Gives space to use imagination, and I'd personally rather it stayed that way.

Aside to other points made, your character could save the world and be a utter badass in a orange suit without saying a word.

cookie for those that get the reference (as easy as it may be)

It never bothered me and agree with others about this.

I assure you, nothing will go wrong.

too much to record, ten races, 2 genders plus they would need a few voice options for each so lets say 5 for each like in dragons age 10x2x5=100.... thats alot more voice actors and alot more time and space not on gameplay.

honestly the only rpg that has ever pulled off having the main character voiced was the mass effect series.. ever other game with it is horrible

Exactly

You don't seem to understand how this works. This is not any random character. This is any of billions of possible characters of different personalities and genders and races all in one, who has an ENOURMOUS amount of conversations to take part in. You have to record every concievable response for your player, which could be thousands of lines, and you'd have to do this 20 times to just have 1 voice for each race/gender, and even then, you're stuck with your character portraying a particular personality in their voice, which may be completely different from the character you want to roleplay. And finally, this means that people can't do mods that have new conversations without ruining immersion because suddenly the PC either doesn't speak his lines when he always did before, or he speaks with a different voice. An average character in Skyrim will have, what, 5-10 lines total? It's a big difference between ONE random character and ONE character who happens to be the player.

Im sure he'll forgive him for that microwave casserole debacle :cookie:

It allows players to use their imagination to craft a more personal version of their own hero. Voiced characters are more restrictive when it comes to roleplaying. Leave that to other games.

I think the number one reason for no talking is because it allows the player to put their own words, thoughts, motives to the character. If every opinion is made up for you it makes it more difficult to relate to your character. A great example of this is GTA 3. The silent hero is considered one of the best of the series. In San Andreas, Vice City, and 4 you play a moron who is hard to relate to because they tell you exactly why they make all the horrible decisions. They whine, they complain, they do things that seem against their characters. All because they are talking the entire time, not letting the player decide how they feel about anything.

Hardly...


It is possible in Fallout where you can only play as a human, but in TES you'll need to record all lines for all races.
Twice.

this.. voice acting takes up a lot of disk space and considering there is ten races and two genders thats twenty different voice actors all doing at least 5000 lines. mass effect did this and there was only one race and two genders and it still had to be put out on two disks because the voice acting in the game is like a [censored] record breaker.. and for as long as Skyrim would be we would literally need an entire disk just for voice acting for the main character.. maybe not an entire one lol but you all get the point

I'll explain in Detail why having a voiced main character is bad.

DAO has a Silent Protagonist, Skyrim will have a silent, Fallout 3, Reckoning, Oblivion, etc. I bolded that part because that's an important detail that I'm highlighting. Having a Silent Protagonist allows more choices to be made in an RPG because it's texted based. I'll give an example from Dragon Age Origins. You meet up with a prisoner who is stuck in a cage, the prisoner say's that he's hungry and will exchange food for a key that he stole from some mages. Now you have 4 choices in this quest.

1. You leave and ignore him but you don't get his key.
2. You kill him and take the key.
3. You convince the guard to give you his food, the prisoner gives you his key.
4. You steal the food from the guard, the prisoner gives you his key.

Now how would that same scenario work in Dragon Age 2 or Mass Effect 1, 2, 3 which has a Voiced Protagonist

1. Good Option
2. Neutral Option
3. Bad Option

Now that sounds like it's 3 different choices, no it isn't due to the voiced character. With a voiced character you will have 2 choices max if that, unlike a Silent Protagonist which will have 4-6 choices. The neutral choice is usually the hybrid of the good and bad but all 3 lead to the same place.

I'll give another example with Fallout 3. Fallout 3 will have multiple choices that you could take with any certain quest, usually around 2 to 3. That doesn't sound like a lot but it's better then what a linear RPG would give you which is none. Having a voiced character will lead to a more linear RPG then what a silent Protagonist would lead towards.

Lastly I'll give one final example and it's probably the most important one. Having a voiced character will mean that it's not your character. The voiced character isn't going to know what you are going to do and with texted based conversations instead of voiced ones you have more choices instead of good, neutral or bad which those 3 lead to the same outcome.

They would have to do recordings for each six of all races and for many different scenarios.

I think when it comes to time invested vs outcome it simply isnt worth it for games that have a character generation like TES.

Because they know that the player has a better idea of what their character sounds like than what they can offer with fully voiced dialogue.