Do you wish that Fallout: New Vegas had a non-silent protagonist?

[meticadpa]

Got the idea from the thread of comparing silent and non-silent protagonists, but it's a good idea.

I personally wish your character spoke, but conversations still took place from the same view.

I think it'd add to the immersion a bit if your character spoke; though it'd likely have made making the game a much larger job for Obsidian.

 

[Valkyrie101]

No, because chances are the voice wouldn't sound quite right.

 

[zombiestrangler]

I wish a lot of things about New Vegas, chief among them the doing away with the damn meat gates and having to pour points into speech, science, and shit I want no part in, but a non-silent protagonist? Meh, it would be nice to hear something other than grunts, screams, and the invasion of shinbones into chest cavities when I "fall" off cliffs.

 

[onda]

Got the idea from the thread of comparing silent and non-silent protagonists, but it's a good idea.

I personally wish your character spoke, but conversations still took place from the same view.

I think it'd add to the immersion a bit if your character spoke; though it'd likely have made making the game a much larger job for Obsidian.

No. Definitely not. It would give him non customizable character which is exactly what RPGs try to avoid. Or should try.

 

[meticadpa]

Would he sound like Paul Gilbert?

Ideally! I see him tonight, as it happens.

No. Definitely not. It would give him non customizable character which is exactly what RPGs try to avoid. Or should try.

Mass Effect handles it fairly well, though.

 

[Azaraxzealot]

as long as he or she was aced as well as bioware or rockstar characters, that would be amazing

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

Well in Dragon Age the fact that the protagonist was silent sort of irked me because having played Mass Effect I was used to the PC actually talking. In Fallout though I don't mind it because I'm usually in First-Person, so I feel less like I'm controlling a character and more like I'm actually in the world. So hearing another voice speak would actually be really weird.

 

[SimuLord]

A talking character in any first-person game breaks immersion. The whole point of first-person is to say to the player "this character is you, these are your actions, you are dropped into the character." (kind of like Scott Bakula in Quantum Leap.)

If you're going to make a character talk and interact with the world in-game in a way that's not 100% player-driven, you can't make the game first-person. I don't have a problem with playing a talking character in a game like Grand Theft Auto because I can see at all times that this is not me, it's Tommy Vercetti or Carl Johnson or Niko Bellic. In Fallout (or Elder Scrolls), yes, there's a visual of a character, but since the overwhelming majority of the game's in first-person the illusion of "that's me in there" is maintained. All the more so since I have a tendency to talk to the screen while I play.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Would he sound like Paul Gilbert?

Ideally! I see him tonight, as it happens.

No. Definitely not. It would give him non customizable character which is exactly what RPGs try to avoid. Or should try.

Mass Effect handles it fairly well, though.

Mass Effect also tells you just exactly who your character is and defines Shephard quite a lot even before the player assumes control. As such, the Shephard voice only needs to be a Marine Commander. But in New Vegas, ther Courier has no background apart from what I make up. So my Courier could be a former NCR-veteran that moved west, an escaped Legion slave, a tribal or a million other possibilities. So either we need at least a dozen voices per gender for the Courier or it will sound very odd to hear a tribal sounding exactly like a suave conman or a jaded gun merchant.

 

[Jandau]

There is a difference between a silent protagonist and one who simply isn't voiced.

Half Life had a silent protagonist. Gordon Freeman never speaks to anyone. People just talk to him (or perhaps it might be better to say "at him") and he follows along. New Vegas does NOT have a silent protagonist. You interact with other people and have conversations with them. It's just that your lines are not voiced. Now that we have that distinction out of the way, let's proceed...

That being said, no, I do not think it would be a good idea. Considering the possible variations in the character you can make, one-voice-fits-all would not work out. You need a more "focused" protagonist for that to work. Mass Effect made it work by giving you a 25-35 year old soldier. Sure, you could customize him to a degree, but you stayed within certain parameters. Dragon Age 2 is also going with a voiced protagonist, but now it's forced to limit you to a Human of 30ish years. Dragon Age 1 let you make anything from a 18 year old dwarf lad to a 90-something wizzened old human mage, but the voices for such characters would be quite different (not to mention the other possible characters), so the protagonist wasn't voiced. It's a tradeoff, freedom and choice VS voiceovers.

One could argue that the developer could just make multiple voice sets and then just let the palyer choose from, say, 4+ voices (per gender), but that's just not an option in this case. Making several sets of voiceovers for the player to choose from would be a logistical nightmare from a development perspective. Also, it would further hamper the developer's ability to edit content and all the voice work would have to be done after everything else is done. Sure, you might argue that having all the other NPCs voiced would also make editing quests a problem, but it's different when you need to drag a single voice actor to the studio to edit some dialogue or when you need to drag 10+ to edit some protagonist dialogue.

Voiced protagonists work in more linear games. The more freedom is given to a player, the less feasible the whole thing becomes. New Vegas is a very open game and fully voicing the player character would be waaaaay too much work.

 

[DustyDrB]

Well, I always prefer a voiced character (except if his name is Link. I'm aware that makes me a hypocrite, but that's just how it is). However, the degree of variability in how you play the game (your character's gender, race, age, disposition) make it hard to pull off in New Vegas. Maybe you imagine the character sounding like he/she is from Sheffield, or maybe from South Carolina. This is different than Mass Effect, where your character will have one of three predefined backstories and will be a good guy, more or less (Paragon and Renegade do not equal Good and Evil). So I can understand how voicing the Courier would be tricky. I'm just glad they made the game playable in third person. Only rarely did I leave that viewpoint.

 

[RabbiiFrystofsk]

The problem is if you get a stupid voice you'll get a lot of people saying "i don't like this voice." It's just much easier to have a silent protaganist. Hell you could use your imagination which is pretty difficult nowerdays as everything is spoon fed. Also looking at it, the most successful characters in gaming history have been pretty silent or minimal speech.

 

[EHKOS]

Well maybe if they had a few different sounding voices and you could choose like in Tribes Aerial Assult. Or if you could turn it off too.

 

[MrJoyless]

I like the idea of the silent main character it lets me insert my voice into the dialog instead of some random voice actor, i think the point is that you are playing yourself not some other character made up by the game developer.

having to pour points into speech, science, and shit I want no part in

There is no need for points in speech etc, especially in this version where you can pass "speech" challenges with other stats like Explosives, Medicine, etc. the only thing you miss out on by not maxing lockpick (which i think there are a total of 4 or 5 100% required locks in the game) or science (which in most cases is the other option to open a door) are a few unique weapons which in this version arent as utterly insane as in Fallout 3.

And Speech, hell my character uses 30 speech MAX because there are skill magazines that can raise your skills by up to 20 points which covers damn near the whole games speech challenges when you consider the other skill based / stat based success options, and my opinion of the higher challenges is i'd rather drop my super sledge into their skull than speak all high and mighty to them.....

honestly boo hoo...

 

[Zhukov]

No.

Not at all.

If your Fallout character was voiced, you'd always have to listen to him say the line you just clicked on. You would know what he was going to say before he said it.

I would start skipping his lines with minutes of hitting new game.

Besides, given the general standard of voice acting in FO:NV, your character's voice would be flat, dull and devoid of character.