If actions are voiced it will get extremely annoying. As in Far Cry 3, where Jason whines "Eww, gross!" every time you skin an animal (yet never questions slaughtering dozens of endangered species, or hundreds of people).

A voiced protagonist reduces replay value for me. I played Mass Effect through twice: one good Shep, one bad. I couldn't take sitting through all the cut scenes more than that. It's more like watching a movie - which is the trouble with modern game design. Developers want their games to be "cinematic", instead of free-flowing unpredictable video gameatic.

Fallout 4 will probably be a game I pick up late in a Steam sale, because I doubt I'll get much replay value out of it.

That would get annoying very quick, only time I liked a voice on the player was way back with Prey, and that was only because the guy had such a fowl potty mouth that you were interested in hearing new and novel ways he could fit [censored] into nearly every sentence.

Started Skyrim again Alvor the blacksmith in Riverwood is that I call an information NPC, he has 9 options 10 or more during the tutorial quest.

One is trade, other is about the free stuff he gives you, then if you can use the forge who give an small refresh in how to use it.

Next is locale info, about Riverwood, how to get to Whiterun and about the jarl.

The rest is about the war: who is Ulfric, about the Thalmor and his opinion about the war.

Trade pretty much has to be on top menu.

The last two fits in the town and factions. Note that you are limited to three options on sub menus as you need an back option.

Then you need one about himself for the free stuff and forge.

So yes it will work, clunky as hell but will work. Removing some of the options will not simply this much.

Now the main problem as I see it will be to come up with intelligent comments your character have to say to access the 3 sub menus.

This is pretty critical unlike an non voiced character where the border between talk and simple menu interaction is blurry.

Tell me about the area, tell me about the war, about your self. will sound a bit weird, and you will have to listen to yourself asking to go back to main menu again multiple times also

This does not affect most npc only the information type ones.

How you're describing it is how I've described it. We will have 4 buttons to press, but not only 4 dialogue options.

How did you get that skewed idea, that I was proving incorrect? It seems we're both making the same point.

At the expense of the number of dialogue options?

And this is Bethesda. The story isn't going to be good anyway, so it might as well have more freedom.

The answer to this is recycled dialogue. Something that became obvious in the late game of SWTOR was the reuse of basic dialogue.

Yes, no, I'll help, I won't help, etc.

I like to give them the benefit of the doubt. They were responsible for a lot of quest lines with humorous and/or interesting storylines. Skyrim's thieves guild (I actually hated them at first), Oblivion's Dark Brotherhood, Fallout 3 The Pitt and Point Lookout.

People who babble the same over and over all the time get hyper annoying. The Whiterun disease, Zion tribal followers, ESO patched some npc to reduce the rate they repeated themselves, This is dependent on location, Whiterun was main town for most in Skyrim, the Zion followers was followers

I assume we can cut the player short like we can with npc, you will hear "let me ask you about something else" hundred of times.

You forget that tons of dialog in past games wasn't tied to responses to the PC.

All those "PATROLLING THE MOJAVE" type lines, all the dialog NPCs had with each other, and the radio news lines, all count as dialog, despite not being responses to dialog options of the player.

I don't know why "voiced protagonist" keeps getting mixed up with "limited dialogue options" due to the new face-button mapping. They are two separate issues.

It hasn't occurred to anyone that they might simply bring up a prompt like "right bumper" to see more dialogue options?

The voice actress said that there were 8 basic personality types for dialogue choices, so to me that implies that there will be at least 8 choices for dialogue lines in situations where we would normally get nice/a*hole/snarky/helpful speech options.

Using something like the bumper buttons to cycle through groups of dialogue options makes more sense than using one of the face buttons for "more...", and is in keeping with how they cycle through tabs in other menu systems.

My only concern with the new dialogue system is the limited indication of what the PC is going to say--I don't like being surprised by my own character during conversation.

Do you get to the cloud district very often? It wouldn't have been so bad if they just had more lines to say so that maybe you only heard that once in a blue moon, they could have loaded Nazeem up with a lot more lines which would have made him a much more annoying character and not just because of repetitive dialogue.

My main problem with it is they gave "more emotional impact" as a reason for it, which I don't give a [censored] about.

This, its not only Nazeem but also nice people like the female blacksmith, here its as you have to listen to, have you heard about my father 300 times while improving gear and leveling smitting. In here case less talking is probably the only solution.

I found Oblivion much better here, as it was not directed to you personally except the natural greetings, beggars and guards. It makes sense that beggars ask you for money every time you pas them, that is unless you gave something 3 minutes ago

The NPC just talked about mudcrabs but it was just ambient, just as npc pretend to be working.

It also gave some legendary ones like this http://i.imgur.com/G0aRXLF.jpg%C2%A0

It's code for "more appealing to casual gamers who don't like to read".

Oh sorry... I think it's more emotional and immersive to see and hear a full dialogue instead of monologues... But as I see I'm just a casual gamer who don't like to read...

Maybe you're a hardcoe gamer who doesn't like to read

Seriously though, I think it can make it more emotional (but not necessarily depending on tastes) but it only increases immersion if you want your character to be more emotional, I don't so that's a minus for me.

I would get into this debate, but I can see from some of the posters here, having the opinion that I don't really mind the voice acting implies I'm just some dum-dum casual gamer that can't read anything above 'See Spot Run'.

So I'mma stay out of this one and reserve judgment for when the game comes out.

A video game is the last thing that I worry about. If I don't like it, I'll sell it at GameStop.

I am not worried in the slightest bit.

Over 4 million people owned fallout 3, and no doubt more will own fallout 4. Yet this forum, a minority, assumes that because they had a few polls that the majority dont want/ arent happy/ and/ or hate the voiced PC. Really have to step back and look at the bigger picture here people, plus these threads are getting old.

The notion that sales equate to quality or appropriateness of design is getting old; has been for years, decades; centuries; and now its come to gaming.

It's likely that now, if the majority of gamers demanded a Mortal Kombat clone of all AAA game, that FO5 might not only be a beat'em up title, but one with a cheering section that lauds how it finally got with the times, and shed the archaic rules of the early 2000's; becoming what it should have been all along, if only they had the capability back then to match modern gameplay and design trends.

I am worried that there will not be enough Angst on this forum before the release in November. Its only 4 months away!

Much of that you character say will be standard comments, Yes, No, I do it for 200 caps, tell me more, I might do it later, any rumors,

This is also why I'm not very worried about moding,

if this whole voiced protagonist was done to get us more emotional involved , meaning that at one point our protagonist is going to get all emotional about the loss of his wife and kids than ( censored) you bethesda , i wouldf just stop playing

flame on

I think people are misreading the information we've been given.

What Todd actually said was having a voiced player character enables them to have a stronger narrative, giving a better connection between player and character. I'm paraphrasing, but I think it's literally just about engaging in the story more. Like we saw in Red Dead and Mass Effect. Players are more invested from a narrative point of view with higher engagement.

Of course this isn't always necessary, however it's a direction they haven't tried before. And they always get criticised for their story telling. This is just one of their answers to that critique.

Sure people RP and that's important for us, but everyone generally says their story telling is not up to the standards of other games. From both commercial reviews to player opinions.

you are probably right , we are all guilty of speculating about this game , we in reality still know little about, me also

it also means we all want this game to be great , and for some the game will fullfill al their expectations for some it will not or even disapoint