Well its okay. But all the voices are the same so that is a little lame.

Though I agree- I would have loved to hear more from Arngeir and Esbern, I felt that at least Arngeir (Plummer) was used appropriately. Speaking with Arngeir throughout the main quest (which was too short, which is another topic entirely, but still relevant to how these two characters were used too briefly), I was able to develop a memorable relationship with that character; he took on the "Gandalf"-type role of Skyrim (again, LOTR is the bar for modern fantasy... I suppose it's better to say that he's the Socratic mentor?).

Esbern got, like, 10 minutes total to appear in-game, which was really wasted.

Accents are a bit ridiculous sometimes but I still think they got some really good voice acting for this, which is saying a lot for a fantasy game.

And they got a whole cast of real voice actors, first time ever. I remember when Oblivion came out and they said they had the dude from Star Trek along with a star studded cast of voice actors, and then it came out and there were only like 3 other famous people. But Skyrim's got Charles Martinet, Max Von Sydow, Michael Hogan, Linda Carter, Joan Allen, Christopher Plummer, and Vladimir Kulich.

But Esbern's does.

Never played Oblivion? Skyrim is lightyears ahead.

The voice acting itself is excellent, it's just the character animations and facial expressions during dialogue that bring it down a bit.

Sheogorth's accent and voice-acting is attrocious. Plus he is about as 'mad' as a something that is not very mad at all. Nice idea for character, but done terribly....

It's vastly improved over Oblivion's voice acting where they blew their entire budget on Captain Picard and Boromir , then had roughly enough money left for six people to voice the rest of the NPCs. As someone has already said, it could be very disconcerting to be speaking to a beggar, who would switch from sounding like a polished aristocrat and drunk beggar from sentence to sentence.

It's terrible. The expense of 100% voice acting forces the devs to cut serious corners when it comes to branching dialogue options and consequences. I hate it because it's shallow.

I like it. Good variety

for there being over 70 actors, they must be like in caves because i keep running into the same voices, all the guy bards are the same annoying voice as the bard in whiterun, i keep runing into rolaf's voice every were.

but it has improved by allot.

could use some work but much much much better then oblivion.

Nice idea for a character? You talk like his first appearance was Skyrim. He is brilliant, and Wes Johnon is an amazing voice actor! You have to be the only person I've heard of that dislikes Sheogorath!

Agree, agree, and "I doooo agreee" XP... That one definitely annoyed me the most!

No I thought he was [censored] in Oblivion too. I'm sorry I dunno what else the fella has done but Wes, if that's the guy who 'did' Sheogorath, is a very bad voice actor.

The voice acting is a huge improvement over Oblivion but it's still got a long way to go before it can match that in Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. And why does every other bloke sound like Robert Picardo from Star Trek Voyager when he's not even listed as a voice actor? Still keep expecting to hear "Please state the nature of the medical emergency" ....
I agree there needs to be much more dialogue (better written too) with more choice and branching storylines even if it means another several gigs added to the install.

I think it's great.
They seem to have worked really hard at getting the accents and making it really feel like it's placed in a specific region.
There have not been any voices that have really stood out as being at all clunky - it does seem to fit and there's enough variation that even the loops that play in forts and so forth don't get boring, for me at least.

Oh and Draugr can talk - [censored] me I nearly [censored] myself when one did almost next to me!!

http://vimeo.com/19558165, actually. And he gets a bad rap. Farengar is supposed to be snooty and in his world. He does a great job as Vorstag.

You realize you're talking about not only Sheogorath but Lucien Lachance? Blasphemy!

Well, in terms of what I was expecting because of the mass marketing, the voices aren't good. In terms of Oblivion, Skyrim is better but not by much.

If the animations reflected the voice acting, it might be more convincing. But aside from Cicero and a few dynamic scenes, there's very little convincing emoting going on. I find that characters that are actually doing something, even something as mundane as cleaning a glass, seem more "real". Props for the effort, but the main towns are the places that really needed to be diversified in their selection of voices. It's irritating to hear the same voice everywhere I go.

I really enjoy the guards in Skyrim. I'm still waiting for them to tell me to come with them if I want to live. Maybe they're busy crushing their enemies, seeing them driven before them and hearing the lamentation of their women.

It still gets repetirious very fast though, like in OB, FO3 and so on.


Gothic wasn't so bad in the German version, TW2 was mostly ok. But are you sure that he did voice AJ? I always imagined the actor of AJ beeing an 80 year old throut cancer patient.

I think the voice acting is good. I like to hear the guards talk for the most part.

Yeah, this reminds me before I go to bed for the night, the original KOTOR, on the XBOX so many years ago, had MUCH better voice acting than anything TES has ever done. And now, I'm too tired to go on. Bed.

And every other male sounds like Belethor/Mercer, etc. Just when you think you've had your fill of that cheese-grater-on-the-ear voice, you find yourself hearing Viarmo recite the Burning of King Olaf... twice!

Others have noticed that Farengar sounds like an imperfect automated voice program, or as I call it, a method voice-actor.

And I agree that more real actors would have been nice, the unfortunate thing with Max von Sydow is that either they ran out of money or maybe out of script before he left the studio. Anybody who continues with the Blades after Delphine's ultimatum will know just what I mean. If you don't, well, imagine someone (yourself, perhaps) trying to sound like a constipated Yoda...

He did the imperial males in Oblivion, Lucien Lachance, the Arena announcer and the guards as well as Sheogorath.

he was a good arena announcer at least