Fallout 4 - Courtenay Taylor Speaks

Courtenay Taylor discusses difficult moments in recording the protagonist's dialogue for Fallout 4.

Fallout 4 introduced a voiced protagonist to the series for the first time ever in an effort to provide more emotional depth to scenes. In a plot where a parent is on the hunt for their missing child, it’s a move that made sense, and Fallout 4 eventually went gold with over 13,000 lines of dialogue recorded for the main character.

Courtenay Jackson provides the voice for the female Sole Survivor in Fallout 4, and recently did a Reddit Ask Me Anything thread where fans could ask her, well, anything. Courtenay is a veteran voice actor with over 13 years of videogame industry experience, and fans had plenty of questions to ask her on the subject of her experience with Fallout 4.

When asked by fans why her vocal tones didn’t always match her male counterpart voiced by Brian Delaney, Courtenay revealed that she did several takes of each line, and actually had no input on which version was selected – this is fairly normal in the voice recording process for videogames, as higher-ups from the development studio would know best which type of line delivery would best fit the overall narrative.

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Its another case where the Female voice actor is better then the male voice actor once agian. It reminds me of the debate of those who prefer Jennifer Hale, or Mark Meer.

I have not heard the male voice actor at all. The female voice actor is in my view not very good, unfortunately.

In pretty much every conversation in which she asks a question, she significantly pauses during the question as if she is thinking of the next word to say. This might be good the first or tenth time, but after probably hundreds of times it's very monotonous and immersion-affecting. It may be due to the writer or director instead of the voice actor.

I enjoyed both Jennifer Hale and Mark Meer in ME.

Yeah, played through as both. I also found the female voice acting to be better. Perhaps also a better job by the individual(s) that selected from the various takes.

I played with a voiced protagonist for all of 20 minutes before I installed the mod to do away with it. I hope this doesn't become the norm in RPGs… the graphics & marketing budgets are already exorbitant enough without sapping away further resources from silly things like writing & quest design.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Its another case where the Female voice actor is better then the male voice actor once agian. It reminds me of the debate of those who prefer Jennifer Hale, or Mark Meer.

Totally disagree but not surprising considering my point of view. Thought the male voice actor was perfect and really like his voice - couldn't have picked a better voice for my character if I tried.

Which was very lucky as it would suck to have a VO you did not like. Overall I seem to be agreeable though as I liked the voices for Hawk, the Inquisitor, Shepherd, and Fallout 4.

I liked most of the voices in the game but I wasn't a big fan the the males. I don't know what it was, a bit soft maybe. I just didn't feel much emotion coming through. I didn't try out a female character so can't comment on that.

Its rare for me to like the voices tho so I think they did a decent job on them overall. Remember how bad they were in Oblivion? The same voice used on many NPCs. Uggggg!