Even if we get 100% support for this on the forums it still won’t be implemented in the next TES, or in FO4. You know critics will tear into Beth like crazy if they do this and their sales will suffer. There is just no way to avoid voice acting everything and still looking good to modern day reviewers and critics who seem to be fascinated by pretty graphics and terrified by deep meaningful choices. Also, even if they did do just text there is just no guarantee that it would be any better, we haven’t seen any good writing from Beth since morrowind and that was a long time ago.

deep meaningful choices such as?

To answer this, I don't have time to play through this game over and over just to see the stories so I would want bethesda to spend time on other things apart from the story to make the game more polished, also you will find most people including me do not like decisions that lock us out of content. It might seem like a bad assumption when you ask people on the forum, but thats because the average type of people that visit the forum are not the same as the average player who plays RPG's, and forum goers opinions are the vocal minority of the player base. That's why it's useless to ask or demand anything on forums.

Valid points, and valid position... but also contrary to basic RPG precepts.... The hallmark of a good RPG is to have more assets than a player will see in one session; assets that only come into play when called for by one of the various possible PCs in one of many, many conditional situations; (and to cut off content that is inappropriate for some PCs).

** I've played Fallout 2 on and off for 10 years and have not yet seen it all.

I would rather have full voice acting, but its touchy for me. Weak acting can really kill a game. Luckily this game has superb voice acting.

But they talk to much. Walking around towns, I wish it was text based sometimes.

Ever played Gothic 3? That game had choice which would change the game world and the story. There were three different outcomes for the main quest(s) and they weren’t just end game choices. They were separate quest branches. Of course the game was so bloody buggy and unfinished it was hard to enjoy all that BUT IT WAS THERE lol.

Written dialogue:

• Allows for MUCH more content
  
• More fleshed out NPCs
  
• More dialogue choices, which in turn means much better character development
  
• More left to the player's own imagination (one of the reasons why people will often say that a book is better than it's film adaptation)
  
• Easier to edit

Voiced dialogue:

• Greater sense of immersion (if done properly, without recycled voices and lines)

...Seems like an obvious choice to me. I'm amazed so many people are trying to defend fully voiced dialogue. To me, it's easily one of, if not the worst thing to happen to the RPG genre.

Agreed. When it's well done, full voice really can add to the experience. When its overdone (done too much) ... it really can take away from it IMO.

Man, you must hate Zelda then.

I think a lack of voice acting breaks immersion a lot and is actually very boring to play through, you might have more story but you end up spending all your game time in silence reading, I don't read books because the lack of immersion and interaction put me to sleep. I really hope in the next elder scrolls we can have our own character have a voice because having a muted character really svcks imo, I also concede it would be too much work. No voice acting at all would really put me off the game in all honesty, I love being able to over hear conversations as I'm walking past, no amount of story would make up for missing out on little things like that.

Pick up George Martin's "A Game of Thrones." I promise you'll change your mind.

i'll take a look

http://www.amazon.com/Shogun-Asian-Chronology-James-Clavell/dp/0385343248/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1330291761&sr=8-4 ~James Clavell

A close second favorite to the Song of Fire and Ice series... but Clavell isn't my favorite novelist. Shogun is beyond amazing, but I couldn't finish any of his other books

Agreed!
Anything by Tolkien will do just as well.

On my "very good guy" playtrough I don't want to steal ANYTHING. I want a 0 at all time in the stats. Now this beggar in whiterun wants some argonian ale...it's like worth 7 gold, why the hell can't I pay for it *.*

Does Bethesda really need to spend loads of money on 'well known' voice actors? How about hiring 'less well known' voice actors for less money which can then be used in deep dialogue trees?

I don't really mind having to read the text but I would prefer voice acting as it makes the game have a more realistic feel. Everybody always moans about the lack of NPC intelligence and surely if they cannot talk it would just cause more moaning?

I think the main problem is--they had the opportunity to make more, fully-voiced dialogue---but chose not to. The Bethesda writers are just not as prolific as the writers who did New Vegas. The Main story was well done, but I feel that a lot of the game was lacking severely. It was far to...systematic.

Press A: Listen to someone whine.

Press A: They say "oh...if only there was some brave, noble warrior to go get my sweetroll back from dungeon [insert random dungeon]

Press A: Accept quest.

[senselessly kill random enemies with no unique dialogue or story. Take sweetroll. Bring back sweetroll]

Press A: "Oh...thank you. Here's 1000 gold for your trouble!"


Where do I get to make any choices in what I say?
Where do I get to ask for more information--what if this person's sweetroll was justly taken?
Why does everyone trust me without having to be convinced?
Why are all persaude/intimidate options speech-level sensitive? Why cant you just choose dialogue lines to convince people?
Why is the conversation system so bad?

Here's my input: both are mandatory. I can remember last time I played a text+voice game, that was Morrowind yesterday. But I can't remember last time I bought a game like that. It wouldn't surprise me if it's the same old Morrowind. I can still play Morrowind because it's Morrowind, but I'd never buy a 2012+ game with dominant text, be it a TES. I don't have a reasonable explanation, it's probably the habit, I've been spoiled with so many recent games with high production value on the cinematic experience part (visuals, sounds, voices, special effects) that I'm now percieving my gaming more like a movie-like experience than a book-like experience. I'm not against substance and meaningful choices, by the contrary, it's just that I can't trade the cinematic experience for more dialogue and dialogue options, I'll just pick the best games that have voice acting.

remember when you are getting those quests, the NPC's are treating you as a mercenary, "you get me this and I'll give you gold" it doesn't matter if it was justly taken, they are paying you to go and do what they ask, you can always tell them no. The conversation system is far better then in oblivion, the speech mechanic back then was the most frustrating horrible thing bethesda could've ever invented as a chat system. persuade/intimidate is level sensetive so we don't have to have a stupid pie to level speech, it's a lot more fluent mechanic rather than a minigame everytime you want to know something from the NPC.

great point.

and, don't forget that attacking wolves and such FIRST is considered a freakin ASSAULT in the stats.

unbelievable.

Why would a good guy want to fuel a beggars drinking problem though?

Don't laugh, but I liked that pie chart.
It allowed them to imply the themes of random banter without having to write or record any of it, or repeat it ad nauseum with every other NPC you talked to; (and it allowed the NPC's personality influence what manner of persuasion worked with them ~or caused insult).

For me it's quite simple: no voiced dialogue, no buy. Like someone said a modern game must be developed like a movie and both audio and video components must be top notch for the immersion. Bethesda will never go back to tons of text because most of the 10 million Skyrim buyers would run screaming. The hedonist old school rpg'ers who prefer isometric camera and 16x16 pixels textures as long as the dialogue is rich are a dying breed and are no longer catered by the game studios, and Bethesda is clearly one of the most casual oriented studios to increase the fanbase.

Yeah true, looking at it like that is fine, but even with that the thought of that thing making a return in any TES game makes me want to throw my computer out of the window XD