Fallout 4 is one of those games where people are yelling “GOTY!” from the rooftops well before it releases. It's likely to walk away with this year's most prized possession in gaming, and part of it could be for the way the story is conveyed. Bethesda has taken extra time to ensure that the voice acting is spot on and that included going through more than 111,000 lines of dialogue.
According to a tweet from the official Bethesda Studios Twitter account, Fallout 4 has more lines of dialogue than both Skyrim and Fallout 3 combined.
Think about that... 111,000 lines of dialogue. I feel sorry for the voice actors.
That's an insane amount of talking being included in Fallout 4. One of the interesting things is that this was made possible thanks to the consoles now using Blu-ray discs instead of relying on those old DVD9 formats (well, for Microsoft, anyway).
During the seventh generation the Xbox 360 stuck with DVD layers after the HD-DVD format failed and the PS3 and Blu-ray won out on the format wars. The DVD format was ancient, though, resulting in a lot of Xbox 360 games either requiring alterations to the physical size of the games to fit on more than one disc, or the games had to be greatly compressed in order to run on a single disc. It's why a lot of games toward the end of the Xbox 360's life cycle were either on multi-discs and suffered from low resolution textures or they were on a single disc and suffered from extremely low resolution textures... sort of like GTA V.
With the Xbox One and PS4, having access to Blu-ray capacity opens up the games to store 25GB of data on a single layer or up to 50GB on a dual-layer disc. This not only means that games like Fallout 4 can afford to include high-resolution textures and geometry, but it also means that developers can include a heck of a lot more audio data in the game, including music, sound effects and voice acting.
Now if you think that 50GB is a lot... it's already been surpassed. GTA V on PC requires 60GB worth of space. So GTA VI – if Rockstar really wanted to push the limits – could likely require up to 100GB when all is said and done.
In the case of Fallout 4, Bethesda is likely to keep the game's total size as moderate as possible given that player-made mods will easily extend the game's length and size with ease. As for the 111,000 lines of dialogue, I imagine a lot of that will be for all the multiple choices and options afforded to players throughout their journey.
From the multiple endings to the side-quests to the personal missions, it seems like Bethesda took dialogue very seriously this time around. We'll find out if the quality matches the quantity when the game launches on November 10th for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC this fall.
