December 2, 2015 4:04 AM EST
Great post Isaac, very thoughtful. Are you sure you've come to the right place? 
This is a matter I've been quite vocal about in the last few months too, especially as I have had my world turned upside down by The Witcher Wild Hunt which has challenged the idea that a predefined character is not as good as a "blank slate" character in terms of immersion and emotional attachment.
Allow me to explain what I mean.
As a fan of long time fan of Bioware's RPGs and more recently CD Projekt Red's Witcher games it is almost unfair to compare the dialogue system in a Bethesda game alongside those greats. Games like Fallout 3 and 4, Oblivion, Skyrim and Morrowind are great at doing what they do - which is to say giving the player the freedom to be who he/she wants to be. But the dialogue has always sucked even to the point of immersion breaking. You can imagine your character to be a grizzled veteran of the Great War all you want but as soon as another character refers to you as a 'boy' then the suspension of disbelief is shattered. So the sensible way around that problem is to have a shallow dialogue system and let the player's imagination do the rest.
This is great and allows for a massive amount of character flexibility and freedom which in turn allows for a bigger sandbox to play in but doesn't allow for much emotional fulfilment. You can imagine Lydia is the love of your life all you want but you'll never feel any connection there beyond what you imagine.
Games like Bioware's Mass Effect RPGs are almost the exact opposite in their focus on story and character over and above an open world. You can finish the games and feel like you have left friends behind in those worlds more than in a Bethesda game but each subsequent play through feels less and less unique compared to a game like Skyrim which is big enough for multiple interpretations.
At least that was the traditional viewpoint.
Now we are well into a new era of RPGs which have demonstrated that this mode of thinking is out dated. DA:I and Witcher 3 have demonstrated it is possible to have huge open worlds and emotional, story driven plots like never before. One thing even they can't do is allow for a totally blank slate character simply because the sheer number of options would make it an impossible task. To get around this, the characters are predefined to a certain extent, the player being allowed to colour in the remaining gaps through dialogue choices and decisions.
Bioware have had a long time to perfect this style whereas it's new for Bethesda. While I am often critical of Fallout 4 and how distinctly underwhelmed I am by it and wondering why after seven years the best they could do was make it feel like Fallout 3.5, I don't think the voiced protagonists are the problem.
Indeed, I reckon the dialogue is the best thing about the game so far and one of the only reasons I am dragging my arse all over the wasteland just to hear what my character Jennifer says next. Bitchy, smartassed, genuine, helpful or somewhat cruel, for the first time in a Bethesda game my character feels real rather than a two dimensional stereotype given life by my own imagination. Playing an evil character is fun and easy in a game like Skyrim because of that emotional gap. When you exist in a world which you never feel part of it makes playing a blood sucking vampire assassin necromancer quite easy. Playing a complete and total dick in Mass Effect is a lot harder because there isn't that emotional gap. Anyone who has played KotOR and chose the dark side knows where I am coming from I'm sure. Being the villain in that game was a lot more difficult emotionally than in any Bethesda game.
So, TL;DR. I disagree and think the voiced protagonist is not the fault of why F4 lacks the same level of immersion as Skyrim. The problem with Fallout 4 and roleplaying lies not with it's dialogue system but within it's setting and how the story is delivered.
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