Bethesda didn't expect negative reaction to Fallout 4 protagonist's voice acting
Not all players appreciated the developers' idea.
Players have various complaints about Fallout 4. For example, some didn't like the dialogue system and the fact that the protagonist was voiced.
Recently, Bethesda writer Emil Pagliarulo spoke with GamesRadar+ and said that the developers did not expect such a reaction from players to the voice acting of the main character in Fallout 4 - in those years, a talking protagonist was the norm in AAA projects:
When Fallout 4 came out in the fall of 2015, protagonists with voice acting were very common. Honestly, I don't think there was a single AAA game without a voiced protagonist back then. So, on the one hand, we were keeping up with the industry, and on the other hand, [voice acting] was a way to show the protagonist with different emotions.
The community's reaction showed that fans expected a "mute" character from Fallout 4, with whom they would associate themselves. Bethesda took this experience into account and used the previous approach when working on Starfield:
[...] in Starfield, we already had a protagonist without voice acting, because we realized: that's what people want.
Although Fallout 4 caused controversy in the gaming community, the project eventually became successful and remains popular to this day.
