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It's oh so quiet.....


skydragon78

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So, why can't you talk?

 

I like to role-play Skyrim, it gives me a much deeper and interesting experience to create a character with a back-story, faults, habits, strengths and weaknesses. I use the conversation on the cart to inform my character building....you were trying to cross the border, Ralof says. He also says 'We're all brothers and sisters in binds now, thief', which I take to mean my character is female, etc etc. Unless I'm playing a role where I'm starting out as a civilian, I even have an answer for why I'm a thief, but have little to no sneak ability, a warrior with no weapon skills etc, essentially trying to explain the perk system and character growth.

 

However, the one thing that I struggle to explain satisfactorily is my characters muteness. Why can I not speak, other than the occasional grunt of pain, or when I'm using a dragon shout? Its a conundrum I find difficult to answer, especially a good, solid role-playing answer. Best I've come up with is an injury left you mute, when you're using the dialogue options your character is in fact writing or using some form of sign language. When using the shouts, it's the combined power of the absorbed dragon souls, and the power of your dragon blood giving you the ability.

 

If anyone's had similar thoughts I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts and solutions!

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Character is ...

shocked

despondent

semi-conscious

mad at being thought a stormcloak and thus won't talk to the stormlcoaks

mad at Ralof

in disbelief that he and the other stormcloaks were caught

unwilling to give away any clue to his own identity

antisocial in general

gagged

 

That's off the top of my head

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Who said you can't talk? You talk all the time. Or do you think your just signing al those dialogue options?

 

They don't give you a pre-recorded voice because your character speaks with whatever voice you want. It's not some prescribed identity imposed on you by the developers choice options A or B. Want a Dunmer who speaks in a high pitched voice with a lisp? Done. How about a Redguard red neck? All yours. A female Imperial with a deep manly voice? Perfectly fine.

 

The 'lack' of a voice gives you far more options for RP than Bioware's or CK's deciding what you sound like.

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Who said you can't talk? You talk all the time. Or do you think your just signing al those dialogue options?

 

They don't give you a pre-recorded voice because your character speaks with whatever voice you want. It's not some prescribed identity imposed on you by the developers choice options A or B. Want a Dunmer who speaks in a high pitched voice with a lisp? Done. How about a Redguard red neck? All yours. A female Imperial with a deep manly voice? Perfectly fine.

 

The 'lack' of a voice gives you far more options for RP than Bioware's or CK's deciding what you sound like.

It'd be nice if Bethesda maybe gave you a list of voicetypes for your character to choose from so when you do click those dialogue options your character talks with that voice...would add a great deal of immersion, at least for me. Of course, it should also have the option to let your character be mute so you can give him/her your own voice.

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It'd be nice if Bethesda maybe gave you a list of voicetypes for your character to choose from so when you do click those dialogue options your character talks with that voice...would add a great deal of immersion, at least for me. Of course, it should also have the option to let your character be mute so you can give him/her your own voice.

The main problem with that is the sheer quantity of dialogue... Believe it or not, bit Skyrim has about the same number of lines of dialogue as Inquisition. If you were to have even two voice sets for PCs, that dialogue would almost double. That is a LOT of space and a LOT of work, and it would require sacrificing other things.

 

Plus, you run into the inevitable 'not what I picked' problem. For instance, in Mass Effect, when encountering the Throian. If you pick "That's... Big", Shephard will actually say "We are going to need bigger guns". Dialogue that changes from selection to speech isn't the best immersion tool... It also imposes tone and identity on someone.

 

Vague topical dialogue choices allow yoibto formulate the wording yourself.

Edited by Lachdonin
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I've never played Inquisition so I'm taking your word for it that it has a lot of dialogue. Anyway, you're right...that would hog a lot of effort and time on the developers part especialy if you had 10-20 voice actors going over hundreds of lines of dialogue.

 

But, who says you can't dream lol.

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Ha ha yes we could all dream of the freedom of speech in rpgs.

 

But who knows!!! Maybe thats what future games has in store for us?

 

A mix of these old Text rpgs from the good old Dos era + The modern rpg machine.

 

I would love seeing that :laugh:

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Voicing the PC also presents a conundrum for modders who would have to either include non-voiced player dialogue, or have voice actors attempt to imitate the original. I actually would be fine with that, but many modders and mod-users don't.

 

And yeah, what Lachdonin said - you aren't actually mute in-universe, just like Whiterun in-universe contains much more than 50 people.

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