He/She does talk, what do you think he's doing when you're asking people questions and whatnot?

That, and he shouts.

Because voiced protagonists svck mudcrab dung.

Let's see... some quick math. Say the player character has about 5,000 lines of voice acting to be done. There are 10 races. That's 10x5000=50,000 lines. Even if you use a common 'human' voice for the 4 humanoid races, you still get somewhere in the range of 25,000 lines. Now add this to the fact that the game is localized & released in 5 languages, including dramatically different ones like Japanese.. That's about 250,000 lines of recorded spoken dialog for the player character ONLY. Not to mention that each NPC in the game has to be voiced and localized to 5 languages also. The cost for doing this would be astronomical. And I'm not adding the cost of hiring professional Hollywood actors/actresses to do voice acting for high-profile NPCs, like Christopher Plummer, Joan Allen, Sean Bean.

Games like Mass Effect can afford to have a voiced main character because they have 'only' about 20-40 hours worth of content. Also, the open world nature of Skyrim gives rise to the additional complexity that no player ever plays the game the same way.

Maybe if Skyrim had a billion dollar budget, it would be possible.

There we go, smart man/woman. That's exactly the problem, the voices are different, and when you read the choice you use your voice or the one you make up. Like a cool batman voice (No, i hate C-Bale's batman voice)

Thank. [censored]. God.


This too.


I'm against voiced PC's in RPG's too, but I feel I should say that Deus Ex 1, and 2 had a voiced protagonist.

Waait? What? DX3 was amazing. Tell me how they could have done it with a silent, player made character? It just wouldnt work. In DX3 you play as Adam Jensen. Nothing wrong with that, as long as they do it right, and I think they nailed it.

I'd prefer them not to talk, then I make up my own voice for them.

Neverwinter Nights has decent player character "voice" acting people!

I don't want someone telling me how I'm supposed to sound.

It will probably become an option sometime in the future when the technology will allow computer generated voice acting and the storage capacity will dwarf today's like today's dvd's dwarf a 3.5 floppy diskette.

Because he quickly learns powerful Thu'um. Same reason Greybeards don't talk.

JC Denton was voiced in the original Deus Ex too. It was a typical monotone, gravelly action-hero type voice and worked quite well for someone who was part machine. As you're playing a pre-determined character I don't mind that.

A voiced PC wouldn't work in Skyrim from a purely technical pint of view. 10 different races, male and female, would be a lot of expensive recording and bulky sound files. If some sort of voice pitch and tone slider could be implemented to go with the character creator it might work.

Because it's impossible to find a voice who sounds ok for every race, age, look (a thin man doesn't speak the same way than a massive one)
Because it's impossible to use enough voice actor to suit every configuration.
Because every element of the main character can be modified and the technology to easily modify a voice doesn't seem to be available right now.

When that thing starts talking a lot of players will be annoyed and I understand, it's too much of a hit or miss. If my Khajiit had a voice like Ri'Saad I'd be delighted and I could roleplay no probs, but if my Argonian sounded like Madesi it would be freaking annoying, they don't sound like fierce beasts at all, rather like a gay hairdresser. Threads like this aren't a good idea, someone from the management might read and be hit by a revelation that in order to be competitive, you must eliminate the spreadheety redundancies such as muted dialogue.

I disagree, I have an idea for what my characte would sound like, and I doubt that bethesda would add that exact voice, character decides the voice not the other way around. And you don't choose the voice of your character.

I remember this debate on the Bioware forums about DA and DA2. One of the developers of DA, Georg Zoeller, when asked about this stated during the making of DA that sure, they could use a voiced protagonist but then the game would be half the length. Some people still wanted it and so they went on to make DA2 which included a voiced protagonist. And Georg Zoeller was spot on - the game was massively reduced in content and features as much of the budget was blown on the voice. For me it definitely wasn't a worthy tradeoff, or - judging by the criticisms and sales figures - not many other people thought it was either.

So no, I definitely don't want this "feature" in any Elder Scrolls games.

Show me an actor, in fact one each male and female, who could portray each of those lines from the perspective of an Alinor Altmer reduced to communicating, to borrow a 40K term, in mon-keigh languages. The blunt arrogance you get from Radiant Raiments just wouldn't cut it without grating over a whole game. And that's just one race.

A voiced PC would be a terrible idea, for all of the reasons above.
Echonite, amongst others, hit the nail bang on the head.

never. ever. add. a. player. voice.

Unless your game is all linear story, which TES aren't, and you are limited by that story to a pre-determined character, which goes against the entire point of TES, '...be who you want...'.

Chris Tucker and we got a deal.

I hate when they have a lame voice to the main character, especially in an rpg...the strong silent type is the best choice

I suppose if it was natasha McElhone doing the accent that she did in Ronin, only not quite as harsh...
Niamh is fairly taciturn so there wouldn't be a lot to record, although most of it would be unpleasant...

good warriors dont have time to talk, they make noises instead

The only RPG where I've seen a voiced protagonist really work is Mass Effect, and that's only because Bioware set out to make Shepard have a distinct personality. Whereas in The Elder Scrolls, your character is whatever you want him/her to be.