Talking head

TalkingHeadMask — Two examples of masks for Talking Heads

A talking head is a type of NPC in Fallout and Fallout 2. In these games, ordinary NPCs appear as normal game sprites in dialogues and have no voice; talking heads, in contrast, have fully animated, three-dimensional portraits, and fully voice acted dialogue that has been lip-synced to the animation. (In Fallout 3, due to its different approach and different game engine, every NPC is effectively a "talking head", but this term is not used of Fallout 3 characters.)

Some of the voices for the talking heads were produced by well-known actors, such as Richard Dean Anderson from MacGyver and Stargate SG-1, and Michael Dorn who is known as Worf from Star Trek: The Next Generation.