Fallout 4: The Problem with Voiced Protagonists

[Fireseed]

If multiplayer is the number one thing I never wanted added to my Bethesda stew, voiced protagonists was a pretty close second. Base building? Hell yeah. Better gun play? You know it sister. A Fully voiced protagonist!? Ummm I don’t think we needed that.

Before I give my two cents as to why I have such a major issue with voiced protagonists in FO4, let me first praise the system. I know it seems weird but let’s do it. First off, what a massive undertaking. 111,000 lines of dialogue 13,000 of which are dedicated to the main character. Bethesda went all in on this. They believed it would add something major to their open world formula and they went for it. I like a studio that takes risks. We don’t see enough of that in the triple A space. Bethesda shook their open world soda and didn’t look back. To their credit, there are parts where it works, especially during the main quest line. Having a voiced protagonist lends a sense of cinematic assurance that other Bethesda games do not have. I feel comfortable saying that Fallout 4 features Bethesda’s best main quest and this is partly due to having a voice actor that talks. Without a speaking protagonist the third person cinematics would have never worked and a lot of the emotional weight placed on the character would have fallen flat.

Most of us don’t play Bethesda games for the main quest though. We play them to put ourselves into a foreign land or to role play as some invented character in our head. Bethesda’s playgrounds are a place to experiment with the rules of the world and to do and say things we never would in real life. This is where the voiced protagonist unfortunately fails. In Skyrim, when I choose a line of dialogue I always felt as though it was me saying this. In FO4, it’s generic male1 and generic female1 speaking. No matter what choices I make in subsequent playthroughs these characters never really become my own.

The fallout from this system reaches many aspects of Bethesda’s game design. We lose some seriously entertaining lines from Fallout 3 which feature some hilarious and terrifying speech options. FO4 is much more generic and doesn’t allow you to say outrageous things. We all remember lying to Moira in Megaton to avoid her annoying experiments and receiving subsequent payments nonetheless. The world of fallout 3 and Skyrim are much more malleable due to allowing you to choose voice options which are much more interesting. This is probably due to the fact that adding these odd lines would have ballooned the lines of dialogue in FO4 from 13,000 to 20,000. Also, how does generic male1 deliver a heartfelt line to a struggling waste-lander and then change his personality drastically to deliver a truly sadistic line. It simply won’t work. Brian T Delany and Courtenay Taylor do a bang-up job voicing the lone survivor but shifting tones so drastically would cripple even the best of actors.

Even more damaging, is the fact that we have to choose from four different options without really knowing what our character is going to say. This does not work in a Bethesda RPG. The sarcastic option rarely conveyed what I was thinking in my head. There’s a reason that shortly after the game came out there was a mod that brought back the traditional speech options where we could see what we were saying.

Looking forward, I wonder if Bethesda will keep this system. If they do, the only way to make it work would be to double down on the voice actors. You need at least three voice actors for each female and male survivor. If you’re talking about transplanting this into The Elder Scrolls, then you need two different voice actors for each race (male and female) and you can see this spiraling out of control quickly.

As much as I disagree with the decision, I can understand the inclusion of speech in FO4 on paper or in a board meeting. I even know some fans that like it (my brother). I mean, it worked so well in The Witcher series. Geralt of Rivia is a fantastic character to role play as. CDproject Red’s top notch writing always gives the players a choice of lines that fit Geralt’s personality. Unlike in a Bethesda game where you name your character, In the Witcher series you are Geralt. There are no voice options for him to say something out of character. You guide the white wolf through his story and make some adjustments to his personality but at the end of the day he’s still Geralt. Throughout the story you make major decisions that greatly affect the outcome of the world but we are still Geralt. When I play a Bethesda RPG my character is me. Sometimes I am super evil and sometimes I am generous when exploring the wasteland. I feel as though in Fallout 4 I am some amalgamation of myself and a character that the Bethesda writers have invented. I exist in a no man’s land and I sense that I am not fully realized.

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[Swagmaster Love 🇪🇺]

Multiplayer probably was the most requested feature for Bethesda-games and they finally found a way to improve their engine to that point of offering it as a possibility.

Mute protagonists hurt the immersion and reduce the character of dialogues,imo.
Theyre nonsensical and comical in a world where everything lives around you, you, the main protagonist, are the one that lacks any of it and your character never really becomes a part of the displayed world, if youre mute (Unless the character is supposed to be mute that is.).

It's the quality of the voice actor; the consistency of their ability to deliver certain intended personas and how much of a broad display they can give.
It's the quality of writing, which was, imo, not as good as it could have been with Fallout 4.
Right at the start of the game, the voice actor and the diversity of lines were never really given much of a chance to develop an immersive true broadness of a roleplaying experience.
Bethesda took you to the start of the game, heavily defined your character by their pre-writing and from there on out both voice actors and writers could not diverge too much off that path as anything out of the ordinary would have not fallen in line with the premise of the prologue.

While the writing may have been good in order to portray a story, it didnt manage to create a good >player-driven< RPG videogame.


I believe that the implementation of "obscure" dialogue-options wasnt Bethesdas greatest idea either.
It makes for a good, clean UI and since they pre-defined the character anyway, it lost the "surprise"-effect for the player most of the time, but it still did surprise players sometimes with unintended actions.

[Fireseed]

Thanks for the comment! It's an interesting take. I agree that mute protagonists can be comical but I feel that Bethesda games are different because the character is my own. I suppose I always interpreted it as me saying the lines. It is much different than HL2 for example where Gordon truly says nothing.

[Reverend Belial]

Originally posted by Mercy:

Mute protagonists hurt the immersion and reduce the character of dialogues,imo.
Theyre nonsensical and comical in a world where everything lives around you, you, the main protagonist, are the one that lacks any of it and your character never really becomes a part of the displayed world, if youre mute (Unless the character is supposed to be mute that is.).

I disagree firmly. A voiced protagonist tells YOU the tone of your words (what if I don't want to be a sarcastic prick all the time even if I pick the normal choices? What if I don't want to greet children like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥♥?), and in the case of this game even sets the ethnicity of your character because frankly they picked the two whitest people on the planet to do voices.

It's not as simple as just giving alternate actors or whatever because voice acting is incredibly expensive for one, so even if they did get multiple sets to choose from it would ultimately end in them cutting down on some other aspect of the game because a huge amount of funding went into getting the actors, but the more actors you have the less a chance of being able to get them all back for future expansions.

Mute protagonists just make you need to use your imagination for a second to fill in the lines. That's it. Voiced protagonists are just a step to experiencing someone else's story with less choice in your own hands.

[Swagmaster Love 🇪🇺]

I agree to a certain extent.
I expected the game to be more open to what I wanted the character to be.
Instead they carved that in stone right at the start without my doing.
Really didnt want to play a Fallout game as a whiny dad/mother and the voice actor and writers who obviously had to portray this protagonist throughout the entire game just got disattached from me and my idea of "R" in RPG.

This was really a hit and miss attempt, because it's only immersive, if youre gonna be down with the whiny dad/mom character they created.
Every now and then the writers try to stray away from that prologue in an attempt to give the player the idea of freedom of choice and character, but it's simply not enough.

A voice-acted protagonist is a good thing in my book, but theyre going to have to keep options for player-choices open the next time around they start a story in a Fallout or TES game.
It's possible to do that with voice-acting. The branching simply sucked in FO4.

And if someone is against voice acting in general, it's very easy to disable it via mods.

[The Pollie]

Voiced protags always have and always will hurt player decisions. In specific stories, they're fine. But any intention on it being your own character falls apart the second they force their own voice on you.

It also dramatically hurt dialogue options. Compare Fallout 3 to Fallout 4 and the difference in player decisions is obnoxious.

[Kameraden]

@Mercy:

I think when people wanted multiplayer I don't think it was in the context of an MMO Like Experience with Microtransactions (As Todd said it's a Games as a Service Model). So you can bet it will sell resources/gear/items/tools/whatever they do to make a bigger profit with the game.

When it comes to player's demand for multiplayer it was more long the lines of Co-op. Joining friends in the world of Fallout and Skyrim, going on adventures together. Not in the context of an MMO.

In short saying users want multiplayer is true. But not exactly "This" Particular kind of multiplayer.

[The Pollie]

No, we certainly did not. We wanted multiplayer Fallout, not a craft&kill battle arena that will likely just be abandoned before long when Fallout 5 gets popped out.

[bongerman85]

there some mods to allow u to tinker with the voice levels. presumably u could synthesize urs eventually. but. honestly i didnt think it was that bad. its kind of entertaining honestly. the next time u take ur playthrough go the sarcastic route as much as u can safely and i think u will begin to deal with the voiced protagonists a little differently. its still ur game.

the other way that i choose to look at this game is that the characters look far more aged than i do myself almost no matter what i do. which is okay. imagine its more of a future you.

[Eminem]

Full on voice protagonist works well with games that use a heavy dose of cut scenes to convey the story....Witcher 3, Bioware titles etc.

[bongerman85]

also keep in mind that with the way the conversations work now. the game itself is much more fluid feeling. less clunky than the old menus. and it also helps to remind you that the world in which u exist in fallout 4 is an ever evolving world around you. and sometimes odd stuff really can turn a mundane conversation into a huge laugh. you are a character in a movie now. that is what fallout 4 is. its your movie

[Kameraden]

Originally posted by bongerman85:

also keep in mind that with the way the conversations work now. the game itself is much more fluid feeling. less clunky than the old menus. and it also helps to remind you that the world in which u exist in fallout 4 is an ever evolving world around you. and sometimes odd stuff really can turn a mundane conversation into a huge laugh. you are a character in a movie now. that is what fallout 4 is. its your movie

Ya but regardless you will sound like a middle aged white male/female with a very generic voice. Definitely not sounding like you're from Kentucky, or Mexico. Who knows maybe your character was from Ontario? Voice Protagonist really limits the imagination as it takes that part away from you.

[The Pollie]

Originally posted by bongerman85:

also keep in mind that with the way the conversations work now. the game itself is much more fluid feeling. less clunky than the old menus. and it also helps to remind you that the world in which u exist in fallout 4 is an ever evolving world around you. and sometimes odd stuff really can turn a mundane conversation into a huge laugh. you are a character in a movie now. that is what fallout 4 is. its your movie

... No. No, it did not. It felt more clunky, actually, given that you are basically eternally pigeonholed into a handful of really narrow choices. You are given very little actual choice in this game. Seriously. Go through the main story, get to the 'end' when you find that damned kid, and try to shoot the guy that walks in to talk to you.

I know that was the first thing I jumped to when I saw him. But, no. The game said, "No, you have to listen to this guy. I'm not giving you any other option."

This gets far, far worse when they have to have every line voiced, and so are encouraged to write you far less dialogue than usual. When it's just text, they can write a great deal more. Again, compare Fallout 3 - Where sometimes you may have as many as TWELVE options at a time - to Fallout 4, where you often have only the four, and at times two or even three of those "choices" are all actually the same - if any of them at all result in a different outcome.

There were a lot of dialogue options in this game that literally have you say the exact same line, despite the prompts having completely different text.

[The Pollie]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m925z03-p54

This is probably why they're dropping NPCs and dialogue in the new game, actually. They know full well they fouled it up and would rather not even aim for quality.

[Yhwach]

Fallout 4 follows the same loose-illusionary set of choices that Skyrim has so I don't see why people keep complaining; all Bethesda did was apply their own rpg system into Fallout since Oblivion.
The only difference between each dialogue system is one is voiced, and the other is not..and fallout 4 actually does offer more "choices" down the road since even the faction quests in skyrim are very linear and have hardly any impact on the world.

[Kameraden]

Originally posted by Yhwach:

Fallout 4 follows the same loose-illusionary set of choices that Skyrim has so I don't see why people keep complaining.
The only difference between each dialogue system is one is voiced, and the other is not..and fallout 4 actually does offer more "choices" down the road since even the faction quests in skyrim are very linear and have hardly any impact on the world.

And it is why Skyrim I absolutely hated questing. I would even completely ignore most of the major story quest lines because they just felt so badly done. I would just imagine my way through the game as you didn't have any other option on how to enjoy it otherwise.

It's also why I'm going to be insanely skeptical with every new game Bethesda releases as well. I mean I enjoy Fallout 4, but really all I do on the game is build/craft/protect settlements. Everything else in the game is kind of meh. It's why I enjoy ARK for similar reasons. It has a Sim City consume your time building mantality to it. Vast majority of hours I have in Fallout 4 is just building stuff. But sadly that can not resell me a future game by Bethesda if this is all their future games will be good at.

Fallout 4 was the first game I ever pre-ordered that was Bethesda, I doubt I will ever do that again. I let my love for Fallout 3 and New Vegas kind of get the better of me... I should of known better after Skyrim. Skyrim was shallow, I have more hours out of New Vegas surprisingly, despite how empty that game feels, it's still nicer to play than Skyrim.

Though I can say Fallout 4 is the less "Mod" necessary of Bethesda's games I've played anyways. Skyrim I couldn't go a week without modding it, mostly because how ugly the weapon/armor/character designs were. Plastic Hair........ bugged me so much. Felt like my character was a Lego Man. LOL