I'm so sick of hearing Farkas' voice for every tough guy I meet.

yeah, the voice acting is still not good.

But if they didn't use the same stereotypical voices delivered by the same voice actors, stupid people wouldn't be able to decide what kind of NPC they were dealing with. It's all part of streamlining, y'know.

/sarcasm

Would have been nice.

i wonder if the people they hired even know people can change there voice.

Anyway, still better than oblivion XD
I think it is better now, of course there is always room for improvement,that would have come naturally with a litle more of hard work, and love.

I watched a video of the game Devs speaking about how they only had a dozen voice actors for Oblivion. In this game they had over a hundred. I like to know where exactly.

While the main characters do have different voices most of the back-round characters you interact with the most sound all alike. I spoke to this one insane beggar, different voice and sounded good. Then I walked past him and he was talking in a different voice and no insanity at all.

Then you have the guards, all the females sound alike and all the males sound alike. And it does not matter which city you go to either. To me the females sound like they are doing a Jamaican accent and males are doing a poor impersonation of Arnold S.

At least the voice acting in Oblivion was not so annoying and forgivable, here not so much.

I think certain voice actors got overused. There are many voices in the game you only hear from a couple NPCs. If they had been used a little more, it would have helped.

Also, the guys who do Farkas and the Whiterun mage both have distinctive voices, so it's extremely easy to recognize.

Often they don't know they are doing different characters. They come in for their recording session, get paid at least $500 per hour (if they are actors union, otherwise it's negotiable- anime cartoonists for example probably make $5.00 an hour ), and are given a list of lines to read with notes for inflection (Snobby Noble, e.g.)

Then the devs take these voices from the database and assign them to characters.

*7 voice actors for Oblivion* OH MAH GAWD SO B@D
*70 voice actors for Skyrim* OH MAH GAWD SO B@D

Nothing to see here folks, move along.

/facepalm

Yeah I agree, It still feels like skyrim has 10 voiceactors or something, the guards is the worst, they all sound the same and says the same things in every city.

Normally I would disregard a comment like this but... you do look like Ace Ventura...

The voice actors only do what they are told to do. It's not their fault.

*700 voice actors* TOO MUCH SPEECH SO B@D

The game is enjoyable to a point where I don't really care, as obvious as it is. Plus, they DO attempt to do different voices. In some cases, they succeed. A different face on the character helps.

IMO they should just have just made text dialogue instead.

Anyone know who's the guy that does The Archmage's voice? If you haven't heard him then there is another NPC everyone hates - Nazeem. Who does their voice? And the voice of Lucien Lachance's spirit?

Stop nitpicking

Id love just text with some hums and haws to give the character audio definition, lika zelda. that way the game would be alot more extendable, and they could make alot more interesting quests and branching quests. ah but alas, its the age of voice acting in gaming now. not until they can synthesize human voices and emotions will we see such things again. however honestly, the VA is decent. I feel like if they have so many male actors they should get more male voice actors. I feel like theres Arnold, Belathor, Olfrid Battleborn, and nazeem. then unique characters. the VA is good, but i get the feeling that resources could have been used more effectively. but who knows, im not a game maker.

There are 3 different VAs for each gender of each race which totals up to 60, with the remainder of the VAs having unique roles like Tullius and Ulfric. The problem is that the games population is made up of mostly Nords with the guards of towns being the most obvious offenders. So despite having a ton more VA's than Oblivion had you still run into a lot of the same voices due to bad planning.

The Voice Actors used to do different voices, then they took an arrow in the knee.

I can't even list 3 named female wood elfs in the game

Anyway, one thing I liked is that Human races have accent, and Beast races have variations between then

The voice acting is good... for the most part. Though it'd be nice if they had a variation in them, like guards from different keeps speak in different accents.
I'm still confused why would they give Arvel the Shift a unique voice actor, and not the generic Bandit one.

Needs more Borat.

"Here is sword of flaming doom....(40 second pause)....not!"

Indeed... they could have made diferent voice tones for a more variety into the voice of the NPC's.... totally agreed.