Starfield's design director says the game nearly had a voiced protagonist, but they dropped it: 'It was a AAA thing'

pcgamer.com:

In Polygon's recent interview with design director Emil Pagliarulo, it was revealed that Starfield very nearly had a voiced protagonist in the style of Fallout 4's sole survivor.

When asked whether this choice was a response to the fan reception of that game's controversial dialogue system—which only gave you the general vibe of what you were committing to words—Pagliarulo responded: «Not directly, but it certainly played into it … 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.

»[In Starfield,] you can make every different type of person. We realised that the only way to really do [that] and let the player be the person they want to be was to have an unvoiced protagonist."

While we've obviously known your space explorer would be a silent protagonist since last year, I'm surprised we even came close to Fallout 4 setting a new blueprint for the Bethesda hero. I've always preferred knowing exactly what my character's going to say in a conversation—and having the word «Sarcastic» next to a button prompt doesn't clue me in enough. To me, it seemed like a weird love affair from big-budget studios, an attempt to come across as more 'cinematic' while shuttering an RPG's more freeform potential.

That's a sentiment Pagliarulo speaks to: «There was a time in the industry where every protagonist was voiced. It was a AAA thing … 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].»

He goes on to point out that hearing a character speak a line of text you've just read isn't ideal, either, «So then we just