So, lets get a little insight on here into what people want from the conversation system in Skyrim. A little discussion. I'll toss out my own idea(s) and then you can criticize and critique it, or just ignore it and throw in your own.

What first? I'm going to go with the camera and animations. I'd really like to see the conversation view moved away from the person's face. How many of you regularly have conversations standing a foot apart from your friends? (or total strangers?) I propose this: when the player activates an NPC to start a conversation the player is frozen in place, and the camera locks to the NPC, it does not, however, zoom in. The NPC is free to move about and perform animations, but the player is centered on them. This will allow the use of full body language, fully animated reactions to dialogue, and let the NPC move about the area if the devs want them to, e.g. to show the player a map on the wall or some such.

For conversation style I'll just say I'd like something a bit more...uh...conversation like. Morrowind and Oblivion's conversations consist almost entirely of the player asking questions (which don't actually have dialogue, just terms to inquire about) and NPCs answering them. The system employed in the new Fallout games is nice, but requires quite specific dialogue for the number of NPCs that will likely be present in Skyrim. Options along the lines of "Ask about services in Solitude." or "Accuse in murder of Eydis." or "Offer to help with missing armor." Something simplistic, but more descriptive than a single word.

Finally, the the Speechcraft skill. I'll just say it flat out, the mini-game in Oblivion was stupid. I don't really have an idea for how it should be used beyond bringing in a Persuasion menu similar to Morrowind, but I'm sure one of you can think of something better.

Seems cool, but I can't see this happening for every conversation. For one thing, NPCs like store clerks will seem very annoying and hilarious if they do the same routine every time you talk to them. For scripted quest encounters, it's a great idea and would serve to break up the monotony.



I'm a strong supporter of full dialogue lines. It feels like we're going back to Ultima VII when we shorten lines into a few words instead of moving forward. For example, there can be many was to accuse someone of murder. Some ways can have different consequences than others (ie: a confession vs a fight or a reward vs jail time). The dialogue should seek to pay more attention to detail, not gloss over it.

I love the topic system in Morrowind and Oblivion. The topic system gives me the freedom to imagine very specific responses for my characters. Not to pick on Dragon Age but I found that game's dialog trees extremely restrictive. Dialog trees rarely stimulate my imagination the way topics in Morrowind and Oblivion do.

I wish some of the generic asking options would be a little less generic for key encounters.

But Morrowind and Oblivion's dialogue engine is spectacular when you get right down to it. Conversations aren't always inevitably linear. Sure, you may get looped into asking the same things but the key point is it doesn't always feel scripted. Morrowind's all-dialogue was superior to Oblivion's all-voice, to me, though. You could ask a MW NPC something over and over and get different responses. Most always OB NPC's will repeat the same thing over and over like they get question-based Alzheimer's.

I liked how Dragon Age: Origins handled dialogue. Those cutscenes really helped bring the NPCs to life.

I like your idea for camera and moving NPC's. But I'd also like to see conversations with multiple NPC's at the same time.

I don’t have a problem with a topic selection menu but I think each topic should initiate a conversation. The NPC says something and you reply. Your speechcraft skill determined what you can respond with. Better speechcraft skill allows more probing responses to try and get more information from the NPC's.

I think that’s the best of both worlds, topic selection so you can have the freedom to talk about what you want, and conversation replies for immersive conversations.

I'd very much love the dialogue to stop freezing time and space, as well. It would be nice to actually pass some time talking to some one. Or have to break away from a conversation fast because that quest target/guy with fat purse just walked by.

I'm sure it will be passive(I hope). Being a good conversationalist is about being able read your opponent, asking the proper questions, and giving proper replies. Though I would like to see mercantile also enter into conversations, for to long that skill has been greatly underpowered.

As for the camera, It be nice if played in third person you could view the conversations from differ angles. Perhaps being able to notice telling gestures (speechcraft). Though, I play in first person and would like if conversation stayed face to face.

I love speech trees, like in bioware games, but they only work if you limit the conversations with non-essential characters. FO style conversations work well enough for the type of game TES is. If Beth gave skyrim a finely tuned FO style interface I would be more then happy.
I honestly can't play a character who doesn't have conversational skills, so needless to say this topic is very important to me.

I case you weren't aware, you can already prevent the zooming in on the PC versions. Set fDlgFocus to 16.0 in the INI file. It worked on Oblivion, FO3, and NV. I always hated the zoom in too, so I figured out how to prevent it.

I really didn't like the dialogue in Oblivion. It seemed to have so little depth compared to Morrowind. Sadly, I don't think there are many other ways the developers could take it. Noone would settle for anything less than fully voice acted, and that restricts greatly a whole number of things - number of unique NPCs, complexity of topics, etc.

That's true, but dialog trees with only words are not much better, they also restrict you, you only find out after you said something. Apparently I was an 'idiot for wanting light armor' or something like that when I asked the armorer about 'the Imperial City'.
Single words are just not enough to let you know what the hell you are going to say. The best would be something between Dragon Age and Oblivion but with more options, though voice acting is probably only reducing the dialog options we are going to get.

I all for getting rid of the in your face conversations. I like the way Arcania worked it out where the camera panned to the side and the world behind the conversation is still in motion. I recall going inside a witches hut during a storm and the camera panned to the side showing the trees blowing madly in the wind through the open doorway.

But your idea about the npc moving around sounds pretty cool as long as it would look natural and randomized so we don't see the same thing over and over. I also like someone elses idea of conversations with multiple npcs, that would rock to have options for answering from different sources and maybe conversations might take a different path depending on who brought what up....if that makes sense....

I agree with everything except for the speechcraft skill thing. I actually liked that. It was hardly awesome and there is much for improvement (or a complete overhaul for that matter), but I thought it was an upgrade from Morrowind at least.

Other than that, I agree

Rather than have a "dynamic camera angle" approach to conversations a la Bioware games, I would rather you simply keep movement control.

This would be easy on the consoles, as you could use the D-pad for selecting dialogue options while maintaining normal movement controls with the anolog sticks (and simply walking away from a conversation if you wanted). The mouse wheel could work well for the PC (but PC players would obviously be given more options).

The zoom-in-lock-on-to-face approach is definitely getting old, but I really, really wouldn't want the camera to break 1st person....Forced 3rd person scenes in a 1st person game = evil