I've been hearing a lot of complains about how all the voices in Skyrim are all the same and how it felt like there was only 12 or so voice actors. While I wouldn't disagree, I personally think the problem lies in the fact that though Bethesda hired over 70 voice actors, the majority of them only voice a few characters( most of whom you usually don't see or hear for long) while the rest of the cast voices about a hundred each including generic npcs.

For instance lets compare both Michael Gough and Robin Atkin Downes

Michael Gough who is a very good and experienced voice actor does about 60 characters in the game (e.g Ralof, Vilkas etc) while Robin Atkin Downes, an amazing voice actor who voices characters in Resistance, Uncharted, God of War, Metal Gear Solid, Gears of War, Infamous, Ninja Gaiden,Team Fortress 2 , Dragon Age and many more is stuck with just Brynjolf when he could have potentially been used for more.

Was it also necessary to let Odahviing have his own unique voice actor when you only talk to him like twice? Lynda Carter who has some of the most experience with the Series given just TWO characters?

Because of this mismanagement, some of the most important characters you meet in Skyrim such as Ysgrammor, Jurgen Windcaller Olaf One-eye and a few Jarls are stuck with the Arnold Schwarzenegger sounding guy who would normally play the generic guards...

I believe Bethesda definitely stepped up their game by providing more voices, but due to poor management we ended up hearing the same people over and over again and the few unique voices there were are only heard a couple of times.

I've made this exact point before.

The problem is Skyrim followed New Vegas' formula while handling NPCs completely differently.
In New Vegas, anyone important has a unique voice actor. House, Caesar, Benny, Joshua Graham: they all get their own voice because they're important. Likewise, many of these characters offer an excess of 30 minutes of dialog. The anonymous characters or the not-so-important characters? They get voiced by the generic voice actor pool. The result is that every character feels unique, because you're getting long conversations with unique voices followed by short spurts of generic voices in-between, like commercial breaks between TV shows. The result is the voice acting as a whole feels better and many more characters feel unique. New Vegas has bad voice actors too (General Oliver), but it hides it well with proper voice actor management.

The problem is this formula doesn't work in Skyrim. While you can spend a good 40 minutes talking with Caesar about philosophy alone, you're really only gonna hear Clavicus Vile for about 5 minutes. The result is that while yes, the unique voice actors ARE there, their roles are TINY. The result is you hear the exact same voice actor over and over and over and over and over, and it gets REALLY old.

Skyrim simply should've realized they lack extensive characters and, instead of assigning particular voice actors to particular important characters, spread all 70 voice actors out evenly amongst ALL NPCs.

Just bad management, really.

I'm still gutted that Argonian males still have the same shouts as any of the human male races.

The existing Skyrim voice actors all do a very good job, but the game needs more (still a huge improvement from Oblivion).

I agree with the sentiments so far, the VA is not terrible in any sense. its just how its managed and spread out is very lackluster to me.

if anyone annoys me though its Gen Tullius, almost always sounds like he's reading from a script rather than putting himself in the situation.

I want Bethesda to get GOOD voice actors.

The games in the Elder Scrolls series need voice actors that sound more ethnic to make it believable. The new mer races to be honest sound terrible whereas the new Imperials, Redguards & Nords as they have made them have unique ethnic accents and it sounds better

The best Dunmer were in Morrowind. Mer accents should sound more Asiatic or Amerindian to make the world sound realistic with a rich cultural diversity like our own

ok. the voice acting is still bad.

No, you're just comparing a non-existent fantasy world to our own, trying to assign accents to each race. The accents themselves should be made up ones IMO.

While I agree that spreading the voices over many different NPC was a big mistake, the voice acting is overall good enough for me. What really bugs me the most is the Dunmer accent, no idea why they have made them sound so british. Every time I listen to them I'm like geez, are you a friggin' dark elf or an english butler? That, and the kids voices. For some reason young Nords sound like they came from Brooklyn, when they grow up they lose the accent and start talk like Scandinavians. Meh.

Oh don't get me wrong, I still think the individual voice acting is bad. It's bad when a character says "kom-rads" and then says "kom-raids" two seconds later.
It's also bad considering that Doc Mitchell of New Vegas = General Tullius and Joshua Graham = Dunmer males. While those two voice actors exhibit no problems or quirks whatsoever in New Vegas, suddenly in Skyrim they do. This doesn't so much say the voice actors themselves are bad, but rather, again, that the directing and management of the voice actors is bad. Obviously someone's calling the shots on who voices who and directing the voice actors on how to pronounce something (or NOT directing them, that might be the problem...), and they're not exactly doing a stellar job.

I love this.

And yeah I love Dunmer voice in Morrowind.
But in Skyrim isn't that bad, Oblivion had it worst.

It amazes me why in the world they changed it. The Altmer voices are as bad. The lady in the clothes shop in Solitude sounds like a cheap joke gone seriously wrong.

Joanna Lumley is the last voice I'd want for an Altmer

"Ok so basically I want you to speak with a tone that announces you're the antagonist to the world and suggests you burn kittens. Yeah just like that, great. Print it."

I think they blew too much of their budget on actors such as Christopher Plummer, Max von Sydow and Joan Allen when it could be used to hire more people(Sadly it seems Dishonored is going the same route ). To be honest I found them to be some of the most atrocious voice acting I've seen in the game. On the other hand Ulfric Stormcloak, Astrid and Cicero were pretty well done.

I agree. I actually think they should save their money on big names and just employ lesser known strong voice actors from various parts of the globe due to the type of world it is set in.

It different for games like Fallout where the accents are mostly American based (I'm hoping for Clint Eastwood on the next Fallout game )

+1

Though I agree, I think the unimportant FNV npcs are a little toooooo generic, like "Patrolling the Mojave makes you wish for a nuclear winter" is more annoying to me now than arrow in the knee. Some of the villagers and city folks in Skyrim at least say a couple unique lines of dialogue before going into the "Hmm" or "What do you need?" phase

I agree. Robin's an amazing VA, he should have done more than just Brynjolf. They could have spread out the talent more.

Kinda related but I do hope they bring Michael Mack back to voice someone, even if it's just one character. I kinda wished he would've voiced Isran, but I still remain hopeful they'll bring him back to voice in another DLC. He's like second only to Wes Johnson in awesomeness, and he's voiced Redguards since, well, Redguard.

Anyway I still love how Nazir voiced by Three Dog in Fallout 3.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSUEE_e8a0I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLQ3Uw0S4eQ&feature=watch_response

And really? I much prefer "what do you need" to "I was born in 176, my mother liked to pick snowberries in her spare time. I have a fingernail collection in my basemant." The latter is severely unrealistic. A stranger asking "what do you need" is exactly how it should be.

Needed more Jeff Baker, a lot less generic loud American guys (no political feelings at all, just sounds badly out of place in fantasy viking land). Atrocious writing, and cockney Dunmer were the last straw. I play with the volume off and subtitles on now.

That said, Skyrim's VA has its moments (some of the overused "nordic" voices are pretty good, until their over-use becomes apparent, ie for about 5 minutes of play). I agree with the OP.

To their credit, at least the characters have various ways of saying the lines, with different inflections and whatnot.

What, you didn't like having to remember which Male Nord Authority Figure you were speaking to, or hearing Ysolde argue with Ysold-er- Olfinna, or Olfrid and Vignar explaining how much the other clan svcks in the exact same voice?

For shame!

At least they got Julie Farkas to play Serana.

Still not sure what's going on with the voiceboxes of the Dunmer over the last 200 years. Hearing Jiub speak for the first time was amazing. Hearing that [censored] in a cell across from yours in Oblivion going "He he he he he he he!" was painful. I started to get into the dunmer males of Skyrim the first time I heard one talking until Joshua Graham threw in a sudden Irish / poor British cockney curveball at the last minute.

I agree with the sentiment that they blow their money early on too many big name people who either get next to no lines, or deliver absolutely atrocious performances.

Malcolm McDowell as J.H. Eden though was pretty good. Coming out of the Vault for the first time and hearing him say everything would be okay was pretty amazing.

Did you notice Jarl Balgruuf and Farengar pronounce each other's names differently every time they say them?