anything. That's more immersion breaking than the voice not matching my imagination.

Well, there's always Marmite...

I think that if one has an appreciation of turn based gaming, that one finds it second nature to perceive in-game conversation in turns, and the fact that the PC never talks is never an issue and hardly noticed. One knows what they said, and then pays attention to what responses they get (from the NPCs). I never see it as a mute PC getting talked at, and always see the responses as naturally following the PC's speech (that I did not need to hear, because I'd already selected it, and know what it says).

*But it becomes VERY annoying to select a choice, and have it not be precisely what is imparted to the NPC. Witcher 2 did this, and FO4 probably does this.

The best RPGs I've played had subtle differences in similar statements, that could change their reception. Verbal minefields to navigate... and I expect that too has become a lost art in game design.

You don't need to have an appreciation for how older games functioned in order to like a feature like mute protags or turn based mechanics. I've played civ (turn based) and I've played tes/fo with mute protags without complaint. Granted, it's nice to just skip through the dialogue after the umpteenth playthrough, experiencing all the dialogue in the first 2 or 3 play-throughs is nice.

In that same breath, I can also appreciate voiced protagonists because they reinforce the notion that I'm not just playing me, I'm playing someone else. I'm living their story. I never feel invested in ANY of my characters from Skyrim or Fo because they don't feel alive to me. They're just mute drones and I have to work at consistently give them a voice and it's a [censored] drag sometimes. But, because there are individuals, like me, who welcome the change and are open minded to having a voiced protag, we're just illogical, casual gamers who don't like to read. How petty.

But Fallout 4 isn't even out yet OP. At least give it until the release to make a decision on whether you enjoy it or not. And not that its a "fix" or anything but, im sure there will be a mod to remove voice. Or an option.

i'm also more worried about the stupid dialogue wheel. the fact that you select some blurb which turns into a few spoken sentences really irks me.

i'm hoping the cutscenes are almost non existent, otherwise cutting the voice out could prove to be a worthless endeavor. also before the voice just gets snipped, the ui will have to be accessible to redo the dialogue boxes so all the text can be rewritten. there's simply no way the game will make sense just leaving those blurbs on screen without a voice. the animation will have to be cut out too. beth really [censored] us on this. making new quests will also be a little jarring having to go from a fully voiced character to dead silence.

the silver lining could be that there is so much spoken dialogue, we could piece it together into generic sentences so that quest makers could give the illusion of having some voiced dialougue from the protag

I think that the best solution to this would be to let us prehear (for lack of a better term) what will be said before selecting maybe by holding a "modifier" button or trigger .

Even though I didn't say anyone is illogical, you bring up a good point!

Sure thing, if that's the tune you want to whistle.

Voice has nothing to do with connecting to a character, I connect to characters when I like their personality, so I connected to my Lone Wanderer (and my Wardens, etc) because I created their personalities so of course I liked them. Contrast with say, RDR, where I gave less than zero [censored] about john marston and thought the story was complete garbage (cause character driven story+[censored] character=[censored] story), and the same thing applies to any other game.

And the best way to make sure everyone likes the PC is to make them decide their personality, cause if you don't like a character you made yourself that's not the game's fault.