An RPG in 2023 with a mute protagonist???

[Gameplayer]

Would have preferred a voice protagonist, however

 

Player Voice will be a very popular mod to the degree that I imagine it might actually cause the next game to have an actual voice actor again.

[DocClox]

15 hours ago, bjornk said:

 

I hate Nazeem as much as the next guy, but I'd definitely be excited about a game where NPCs can invite me to an activity and I get to follow them for a change.

 

You might try Cyberpunk 2027. The example I used put Nazeem in Judy's place in one of her character quests. It does all things you're talking about, and doesthem well.

 

All the same, I play it and I find myself wishing it had a bit more Bethesda in its DNA.

 

15 hours ago, bjornk said:

 

 

I, on the hand, think that it's mainly due to the technical limitations of their engine and tools, risk avoidance, laziness and overall incompetence.

 

 

OK, OK! I will henceforth cease from trying to persuade you that Bethesda has any redeeming features whatsoever!

[Jellyfish505]

13 hours ago, Gameplayer said:

Would have preferred a voice protagonist, however

 

Player Voice will be a very popular mod to the degree that I imagine it might actually cause the next game to have an actual voice actor again.

 

When that mod comes out, and hopefully it will, I will absolutely buy the game. Until then, deal breaker for me.

[31971207]

Player community had the same debate before FO4 and Starfield is Bethesda's recognition that BGS DNA is world building and not character writing.

[Tam]

I have 10 times as much time spent in Fallout new vegas as I do in Fallout 4 and the voiced protaganist is one of the major reasons why I can't love F4 as much as the earlier fallouts or elder scrolls.  Voiced characters have a whole series of emotional beats and tone to them that define them as much as their skin, eyes, and hair color.   In F4 I could never get past they fact that I was playing Nate / Nora and not the character I wanted to make.  This combined with the very character defining Main Quest limited the open world feel of the game considerably for me.

 

I welcome the return of a mute protaganist and from what little I've seen a more generic MQ that involves searching for relics rather than frantically searching for a baby the entire game.  I cared more about the german shepard dog I found after exiting the vault, than I was every was able to about baby Shawn.   

[kziitd]

As long as it is a human and not a deaf mute, then he/she needs to have a voice. Especially when everyone else is talking.

For this sound, you can make it appear to be of any skin color and race, which is your free part.

Even sounds should have sliders like some mods to adjust for age differentiation. It is better to subdivide this choice under the premise of having more available personality styles.

Nowadays, the development of games has made custom appearance a standard configuration that can be seen everywhere, but the sound has not yet reached such a level of development.

Is voice a reason to hinder your "personality"? So why can't you customize it.

So this is not a reason at all.
It has to be said that in the past, silent protagonists were entirely the result of hardware/capacity limitations.
And now, is the average capacity of AAA games around 100g still insufficient?

Or lazy and willing to see nostalgic players actively defend it.

Edited July 6, 2023 by kziitd

[DocClox]

20 minutes ago, kziitd said:

It has to be said that in the past, silent protagonists were entirely the result of hardware/capacity limitations.

 

And yet some of us prefer it that way. Quite I few I suspect, given that Bethesda decided to revert back to silent.

[kziitd]

For those who simply enjoy pantomime and still refuse to customize their voices.

An on and off option directly solves the debate between the two factions.

So, this is still not a reason.

[DocClox]

1 hour ago, kziitd said:

For those who simply enjoy pantomime

 

Ah, yes, pantomime.

 

1 hour ago, kziitd said:

So, this is still not a reason.

 

OH YES IT IS!!

[Jellyfish505]

1 hour ago, kziitd said:

Is voice a reason to hinder your "personality"? So why can't you customize it.

 

Quite so. In FO4 I used a mod to alter the player voice.

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/5088/

[kziitd]

10 minutes ago, Jellyfish505 said:

 

Quite so. In FO4 I used a mod to alter the player voice.

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/5088/

There are many fun apps in mobile device stores that change your recordings to robot effects, orc effects, sounds similar to certain professions/races, changes in age, and so on.

I don't think an AAA game manufacturer's capabilities are still inferior to those of independent app authors.

Just immersed in the past.

[bjornk]

2 hours ago, kziitd said:

Is voice a reason to hinder your "personality"? So why can't you customize it.

So this is not a reason at all.

 

You may be able to alter the voice of the protagonist to some extend, even though the result is usually ridiculous, but even if it isn't, it still won't do you much good, because a voice is much more than the frequency, or the pitch of the sound or the filters you apply to it. For instance, the spoken accent, the vocabulary/jargon the character uses etc. are some of the features that cannot simply be altered. The voice is a major aspect of a person's character perceived by others, which is why when a person wants to imitate another, they often imitate their voice and everyone else immediately recognize who's being imitated. This is why a prerecorded voice would impose a certain character on the protagonist and this is definitely not what you want in a role-playing game that allows you to create vastly different characters, because it will place certain restrictions to your imagination.

 

Moreover, if want to create a mod to add new dialogue lines for the protagonist, which is very likely for a Bethesda game, having a voiceless protagonist would allow them to be integrated in the game seamlessly, whereas with a voiced protagonist, since the newly added lines won't have a voice over, they will stand out like a sore thumb.

 

I'm afraid I'm gonna have to put it bluntly, for whatever reason, if using your imagination is too much work for you, then perhaps you should either avoid role-playing games and look for other types of games or force yourself to get accustomed to the voiceless protagonist which you may find enjoyable after a while.

 

[fred200]

I buy Bethesda games for what mods bring to the table.

I far prefer Skyrim with silent protagonist to Fallout 4 voiced protagonist for this reason.

With a voiced protagonist, you can't add new dialogue that did not exist in the base game.

Put me in the Delighted column that Starfield has a silent protagonist. And I fully expect great Quest mods.

[kziitd]

4 hours ago, bjornk said:

 

You may be able to alter the voice of the protagonist to some extend, even though the result is usually ridiculous, but even if it isn't, it still won't do you much good, because a voice is much more than the frequency, or the pitch of the sound or the filters you apply to it. For instance, the spoken accent, the vocabulary/jargon the character uses etc. are some of the features that cannot simply be altered. The voice is a major aspect of a person's character perceived by others, which is why when a person wants to imitate another, they often imitate their voice and everyone else immediately recognize who's being imitated. This is why a prerecorded voice would impose a certain character on the protagonist and this is definitely not what you want in a role-playing game that allows you to create vastly different characters, because it will place certain restrictions to your imagination.

 

Moreover, if want to create a mod to add new dialogue lines for the protagonist, which is very likely for a Bethesda game, having a voiceless protagonist would allow them to be integrated in the game seamlessly, whereas with a voiced protagonist, since the newly added lines won't have a voice over, they will stand out like a sore thumb.

 

I'm afraid I'm gonna have to put it bluntly, for whatever reason, if using your imagination is too much work for you, then perhaps you should either avoid role-playing games and look for other types of games or force yourself to get accustomed to the voiceless protagonist which you may find enjoyable after a while.

 

Your skepticism about any custom sound should also be reflected in the appearance of the character, but you accepted it only because it has now developed and is working well.

Never assume that game manufacturers long ago found the most correct way to relate to imagination.

That's really just because of hardware/capacity.

It doesn't make much sense to continue.

Today, there is no 'absolutely correct' here, only 'should be able to provide a choice for both'.

 

Edited July 7, 2023 by kziitd

[31971207]

There seem to be some apple and orange arguments between making sounds and having a voice. Having the protagonist saying some repeatable and generic lines are relatively easy to customize nowadays, but it is not the same as having conversations. If that were easy Jennifer Hale wouldn't be as celebrated for her works in Mass Effect instead of the other guy Bioware originally designated as canon. Having the voice actor reading quest lines and cut scenes would definitely give the character a somewhat predefined personality. The experience will also lean heavily about the quality of writing and voice acting and the latter could cost greatly, very redundant and very likely uneven in quality of player experience if to budget voice acting of the same lines of varied personality, age, race and gender. BGS DNA is building worlds and not good at building characters and FO4 showed that more attention was paid to what BGS is not good at and less to what they do excel. Until BGS figure out how to get better writing I and likely most BGS players would rather they design the game around a blank slate protagonist conversed in silence instead of using a voiced protagonist to lead the experience. If by mute people meant just sounds and not a voiced protagonist then I think we can all generally agree that could be nice.

 

[DocClox]

3 hours ago, kziitd said:

Your skepticism about any custom sound should also be reflected in the appearance of the character, but you accepted it only because it has now developed and is working well.

 

Because there are built in options to change the pitch timbre, cadence, and emotional tone of the delivery? I don't think so. Not even if you push the responsibility onto the player to find 3rd party tools

 

3 hours ago, kziitd said:

Never assume that game manufacturers long ago found the most correct way to relate to imagination.

 

And yet isn't that what you're doing? Assuming that player VA is indeed the correct way, and that everything else is wrong? Take a leaf from your own book.

 

3 hours ago, kziitd said:

Today, there is no 'absolutely correct' here, only 'should be able to provide a choice for both'.

 

That's like saying "all games should provide multi-player and those who don't like can play solo". It isn't so simple.  You might as well say that all chess boards should have Bluetooth built in.

 

Just because the capability exists,  that doesn't mean  that it's well suited to every project.

Edited July 7, 2023 by DocClox

[bjornk]

1 hour ago, kziitd said:

Your skepticism about any custom sound should also be reflected in the appearance of the character

 

Appearance customization usually offers more than 1 options, so it not quite the same.

 

2 hours ago, kziitd said:

Today, there is no 'absolutely correct' here, only 'should be able to provide a choice for both'.

 

Perhaps. I don't know if it's fully voiced or not, but in Baldur's Gate 3 for instance, you can pick one of the two player voice options for each gender. It lets you pick a voice from the set of the opposite gender, but I find it quite stupid. If you know any other role-playing game with a fully voiced protagonist that allows you to create a wide range of characters and has multiple voice options to choose from, let us know.

 

[bjornk]

35 minutes ago, 31971207 said:

If that were easy Jennifer Hale wouldn't be as celebrated for her works in Mass Effect instead of the other guy Bioware originally designated as canon. Having the voice actor reading quest lines and cut scenes would definitely give the character a somewhat predefined personality.

Would Jennifer Hale's voice and speech style as Shepard in Mass Effect fit every other female character in that game? For instance would it fit Liara? This is pretty much what people arguing about. I would say that definitely not, because she was voicing a very specific character, whose role in the story was also very specific no matter how you approach it, and yet we have people in this thread who clearly claim that it would. This is the problem. It's, in my opinion, has nothing to do with "personal taste" and is something fairly objective. Game developers who design narrative-driven games always have a vision for the protagonist and its personality, therefore they pick a specific actor to do the voice acting. This is in direct conflict with the idea of player created characters. I don't know how some people are unable to see that.

 

 

Edited July 7, 2023 by bjornk

[Jellyfish505]

Quote

Just because the capability exists,  that doesn't mean  that it's well suited to every project.

 

Sure, but the ability to turn a voiced player on/off really is suited to every RPG project. If you don't like it for some reason & prefer mute, turn it off. Everyone is happy.

 

AI will fix this issue anyway (& probably fairly soon), & when it does, I'll buy Starfield.

 

Eventually we will just speak freeform via microphone to NPCs in games & they will use a ChatGPT style AI to respond. Then the issue (at least for people like me) is not doing this in real time but rather with a delay so the AI can convert it to the custom voice I want the player character to use in-game  

[DocClox]

24 minutes ago, Jellyfish505 said:

Everyone is happy.

 

In Fallout 4, there was a silent player mod. It really threw out the timing of conversations. The camera was all over the place. I didn't have to put up with Nate's eternal boy scout delivery, but the camera work was just as distracting. Everybody was not, in fact, happy.

 

And even with a silent player, Nate/Nora still said the same old drivel. They'd still been written to have a certain personality so the VAs had something to actually act. That still came across on subtitles even with a mute player. And you couldn't turn off subtitles because, unlike Skyrim, the dialogue wasn't written to make sense if you only had the NPC side of it.

 

The ideal for games like this, for Bethesda style roleplaying, s that the player character is a cipher. A void. Tabula rasa. That's the ideal. Anything that takes away from that makes for a worse game. You can't include player VA without impacting that.

 

It's like the people who think everything needs to have multiplayer and say "but you can always go offline". It's just not that simple.

 

Edited July 7, 2023 by DocClox

[HentaiGnome]

Personally I wouldn't say it's a deal breaker and Starfield is STILL an "instant" buy for me (I don't pre-order games, but I do buy the ones that I really want within the first week or two of its launch). That being said, I do understand the appeal of voiced protagonists. I actually liked the VA for FO4 especially Nora, and I will also admit I've been spoiled by other games like God of War, Mass Effect, Red Dead Redemption, etc. with excellent voiced protagonists that appear to realistically interact with other characters as opposed to just nodding/shaking their heads or acting like detached robots lol. In the end though, there's SO much Starfield has to offer (being a Bethesda game after all) that I think it would do you a disservice to not play this game just because the protagonist isn't voiced. If you think about it, just about every Bethesda game has always had a mute protagonist with the exception of FO4 in recent times, so if you were able to put up, let alone enjoy, their other games before, why change your viewpoint now?

[Jellyfish505]

4 hours ago, DocClox said:

In Fallout 4, there was a silent player mod. It really threw out the timing of conversations. The camera was all over the place. I didn't have to put up with Nate's eternal boy scout delivery, but the camera work was just as distracting. Everybody was not, in fact, happy.

 

So you chose a crap mod. It should have been built into the game.

 

4 hours ago, DocClox said:

It's like the people who think everything needs to have multiplayer and say "but you can always go offline". It's just not that simple.

 

Of course it's that simple. Unlike adding multiplayer, which is massively complex & requires in effect making two separate games, voicing the character is no different to voicing an NPC. Just add an off-switch for the player's toon to accommodate the strange mute fans and like I said: everyone is happy.

[Jellyfish505]

1 hour ago, HentaiGnome said:

so if you were able to put up, let alone enjoy, their other games before, why change your viewpoint now?

 

My view point hasn't changed.

 

Played Fallout 3 = 66 hours.

Played Skyrim = 352 hours.

Played Fallout 4 = 4,099 hours. 

[pinky6225]

Voiced/Non voiced as the sound from the speaker i don't really care about to be honest, its what limitations that places on quest mods i'd be concerned about as that was the main reason i didn't like it being in FO4 by default and until mods came out to remove the 4 option choice we had the other mods were quite limited as i recall

 

So if we could have voiced plus the ability for a mod to stick in new dialogue relevant to there mod then great, if not i'd go for non-voiced

[DocClox]

1 hour ago, Jellyfish505 said:

My view point hasn't changed.

 

 

And I very much doubt it's going to.

 

How about we table this discussion and pick it up when hear how TES6 is handling dialogue? I don't think either of us are going to achieve anything here.