What will become of the protagonist in voiced story/quest mods?

[anbeegod]

As we all know, Fallout 4's protagonist is voiced, so they'd talk in scenes, conversations and different sort of events.

 

Here comes a matter: what will become of their lines in quest mods?

 

 

Unlike Skyrim, which the protagonist has no voice, Fallout 4's protagonist has a hard-coded voice and quest mods have to inevitably deal with it.

 

I suppose I don't need to explain what it means, so I'll get STTP - what are the possible ways out to this situation?

 

 

1. Unvoiced protagonist

Pros: Simple to do, plus the benefits of having a completely muted protagonist (truly roleplay the way you want).

Cons: The protagonist can speak in the vanilla content and it'd be immersion-breaking if they're suddenly muted in another adventure. It's true that there are tons of completely unvoiced quest mods in Skyrim and most people don't have a big problem about it, but we're talking about voiced quest mods here. All characters in the same mod can speak except the protagonist who can actually speak as well - it's not immersive. Some might use the Muted Protagonist mod for whatever reason they have, but the majority is still playing with a voiced one.

 

2. Pay the original VAs to voice the protagonist

Pros: Completely seamless with vanilla game.

Cons: It's basically unfeasible. First, not all modders have that kind of money to hire two VAs even with donations from the users; second, that means the other VAs in the mod would have to be paid as well for the sake of fairness - that'd be a hell lot of money.

 

3. Convince the original VAs to voice the lines for free

Pros: WOW! It's simply the BEST way!

Cons: Man, I'd want to live in utopia as well.

 

4. Find volunteer VAs (possibly with voices resembling the original ones) to voice the protagonist

Pros: The protagonist have voice, making the mod more seamless with the vanilla game.

Cons: Not all VAs have the ability to resemble the voices of the original VAs. If they don't, there'd be even greater seam with the vanilla game.

 

4a. Edit the voiced lines to make them resemble the voices of original VAs

Pros: More seamless with vanilla game.

Cons: Difficult to be done perfectly in massive story mods that have thousands of lines. Plus, ultimately, edited voice files are still "fake" and cannot truly resemble the voices of original VAs.

 

4b. Use the story to explain why the protagonist has a different voice

Pros: Makes the whole thing logical.

Cons: The seam remains and the players might not truly accept the explanations.

 

5. Scrap and remix the voice files of the vanilla game to form desired lines

Pros: More seamless with the vanilla game.

Cons: Difficult to be done perfectly, especially in massive story mods that have thousands of lines. Finding vanilla lines that contain the desired words, scraping and remixing them - it'd take exponentially more time and effort than writing and proofreading a line itself. Plus, the voice files produced in this way are usually flawed.

 

 

 

What other ways would you suggest to handle the protagonist's voice in quest mods? I'm interested in hearing them.

[QuestionableDragon]

Solution five is easy enough to do, I could do that. Just get me the extracted audio you want to be remixed and I could do something with it.

[jkruse05]

6. Reuse dialogue from other parts of the game. That was my plan. Just takes a lot of time sifting through the existing options and you can't really use anything that mentions a specific faction or place or anything like that. Just means the writing for your NPCs has to be stronger.

[Hallgarth]

7. Have custom voiced NPC's do most of the work and only have the PC ask or say basic existing lines of dialogue.

[anbeegod]

Solution five is easy enough to do, I could do that. Just get me the extracted audio you want to be remixed and I could do something with it.

 

Not sure it's the best method for a massive mod that has thousands of lines though.

[TeamBacon]

 

Solution five is easy enough to do, I could do that. Just get me the extracted audio you want to be remixed and I could do something with it.

 

Not sure it's the best method for a massive mod that has thousands of lines though.

 

 

How would you know?

 

Anyways, I handled this a long time ago, and it will be amazing when I release it. But until then you will just have to wait and see.

[llamaRCA]

This has been discussed extensively.

 

-Some modders are going to use voice actors for the player's voices. Until we hear those mods we won't know how it sounds.

 

-Some modders are going to re-use vanilla dialogue. Some will splice the existing lines it to make new stuff. Others will reuse stuff we've already heard.

 

-Some modders will go with a silent protag.

 

-Some modders will do a mix of some of these.

 

imo, players are going to have to be flexible no matter what

 

-the only voice actors that are going to sound exactly like the originals are the original actors. And even if you could fine one actor that could mimic one of the originals perfectly, the chances of finding two are pretty low. Personally, I'd hate that difference and would rather have a silent protag than one that sounds different, unless their is a good story reason for it (player forced to wear helmet, say, in an inhospitable area during the quest). But I will probably ignore my usual standards because modding with a voiced protag is such a nuisance and whatever a modder does, if it helps tell the story, I'll live with it.

 

- Spliced vanilla dialogue is usually pretty obvious and sounds kind of forced, although sometimes you can make it work, but there will be times when it just sounds odd. Reused vanilla dialogue is going to get very boring very fast if everyone is reusing it. Kind of like the thousands of followers in Skyrim all using the same voices. I'm already sick of everything the protag says. It's all so boring. But, you know, we only have so many choices.

 

- Silent protag lines will be weird.

 

There is no good solution for modders. Providing any voice for the protag will take a lot of work. For every line you write for a new NPC you need to create two for the protag. Silent will be weird. I plan to mix voiced and unvoiced in a way that isn't so jarring (routine dialogue voiced; special occasion dialogue silent). I think that will work better than all silent and reusing vanilla would be the kiss of death to any story telling (not to mention an enormous amount of work for boring vanilla writing).