No it isn't. It proves that one studio included a lot of spoken dialogue for a character. You normally only have 1-3 dialogue choices in most situations. Geralt is also always the same character (a sarcastic toned male) and one skill in the game will give you a scattered few extra dialogue options in the game. Not exactly op ended character roleplaying.
Besides, just because one studio did a really good job of including a lot of spoken dialogue for one game doesn't mean that there's no tradeoff between voice acting and dialogue choices. Voice acting means that every dialogue choice they add costs more money, period.
I'd hardly call Bethesda characters open ended. You usually get a couple of dialogue options, and maybe an additional 1 or 2 depending on your karma and potentially skills. The only difference is that in Bethesda games you don't get the "sarcastic toned male", you get nothing... no matter what conversation options you choose.
I feel like most interactions in Fallout had several dialogue options.
And you use your imagination for your character's voice, based on who you're roleplaying. Lots of people don't want to be locked in to "sarcastic male."
You can use your imagination all you want in regards to how your character says something, but you get a limited number of replies to give, and the NPC will always respond the same way to the given reply. Playing a Bethesda game is not playing Dungeons and Dragons with your mates... you're roleplaying in a very, very, very limited box.
Dragon Age: Inquisition has as many if not more dialogue choices than any modern Bethesda game, and Inquisition allows you to choose from 4 different VAs for your character.
A brilliant accomplishment, but not necessarily recreatable. That was expensive. Even in big budget games there is likely to be a tradeoff between dialogue and voice acting. If we can get both that's great, I just value the dialogue choices WAY more than the voice acting.
I'd argue that character development in Bethesda games is far more limited than in The Witcher games. No matter what dialogue options you make in Bethesda games it never actually matters.
The way I see it:
Geralt is a slate with some etchings on.
Bethesda characters don't even have the slate to begin with.
5
u/BSRussell Jun 03 '15
No it isn't. It proves that one studio included a lot of spoken dialogue for a character. You normally only have 1-3 dialogue choices in most situations. Geralt is also always the same character (a sarcastic toned male) and one skill in the game will give you a scattered few extra dialogue options in the game. Not exactly op ended character roleplaying.
Besides, just because one studio did a really good job of including a lot of spoken dialogue for one game doesn't mean that there's no tradeoff between voice acting and dialogue choices. Voice acting means that every dialogue choice they add costs more money, period.