I accept that in this modern RPG age voice acting is probably necessary, but some of it in Skyrim had me cringing. Mehrunes Dagon sounds exactly like the elevator host in Disneyland's Haunted Mansion. The old Blades member is so obviously Max von Sydow it immediately takes me out of the fantasy immersion. That is not to say all voice acting is bad, most of the stuff in the Winterhold College was good. Alduin sounded pretty badass too.

I guess with text you had the option of (1) imagining any kind of voice you wanted on an npc, and (2) exponentially more dialogue opportunities.

A minor issue to an otherwise great game though.

I agree that hiring those famous actors like Max wasn't the best idea but I like the voice acting in general.

Im happy with it. Way better then some games Ive played.

I like the voice acting, but there are a couple of things I wish they'd done.
First, I wish they had recorded marriage dialog for every voice.
Secondly, I was hoping for some of the voices from Oblivion to also be included (if there are, I haven't noticed it yet)

Not disappointed in the least. I'd love to see hear more variety in voices, but otherwise it's perfect. Especially perfect in comparison with a localised version. Bad guys speaking with, for example, the voice of a Disney's Alladdin? No, thanks.

I thought the voice acting was good. If you have a look at the credits on UESP, there are loads of voices, so the diversity is pretty good.

But at the same time, I did like the text dialogue in Morrowind. I think Oblivion had it right with a mix of both.

I know what you mean. Morrowind and Oblivion really shared the same pool of voice actors. Not heard many of them in Skyrim.

Personally, I like it

Not to mention not hiring someone famous like that would slash budgetary expenses by like 1/10

OK, but too many of the voices are by the same actors - so you hear the same voices all over Skyrim. Should try and digitally modify voices to make them sound a little bit different even when the same actor/actress is voicing multiple characters

I could go for simple voice acting to set the mood of the npc, and more comprehensive dialog in a text. Sometimes I hate listening through half of the dialog skyrim has to offer.

It is far from the worst I have heard and I generally like it. I see no need for all these big names though, it just costs more money.

I have never been to Disneyland. Max von Sydow's voice is anonymous to me. Claims of text providing exponentially more dialog opportunities are likely exponentially exaggerated.

I am the only one who turns down the voices slide? I grew up reading everything on the screen and I don't have lost that habit. I'm also a fast reader so I hate when I have to wait for the spoken dialogue to end before advancing to the next line

It is not the voice acting that is bad. It simply is the audio that is complete crap. I have good headphones and and decent sound system. As I am playing I can actually hear the audio go up and down at times. They did a horrid job on it IMHO even compared to Oblivion. The music and voices seem to go up and down in volume after you save, load, wait, or enter someplace. It honestly needs to be patched. I know it is Skyrim itself because none of my other games have this problem.

No, you are not the only one.

Everything's fine in my game. The problem is at your end.

For whats its worth. Many voices in Dragon Age sound like they are voiced by Star Trek actors, and thats because they ARE voiced by Star Trek actors. Dont be surprised to hear cptn Janeway. Her role is fitting too.

The voice acting is good, but I would rather see game designers come up with an awesome 'txt reader' that would allow them to create limitless variations in voices with specific parameters and particular accents on some races. It would also cut down on the load of memory-space that is required to store voice acting and give the CK modders a base to include voices without 'do it yourself' voice acting (which takes talent, time, and loads of memory space)

I know current txt readers kind of svck (market end at least) so I guess we will just have to wait.

I do like the voice acting, when they are not always repeating themselves. Anything said over and over can get annoying no matter who is saying it, in most situations.

They could have used three times more voices, because one gets to hear the same ones too often. There is no voice where I could say, "This voice I have not heard for a while!" The voice acting is also not as fun as Japanese voice acting, but it is not bad nor am I disappointed of it. It gives life to the game and does not ridicule it, instead it is doing its job. Hopefully will they have made enough money with Skyrim to hire more voice actors for their next game.

I agree with that totally. While the acting is good, there are not enough actors. I think that it is a matter of memory-space rather than having the money to hire them though.

For a completely open world game, with eight bajillion quests and hundreds of npcs who can only be filed under extras, not a bad job imo. And no one anywhere says 'M'kay', so it could be worse.

My issue with the voice acting is:

1. Repeated voices. It's really grating to see what you thought was a unique voice, coming out of someone else. This is especially troubling with some voice actors Bethesda chose, because I KNOW the actor has more range than that, yet they are using the exact same voice for a completely different person.

2. Repeated lines. This one annoys me a lot. They got all these voice actors, but for some reason directed them to say the exact same thing as someone else, but in a different voice. I really don't understand that, and it makes some situations really ridiculous, like a child running up to a dead dragon being absorbed saying "In all my years I have never seen such a thing." Really? Seriously?

I didn't recognize any voice in the game lol

but i liked it, it had some diversity to it but still got repetitive

All vendors should have equal functionality. Which means paths like this:
...voice1/vendor_weapon/hello_1.ogg
...voice1/vendor_weapon/hello_2.ogg
...voice1/vendor_weapon/hello_3.ogg
...voice2/vendor_weapon/hello_1.ogg
...voice2/vendor_weapon/hello_2.ogg

Are unavoidable without redirecting too much time and effort.

I think the voice acting itself is good, very good sometimes.

The variety of dialogue is very poor especially for shop owners and guards etc