Fallout 4: The Ugly - Voiced Protagonist

This topic is one of the defining parts of Fallout 4, and it is the movement from the silent protagonist, in which lines of dialog from the protagonist are chosen by the player for the Player Character (PC) to say, but that have no voice acting for it.  The silent protagonist comes in two varieties: the truly silent protagonist and the unvoiced silent protagonist.  That first type, the protagonist who never actually has a line of dialog is rare in gaming for at least the last 15 years, but it is a well known type of play style.  The Fallout franchise, up to Fallout 4 used the other sort of silent protagonist, which allowed for a variety of dialog options with NPCs so that the player could get to know a bit about them, what their circumstances were and if anything of interest could be revealed by them.  The NPCs are voice acted, the PC is not.  This is a vital part of role playing as no voice acted protagonist can cover the wide array of options and choices for character design and the type of person and personality the player was trying to achieve with their PC.

The Player Character is the avatar of the player in the game world, the one doing the actual activities guided by the player, and by giving a wide set of character design options the voice of the PC has to be one that is imagined by the player.  By choosing lines of dialog that are appropriate to that design and outlook for the PC, the player has a form of freedom in thinking just how the lines are spoken.  By giving a variety of choices of what to say there is also the intention that each PC will say them differently, which means that while certain dialog might yield better results, they may not actually fit with the type of person the PC is and thus yield different results in speech options.

A voice acted character is expected for times when known PCs are the point of a game.  A game out of The Witcher series gives the voice of Geralt of Rivia, while one out of Mass Effect gives a male or female Commander Shepard.  The basic role and situation is already created for the player, and while some cosmetic changes can happen before the game starts and within the game, the voice of the PC is set and all the lines of dialogue fully voiced.  That then requires a system for figuring out how to give the player agency in the world, and that can come out as a result of the different decisions the player makes throughout game play.  With that said you don't get to play anyone else in those franchises.  A game like Bioshock Infinite and its DLCs does offer a single voiced protagonist, but in the DLCs you play the companion who has an interesting set of stories of her own.  Thus you play through the main game as Booker DeWitt and then switch over to Elizabeth for some of the DLC content.  You don't get to play a resident of Columbia, say, just as you can't start out as a peasant in The Witcher series or a different species and job in the Mass Effect franchise.  That voice acted protagonist deal means that the freedom of the player is limited to the choices of the game design team, and if they did a great job then the leeway and types of decisions a player gets to make will then allow for a form of immersion in that PC.  Everyone has a different view of Shepard, Geralt, Booker and Elizabeth, and that is only constrained by how well the design team created a meaningful and in-depth experience for the player.

That single choice at the very start of the design process then starts to constrain and limit what can be done with the depth of the overall story, the world and interactions between the PC and NPCs.  Constraints are in no way a bad thing in game design terms, and can actually require a creative response and better look at the content that will be provided in the game itself.  Voice acting is only one, and a rather minor part, of immersion and allowing a game world to have a sense of internal reality for the player.  Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas both offered a good sense of how the in-game world and situation worked without a voice acted protagonist, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim by Bethesda Game Studios also didn't need a voice acted protagonist and may have actually found that if they wanted to budget for all the different races that could be played that they wouldn't even be able to make the game if they did so.

For an Open World RPG in which there is not a set background for the PC, then comes a problem of having to create a setting in which voicing the PC becomes a problem due to character types and styles that players will create.  With too much background set, the player must either abide by the decisions the game designers made or decide to chuck them, imagine some different sort of background and then put up with voice acted lines that don't fit their character very well.  By making a story line imminent, that is to say pressing at all times, upon the PC if the route of following what the game designers want the player to do is chucked out the window, then the main story becomes a burden to the player as it will be brought up and nudged at them from various sources including NPCs, quests, and running across locations intended to show something to the player about that main story.  Putting up with that sort of pushing and nudging is an irritation and breaks immersion into the game world as no one will see your character as you have made them but only as the game designers intended for the main story of the game.

Voicing the protagonist and then doing a quick cut to get the main part of the game, means that there is no chance to get a solid grounding in the character type the game designers intend for the player to use.  The choice of male/soldier or female/lawyer isn't even given an hour of game play so that they can go looking for a job, figure out how to tend to their finances and put up with that pesky guy from Vault Tec trying to sign them up for the local Vault.  Why don't we get that?  Too much voice acting work.  If more attention is paid to the start, then the actual game will start to lose some of its structure due to budgetary constraints and timing.  Yet that sort of time would allow players to begin the process of building their character, to get some initial perks that reflect their pre-war lives.  If a voiced protagonist for an Open World game without a set type of protagonist must be done, and the game is broken into an intro/get to know you part and then a transition to the main game, then what is required is actually getting to know some of the life and background of that protagonist before the change-over.

A longer lead-in would allow the player to establish some of what that PC was before the bombs dropped.  Perhaps visiting the local garage to get a perk there, or going to the local range to pick up a perk or two there...fixing some stuff or reprogramming a basic routine into the robot could add in perk points.  Singular, yes, but a foundation and a beginning of a couple of extra points to go with a few they got from their lives before they were married.  Was the male interested in anything before getting drafted?  Did the female try to pursue some necessary training for the slowly decaying society around her while still getting a night school law degree?  Was the equivalent of an ROTC program available?  Were there vocational schools either could attend?  Perhaps part-timing as a model or waiting on tables was something they did to get by?  Anything?  These individuals did have a pre-war life, and were in their late 20's to early 30's, which is a point in which most normal individuals actually have some real life skills behind them and that should be reflected in their perk trees.

It wouldn't take much in the way of story of game assets to do this, save for getting some spruced up buildings in the pre-war era, maybe a short bus ride to go past a few places...but the interactions with anyone would require some plotting out and voicing.  Game mechanics for some perks getting assigned would be relatively easy.  Yet for an hour of time spent in the pre-war era the player could get to know their spouse, their neighborhood and truly realize what a horror was going to happen when the bombs dropped.  That would, of course, force the Far Harbor DLC to not take the coward's way out with the sudden lack of pre-war memories on the part of the protagonist...but that is a plot hole or deceit on the part of the game designers depending on how you look at it.  If the player is supposed to care about their spouse, their neighborhood and have deep and heartfelt reactions about losing them, then that isn't done in a short intro inside a single home and then running past people who are panicking when the alarm comes.  Caring takes time, and the game designers did not allot enough to actually get that across to the player via interactions of the Player Character.

More problematical is the way the game unfolds in the Vault and the ever so smart Institute sending a harsh wasteland operative with a penchant for violence in to lead a team of scientists and medical personnel to do a baby snatching.  The man would lead the security end of things, but not the actual kidnapping part as the medical team would be ready with sedatives to inject the parent holding the child so that the child wouldn't come to any harm.  Then close the chamber, turn on the cryo system and leave.  Murdering all but the Sole Survivor is insane for the Institute as each of the individuals in the Vault represent fresh, uncontaminated pre-war genetic material.  There were children scheduled for cryso sleep as well as young adults.  If the worry is getting flashed by the distant nuclear bomb disturbing genetic material, then the infant was exposed to that as well.  The only reason that would be set aside is if the distance meant that exposure was minor beyond the flash of the light, and that those who got in before the shockwave carrying debris hit was the only worry for fallout contamination.  It's a shame that Bethesda decided on voice acting as it would have been fun and interesting to play someone else from the neighborhood in the Vault.  The opportunities for play in that are large and could change the very nature of the post-war world and its recovery.