Not trolling actually.

He was trying to call you an idiot. Coincidentally though, his example was right on the mark about you in terms of how you enjoy entertainment, but not about your intelligence.

When I saw this quoted, I laughed because I thought the person quoting it had missed the sarcasm.
But...you're serious. In my opinion, there is nothing more immersive then a good book. And reading
the book is just one aspect of literature. Writing is your interaction. And both bear endless possibilities.
Don't get me wrong - if you don't enjoy reading, that's perfectly fine, plenty of intelligent people don't.
But saying that books are not immersive isn't true, atleast not for everybody.

call me crazy but I would not mind massive amounts of unvoiced text in a game like skyrim

I read that as a compliment; "slick" meaning polished & exceptional voiced dialog. (But simply less of it.)

I do hate Zelda. It's complete garbage, and even it's most current rendition has heavily dated graphics.

I read it as derogatory, with 'slick' being slippery and deceiving. Like a slick lawyer pulling the wool over the eyes of a jury, or a slick talking politician doing the same with voters. A slick talking used car salesman talking you into buying a lemon.

How does someone hate Zelda? I can understand if adventure/puzzle games aren't your cup of tea, but to call it garbage makes me dismiss your opinion of any video game outright.


Nope. Slick meant slick, as in "cool." I'm not sure what slippery and deceiving voice acting could be.... ???

Not really as a pop-up book would not keep my attention either, so he was wrong.



When I said that I meant just from my perspective sorry, I understand everyone has different ways of taking in information. I would like to read books, but they just aren't for me. My point with that is making tons of text dialogue with no voice acting would alienate me and people like me from the game, Skyrim has a balance for all as it stands at the moment and i believe it should remain like that.

Sad statement if you are older than 25~ish. Not surprising if you are younger than that.


Whatever the case, voice work is well known for being a quick attention grabber, there hasn't been a single game yet that is both open world and has deep voice acting for every single character in the game.

Ummm... ever heard of a little game called Fallout: New Vegas?

Pretty sure Skyrim has a hell of a lot more NPC's than NV... not to mention the size of the world is much, much bigger.

I haven't played it, so I'm not going to assume that it has deep voice dialog and voice acting for every single NPC in the game.

He emphasized 'every single' character in the game. NV only had it for characters who were actually worth talking to. But there were many 'characters' that were essentially just window dressing, part of the scenery. Every single character isn't a necessary standard for telling a great story in an open world game.

That is one of the things New Vegas did great the characters are interesting and to me they have multilayered personalities.
Still the game could have had even deeper dialogue with text because of less money on voice acters and its easier to just write the story.
Not every character was fully voiced but the one of interest was, the game had a bunch of generic NPCs and NPCs that spoke one line.

And that's kind of the point of this thread.

We don't need the guy who works with Belethor at the shop to voice his every single line. Instead he could greet us with:

"Hello, have we met before? I am the dude who works with Belethor in his shop, have you ever been there?"

And then never voice another thing again, everything else would be text.

Regardless, a game developer that lets you pick flowers and read books has no excuse
to not satisfy both sides of the argument. Just because its never been done on this scale
before certainly doesn't mean it can't be done, especially by Bethesda.

The guy who works in Belethor's shop doesn't need lines. Really, if what he has to say isn't worth voicing, it's not worth writing. Not every person has something to say, or even wants to talk to you. I guarantee if somebody I don't know approached me on the street and started yapping at me I'd just tell them to get lost.

Games are full of statics that are there just for the scenery. Trees, bushes, crates, boulders and other things you can't interact with that exist only to flesh out the scene. There is no reason NPCs that fill a similar roll can't or shouldn't exist.

I have no disagreement that non important NPCs should have no voiced lines. That's the way it should be.

I think this could also apply to buildings, which would offer much larger and more populated cities. Make them perma-locked-- just there for scenery. I found the towns in Skyrim to be lacking, even compared to much older games like Morrowind.

No, no they don't. I just did a quest like this where some guy wanted me to bring the ashes of his friend to a priest. The priest is literally in the building right next to us. I walk in and give him the ashes and he gives me 500 gold as a reward....

All together they have given you a huge amount of stuff, 100's of hours of content. Bethesda have done an amazing job with all aspects of the game which seemingly goes far to unappreciated. Seriously even bethesda can't do everything but they have tried and done very well.

A text based game is much more immersive, I'm not saying a voiced one cant be I just don't think that technology(Disc Storage) has come far enough to cover all the voice you would need to match a text based game not to mention the cost of voice actors.

And with voice actors you run into the problem of getting bad ones that can completely ruin the experience.

Graphics are good (better with mods), the world is huge, dungeons are beautiful, and the leveling system is interesting.

The story is mediocre, the guild stories are horrible, the dialogue is really bad, crafting is broken, races are meaningless, combat is bad (as usual), the spell system is bad, dungeon "puzzles" are laughable, there's no monster / dungeon boss variety, all around the writing is meh.

I wouldn't go so far as to say they've excelled in "all aspects." Still a great game, though.

What seems to be the main complaint against Skyrim is that it it lacks depth. For all the dungeons there are the game isn't what I'd call replayable. What really puts me off from starting a second character is that there is no faction system and most of my decisions don't have much weight. I feel like I can do everything I want to do (in terms of sidequests) with my first character. No amount dungeons and caves can change how I feel about the games severe lack of choices and consequences and the dialogue reflects that. Outright refusing people is pointless since they'll still keep the offer open and no matter what guild I become the leader of I can still do the questline of the opposing guilds (DB and the Imperial questline come to mind).

20.