[Sever]

Does anyone else feel that by having spoken dialogue instead of text, it lessens the whole immersion factor of the game? I'm not a big fan of voice acting in rpgs for two reasons:

1. It takes up more disc space. Not that i'm short of it or anything, but if they only had, say, 20% of dialogue spoken by actors, they'd be able to fit in about 5000 times more dialogue for all the various npcs. Elder Scrolls games are heavy on the 'generic' npc and i feel that they need to move away from this trap. If each npc were given about 100 new, unique lines of unspoken dialogue (still about 1000 lines short of what i'd like), it'd still cost less money, time, disc space and people to produce than 100% voice acting and it'd fix the problem of the generic (boring) npc.

2. The level of *cough* talent in game voices in general leaves a lot to be desired. I like my rpg experience to be rich. Like a fat book. And like a book, i like to leave the particulars of voice characteristics to my own imagination. (how many of you prefer reading a book as opposed to listening to a book?) Believe it or not, most non-Americans don't like listening to American accents in their rpgs. (I kid you not, it's true!) And i've yet to come across a 'monster' voice that wasn't corny in the extreme. (NWN anyone?)

I'm not saying there shouldn't be voice talent at all. There are times where a little 'talented' voice talent has really brought a character to life: Sarevok, Tommy Vercetti, Irenicus etc. But for every good example i'm left with 100 bad ones that should've been left as text.

More on this a little later. I've got to get back to work. But i'll finish this post by casting my vote:

100% spoken dialogue in Oblivion? Nay.