Eugh, I'm horribly late with all this but I'm sure you guys all saw them by now though (I hope). Still, I'm gonna post 'em anyway. Starting with the new Intelligence video:
SCIENCE! This just leaves two more videos left now with Agility & Luck soon. Personally I found the Charisma video to definitely be my favorite one thus far and I hope we can have goofy antics like it in the game (wake up drunk somewhere, fully looted). Aside from the Charisma video below, Bethesda also released a 20 minute (2-part) discussion panel on the game, with some new information released in it. One of the surprising takeaways from it was that you'll be able to program your own music for your settlement/home with the terminals with customizable pitch and timing. Like jingles for your town and such. Pretty awesome stuff.
S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Video Series: Charisma!
The Team Bringing Fallout 4 to Life: Part 1
The Team Bringing Fallout 4 to Life: Part 2
Sorry to bring up something that's already been discussed a month back; I keep remembering this through the day but forget about it when I come here.
On the voice acting, I hope they get everyone coordinated on how to say what. Skyrim fans saw a lot of inconsistencies with these things, which is fine if it's from an expendable insignificant nobody but key roles should at least know how to pronounce other key roles. Without any context, I'm just going to say a thing from Skyrim. Actually I'm not, I'm going to say it the way I say it whenever I think about it. I'm sure people will know exactly what I'm talking about and how it connects to this subject.
"I'm not madanamanak."
Ah, you mean like when characters say a person or place's name one way, but then a bunch elsewhere will say it incorrectly? Obsidian had done that with Fallout: New Vegas but the twist was that it was intentional and the characters in-game acknowledged that they weren't sure if they were pronouncing it right (e.g. the name Caesar: "Seezer/Kaizar"). Bethesda on the other hand I think just never cared enough to correct the inconsistencies, of which I really hope they learned from as well. Like I don't mind if a character mispronounces a word or key word, but at least have it make sense and acknowledged in game; such as a bum on the street that lacks education or a local who isn't familiar with the word because it originated from a different region.
As it would be in real life.
Agreed. I don't know if we have the numbers yet. Gikoku mentioned earlier that Skyrim had 70ish voice actors but I'd be willing to bet that easily half of those were for unique, single instance characters. Generic voices were problematic. But hey, I don't know, maybe all altmer, orsimer, dunmer, nord, argonian and khajiit just sound the same. Fallout has to be different. They can't have all humans sounding the same.
Yeah it was a bit over 70 voice actors, but Bethesda squandered it and used over half of them for unique one-off NPCs, worst yet when some of those NPCs would only have about 10-lines of dialogue and that was it. They didn't spread them out more and instead made the same mistake they did in Oblivion & FO3, where both of those games had 7 to 13 voice actors respectively and were stretched out across 200+ NPCs. 1 man should not be voicing the entire Khajiit race with the same exact voice (and tone) regardless if there's only 3 or 20 of them in the game.
So I really hope they learned their lesson with that. Plus it just ends up being a waste of money having all those fancy new voice actors, and then barely use them for anything. Even more so when those actors are capable of multiple voice types but are told to just do only one.
The takeaways from the article is the greater use of a piano in the soundtrack and more varied and unconventional instruments to make many new sounds. Many of the areas in the game will have their own tone & instruments to separate themselves so that it won't be a blanket experience like it was in Fallout 3, but still manage to fit together. Lots of despair but also lots of optimism to go along with the tone of the game that was set by the main theme song.
