Some of them do a good job.

*(Though some of them are not always used to the best of their ability.)

Th' hell with it I want http://nehrim.de/indexEV.htmlAlso, Risen, Gothic 3, (Deuche voice-work/english subs) Drakkansang series, (Again, Deuche vers) and lastly the Witcher series are fine examples of intriguing story and voice-work...(Except for the S***** American-accent voice- work for Geralt, the Polish version, 200 times better.) although we will have to look to indie devs to pick up the slack, You should definitely checkout this http://www.spidweb.com/, as his is the few remaining party-based traditional RPG around!

A game would be worth its $80 price tag if it had good voice-acting AND branching dialogue trees. It should not have to be a choice.

People deserve a better game. Graphics are not the end all of a great rpg, or game play mechanics. "Interaction' between rpgs and the player mimics AI. There must be more provision is this series for this experience or it will feel empty.
I think Bethesda gambled we wouldn't notice, or care; and they're half right.

Some do yes.

I can also agree with that but most is sub par at best.

Actually. Wrong.

if I click click click I die. What I do is use timing to dodge circle etc . I time my shield bashes to stop power attacks and if I've conserved stamina properly I follw up with apower attack and stagger them. There's always the possiblity that even a minor foe will get a really lucky hit and I find myself on the bad end of a finisher. The point is that combat is quite rich and unless you're crazy overpwered or playing on novice or have the reflexes of Neo you should already know this.

Magic. You have multiple spell damage effects good against differnt foes. You can lay down magical booby traps on the ground , produce zones of damaging energy. Enrage your foes, make them run in fear. The possiblities are quite expansive.

The only cop out I see is you refusing to see most of the interesting complexities of the game. I honestly don't understand folks who claim That click clic is all there is to combat .

I really think a dialogue is hard because in this thread I frankly think you've lost most of the debates you feel you've "obviously won"

I guess it depends on the person. As a Morrowind player , for me its obviously not impssible but voices make it way easier for me.

The thing is some people make sweeping comments like `impossible` because they`ve never had to play any games where it`s full text without the expectation of voiced dialogue. So, to them it`s impossible, which it isn`t. It`s just that their range of experience has not taken them this far. So since they haven`t experienced it, it must therefore be `impossible`.


Of course audible voices make it easier to get immersed. It should. In reality we talk face to face and there`s no magic text that appears, so I would of course prefer audible speech. It`s natural.

The only reaosn I`m a little against voiced dialogue is because of the obvious loss of detail we get in dialogue branches. Even today with the latest games they still don`t match the detail of story and dialogue of something like Morrowind. And as long as you are prepared to READ, and the story is GOOD, you WILL become immersed..

But it is not impossible at all to become totally immersed in a text only fps rpg, it really isn`t. Anyone who says that has not played games where they don`t always expect everything to be voiced.

When they have full voiced dialogue with the depth of Morrowind or Baldur`s gate or even Planescape Torment, then we can say there`s no need for text games.

I had the chance to play text based games when I started gaming in the late 90's. I played and loved games like Torment, Fallout 1&2, NWN, then Morrowind. Text was nice and it didn't bother me at all as it was the standard. Then the full voiced games like Gothic, Oblivion, Risen, Witcher, Mass Effect came and I wholeheartedly adopted them as the new standard. I love voiced dialogue. I simply like it more, it's not like I hate reading text or whatever, I can still play old text games and enjoy them but from a new game, especially a TES, I expect good quality in every department with no sacrifice from my part; and I don't necessarily blame the voices for bad or limited dialogue choices because I've played games that can do both, especially the BioWare games. So in conclusion I wish Bethesda keep the full voice acting and pull a New Vegas on us next time

We're getting WAY off topic here, but some things I can't ignore. I'm not trying to be mean. Honestly, I'm not-- but seriously? I've seen fan bois wearing the rose colored glasses before, but calling Bethesda combat "rich" has to take the cake. First, I play sword 'n board on Master with no a companion rule. Like I said before, sword 'n board is the ONLY form of combat that's even remotely interesting, because you can block things which (sort of) adds a timing element to combat. You being on the "bad end of a finisher" has nothing to do with how you play. You don't see your enemy's stamina. You don't know when the power attack is coming. "Reflexes" are irrelevant, unless you're talking about blocking a power attack (which is laughably easy with the shield perk to slow time.)


Yeah. Runes (or "booby traps"). I'm not seeing how that adds complexity to combat. Lay one down and lure an enemy (which, with the terrible AI, isn't hard) so it blows up. Resume tapping X. "Expansive" possibilites? You named 75% of them. Calm, Frenzy.... Fire bolt? CC (crowd control) in Skyrim doesn't add depth to combat itself. "Different effects against different foes"?? Ice, Fire, or Shock? They all do basically the same thing...


I still don't agree with anything you've said about combat, you're being hopelessly optimistic because you love this game (and so do I, but I'll still point out its obvious shortcomings)


If you say so.

That wouldn't work in Skyrim, reckoning is an arcade style combat system. It's also over the top like being able to juggle enemies with arrows, could you imagine that in Skyrim? It would not go down well with the players.

It's weird to play through a game where every single thing communicates in complete silence, I would just end up skipping through all the text for quests or read it but not feel like I was there, I would just feel like I had something to read. I would rather bethesada left journals lying around everywhere than talking to NPC's with no voice.

What this good sir said.

Fallout: NV proved you can have an open-world game with fully voiced branching dialogue. It just takes the will to organise and record it all. I think Bethesda would be afraid that someone might miss something in a single play through (their philosophy seems to be that the player can experience EVERYTHING playing the game once). In NV you can speak to to Caesar and entirely miss his lengthy back-story monologue if you select the 'wrong' response. You have to play through the game a few times to hear everything.

For me the issue is stylistic rather than technical. You can argue that, unlike a movie, a vide game is an interactive medium more akin to a book, so having text dialogue is MORE immersive, as it allows for imagination. As with a book the player/reader gives the characters their voice and personality, so the experience becomes more personal. I like reading so I don't mind text, but the trend seems to be to try to make video games a more movie-like experience, rather than have a unique flavour of their own.

I see what you did there. You want people to choose between 2 different options with no compromise. Well, I don't think it's such a black and white issue as you make it.

One is not evil and the other is not the savior of RPG games. I like voice acting in immersive first person RPG games like Skyrim. My feeling is that the style of game is to immerse you in the reality of the game world as much as possible so the evolution of voice acting is part of a natural progression towards a "virtual world" setting.

Don't get me wrong, I love Morrowind, and the previous 2 games (and even Oblivion) but a voice-to-text ratio like Baldur's Gate 1 or 2 Shadows of Amn is fine for a top-down, party-based, 3rd person style RPG. I just think more voice acting is a better fit for a first person style of play. Although it's not perfect (especially Oblivion) I enjoy the way Skyrim and Oblivion try to have completely voiced dialogue. I read alot of books in both real life and in-game, but I usually play with subtitles Off for immersion in the 3d world of Skyrim (and Oblivion).

That said, I wouldn't mind some more dialogue branches and different ways of completing quests. Look at the original Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic games - they had some pretty in-depth character dialogue trees with a lot of character development for your companions, and they were designed to have multiple outcomes to the game depending on your decisions. KOTOR 2 : Sith Lords did this especially in depth.

So it is possible to compromise between the two - you can do voiced dialogue options a little better than Skyrim, but compromises might have had to be made in some other areas like voice actor quality. I like the voice acting, but I just wish there were a few more options.

Thanks for that effort. Basically shows the power/flexibility of text.
Now multiply by many characters.
Set up dialogue dependencies between many of them.
Voice all dialogue.
I don't see that as a problem either.
If the story and graphics are "good," gamers will upgrade their computers for this.
(I've done that twice, once a graphics card to play NOLF, then an entire PC to play Saboteur.)
The game will cost at least a hundred bucks to purchase..
And it will sell in the millions.
Air Jordans proved that already.

We know it's a daunting task, but it can be done.
Imagine the replayability. Almost endless.
The "Moon Mission" of games.
Will it ever happen?
I tend to think not. But I can dream.

Well I'm uncertain of this but I think that they can only fit so much audio on a 360 or PS3 disc before it exceeds the space.
A model takes very little to replicate, I've replicated like 50 cazadors in New Vegas and the file size was something like 40kb.
But try replicating audio files with 50 and the size becomes tremendously big.

That's just my take on it though.

Just recorded a sound file with the default sound recorder for windows, I spoke out a line that one could expect to hear and it became 13 seconds long.
Seems reasonable enough right.
Okay, so I dunno which file type they use for games, especially not for 360 and PS3, but let's just roll with this one and copy it by 50, the originals size is: 189kb
And 189kb x 50 = 9,04MB. (I actually copy pasted this file 50 times and did not use the calculator)

I think that's the problem with branching complex dialogue and voice acting.

That game is tap A tap a tap a tap a, its just a button mash fest that locks onto your enemy with auto aim.

It has no more depth than that, ugh I have yet to play it yet.

Its abig button mash fest, and the graphics are early 360 graphics at best. My friend is a fan of hack and slash games, he played it ten minutes and was like, seriously? And when you unlock more skills, they get added into the sequence of mashing, its ridiculous.

That sounds moronic, I am going to try it and see if it has anything to hold my attention but I am not a button mashing kind of guy. Graphics are not an issue for me: how about the magic system I heard that was really good.

It -looks- good, as in its pretty. Again, it gets added into the button mashing sequences. More things you unlock, the more sequences there are.

Sounds tedious I am just going to have to try it out.

Yep, thats the best advice, get the demo if possible, dont waste the money and then be disappointed