Have you ever played an RPG where you can build your own character? Like Skyrim, or Fallout?

Well, those games have a character customization so you can "immerse" yourself into the gaming world. You can pick gender, physical appearance, clotches, and... Your name... And that's the point of this thread.

When I first played Skyrim, I thought for some time about the name of my character, so I could make the game more interesting. But there's a problem... I played it for about 12 hours, and not a single character called me by my name.

At first, they called me "Prisoner". Then, "Friend". Then, after a certain event, you will only be adressed as "Dragonborn". Seriously, this broke any kind of immersion I could have in the world of the game.

Yes, I know why that happens. Limitations. But man, I really wish they could find a solution for that, because I don't want to give my character a name, if no one is going to use it.

I think this destroys the immersion. If I'm not mistaken, South Park: The Stick of Truth threw a jab at that, when Cartman asks you for your name, and right after you input it, he starts calling you "Douchebag". I loved that.

But yeah, I hope we can see a fix for that in the near future.

That's really hard to address, nowdays with the voiced AI we have that can be a reality pretty easily... if the voice actors agree with using their voice for that, but as that can open a can of worms to using their voices against themselves so voice actors are not needed anymore because of AI replacing them, that may not happen either.

Testing some of the Forza Horizons these days, 3 I think, they allowed me to pick my name, Victor, from a list and they are calling me that by voice, but that's because it was listed there and I'm sure BraLoD wouldn't work at all lol.

I don't remember what game it was, I think it was one of the GRID games, that used a similar system, where I could choose "Alex" from a list.

But in RPGs it's really weird, like, imagine being thrown in a whole world where no people call you by your name. I can't fully immerse myself like that.

I don't support GEN AI of any kind but this is something AI could change. I have no idea if this is possible and maybe an alt. If the VA can record them saying every letter and something within the games engine could have the voice say the name from the actor. It's not stealing or using a AI farm. It's recorded just arranged and smoothed out in the engine to sound more natural.

Hm. I never noticed this, but then all the RPGs I play either don't have spoken dialogue, or are games where I can't create my own character.

On Genshin Impact even as the main characters are fixed and have real names, Aether for the male and Lumine for the female, it let's up pick a name for the one you choose to play with, so only the other one is always called by its official name, while all chars always call you "traveler".

It's actually become quite fun because the main char is so well known all over the world nowdays that the others chars mentioning "The Traveler" became kind of a brand, like people calling Luffy only Mugiwara or his crews The Mugiwaras sometimes and it bringing respect all of the world.

In their other game that I play, Zenless Zone Zero, even if you have to pick a character at the start it lets you play as both and switch between them, and their official name is always how their are addressed by others chars, like in other games you get used to being called the name of your char like Link, Kratos, an such.

So even as I believe that is the best method, as even if I make my own char them having an official name is good enough for story immersion, I can't lie that "The Traveler" title from Genshin has become quite a cool way to get addressed, like some people talking about Kratos just say "The Ghost of Sparta" and it brings fear to even strong foes, it's really cool how well it works after some time to make your character feel a worldwide badass where a title is enough to be recognized by everyone, like Valdemort being called "He who must not be named" because the name is taboo.

Yeah, I remember in Final Fantasy titles up to IX, you could change the name of all characters, and since there wasn't any voice acting, they would always use the name you choose.

In Final Fantasy X, they did something really weird. You can change Tidus' name, and at the cutscenes where his name is mentioned, they just removed the voice acting...

From Final Fantasy XII onwards, they just scrapped the option to change characters' names, and it makes better sense now.

They can.

By using A.I to voice all characters, killing all human jobs of voice acting in games.... such a thing would be possible.

Would you be happier with a somewhat robotic voice, saying your character name, and all other things in the game?
Or would you prefer a human voiceing dialog but resorting to "Prisoner, Friend, Dragonborn" ect ?

Also this is without a doubt, the route Microsoft is going.
So your in luck, the next bethesda games will likely have such.

I am fine with that =p Now RNG is something I despise...

While not exactly an RPG, in Stronghold, if you enter one of the names in their list as your name, the Game will greet you audibly with your name as "Greetings, Lady/Lord xxx" (also works with Vader)