The Silent Protagonist has never really bothered me, but I'm also fine with a protagonist being voiced.

The problem with a voiced protagonist is that conversations last significantly longer though, since your character has to speak his lines instead of you just selecting what you want to say. In The Witcher 3 for instance, even with subtitles on, I just wait for Geralt to finish his lines simply because it's awkward and kind of immersion breaking to skip them. Fortunately in The Witcher most of the dialogue is really good so it isn't much of an issue, but for other games it really drags things out. I guess it's because I grew up with games like Morrowind, so I prefer the silent protagonist because it makes things move along a lot quicker.

I'l take voiced any day. SR has the best solution, for created characters.

@teddie: Don't apologize for a rebuttal, it's all good. The main point I was thinking of when I said "badass" and how a voice could help is just that an actual voice saying it is better than me using my mind's ear to imagine it. I should probably mention in relation to this that voice acting is a pretty big interest for me.

I agree with you on all the other points though, since having someone match minor facial reactions to certain sentence points would be ridiculous. If that's the dealbreaker for you, then I guess I can see why neither silent/voiced would be that great.

I guess it's not that I think that VA is going to revolutionize the character interaction; it's more like, I've played two modern Fallout games with a silent protagonist. Didn't much care for it. I'm happy to see where some VA will take us.

Here's hoping for Laura Bailey as female MC.

I love voice acting in my RPGs, but silent protagonists are a sort of a novelty now, and it'd be cool if Fallout was one of the games that continued to have that novelty value.

When I've played Bethesda open world games I've always found the main character completely irrelevant, and if a voice helps change that then I'm all for it. I think it could really add something to the story, and if the story were better than this might be the first of their games that really grabs me. I understand the reluctance to accept a voice though. I thought it ruined the main character in Dragon Age II because I had no ownership over Hawke, and way fewer dialogue options. Then the Inquisitor came along and I realized that you could have a voice without those disadvantages. So it all comes down to how well they do it.

I much prefer full voice acting. It invests me much more in the stories if I can here the back and forth of a conversation. This will make the world feel that much more alive. Of course, voice acting is just a waste of time if the writing and acting are bad. I have full confidence in Bethesda.

Silent protagonists is lazy and unimaginative.

right, because saying "i should go" at the end of every conversation just bursts with imagination.

if shepard was silent, my shepard would be far more interesting and complex than anything drummed up for a mass audience, even if yours would not.

leaving every aspect of how an rpg evolves up to the developers is a mistake, it overrides the potential for creativity, but more people seem to want to be spoonfed, and can't look past the limits of what's official / canon, two words that should never apply to interactive media.

Definitely agree. It is just a one off comment at the end of a trailer, it doesn't mean anything. Even if they are voiced it doesn't mean they can't be a "blank slate". You are voiced in Inquisition and your character is straight up totally under your control and not a pre made personality. Even Shepard has some amount of play in how you can behave. Is the Courier from Fallout New Vegas not "your character" if you suddenly give him a voice too? No. Also the people saying silent protagonists need to die and blank slates need to go away are the ones who need to go away. Seriously, everyone doesn't have to be Solid Snake or Ezio. There is plenty of room in the world for both kinds of characters and there is nothing wrong with a Silent Protagonist.

What pisses me off more is you are still a stupid vault dweller. Seriously for christ sake, New Vegas showed we could do more than be another idiot from a vault. We don't have to needlessly rehash the first game over and over. Out of five games in this series 3 of them start you with the same origin. Funny story, the original games creators (people from black isle, obsidian, etc) are the ones who have made the two games where you AREN'T a vault dweller. It is only Bethesda who can't come up with something more original.

I don't mind either.

The Vault is a convenient contrivance that allows them to justify all the exposition of characters explaining the geography, people and history to a character who has just entered the Wasteland for the first time, and all that exposition is mostly for people who are playing their first Fallout.

Oh stop. Can you tell every time? No. But there is absolutely a correlation of certain voice types with certain ethnicity. And once you bring accents into the equation it is easier.

I would assume everyone grew up in the same vault. They aren't very big so they'd probably all have the same accent.

@teaoverlord: Which makes a great case for whatever the accent may be would certainly not be vanilla south dakota telemarketer accent (that is, what's considered the "default" accent in America, what news anchors and actors are trained to have) but that's the accent he will have. If anything the isolation should mean they have an accent somewhat unique to the vault they came from. But at some point people are looking for more nuance than this franchise has ever delivered on. Fallout isnt in it for the nuance.

True, but I read some old Reddit thread from a supposed leaker saying that the lead character would be voiced. I guess we'll find out for sure at E3... I'd prefer a silent protagonist personally.

It depends on how much of the characters story is authored, if he/she has a set background, personality etc. will a voice help convey that. Voice acting is expensive if you look at the dialogue options for the silent NPCs in morrowind compared to the voiced potato people of oblivion is the difference staggering. I expect a voiced protagonist will have less options than a silent.

Voice over would really kill character customization or available dialogue. I can't seem them recording multiple lines ranging from my male INT 1 brute and INT 10 female geek. Also in a good game, charisma skill would also affect the delivery of the lines.

That reddit leak seems fake as hell. They also said you could only play as a male character who has a dead wife named Lydia. So either it's BS or Bethesda is super lazy and recycled the name of the first companion most people get in Skyrim.

I don't get silent protagonist in a game where you choose to say stuff. In those games I just read what the options are and choose. I've never been able to "roleplay a voice" or character based on a dialogue tree, to me it becomes "choose which outcome this dialogue will have" which isn't immersive at all for me, maybe I'm just bad at role playing. So I'm all for voice acting, that's immersive to me.

Silent protagonists fits in games like Half life where you don't say anything, but is weird to me in games where you are talking to people but only the NPC's actually say stuff.

It's Bethesda. It'll be a bugfest.

I don't consider RPG's where you're given meaningful choices "silent". Your character is obviously saying stuff, there just isn't a pre-recorded voice for them.

I don't care either way. It doesn't bother me if the player's character is voiced (especially if there's a lot of reason for it like in Dead Space), or not.

Fallout never required the player character to be voiced; it's always worked for me without it. It wouldn't bother me if it is a voiced character, though. It might be kind of cool to have it voiced and have the character react to the crazy stuff that can happen in Fallout games.

So, I don't mind whichever way they decide to go with it. I've never been one to be bothered unless the way the game is written it just comes off weird that the player's character doesn't talk (like in Half Life 2, Dead Space 1, or Bioshock where people keep talking to your character about important stuff, but he never talks back like he's basically ignoring them).

There is a place for quiet or silent protagonists, but it requires very specific writing because of it. With the focus on story in a lot of games these days it can be very very difficult. Especially because your character tends to be the focal point of the story.

If they voice your protagonist I hope they pick the voice actor from D4, now that was a boston accent.

I see your point brodehouse, but I think there are ways too do what you said while still not leaning on the Vault story again.
As karkarov stated, they've done different origin stories in the other games and still found a way around the 'explanation' that is required for a new player.
In 2 you were an tribal ancestor of the original Vault Dweller, and lived in a secluded settlement, so you still had the need to know what was happening outside of your settlement but it wasn't a re-hash, NV went with bullet to the head amnesia, which is a little cliche sure, but different enough for this series, so I think they could keep finding ways if they tried.

You could have come from a wasteland family who were rather secluded, lived in a hut or cave somewhere until raiders kill your family at 'insert age' so you don't know much outside of your home.
Could just be someone from outside of Boston/the state and have to travel there for some reason. I mean these aren't great but that is like 30 seconds of trying, bethesda had more time then that annnnnnnd Vault 111 occurs, which is almost the same numbers as Vault 101 for shit sake. Just seems a tad lazy. It wont stop me from playing, and who knows maybe they really out do themselves with this Vault story but it comes off as a bit lazy.
Still probably going to play the shit out of the game though, so whatever, I'm just always hopeful beth ups their writing game, they make fun games, Tood seems like a cool dude in interviews, I'd love for their writing to wow me one day though.

Both ways can be done well or not, and as long as it's done well I don't mind which is used.

I don't consider this to be correct use of 'silent protagonist' though.

Both can be great. For Fallout my preference would be a silent protagonist.

Either way, just show entire lines for dialogue choices. I always like that, voiced or not.

Actually, i prefer silent protagonist over anything else when the game is in first person view. It makes the game more immersive this way, as if you're the character him/herself.

Please be a silent protagonist. People who want to eliminate the concept in favor of voices in everything are crazy. There is room for both.

It all depends on how well implemented it is. For example, I HATED it in Bioshock and Singularity where you were being talked to by all these characters and the guy you play as just seemed content and didn't say anything. I'm sure if you were really in those situations, you would have at least a few questions to ask like "Who are you?" and "What is going on around here?".

Fallout and Elder Scrolls actually had you talking to characters as a "silent protagonist". They gave you opportunities to initiate a conversation with the surrounding characters. If Singularity just had like a pop-up window that had some text you could choose to say to the main scientist guy, then I would've at least been able to related and connect to the story and the character more than just "blank, silent marine".

I've played a handful of different characters in Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, each time trying to roleplay a different personality to befit that choices I would make in that playthrough. I don't think that would be possible with a voiced character. Sure, it might give them a bit of personality for you to grow attached to, but I'd much prefer to have the freedom to play whatever character I wanted as opposed to begin the good/neutral/evil versions of this Vault Hunter.

Stripping out the voice of Mass Effect would not make Shepard a silent protagonist. Shepard is still a character, with own opinions and ideas, written by the writers. You simply choose which one of four-or-so predetermined lines of dialogue you find most appealing, not your own thought up reaction to the situation. Just because a voice actor didn't read the lines wouldn't mean you have more options of deciding who the character is. That is silly, its a written character, with dialogue options.

Link is an example of a real silent protagonist, who doesn't say anything, period. The Fallout 3 protagonist speaks in the dialogues you find better than the other, you just don't hear it.

Your lines about how leaving every aspect of an RPG to the developer being a mistake, is genuinely your own opinion and one I wholeheartedly disagree with. The Witcher is one of my favorite RPG series ever, and they have a clear distinct main character that is interesting and has personality and makes me want to play the games. Written playable characters are not the antichrist of RPG's. I hate the idea that RPG's should just have blank slates as playable characters, with no personalities, self thought simply because you want to self insert your own ideas into it. I rather we have good writers write a compelling story, your own character included.

@awesomeusername: Especially with how good the dlc voiced by Daud was.

Honestly, I don't think it matters as much to me, but I just do not want them to use the mass effect style conversations; where you kind of summarize what you're going to say. I cannot express how many times I've selected an option in other games that have adopted that style and hated the way my character phrased the sentence. Let me know what I'm going to say exactly damn it.

Beyond questions to open up exposition, Shepard never once gets more than three options of what to say, and it's always Yay / Okay / or Oh jeez alright then, not very imaginative. The warden in Dragon Age Origins sometimes gets up to five or six, because he is a silent protagonist in the sense that we are discussing here, he is still a written character, but one with a much broader range of characteristics, with seven very different social backgrounds to choose from, because the writers are not bound by having to voice act all the dialogue. But besides that, when I'm reading the warden's lines in my head, he sounds as i want him to sound, whereas Shepard sounds like someone I don't want to be at all, constantly overstating the obvious and repeating things so that less players get confused about what's going on and where to go next. Also, when you're reading the lines to yourself in a game, it's easy to favor certain aspects of your character, and let them build in your mind, perhaps into deeper background details, or into how you think the character would evolve beyond the scope of the game. That might seem silly to you, but that is roleplaying, and it's the draw of these games for a lot of people. Bethesda are one of the few developers to continue - in the face of games becoming hollywood-ized spectacles - to cultivate that, and every Bethesda game i play i make at least six or seven characters that are all wildly different in how they behave. My favorite game is Oblivion, i've played thousands of hours and i've never once finished the main quest, because the main quest is not my quest, it's there maybe for the players who don't enjoy the same freedom to be imaginative. I did finish the main q in skyrim but honestly i don't remember the details of it at all, no discredit to the writers, it's just that i was naturally less engaged than when i was doing my own thing. You can keep games like the witcher, where the writers entertain you from start to finish, as long as i can keep making my own mind up in games like Elder Scrolls and Fallout.

and i can make up stuff even about that dullard shepard if i find the notion amusing, the idea that the writers might not approve hardly matters, to them either, they're just a bunch of guys making up silly stuff for a living, they don't care what i get up to, they're just glad i'm enjoying their game (even if shepard's voice has made it that much more difficult), and they have failed to engage me with their characterization in this case, so why would i feel beholden to their official word about anything? that is silly to me, accepting their story as sacred, or even something definitive, it's an elaborate motive for gameplay, that's all, the same as i make in my head.

it's not a movie i'm watching, it's not a book i'm reading, it's me, running around a game world, doing whatever i feel like, always me, not some generalised idea of a hero, not always someone who gives a shit about what's going on, but always someone controlled by me, and my own ideas are going to supersede any suggestions made by the writers, especially with the standard as low as it is, if the game world is stimulating enough. that's half the fun of rpg's.

As long as there are voice options within the character creator I think it's okay. But having a black/asian/hispanic etc person just sounding like Nolan North is weird to me

Also I don't have a problem with silent protagonists at all. A big problem I have in voiced RPG's with dialogue options is that often the inflection of a choice as it's spoken is a lot different to how it sounds written. Silent protagonists with dialogue options leaves more open to interpretation and leans more into the role playing aspect of those games.

I think we should establish some ground rules regarding all this terminology. Let's say "silent protagonist" refers to characters that either do not speak in the canon of the game (Gordon Freeman), or characters that are assumed to communicate normally, but this communication isn't represented with audio or text (Link).

By this definition Fallout/Elder Scrolls games don't feature silent protagonists, they feature non-voiced player characters. While technically silent, their communication is represented with text. This fundamentally separates them from the popular idea of the silent protagonist.

With that determined, I vastly prefer non-voiced player characters in my open world rpgs. You can read a line of dialogue in a near infinite number of ways, but you can only hear it one way.

^ The opposite of this is true. A non-voiced player character can be extremely imaginative. It's when you give those words a concrete voice that you lose imagination.

The silent protagonist has always been one of my least favorite things in video games. It makes a character to a non character. A lot of the tension in the original Dead Space was ruined by never having the character react to what happened; no matter what he was just deadly silent, it almost seemed like none of the monters attacking him had any effect on him. He just kept on trucking like nothing ever happened.

In my opinion the silent protagonist should be banned by law, unless there is a very specific reason for having a silent protagonist like a mute protagonist for example.

Its a bit of a mixed bag. On one had I find silent protagonists lazy, and uninteresting. On the other there is the chance that the voiced character is annoying, uninteresting, or youre just unable to identify with them. But I rarely have those issues. I personally would rather have a voiced character and that they take the chance in creating something special. Ive never felt the non voiced characters offer additional role playing, or somehow lets me create my own version of the narrative in my head as to who the character is.

There is speculation that this time your char is a robot created by the institute who may have the memories of male character of the couple with the baby in the video. That could mean they could even exclude the cosmetic choices of building your character this time around, which I also never cared about.

To the OP, I don't think you're crazy if you give your character a voice in your imagination, even if it may not be your own. I do this. In fact, if it fits the type of game I'm playing, I even prefer it. I still think there's a place for the silent protagonist. When playing Mass Effect, I remember thinking "Oh wow, I wish my character did not sound like that". It's not even that it's bad VO, it's just not what I had in my head for that character. I also don't get the argument that it's lazy. If all the supporting characters are voiced, it would be so easy to just do that with the main character as well. The devs made a conscientous choice to refrain from giving them an actual voice.

You what's cool? Characters having a dialogue. Speaking to one another. Having the protagonist be silent means you can almost never establish a dialogue with NPCs because everything you say has to be written down in a dialogue box. So people talk at you about stuff for the most part. There is not character moments when you do it that way. It's nothing but exposition dumps

At this early stage I'm open to any innovations Bethesda might push for. I can't say I'm confident in their ability to write a plot or dialoge worth investing in heavy voice acting though. If they shoot for a voiced protagonist but then stagnate at FO3/ Skyrim levels of character interaction it could easily become a ludicrously expensive and fatal flaw of the game. If they go for voiced and manage to add that whole new dimension into the sandbox without compromise it has the potential to be transformative, maybe even revolutionary.

I think the loss of depth from Morrowind to Oblivion didn't even come close to be justified by the much more extensive voice acting since it didn't add all that much to Bethesda's unquestionable world building skills. Oblivion only made sense as a bold (yet succesful) go at the console market. So I'm skeptical even though Skyrim showed that an incredibly dumbed down version of TES can still act as wonderful popcorn entertainment for me.

Maybe, just maybe, the old engine FO4 seems to use is a sign that Bethesda focussed their efforts elsewhere and are serious about overhauling dialoge and story massively. Fallout would be the better franchise to try such a thing, see F:NV.

Aw hell no I always hated silent protagonists. Bioshock infinite did a great job in this aspect with Booker's voice actor. I would much prefer for the protagonist in the new fallout to have a voice and a damn good one. It makes for a lot of immersion for me at least when the character has a voice and especially a good one.

At least if the community is so splitted maybe bethesda can make the voice optional, somehow.

Just saw Todd Howard on the post-show with Sessler and Webb, and he made a good point about having a voiced protagonist. He said if you hadn't played or seen any of their previous games, you would immediately expect the playable character to be voiced.

And it opens up the possibility for better storytelling. It's not impossible to have good storytelling with a silent protagonist. But, it is harder. Hopefully having them voiced will lead to better storytelling, ontop of the crazy shit we see within Fallout already.

Todd Howard said that each of the voices for both protagonists have been recording in the studio for two years, with it being about 1300 lines of dialogue each.

I don't think there's anyway they're making it optional.

I can only imagine how much better this game will be with a macho man voice mod! Oooh Yeah!!!!!!!!!

I would have rather they had a silent protagonist, but I suppose that can be a mod sometime down the road. This at lease gives me an excuse to play as the female character, to see her dialogue.

Huh? You are a silent protagonist. Dogs can't talk.

didn't really find the voice actor to be appealing at the bethesda conference, here's hoping there's a toggle off option.