Do you want a Fallout 4 talking protagonist in the next Elder Scrolls?

seeing the tech they use for deep fake vids the day when games have voice customisation can't be too far away. would that be a micro(ish)transaction people would pay for? an extra fee if you have a mic and an internet connection to send some voice recordings to the cloud and it'll download the transcript in your voice or any number of other pre made ones to suit your character? dunno, maybe.

anyway, until that kind of thing arrives, any games with a custom character creator should come with the voice as optional, particularly an elder scrolls game with the number of different character types you can choose

I am fine with voice acting for the protagonist. You can always just fallback to subtitles.

Yes. 100%.

As long as the story and character is great, I would rather have a talking character than a silent protagonist.

Give me Kratos, Snake or Geralt instead of mute losers like Link and the hipster from Half Life. Those “characters” suck balls.

Meh. Bethesda can knock themselves out with that. I play their open-world RPGs to wonder around exploring the map. The conversation system has very little effect on that kind of game.

@madrocketeer: Then a "Don't care option" should be added to the poll.

Yeah, probably.

In fact, I'd say "don't care" should be an option for all polls, but meh on that as well.

Don't care about "don't care." Don'tcareception. A tesseract of apathy.

I hate talking protagonists in those kinds of games. Breaks the immersion for me.

I kind of like silent protagonists, idk lol.

Like SOedipus says, it can break immersion for me. Especially true in a game where you can be all these different fantasy races with different backgrounds and personalities.

Nah. Why have a voiced protagonist in a game that let's you make whatever type of character you want? It just doesn't work and ends up hurting the experience more than it helps.

FO4 story was lame. I played through the story about half-way, then I modded out the main story bits about the son and got rid of the player voice acting. Then proceed to play Fallout Colony Simulator for a good several hundred hours. It was fun. Still never 'beat' the game. I'm sure the ending is lame too.

Bethesda have proved that they suck at strong narratives. The best Elder Scrolls game was Morrowind which basically directed you away from its main story, which is why it felt so cool when you started putting it together for yourself.

Absolutely not. Bethesda dialogue is dumb enough silent, let alone in audio form.

@uninspiredcup: However, with Fallout 4 Bethesda appeared to be retroactively influenced by the now disgraced has-been Bioware.

Streamlined text options accommodated a third-person view of a Shepard like character with a far more fixed personality and set of simplified dialogue options.

Never felt the need to play FO4 after 3, but this sounds terrible. Awful Bethesda writing, vocalized as a specific personality in a specific voice for a character that YOU supposedly made? No thanks.

**** no. Video game voice actors, for the most part, are absolute shit. I'd rather imagine for myself what my character sounds like, especially in an RPG where you make your character yourself; I don;t want a "one voice fits all" approach to my character, where my elf sounds like an orc who sounds like a Breton and so on.

Ditto. I try not to judge people who think the opposite, but I can't help but think if you need a talking playable character you're a simpleton. Not that there is anything wrong with Geralt, Commander Shepard, and so on, I just think it's better leaving it up to the player's imagination.

I always prefer a ready-made, properly voice-acted protagonist. The Witcher 3, Mass Effect 2 (I guess it applies to the entire of those franchises) with Geralt & Shephard are much preferred. Same with Final Fantasy, Tidus, Noctis, Cloud etc I would pick those characters over anything I can customise with a shitty slider lol

A big fat no.

Having a character forced upon you by the developers in a game that's supposed to let you create your own character is complete poop. Before I uninstalled Fallout 4 as soon as I began seeing how lazily made and boring it is, I remember being annoyed by my character saying things I don't want him to say.

A no for me. Games like Fallout and TES doesn't need voiced main character. Also I really hated it when you pick an option like in Mass Effect or Fallout 4, they sounded different than what you thought the option gonna be.

@uninspiredcup:

Looking at the poll now and I'm honestly surprised at the results. How could you not WANT your character to have a voice?! It's like, the most obvious thing in modern rpg gaming! That was probably the best thing Bethesda brought to Fallout 4. And one of the reasons why I enjoyed it more than Fallout 3.

I get that some people have this voice in their minds when they're making up characters but at some point, you're going to at least want to hear them talk. It's just so weird to not have a voiced player character in this day and age. Unless, of course, it's a character like Link who just doesn't talk at all.

@Pedro:

It would also be nice to have at least as an option. Like, you can choose your character to have a voice or you can choose to just have subtitles. Sword Art Online had a good idea with that.

Because it is immersion breaking as hell. WHen you create your own character, you probably have a set tone you imagine FOR that character. When your character speaks for you, and breaks not only the voice but general tone, immersion goes down the toilet.

And don't even get me started on Dialogue Wheels, or Vague response lists.

There is a reason one of the most popular mods for Fallout 4 is one that reverts the dialogue to previous games.

@Maroxad:

I get your reasons I just hope that my opinion is in the majority. I don't wanna go back to voiceless mc's for future Fallout and Elder Scroll-ish games. BTW, what's the name of the mod you were talking about for Fallout 4?

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/27216

2 of the most notable features of this mod is the removal of the dialogue wheel in favor of a tree. Another of its key features is to mute the protagonist.

I would love to have a game like this where you do not need to exhaust all dialogue options. Playing ES or Witcher and needing to talk to everyone just drags. I enjoy games where the NPCs say what they need to say in passing, and you either did what they wanted you to do to trigger the next interaction or you didnt.

You can still get choice and consequence here without having a robust dialogue menu. The main character doesnt need to say a word IMO.

It was a fun experiment in 4, but no... limits our options.

For something like Mass Effect or Witcher, it's fine. Fallout or Elder Scrolls? No...

@Cloud_imperium said:

That feels more like Nintendo dialogue options.

@Pedro said:

@Cloud_imperium said:

That feels more like Nintendo dialogue options.

True, they have an entire game series focused on animal cruelty.

No. I'd rather them focus on better writing. I think for these type of RPG's, you potentially gain more depth & immersion out of them without voice acting for the main character (e.g. more dialogue options, context, potentially less linear), than with it (e.g. less choices, more linear, higher budget).

Based on what I've noticed throughout the years at least..

Don't care either way. I tried to give a chance to Bethesda RGPs a couple of times and always quit after an hour or so. They suck at developing games and Todd Howard is a hack like Kojima.

Only if it's Todd Howard's voice so I can smash my head so fast against the wall that I travel through the speed of light.

No. It never made sense for these kinds of games. I guess they got influenced by Mass Effect and BioWare games somewhere along the way.

I'd rather they go back to a silent protagonist. It makes more sense for games like TES where you create your own character and role play as whoever you want to be.

I have no faith in ES6 at all. I just don't like the trend of games Bethesda has been making.

To answer the question? Keep it silent. Works for me in these massive RPGs.

there's been plenty of games with character creation that gave a set of voices to choose from. i could see them adding this as an option in an Elder Scrolls title but hopefully they would also give the option to choose neither.

this belongs in the Games Discussion section, not System Wars. the entire Gamespot forum section has become an un-moderated mess of off-topic discussions and off-section threads. just get used to it.

All i want is for them to use an engine that isn't from 1977.