An early version of 'Starfield' had a voiced protagonist.
Bethesda Studio Design Director Emil Pagliarulo has revealed they decided against having a speaking lead after the negative reception to the voiced Sole Survivor in 'Fallout 4'.
They had even hired a voice actor but they didn't vibe with how "specific" he sounded.
In an interview with Polygon, Pagliarulo explained: "Not directly, but it certainly played into it. Early on in the game, we did have a voiced protagonist. In pre-production, the plan was to have a voiced protagonist. We hired an actor, we got the voice, we listened to him and we were like, You know what, this guy is too specific. So then what are the options? Do we have, like some RPGs do, four voices? Do we have one voice, but hire someone else who’s more convenient? But [in 'Starfield'] you can make every different type of person. We realised that the only way to really do it and let the player be the person they want to be was to have an unvoiced protagonist."
Ultimately, they were able to make a vast world from not having a voiced protagonist.
"There was a time in the industry where every protagonist was voiced. It was a AAA thing. We started realising, You know what, maybe that’s not the case, maybe fans will actually enjoy the game even more... I mean, we played with different things. There’s a big argument, if in Fallout 4 and other RPGs, players don’t like reading a line of dialogue, a player response, and then they click it and get [a different spoken line]. But the problem is, then you read it, and then you click it, and you have to wait for them to say the same thing. So that’s not ideal either. So then we just arrived at, What if we just go text? and it was just really freeing. And, I mean, we have over 200,000 lines of spoken dialogue in Starfield with no voiced protagonists. And it was not having a voiced protagonist that allowed us to create such a big world."
