The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series are arguably what Bethesda is most well-known for, even if they didn’t originally create Fallout. For the longest time, these two series could boast that they allowed players to fully project themselves onto the playable character. Unfortunately, because of Fallout 4, that is no longer the case. While Brian T. Delaney and Courtenay Taylor, who voice the male and female Sole Survivor respectively, are wonderful voice actors, the addition of a voiced protagonist ultimately hurt Fallout 4. I hope Bethesda does not choose to go down that route for the next game in The Elder Scrolls series, as well.
The first Fallout game that Bethesda developed was Fallout 3, and the protagonist in it was incredibly malleable. They had a backstory, but you could shape your character as you saw fit. Because they were silent, you could imagine their replies and personality however you wanted. You were never hindered by listening to their voice. Hearing different inflections in voices naturally makes the player feel a certain way. Sometimes this can even take you out of the moment if the protagonist said something in a way that seemed out of character. Your Lone Wanderer was exactly what you imagined them to be because they were silent. The player had the ability to interpret every response that they made in their own way.
Fallout 4 changed this. The game that was supposed to revolutionize the role-playing genre just left some players feeling hollow.
There are role-playing games where a voiced protagonist works quite well, like Mass Effect and The Witcher, but that’s because they always had voiced protagonists. These games never came with any other expectations. Geralt and Commander Shepard had definitive voices from the start, so that is what noticeably felt more natural. Players never knew what those games could have been like with silent protagonists because that ‘feature’ was never a part of those games to begin with. You can’t compare experiences when there is nothing to compare it to. What works well in one series may not be best for another. And in this case, I feel as if Fallout should have stuck with its old dialogue system.
In Fallout 4, fans of the series could tell that something was missing. It’s odd that the addition of such an important feature seemed to take away from the game’s greatness. Fallout 4 was still a fantastic game for many fans, but it stumbled in several areas where it should have shined. I was constantly being told how my character would react instead of deciding for myself. There were still choices that I could make, but each one gave a specific response from my character. Why did my Sole Survivor respond that way? Or not say that line with enough anger or happiness? Well, that’s because Bethesda had each line recorded. The voice actors were great, and I’m not trying to make it seem like they did a bad job, but I was disappointed when I couldn’t decide my character’s emotions for myself.
It didn’t help that Bethesda sacrificed a lot when they chose to include a voiced protagonist. It’s a running joke at this point that the four, woefully inadequate replies that you are limited to in Fallout 4 are essentially ‘Yes,’ ‘No,’ Maybe,’ and ‘Sarcasm.’ It’s quite apparent that there isn’t any variety in the responses that you could choose. This isn’t always the case, but it’s easy to see when you install a mod that shows the full dialogue that your character will say, and many times the four responses are almost identical. Not only did it render your choices almost meaningless, but it also restricted the amount of choices that you had. The maximum number of replies you could choose from at a time were four, and once you went down a dialogue path, you were locked into it.
Bethesda ended up hindering the story that they told because of this. There are only so many responses that they can write when they also need a voice actor to record them. The Sole Survivor can’t realistically have an enormous amount of different dialogue paths, although the number of lines recorded for each in Fallout 4 was immense, if it also takes time and money in a recording booth to do so. With a silent protagonist, it allows them to expand on certain stories greatly.
I’m much more of an Elder Scrolls fan than I am a Fallout fan, so I’m wary of The Elder Scrolls’ future. If Bethesda decides to keep their current dialogue system from Fallout 4, I fear that it would sour my love for The Elder Scrolls, a series that is one of my favorite’s.
The Dragonborn in Skyrim was an effective character because I never felt like I was being told what kind of character my Dragonborn was. Hearing a specific voice would have automatically made my character (a Wood Elf) feel a little less special. There are probably millions of different Dragonborns, but I know that mine is unique. Although it was prophesied that the character would become a hero and fight Alduin, they are a blank slate otherwise. I never had to worry that the response I was choosing would sound wrong because I could imagine it perfectly in my head. I wasn’t forced to suspend my fantasy of being this badass Wood Elf who could mercilessly rob countess NPCs, while just as easily help save Tamriel, just because the voice didn’t match my character’s personality. I could be anyone. It’s a lot harder to suspend my disbelief when there is a voice behind my actions.
I don’t want The Elder Scrolls 6 to continue down the path that Fallout 4 created. Bethesda could surely take fans’ feedback to heart and just make a better voiced dialogue system, but I feel it would be best for them to stick with a silent protagonist. I understand that Bethesda most likely made this decision to sell as many copies as possible, which I’m not going to fault them for, and to tell a better story. In addition to wanting to appeal to a wider audience, they probably felt that it was necessary in order for the player to form a stronger connection with the Sole Survivor. But good story-telling is just as important, and when I don’t have enough of a reason to care about the characters to begin with, hearing their voices won’t make much of a difference.
In the beginning of Fallout 4 when my spouse was killed and Shaun was taken from me, it didn’t really affect me. I had only known them for what seemed like ten minutes, and it gave me little incentive to care about them. The only reason that I felt anything at all was out of understanding that the game wanted me to feel something. Not because I genuinely cared. If Bethesda meant for the voiced protagonists to really alter how the story affected me, they failed in that regard.
A voiced protagonist could be good, but Bethesda has shown that they sacrifice too much when they go down that route. Not only that, but it would be incredibly difficult in an Elder Scrolls game given the amount of playable races. Khajiits, Orcs, Argonians, and Elves, to name a few, sound nothing alike. They all have their own distinct accents and dialect. If Bethesda chose to cast voice actors for all of the playable races, it would be such a tremendous task for them that I don’t think it’s feasible unless they cut corners in other areas of the game. And if they did that, then the whole game would suffer for it.
This isn’t a new opinion, and surely hundreds of people have already made this known, but I am saying this now because Bethesda recently announced that they would be hosting another E3 press conference in 2016. There is an incredibly slim chance that Bethesda would announce, or even hint at, The Elder Scrolls 6 this year, but they must be thinking about it at this point. Bethesda is in the spotlight with people waiting for some type of announcement, and it would look good for them to acknowledge some fans’ concerns.
Bethesda could certainly prove me wrong and create a voiced protagonist with a robust dialogue system that knocks it out of the park, but it would have to be perfect and not show any signs of weakness. That’s not fair to Bethesda. It’s easy to defend their decision when Fallout 4 has sold so well, no doubt due to its advertisement which included a fully voiced playable character, but I want The Elder Scrolls 6 to be the best game it can possibly be. I just don’t think that it can be accomplished with a voiced protagonist.
Jennifer is a games journalist, former games journalist and PR Manager at Gearbox. They contributed 234 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: went on to write for Windows Central and later managed PR for Gearbox Software.