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With big names, including Christopher Plummer (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo), Max von Sydow (The Exorcist), Joan Allen (The Bourne Ultimatum) and Lynda Carter (Wonder Woman).

Between them, the cast have Tony Awards, Academy Award nominations and Emmys coming out of their ears.

“It’s been incredible to have all these actors together,” said Skyrim Director Todd Howard. “When you start a project, you always make your wish-list of actors, and to actually hear them in the game, it’s amazing. We can’t wait for everyone to experience it.”

The cast also includes Michael Hogan (Battlestar Galactica), Vladimir Kulich (The 13th Warrior), Claudia Christian (Babylon 5), Diane Louise Salinger (Carnivale), Renee Victor (Weeds), and George Coe (Transformers: Dark of the Moon).

In total there are a whopping 70 different voice actors delivering over 60,000 lines of dialogue.

Quite the improvement over Oblivion I'd say!

Holy shit! Oblivion had the same 3 voices 

All 70 voice actors will of course use the same generic "Medieval" accent.

They also heavily touted New Vegas's voice acting as a large improvement and look how that ended up. 
 
If I ever ****ing hear Liam O'Brian again....

Voice actors, disgusting creatures.

@Aishan said:

Voice actors, disgusting creatures.

They'll make those Lizard Wizards come to life!

Let's be honest, this is just Nolan North doing 70 different voices isn't it?

And there's probably going to be hundreds of different characters.

@Chop said:

They also heavily touted New Vegas's voice acting as a large improvement and look how that ended up. If I ever ****ing hear Liam O'Brian again....

eh, at least everyone important was a different voice actor.

and Liam O'Brian was the best character in Catherine so...

@MideonNViscera said:

All 70 voice actors will of course use the same generic "Medieval" accent.

What do you consider a "Medieval Accent". I usually just consider olde english words Medieval enough.

As. Long as they bring the. "Stop theif" guy all will be well

I'd rather have less big names and more smaller name actors for generic NPC's to increase the variety. New Vegas had a similar big name cast and it wasn't much of an improvement over Oblivion.

@WinterSnowblind said:

I'd rather have less big names and more smaller name actors for generic NPC's to increase the variety. New Vegas had a similar big name cast and it wasn't much of an improvement over Oblivion.

are you kidding?

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Voice_Actors

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas_developers#Cast

New Vegas had lots of voice actors, but you still heard Yuri Lowenthal EVERYWHERE.

I'd rather have less big names and more smaller name actors for generic NPC's to increase the variety. New Vegas had a similar big name cast and it wasn't much of an improvement over Oblivion.

@Laketown: Nope. Like you said, important characters were at least more unique, but almost every random NPC you met sounded identical. Yuri Lowenthal in particularly was horribly over used.

@WinterSnowblind said:

@Laketown: Nope. Like you said, important characters were at least more unique, but almost every random NPC you met sounded identical. Yuri Lowenthal in particularly was horribly over used.

that's still better than the same voice actor being used for EVERY SINGLE PERSON OF THAT RACE.

You could definitely hear repetition in Fallout:NV (Sunny Smiles' actress turned up in all sorts of places, and it was easy notice because she's one of the first people you meet, for example), but with a game of that scope there's going to have to be some re-used people. It was definitely nowhere near as bad as Oblivion.

I think the trouble with Oblivion was that damn "Rumors" conversation topic: where nearly every character in the game had to have dialogue for 5-10 different things depending on their town, profession, quest progress etc. That combined with basically one voice (not actor, which also didn't help) for each race/gender combo, there was some heavy repetition. I heard they done away with asking random people about random info in Skyrim though, so it meant lessen it somewhat.

@MideonNViscera said:

All 70 voice actors will of course use the same generic "Medieval" accent.

What, you mean an American accent?

But the biggest question is, will Nolan North do a voice?

But the biggest question is, will Nolan North do a voice?

I bet Saul Tigh could do a mean 'Stop right there, criminal scum!'

Sounds pretty good. That's 3.5 voice actors per race/gender combination. Shave off a few to account for special characters with unique voices, and it's still a pretty good spread, Morrowind was about that.

Now my only concern is the variety of the writing. I could never understand, in Oblivion, why every character of every race and gender literally said the same thing in so many cases. They brought in 7 or so voice actors and had them all say the same generic lines. It was completely mind-boggling.

No Patrick Stewart? I'm cancelling my preorder.

Pretty neat.

@Moonshadow101 said:

Morrowind was about that.

Morrowind was not about that at all. 1 voice actor per race in that game, even the special ones had that same voice. There might have been a few exceptions but Morrowind is definitely the least varied of the three games.

@Berserker976: I can easily recall one-two common voices for most of the race/gender combinations. 3 is overstatement, yes, but putting Morrowind below Oblivion is utterly insane.

@Moonshadow101: I have played Morrowind for more hours than I have played any other game, I'm really sure about this one. If you want proof though go look at the cast pages for both games on IMDB.

Morrowind definitely only had one voice per race/gender. I can see confusion between the Nords, Bretons and Imperials as they don't really have particularly distinct looks, but do have different voices (and, more obviously, naming schemes.)

@Berserker976: I've played over 100 hours of Morrowind in 2011 alone, and I can't even say how much before that, if we're going to get into that contest.

Now that I'm thinking about it more intensively, though, I think I might be a bit off here. It's possible that the limited amount of VO allowed for the impression of more variety, even if it was actually the same voice actor. I distinctly recall the female Dunmer having at least two modes of speech: the raspy one and the smooth one. It's possible that they were the same voice actor in different "modes," but they came off as being pretty different to me. Its possible that this effect would have been more difficult to sustain if the VO had been more extensive.

On the other hand, I really hope you're not seriously trying to say Oblivion was more varied. Oblivion had these voices: Male Elf, Female Elf, Male Breton/Imperial, Female Breton/Imperial, Male Orc/Nord, Female Orc/Nord, Male Khajiit/Argonian, Female Khajiit/Argonian. (Plus the uniques, of course). Oblivion was absolutely less varied.

Also Morrowind's dialog was mostly text.  The spoken dialog was mostly stuff like "Greetings outlander".

that's 7 per race which isn't very impressive.

@Moonshadow101: Oblivion was definitely not more varied, it was exactly the same amount of variance. Also we're in the same boat as far as time played probably, I was just making sure you knew I was coming at it from the perspective of a diehard fan, not of someone who once picked it up for a few days.

I'm honestly not sure why the voices in Morrowind didn't wear on me as much, I do share your opinion that it's more noticeable in Oblivion. But it really isn't because there were more voice actors, I'm afraid.

On topic, I think this is fantastic news! 70 voice actors is quite a lot.

@Wiseblood: If Bethesda announced that they were dropping their commitment to 100% voice acting in favor of a larger and more dynamic dialogue system, I would form a new religion around the worship of their transcendental wisdom.

@Moonshadow101 said:

@Wiseblood: If Bethesda announced that they were dropping their commitment to 100% voice acting in favor of a larger and more dynamic dialogue system, I would form a new religion around the worship of their transcendental wisdom.

that's a little extreme but yeah I would be so down for that

@Swoxx said:

Let's be honest, this is just Nolan North doing 70 different voices isn't it?

It would be a improvement over Oblivion still.

@Will1Lucky said:

@Swoxx said:

Let's be honest, this is just Nolan North doing 70 different voices isn't it?

It would be a improvement over Oblivion still.

So true.

I guess we can put Lynda Carter down as female Nord and Orc again.

@Gargantuan said:

that's 7 per race which isn't very impressive.

I would hope that they would record people with different accents or mannerisms. I feel a voice actor could try and speak differently for different people.

All I need is Patrick Stewart.

yay, no more will I sigh every time I talk to a Redguard because they're all voiced by the exact same fucking guy.

Let's be honest, this is just Nolan North doing 70 different voices isn't it?

Vladimir Kulich, fuck yeah!

@Thule: Wow, I jumped in my chair when Antonio Banderas suddenly was on the screen.

70 is indeed a lot more than Oblivion, but will it be enough for a world with hundreds if not thousands of NPC's? I wonder how many Oblivion had, it felt like it coult not have been more than 10, but it might have been a lot more.

@Moonshadow101 said:

@Berserker976: I've played over 100 hours of Morrowind in 2011 alone, and I can't even say how much before that, if we're going to get into that contest.

Now that I'm thinking about it more intensively, though, I think I might be a bit off here. It's possible that the limited amount of VO allowed for the impression of more variety, even if it was actually the same voice actor. I distinctly recall the female Dunmer having at least two modes of speech: the raspy one and the smooth one. It's possible that they were the same voice actor in different "modes," but they came off as being pretty different to me. Its possible that this effect would have been more difficult to sustain if the VO had been more extensive.

On the other hand, I really hope you're not seriously trying to say Oblivion was more varied. Oblivion had these voices: Male Elf, Female Elf, Male Breton/Imperial, Female Breton/Imperial, Male Orc/Nord, Female Orc/Nord, Male Khajiit/Argonian, Female Khajiit/Argonian. (Plus the uniques, of course). Oblivion was absolutely less varied.

You're a fair bit off in your list of Oblivion VA's. Breton and Imperial males had two different VA's, not the same one (only the females used the same VA between them). And you left out the Redguard male and female. There are 11 standard Oblivion voices, not 8 (there are 10 actual VA's, though, since the Nord/Orc and Khajiit/Argonian voices are done by the same actor).

Morrowind absolutely has the same voice for each race/gender, same as Oblivion, but it does have more variation in the voices because there is much less crossover between races. So you are correct that Oblivion was less varied.

Imperial male

Nord male

Orc male

Breton male

Redguard male

Khajiit/Argonian male

Dark Elf male

Wood Elf male

High Elf male

Imperial female

Nord female

Orc/Argonian female

Breton/High Elf female

Redguard female

Khajiit female

Dark Elf female

Wood Elf female

That's 18 voices, 15 actual VA's (Imperial and Dark Elf male voices were by the same actor, Orc and Breton male voices were by the same actor [the Imperial male in Oblivion], Argonian/Khajiit and Nord male voices were by the same VA that does them in Oblivion). That's still a far cry from this figure of 70 for Skyrim, though, and it's still doing the same thing that Oblivion did of having the same actor do every single member of a given race/gender.