Yeah, Mass Effect has to have one of the best dialogue systems in a game ever. But I'm not sure how well it would work in Skyrim. It just wouldn't feel right.

Feel right?!?!? Okay imagine this your in the pub from that one screen shot...you walk over to the bar made/wench...you ask for a drink and she gets a little of an attitude for what ever reason and tells you to take a seat some where and she'll get to you when she has a chance... your conversation wheel pops up

A ) Nicely say no problem and take a seat.
B ) Walk up to the Bartender/Owner and talk some smack and get her in trouble
C ) Slap her in the face and yell at her to get the drink now
D ) Ask her whats wrong and if there's anything you can do to help

You get to choose to be a A) non confrontationist, B) a back stabbing punk C) an A-hole (MY OPTION LOL) and D) a nice guy

and say answers C and D are your PARAGON/RENEGADE those options can possibly give you a quest or side quest or what have you...but any way Bethesda does it as long as its completely different from Oblivion's and at least some what like ME's or Fallouts 3/ New Vegas I'm sure it'll be good....

Haha I know that. It's just that Mass Effect's dialogue is all in the forms of cutscenes, which is why the conversation wheel needs to be so efficient and expressing. In Skyrim we will likely play another silent protagonist (as in no proper voice actor) so there isn't that much point in a conversation wheel. Also, can't we still walk around during dialogue now? If so, I don't know how exactly it would work. But if they can pull it off then scenes like the one you described above would be awesome

Also, on a side note. Everybody seems to be fantasising over that bar wench from that one screenshot. I really hope she's like a necrophiliac Helen Keller.

I'm sitting here playing Oblivion chatting up with the NPC's and I'm realizing how much I miss Mass Effects conversation system. I mean in oblivion every one pretty much doesn't trust or like you from the start and you either have to waste money bribing them or chat them up using the ...umm...I forgot what it's called so I'll call it the conversation wheel. Now if you get the NPC to like you, you can get things out of it but if they don't like you nothing... I loved how in ME that if you used your renegade answers and were pretty much an A-hole you still got some thing out of it... I love playing the bad guy and in Oblivion the only way you can really do that with anything happening is if you just go around killing people...not that I don't like doing that ... but I want to be able to get the same info, item etc out of a NPC, quest giver or what ever by being an A-hole and not just being a good guy :angel: or having to bribe the NPC to get what I need or want.

So if there is any MAJOR change to the conversation wheel I pray to the nine that Bethesda takes note of ME's conversation wheel...

Now I know there are going to be a lot of people who are going to want to say that TES needs to stick with tradition or what ever and I can understand that...to a point but sometimes change is for the better especially if that change makes the game better and brings in a whole new dynamic to the game. Obviously Bethesda thinks so as well since they took Idea's from Bioshock and Fallout 3...

And yes I do understand that by using the oblivion's conversation wheel you can level up you speech craft skill...but honestly I think the Speech craft skill is the most useless skill you can since all you have to do in from what I remember is just bribe the NPC' s to the max and they'll still give you what you need or want, so why bother even having it?

There better not be a conversation wheel. God they are bad...

I like the Oblivion style with topics to choose from, that way I can imagine what my character says.

Okay what should there be then??? I mean the conversation wheel / Game from Oblivion...well no ofence Bethesda but it svcked because of it I never talked to anyone that I didn't need to!!! Mass Effect's, Fallout 3's, Fallout: New Vegas's and hell even Dragon Age's conversation wheels or what ever you want to call them actually made me want to talk to every person I could because most of the NPC's you talked to or could talk to you got some thing out of the conversation...In oblivion the only thing you got was the NPC liked you and would give you information and that was about the extent of it....

I mean in real life if you walk up to a complete stranger to ask a question you have a 50/50 chance they are going to answer you nicely or like an A-hole...but not because of weather or not they like you but because they are human and that's just being real and what makes an RPG a good game to me no matter how fairy tale-ish it may be it pulls me into the story because of how I can relate to the characters and story because of how realistic it is.... I mean hell that's why I play video games more than watch the crap that's on TV...My wife loves that god forsaken show Jersey Shore she says because its real life...and the only thing I wanna do is break the damn TV :brokencomputer: and then put a gun to my head and blow my brains out every time I see even a commercial for it....lol....

I like the Oblivion style with topics to choose from, that way I can imagine what my character says.

What you seem to be asking for is not for a conversation wheel but more immersible conversations in general. Adding a conversation wheel would not change anything, adding new ways of persuasion, different effects the pcs skills have on conversations, and maybe making race have some kind of effect on conversations would change this.

Some people seem t obe under the impression you want a wheel style system like mass effect had.

There cant be a mass effect kinda conversation thing in Skyrim, because its an RPG.

That means that conversation options are affected by an NPC's disposition, and that we need ways to alter that disposition.
Besides the passive ways such as racial bonus, attire, renown, speechcraft skill, there also needs to be a way to directly affect disposition. By bribing, intimidating, charming etc.

A dialogue tree would remove so many options, if there are only two set ways to respond, a goodie two shoes and a jerk.

Though I did not like the conversation wheel in Oblivion. It was something reliant on real life player skill, and in an RPG things need to be decided by character skill.

well in a way I do... I mean not exactly like it because I do agree with some of these posts about how what you picked some times wasn't what you thought it would be...and that one guy was right in saying Sheperds voice wasn't very aggresive or what not....but the fact remains you had a choice of being a nice guy or a bad guy and the same goes for fallout 3 and New Vegas....Oblivion....nope you had to be a good guy in the conversations or bribe them....

The first and my favorite characters are always the evilist bad guy I can make when I first got Oblivion and joined the dark brotherhood , I was like hell yeah...but then I kept talking to people and I was like whats the point in even having the dark brother hood if you cant be evil or threatening to NPC's and still get what you need out of them... I mean the closest Oblivion's conversation system came to this happened one time during the dark brother hood mission where you had to go get the light house basemant key from the light house keeper and you had the choice of telling him "The Dark Brother hood demands it" or what ever your line says and the keeper gets scared and gives you the key...but other than that I can't think of any other time you could be evil and get what you needed.

But yes what I do want is more choices and a better conversation system all together but mainly I want to be the incarnation of Satan and still get what I need out of NPC's and If being evil closes some quests for me then good...because I always play the nice guy / greatest hero on my second play through... so please let me jump though that oblivion gate as evil as I can be the first time around!!! bliviongate:

So you want the plague that Bioware is spreading to all it's games in Skyrim too? No thanks.

I'm sick of the "moral choices" they give you. You basically have "kill the cat, save the cat, leave the cat alone". This may make for good storytelling but it dumbs down the RPG part to the extent we see in ME2 (transformed into a glorified 3'rd person cover-shooter with no rpg elements whatsoever).

the biggest problem i see here is, in ME all you do is go to area, beat it, go to area, beat it. in oblivion you had reason to go back, so what if you punched someone important in the face to get what you want, you would eventually go back and they will know you by then. A monk doesn't let you into his church because your an assassin so you Tell him you'll set the church on fire, clearly he would let you in, what happens the next time you speak with him when your doing a mages guild quest that requires you to do so? in ME most of the people you could push around you never had to talk to again.

Don't get me wrong i love your idea, i'd love to shoot electricity out of my hands at a npc to get them to do what i want, or maybe punch them in the face for a while, i'm just not sure how they would add it so that npc doesn't hate you the next time you talk to them.

Well your right about the ME part not having to go back and talk to them again but that's the beauty of it in TES I always thought it was kind of stupid you could be in every Guild in one play through... I loved how in Fallout 3 because of your moral choices you made you basicly had to play the game 3 times and in New Vegas although Obsideon changed it a lot and made it more finishing the game for certain factions but even then there was moral choices to be made by which faction you sided with which again made you want to play through multiple times all the while playing through the game multiple times you discover more and more because of how big the game world was....so while my first play though would be an evil character I can understand some quests closing for me the first time around because of that and the same goes for my second time around when I'd play a good guy....

I think that was because the main quest was saving the world. In new vegas you really started of neutral, you were just trying to find the guy that put a bullet in your brain. In oblivion it seemed like you were pushed into being the good guy, besides a few things you could do here and there.

I think it would be better if we had more interactions with npcs, not just "topics" like your suggesting. Maybe physical interaction and such. i also think getting someone to do something for you should not just depend on disposition but your speech skill too. I like the idea of quests being closed off to you semi-permanently for being a jerk/murderer/goodguy but if they choose to do something like that they really have to tell at the beginning of the game that things will go away id you start acting certain ways so you won't go pissing the wrong people off at the beginning.

Joke, Coerce, Boast and-the-last-one-I-can't-remember, all needs to be thrown out of the window, preferably from a sky scraqes top floor, and never seen again.

Beating the NPC should work as a way of getting information, bribing ofcourse should be in because it's a classic way and truly does work, however I'm not so sure they'd be your best friends for life only for gold, but a single piece of information should be bribeable. (is bribeable a word!?) Other ways should exist, threatening, stealing something of great value to them and returning it to them for both gold and the information needed.

It worked perfectly fine in Dragon Age :shrug: I don't see why it wouldn't in TES.

Dragon Age didn't voice PC dialog, just small snippets of speech.

I don't really like BioWare's conversation systems, though. You pretty much just respond to people or interject (in a nice, neutral, or mean way), unlike TES where you proactively ask about a range of specific topics. It's much more flexible as it doesn't presume how your character would say something. Where TES gives you actual dialog options, they typically keep it short to have an appropriate response for a given character (though, there were times when there wasn't an appropriate choice; something that plagues BW's games).