Why I'll always say Morrowind is the best TES game

[Guru]

Voice actors cost money though. Which you could say was Oblivions problem with dropping text blocks and going for full voices for everything.

Yeah, well, the text boxes, it's a two-sided issue. If they had kept the box system, it would probably have gotten called old-timed or obsolete, and the text box system can be a bit "heavy" for less patient people if you know what I mean. But the other side of the coin is that with the text box, it'd have been possible to make more (unique) dialoque for everyone. And you wouldn't have to listen to some certain voice you've grown to hate.
I don't think there's goin' back to the box system anymore though. I guess they could afford the actors, with so many successful games they've made. Reminds me of The Witcher's Enhanced Edition, this talk about voice acting. That thing had all dialoque in like 10 languages..

[Sheogorath]

What bugged me most about Oblivions voices, Dunmer aside, was the way that some people CHANGED VOICE ACTORS MID SPEECH.

The beggars seemed especially prone to fits of vocal multiple personality disorder.

[Raz]

What bugged me most about Oblivions voices, Dunmer aside, was the way that some people CHANGED VOICE ACTORS MID SPEECH.

The beggars seemed especially prone to fits of vocal multiple personality disorder.

True, so very true. It was absolute stupidity that a beggar would come up to me in an old, sickly lady's voice saying "Ss-pare a coin for an old begg-ar?" and as soon as I hand it over she'd suddenly become this healthy, happy youth of a woman saying "Thanks darl!". I gave my money to a sickly woman in need, not a fraudulent con artist.

[lars573]

What bugged me most about Oblivions voices, Dunmer aside, was the way that some people CHANGED VOICE ACTORS MID SPEECH.

The beggars seemed especially prone to fits of vocal multiple personality disorder.

Actually they didn't. If you had a Dunmer beggar it was the same womans voice no matter what she was saying. What would change was the delivery of the dialouge. Oblivion broke up the background voices into small senteces. When a beggar asked you for a coin it was delivered in a certain way. Tired and beaten by the world was the usual way. When you gave them a coin however it changed to an exuberantly happy thank you. But it was the same voice that said each line. Unless you were playing the PC version and the sound files got screwed up.

[Krauser]

Actually they didn't. If you had a Dunmer beggar it was the same womans voice no matter what she was saying. What would change was the delivery of the dialouge. Oblivion broke up the background voices into small senteces. When a beggar asked you for a coin it was delivered in a certain way. Tired and beaten by the world was the usual way. When you gave them a coin however it changed to an exuberantly happy thank you. But it was the same voice that said each line. Unless you were playing the PC version and the sound files got screwed up.

Yeah I think they just tried to reuse as many lines as possible. That same VA probably did a "thank you" for a regular women NPC. Then they just took that same sample for every other elf "thank you". I think I saw an interview of the lead sound guy for the game. He said something like they wanted full voice overs but they didn't want to give him the budget to do it well. He had to compromise. He also said he never supported full voice overs, but did what he was told.

[lars573]

Well that was fairly obvious. Truth is when I heard they were doing full vocies for all NPC's I though it would be a certain way. And then I got Oblivion and popped it into my 360, sure enough it was exactly what I though it would be. Same VA for every NPC of a certain race. Or in the case of the Merrick races 2 VA's, one man and one woman, doing ALL the elven voices. With variations in the delivery. When you talk to a Nord or Orc woman, it's Linda Carter everytime.