60,000 lines of dialogue for Skyrim

By Fred Dutton Published 3 June, 2011

New gameplay details emerge.

A few new tidbits of information on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim have sneaked out of Bethesda HQ, including news that the game contains 60,000 lines of voiced dialogue.

According to PC Gamer, the long-awaited RPG sequel will feature unlimited dragons that can attack at random as you explore the game world.

Wounded dragons will apparently be unable to fly, offering an opportunity to engage them on the ground, potentially giving you the upper hand.

Slaying dragons earns you special abilities called dragon shouts. A few examples offered include power-ups that give you fire breath, a lightning strike, the ability to slow down time or a speed boost.

The game's guard system is reportedly getting an overhaul. In contrast to previous games in the series, if you commit a crime in one region guards in a neighbouring area won't automatically be aware of it and collar you on sight.

Bethesda has also confirmed that horses will feature in the game, with improved handling promised over Oblivion. You'll also be able to hop in a carriage for speedy travel between regions or automatically skip to places you've already discovered.

Oblivion's Dark Brotherhood assassin's guild return, along with a thieves guild, a fighter's guild and a mage's guild.

Finally, Bethesda has promised a much larger voice cast has been signed up to deliver that whopping script than worked on Oblivion.

Picture of Fred.

About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (66) Latest comment 12 months ago

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  • TheDudesRug #1 12 months ago

    Time is money, friend!

    Wait...what?

  • Nevyn #2 12 months ago

    Bet most of them are variations of "I saw a mudcrab the other day".

  • GreatBlackthorn #3 12 months ago

    Hope I can import a save so I still get "THE HERO OF KVATCH!" yelled in my face by two potato faced peasants at once.

  • TAPNGO #4 12 months ago

    maybe 6,000 bugs, i'll get it after the patches.

  • Xardan #5 12 months ago

    I saw a mudcrab by the river yesterday. It was wearing a pink frock.

  • LazyNinjaUk #6 12 months ago

    Hopefully they'll have more than 4 voice actors to perform them this time around.

    I love Oblivion, but when you hear the same voice saying the same thing coming from 2 townsfolk of a different race, things get a little weird.

  • BonzoBanana #7 12 months ago

    Unlimited dragons I suppose keeps the action level up but in a way I'd like a limit like 500 all named that you could work through if you kept playing the game long enough and you get an achievement for killing them all. I just hope the game is incredible enough to merit putting up with all the horrible bugs its sure to have.

  • Xardan #8 12 months ago

    Ive seen mudcrabs fiercer than a brown forest bear!

  • HyperTails #9 12 months ago

    After Alice: Madness Returns, if I only get one more game this year then it will be Skyrim. My most anticipated game of E3, bar none.

  • Ashcroft #10 12 months ago

    More than 50 people in the entire world would be nice. I love Oblivion and New Vegas, but that engine was completely incapable of crowd scenes.

  • dagas #11 12 months ago

    "Finally, Bethesda has promised a much larger voice cast has been signed up to deliver that whopping script than worked on Oblivion."

    thank god for that!

  • King_of_Hyrule #12 12 months ago

    much larger voice cast: no less than 7 different people to say variations on "Well met!"

  • Yuroko #13 12 months ago

    Heard of any news from the other provinces?

  • jimr9999us #14 12 months ago

    Wow...this is shaping up to be the 1st Elder Scrolls game I ever finish.

    lol, yeah. right.

  • Darren #15 12 months ago

    Deeply excited about this follow up to my favourite RPG of this generation but also fully expecting a last minute delay and for the game to slip into 2012. It happened with Oblivion and this game sounds even more impressive and ambitious so if I expect a delay then I won't be disappointed, right? Obviously I hope it isn't... but...

  • Stoatboy #16 12 months ago

    I can't remember the lines exactly but if it's going to equate to beggars asking for cash with their first line in one voice, and then announcing that they're going to browse the selection of high quality books at a bookshop in an entirely different and much posher voice it will be as flawed as Oblivion on a very fundamental level. Unless of course I'm completely mistaken in thinking that whenever I buy a copy of the Big Issue the cash is probably going on Special Brew rather than first editions of À la recherche du temps perdu.

    Number of lines makes no odds when the method of delivering them is flawed to absolute fuck.

  • Xardan #17 12 months ago

    ''Stop right there criminal scum!''

  • mkreku #18 12 months ago

    Unlimited dragons?? Uh, does anyone here remember the cliff racers from Morrowind..? Yeah.

  • Trigalis #19 12 months ago

    I will be looking forward to how they mix up the guild quests this time. The dark brotherhood quests in oblivion were some of my favourites; with a great plot twist.

  • ruddiger7 #20 12 months ago

    This is a day one for me

  • Futaba #21 12 months ago

    "The game's guard system is reportedly getting an overhaul. In contrast to previous games in the series, if you commit a crime in one region guards in a neighbouring area won't automatically be aware of it and collar you on sight."

    Thank fuck...

  • Chevinator #22 12 months ago

    thank god they added more voice actors

  • Quixz #23 12 months ago

    BioWare might need to take notes :D

  • stryker1121 #24 12 months ago

    "Thank you, kind sir."

  • Tryhard #25 12 months ago

    It's to late.They're already here!

  • Demonakinale #26 12 months ago

    "Why won't you die!?"

  • Demiath #27 12 months ago

    Quality over quantity, Bethesda. 60,000 lines don't mean anything if none of them are good, which we have reason to believe they aren't because they're, y'know, written by Bethesda...

  • enigma #28 12 months ago

    The best news for me is the no psychic guards feature. That was always one of the first mods I installed for Oblivion. Great to see it implemented in Skyrim.

    Really looking forward to this now.
    Edited by enigma at 04/06/11 @ 07:47

  • Inmediasress #29 12 months ago

    The one problem I had always with bethesda games more precisely with Morrowind and Oblivion and also the fallout games is that they are completely lifeless very large I have to admit but still very,very lifeless.
    I think that's bethesda's trademark since all of their rpgs manage to fall into this category. Everything is so empty comapred to games like the Gothic series or risen or the witcher series.
    Somehow they always miss that spark that makes the world come alive for me and the end result is that I play and halfway trough I get bored of it and put it aside.
    I don't see how this trend is going to change in Skyrim apart from the changes of more voice actors.
    Like making dragons unlimited is stupid since it makes them generic I bet when you play the game half way trough you wont notice if you kill a dragon or a rat.

  • Murton #30 12 months ago

    I want to see some proper memory handling on this one. Morrowind, Oblivion and both Fallouts suffered shocking memory leak issues. A few extra voice actors will undoubtedly help with immersion but immersion will mean sweet FA if I'm constantly getting up to hard reboot my console or crashing to desktop on my PC

    Other welcome changes would include the engine actually managing darkness so that torches are actually useful/needed and fixing Bethesda's trademark plot hole where you escape from prison at the very beginning of the game and nobody seems to notice or indeed care. The very first person I spoke to in the outside world in Oblivion was an Imperial City and he stood there answering my inane questions rather than saying "weren't you due to be executed today? back to jail with you"

  • Mr_Brown #31 12 months ago

    Should of paid the fine!

  • Xboxfanuk #32 12 months ago

    "I saw a mudcrab the other day"

    Filthy creatures.

  • Goodfella #33 12 months ago

    Look out, giant enemy mudcrab!

  • metalangel #34 12 months ago

    I only played the stupid main quest in Oblivion because I was sick of the Oblivion Gates opening everywhere and having the sky constantly go red and those fucking stunted scamp things attacking me.

    Now it seems I'll have to play the main quest in Skyrim lest I be constantly attacked by dragons.

  • Kanjin #35 12 months ago

    Why won't you fall down and BLEED to death?!

    Why won't you fall down and BLEED to death?!

    Why won't you fall down and BLEED to death?!

    //turns off xbox

  • kinky_mong #36 12 months ago

    FILTHY MUDCRAB PICKPOCKET!

  • Smoped #37 12 months ago

    For comparison's sake, anybody know how many lines of dialogue did Oblivion have? What about Fallout 3 or New Vegas?

    EDIT: Just looked it up and Fallout 3 had over 40,000 lines, so it's a 50% increase.
    Edited by Smoped at 04/06/11 @ 10:57

  • Smoped #38 12 months ago

    Also, I really hope Bethesda has enough of a sense of humour to make Horse Armour a launch DLC for Skyrim.

  • Smoped #39 12 months ago

    Oh, and seems New Vegas had over 65,000 lines. There's quite a bit of talking in New Vegas though.

  • Daeltaja #40 12 months ago

    Should have hired Obsidian's writers. As far as I'm concerned, they are leagues ahead of most in that department.

    Good to hear mounts are back, along with the guilds, but I was hoping for a bit more of a mixup this time around. Perhaps Dragon mounts and different types of guilds to those from previous games. Just hope it's not too samey.

  • PearOfAnguish #41 12 months ago

    Didn't Bethesda make some ludicrous claims about how many endings Fallout 3 was going to have? They said it was going to hundreds of different possibilities, or some such rubbish. So when they say 60,000 lines of dialogue it'll be half that, and voiced by 2 people.

    Good news on the guilds though, Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild were vastly more entertaining than the main quest in Oblivion.

  • Ashcroft #42 12 months ago

    Oblivion's main quest was the worst part of the game, I restarted so that I could play without Oblivion gates popping up everywhere.

  • Lightguy #43 12 months ago

    As much as I liked Oblivion it always felt like you were watching a play were the actors kept running offstage to put on different wigs and outfits.

  • Monkey_Puncher #44 12 months ago

    It's you, the hero of Kvatch!

  • TheEarlOfZinger #45 12 months ago

    WELL MET!

  • benandrewsart #46 12 months ago

    i dont know what ill do if you dont get those scales for me

  • orangpelupa #47 12 months ago

    game like elderscrolls should have sound engine capable to "distorse" voices like in audio editing software in realtime. Like changing pitch and so on. so 1 voice assets can become many character and sounds different.

  • butler` #48 12 months ago

    Oblivion's Dark Brotherhood assassin's guild return, along with a thieves guild, a fighter's guild and a mage's guild.

    single best bit of news

    i've played oblivion for hundreds of hours and most of that time was spent doing guild stuff

  • GI-Joel #49 12 months ago

    This thread made laugh.. thanks ;)

  • metalangel #50 12 months ago

    I am the Lusty Argonian Maid. Look at my lizard tits!

  • Kaminari #51 12 months ago

    I accept... I have no choice!

  • dmt2 #52 12 months ago

    Currently trying to 'finish' oblivion once and for all. I gave it a 2 year rest after finishing the main quest and now doing the shivering isles.

    Its a testament to just how good this game is that I'm still finding new places to loot and it still plays well.

  • Azilis #53 12 months ago

    I'm not expecting great dialogue or storytelling from Bethesda, so that 60,000 number doesn't mean anything for me. Then again, dialogue and story are not why I love their games.

    @mkreku "Unlimited dragons?? Uh, does anyone here remember the cliff racers from Morrowind..? Yeah. "

    Unlimited doesn't mean common or numerous. It just means there will be no hard cap on the number of dragons you can encounter. I do think they learned their lesson from the cliff racers.

  • Daikon #54 12 months ago

    Any word from the other provinces?

  • zythe #55 12 months ago

    *DRIBBLE* -- and I don't mean from my mouth...

  • WeakOrbit #56 12 months ago

    THE MUDCRAB OF KVATCH DLC.

    Face the might of the most hideous mudcrab in this pulse pounding dlc. More nirnroot quests and horse armor and Sean Bean voicing the mudcrab of KVATCH.

    But seriously I hope there's more responses to whatever conversation wheel this time rahter then threatening someone only to tell them a joke afterwards.

    NOT NOW, NOT LATER, NOT EVER.

  • Bluetooth #57 12 months ago

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KN7cKO8-P0

  • peppergomez #58 12 months ago

    Gonna have to say goodbye to family and friends for months at a time when this comes out. For real.

  • Zaiz #59 12 months ago

    Bethesda's main quest was eh, but the sidequests are fantastic. >.> The trick to no oblivion gates is to never give Joffre the amulet.

  • RandyKleen #60 12 months ago

    It's titbit

  • Dave #61 12 months ago

    Somehow I can't get very excited about Skyrim, the more news I read about it. It sounds more and more like an update to Oblivion, like Oblivion was to Morrowind. Since I played Morrowind to death, I just think I've seen it all (which is lazy, I know). But now there are dragons!

  • geeza2020 #62 12 months ago

    You N'wah!!!!

  • GamesProgrammer Verified Games Team Programmer, Eutechnyx Ltd. #63 12 months ago

    sounds good but ill still be waiting for the GOTY edition, sorry Bethesda but all my trust in you to release a Bug free game has gone after you couldn't even manage it on Brink.

    Not to mention getting raped for DLC that will be free in the GOTY Edition.

  • Xardan #64 12 months ago

    Thats a good point, no pre-order DLC has been announced. Hopefully they dont bother and just release the good old expansions in DLC form.

  • Madder-Max #65 12 months ago

    Yes! Dark brotherhood is back....result! I really want to know if I can become a vampire and feed off people who are awake and walking around....not just asleep and be able to drink people to death.

    What would be really intersting is a unique affect of feeding on a dragon as a vampire

  • TexMurphy01 #66 12 months ago

    I'm watching you........ scum.