" We have recorded a thousand different popular names "

(At least I think it was a thousand).

What do you think this means? Like, will ONLY your butler guy say your name, or will every character in the game (that refers to you at least) refer to you by name? Because that would be awesome.......even though my name Coady will almost certainly not be one of them.

For some reason, I'm assuming it's just the robot butler guy. It's just so many names for every VA to have to do. But, I guess that depends on how many characters actually say your name.

Chris is a fairly common name, so hopefully they at least got every voice actor to do that one for me lol.

I just wonder how they'd manage to make it not sound GPS-janky without re-recording the line 1000 times for each name.

Also, "Coady" might not be in there but there's no way "Cody" wouldn't be (I hope those are pronounced the same and I'm not just being ignorant). Actually now I think about it I don't want my name anywhere near my character, because I want to play as an old-ass pirate man named Cap'n Bilge.

@teddie: Yeah, curious about that too tbh...and huh, i completely forgot about " cody ", that will probably be in there!

I feel like they would record each name in a few ways so it wouldn't sound too messed up. It will probably be the vocal equivalent of returning something to a quest-giver and the camera pans up so the item wont be seen coming out of nowhere, or better yet the "I've found this", "Oh great, I've been looking for that, thank you for returningit".

I wonder if they're just gonna refer to your last name, or will change it up once in a while? It's cool that they're doing it though and since I always name my non-fantasy characters the generic 'Jack', it should be no problem.

They've done this in other games before (my favorite being a Hockey game from 2002 I think it was).

It's probably just the butler, though. It'd be a mess having every NPC you talk to say your name. Even from a game play standpoint that could be weird-possibly annoying.

The problem you always run into when you add this feature, though, is there is always a lot of names missing (obviously). Then it's kinda like "Well, either you get lucky and use a name they say, or you don't and they refer to you generically". This wouldn't be a problem except then some people will miss out. It's not like they'll have the list of names, right?

I don't think he should've said anything about it and just left it up to people to figure out. Like a weird easter egg or something. Since most people probably won't necessarily experience it, and all that.

I believe the most common name in the world is Mohammed. They got to have that right?

Aiden

Jayden

Crayden

This is a bad idea I think. As much as Bioware games have been soulless and boring as of late, they have really found an elegant solution with the whole "commander/inqisitor/jedi" thing.

Presumaby most characters you meet in the game won't know (or care) who the fuck you are anyway, so I think that takes care of that issue for the most part. Just having a few important characters say your name a handful of times probably wouldn't be that difficult.

There is a chance that the pronunciation of my first name will be among the names, even though I refuse to spell my name Andre without the "i". That being said, since I never actually use my first name as a character name, I can guarantee Sphynx will not be among the names that can be said.

So does that mean we have to choose pedestrian American names for our characters? If I name the guy Caoimhín does that robot just glitch out and explode preemptively killing everyone?

@blackout62: More likely if you choose a name not in the list he'll just call you by some generic title

I would be okay with the robot literally calling you "GENERIC NAME"

Bet they won't have Davin...guess i'll have to pick Devon or some shit...fuck you, Devons.

How likely do you think they'll have John as a name?

... not that it's my name or anything. I'm asking for a friend.

@oldirtybearon: I would be shocked if they didn't have John

Well definitely not my name! I hope this isn't implemented in a major way, i'm already kinda iffy on the talking character (but wowed by the new conversation system) and another way to take me out of the game doesn't sound especially exciting.

@shinjin977 I think they do this if you don't pick a name/they don't have your name. They'd call you "Vault Dweller" or something along those lines

Yes, but only if you spell it as Muhammad, like the boxer. The AMERICAN BOXER.

Dirt 2 had this like a zillion years ago.

I seriously doubt that they got every VA to record lines that mention your name a thousand times. Someone above mentioned Bioware's solution and I like it best.

It would be cool if only a few very important characters mentioned your name and the rest of the characters in the game just called you "vault dweller" or "badass motherfucker" or perhaps one of a few different titles you could pick from.

Countdown til someone with an interesting name being mad its not in there.

Like I really doubt Joachim, Joaquin or, Stevedave will be in there.

Also like really use a goddamn voice font its a robot your talking to it will make sense.

Uhuh. They won't have my name in there, so I don't give a fuuuck.

I wish they added Chris Avellone's name to this game. *baddum-pshh*

Can't really care. They won't have mine, so it's going to be like WWE's MAW mode, where you just use the closest thing they've got.

@shinjin977: I felt like Bioware had a pretty good idea that more or less made the best of a bad situation... I still find characters calling me "Inquisitor" or whatever to be rather jarring. Not nearly as jarring as parts of Skyrim though, particularly if you marry, then the character you married always refers to you as "love," which I've never heard anyone call their lover, ever.

BTW it's considerably easier in Japanese because there are far fewer names, and sounds, and combinations of sounds, but there's a whole bunch of Japanese games that manage letting you pick a name and have characters actually call you that. If you pick a pretty common name during character creation it'll recognise it, but you can mix the sounds together to make less common Japanese names and it works pretty well.

Personally, I'm fine with them letting me choose from a list of character names. Doesn't even have to be a thousand names, I'm fine with like 20 super common names, John, Mary, James, etc. If you name your character "John Smith" that'd would be one dude with a realistic-ass name.

@doctorchimp said:

Get outta here, secret Dan Ryckert alt account.

I always and forever vote "Other Motherfucker".

A thousand names is impressive I can only think of like 10

Steven is a very common name, so I know it'll be in there.

I think it's a waste of budget, like all those alternate conversations they recorded for every mission in GTA 4 if you have to retry.

I am a little bit concerned about a narrow character creator. I worry that you'll end up with 2 (male/female) or maybe 6 (nice, mean, crazy voice for each gender) that seriously narrows the range of characters to ones that make sense with those voices.

Also the prewar start while novel leaves a more limited character concept seeing as you have to start with a wife and kid which I am not convinced the game can make me care about. I worry that the mainquest will be related to finding out what happened to your baby and frankly that doesn't seem like the sort of thing most of my Fallout characters would give a shit about. Fallout 3 had a similar issue with its main quest.

That said most of what they showed was really cool, I just hope its still an RPg and not just a g.

Edit: that said I've already come up with some character ideas unique to the concept of a displaced prewar person eg. a gay guy who had a sham marriage because of those 50s style morals and couldn't be happier that the old world is ash, I just hope they let me play it that way and it isn't all "I miss my wife"

@hayt: He did say you were the sole survivor of 111 so I assume that means your partner and baby are dead, but who knows. If they aren't dead, then yeah, the story will likely be about that.

@hayt: yeah i hear you. i mean you can still ignore the main quest (and skip through the opening) if you want, but also having to avoid interactions if your banter undermines your idea of a character is kind of a bummer, and definitely not a great route for the rpg.

My guess is that only certain characters will make use of the name. I can't imagine if being a regular thing. With the player characters now being voiced (don't know how I feel about that yet), there are a lot more lines of dialogue to record.

I know Bethesda is all about atmosphere and the little details, but there is only so much budget/time that can go towards VO.

I understood that as both your parents are (probably) dead and you play the child which is a mix of the two characters you created.

I can only imagine that it's just the robot butler, or at the very most, a select few characters in the game. Though, if they somehow did over 1000 voice readings for all the voice actors (all three of 'em) of NPCs in a Fallout game, I won't argue.

It also seems like an audio nightmare. As someone who knows nothing of the craft, it appears as an opportunity for a lot of bugs involving different names said or whole lines of dialogue missing.

you think "Jeremy" would be in the top one thousand?

That's cool and all but who gives their characters 'normal' names in a fantasy game?

From the eurogamer story I read, it sounded like you play as the father/mother of the child.

I imagine this'll be a case where it'll have my old name (Brett) but it won't have my new one (Charlize), so that'll be...I dunno.

I've long complained about how games like Mass Effect never have anyone refer to your character by their first name, so I do think this is pretty neat. But, I think the long term eventual solution to problems like this will be some sort of Miku-like voice synthesizer. Once the tech gets good enough that it doesn't sound like robots.

Also, let's hope the names aren't gendered (ie, only some names can be used by male characters, only some by female).

@bollard: As the sole survivor and cryochamber subject, you definitely aren't the baby.

If Roland or Randall isn't on the list I will burn this motherfucker down.

Ah fair enough, I was only going on the information in the press conference. It seemed plausible that the child grew up in the vault for a period of time before some event caused the death of both parents, but that makes sense too.

You do character creation on the husband or wife, and based on what was said at the presentation, I assume they are the survivor. Things happen (I assume theres some kind of stasis tube involved) and you're still alive 200 years later. One of the ruined vaults in FO3 had a stasis pod setup where the residents lived in a Matrix-style world, could be like that.

Doubtful they'll have "Zak" as an option. Would settle for Jack, though.

The husband or wife ARE the player. The robot butler refers to you as them.