surasshu

There seems to be someone planning something along these lines: http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/462397-total-realism-overhaul

I am really glad to see this project continue, I was watching the other topic as well, and for a while I thought it had died... I can't really help since I'm not an artist, but I just wanted to voice my support of the concept! Hope to see a Nexus release of it soon :)

Haha, it's definitely the most ambitious. But I think it'd really make the biggest difference, too :D

I'd love more interesting followers/companions, that'd be super awesome. Also, multiple followers would be cool? Although I guess there should be some kinda maximum, maybe it can be a thing you develop with perk points, "Leadership" or something (with a max of 3 or 4 so?). Maybe you can even have conflicts, like if you have a high elf follower and you try to recruit an orc, he leaves you, or something... Voice acting wise I guess you could also just use text dialog as placeholder, and recruit voice actors based on that? At least for a beta or so. I actually made a post about it in another topic with a couple thoughts, I'll just add that:

Thanks! Actually, come to think of it... One more suggestion! Something I really liked from Dark Souls was the fact that even if you went into inventory, the game never paused. So you could always be attacked. Maybe this mod could have that too? The favorites system allows you to switch really quickly in my experience, but perhaps you'd need an even faster switch method, like perhaps a "next/previous favorite" type command? This may conflict with two-handedness though, but perhaps something can be figured out, like maybe instead of favoriting individual spells and weapons, you favorite "sets" (like lightning+heal, fire+summon, 2handed sword, etc.) and cycle between those. Anyway, if the game continues while you're trying to switch weapons, it adds just a bit of realism, especially since you can't ask a group of criminals to wait politely while you dig into your backpack to find that right scroll (that's how the game is now! :D). Oh and I just wanted to comment on this too: I suggested this exact thing to a friend when we were playing the game! How it would be so awesome if instead of the blood just fading off the axe/sword, the character would take out a rag and wipe it off. And to add a gameplay element to this visual thing... That'd be so sweet!

Maybe the map and compass system can be similar to how it was in Far Cry 2? Except without the GPS, replace that with a "simple" compass. Like this: http://i.imgur.com/hUIUd.jpg And none of those silly arrows too of course :D

I'd really like this, but if you're gonna take away the compass, I think there should be a compass object that you can hold in your hand! Also, one thing I thought of that I didn't see mentioned (could've easily missed it though...) is the concept of fire spreading, especially forest fires (villages burning down might be a bit difficult to pull off, although it would be awesome). This might make it a risk summoning a flame atronach or blatantly using fire-based spells everywhere, and maybe even lightning based spells too? And I agree with atlantiantokradesu too, splitting it into several "realism-themed" mods might be better. At any rate I hope it'll be possible to switch certain elements in the mod on or off. For example, I already use a mod that makes nights darker, so if I had that one and this one at the same time, it'd cause trouble.

There was .hack// where characters would have VO, but then have speech bubbles for generic background chatter stuff (and when talking to eachother). If you picked up an item, they'd say stuff like "Ooh, that item looks good..." or "As the leader, you should collect the spoils!". Ofcourse, they said it almost every time so it got old fast, but it still had charm and gave them more character, I think. And since you heard their voices in proper dialogs, it was easy to "project" their voice onto the speech bubbles. Though in the case of a mod with extra lines of dialog for all NPCs, it might be better to turn off the voices altogether. But I guess it would be very easy to leave that up to the discretion of the user with the Voice volume slider. ;)

Yeah, in my opinion the voice acting is the weakest part of the game, it's definitely immersion-breaking to me. It's inexplicably bad at points, hilariously so. As a Dutch person living in Sweden, the motley collection of goofy accents from Nowegian to Icelandic to Dutch to Austrian (AHNOLD!) and everything in between (none of it good), and some plain ol' American thrown in... It's just jarring. Plus there are direction errors, like mispronounced names. I distinctly remember at the farm near Solitude, the child and the wife pronounce the name of their father/husband differently. I know that's nitpicking, but it's indicative of the lack of direction the voice actors probably received (I'm sure they're a great bunch of voice actors...). All this stuff wouldn't be an issue without voice acting! I totally agree with Brittainy that having no voice acting for the main but voices for everyone else is also a bit weird. If the voice acting wasn't so friggin' hilarious, I'd probably have turned the volume to 0 on it already. I was thinking about it before too, but one thing I'd love is to get more dialog out of followers, while you're wandering around. Just observing stuff (like the first time you enter a village with them, they'll talk a little about it, if they have any connection to it... not EVERY village of course), or if you fight a certain monster, they might comment on it (like in the intro, "I hate those things. Too many legs, y'know?" also not every time, but maybe once a game-day/week). It's something that was fun in Mass Effect, too, although there it was voice acted. But it certainly doesn't need to be, and the scope of this game is way bigger (despite not being about space wars! :D ). Just feels like now the followers are kinda meh and lifeless at times, and that would give them more personality maybe?