Morrowind was unique for dialogue as almost EVERYTHING was textual. There was very little actual voice dialogue in Morrowind; perhaps when Dagoth Ur, Azura, the guards, the Census guy in the beginning (don't remember his name, lol), and a few others, but very little other than that.

Well then we get to Oblivion, EVERY response is from a voice actor/actress.

I completely understand the ABSOLUTELY DAUNTING task of finding enough voice actors and actresses to create or more diverse feel, but I think it's imperative. Not to mention how difficult it would ALSO be to have MANY things recorded; different responses to things, depending on disposition, when in combat, and of course, quest related topics, among a wide variety of miscellaneous game topics.

I'm sure there's other topics like this, but perhaps not addressing? Dunno.

I feel your love, BUT it seems they may be going the route of FO3/NV where blank NPC's have little to say (this aint that kind of bar) there are flicks and bits saying they will be like generic npcs and just give rumours nothing different from Oblivion save for cutting the middle man and not having a dialog tree.

that said it would be shameful as "unimportant" npc's were helpful in giving directions during related quests so..who knows, a wait and see yeah?

This.

I dno what magazine had this so called information regarding dialouge apparently non important NPC's may not converse with your character at all (I don't know the source I just remember some people mentioning earlier on, please correct me if I am wrong). But there is a good side to it which means we won't get the same dialogue over and over which will stop most problems involving annoyance.

Bethesda hears your plea, but... they're ignoring it.

Yeah...
That was so much fun in Morrowind, listening to everyone.
And by listening I mean reading.
It still felt good to be able to talk to everyone, some people had more to say than others, and some of it was repeated a lot. But there was always plenty to "hear"

As much as I'd love to have it all, if it comes down to it, I'd rather talk to a few very interesting characters than a dozen generic ones.

A lot of npc's in morrowind had the SAME topics and said the SAME thing. I think a lot of people are blinded by their nostalgia for morrowind.

A balance with a slight tilt toward 'interesting ones' would be ideal I think from a doable development standpoint. Who knows, we'll see. <_<

Yeah but I'd rather have the number of topics. Were most of them repeats, sure, but it was still good.
And with the AI, now maybe that person being an assassin could actually make a difference...

Of course we won't see anything like that again. Everything is going to be voiced, and that just takes up so much space on the disk that we can't have a huge amount of conversations...

No.

So having 1 topic that was full of repeats was better?
Getting to know the background of NPC's could be interesting. And with the AI, it could be useful.
Maybe knowing that person is a theif and will likely be stealing things in the middle of the night means you can go steal their stuff easily.

Yep, and it's still getting overhauled by the Less Generic NPCs mod. If Bethesda wanted to make NPC dialogue more individual, they needed to make a tradeoff - either very few NPCs each with individually interesting dialogue, or more NPCs, but some of them won't have interesting dialogue.

So I don't mind the option Bethesda seem to be taking, but I just hope what we get is:

1) Good branching dialogue for quest related NPCs.
2) At least a few standard options for non-quest related NPCs - latest rumours, services, who am I, perhaps a couple of other notable NPCs ("he's that strange guy living over on street X"). Hell, I wouldn't even mind if this was achieved with the same voice over for a bunch of NPCs.

Alot of NPC's did have the same topics but alot of them also said very different things depending on their race or religion reguarding things in the world, for example ask an ordinator about vampires and he will say something different to say, an imperial or mages guild member or a member of house telvanni, this was the case for many topics.

It wasnt perfect but i'd take it over the 3 topics NPC's in oblivion had :shrug:

Except... Skyrim seems to be ditching the obsolete "Push Button for Wall'o'Text" dialogue from the 80s. Goodbye "Dialogue Trees", Hello Conversations. I hope it comes across even better. And with the new engine, it may even be more space-efficient.

It's only a conversation if you the player are participating as well - otherwise it is a standard request for info

Dialogue trees provide a structured approach for storing info and allow for different responses - I personally felt more dialogue was what distinguished a RPG from an action game

Yeah, I don't quite understand how dialogue trees could NOT be used... there's a player pushing buttons to initiate a recorded response.

Simplifying the dialouge was completely unnecessary.

In this case, all Bethesda did was take away something most ES fans enjoyed.

Not cool Todd.

What's the point in having voice acting when the characters have nothing interesting to say?

They should limit commoners' and the like dialogue in text, perhaps with a recorded greeting or something, instead of removing so many dialogue options. This the worst change I have ever seen in the TES series.

Let's play the game first shall we? Of course you are more than welcome to judge the entirety of the conversation system before even seeing it based off an italian translation.

I don't see how it being based on an italian translation makes it any different from a U.S. Game Informer scan that we all follow like religion?

Edit :Or maybe the Italians are playing their own version.

You know something that never fails to amaze me is that so many people dis the text based dialogue of Morrowind and yet work their butts off to raise their star status on these forums by engaging in text based dialogue

I'm fine with any dialogue they provide.

edit: fixed error.

Pretty sure he meant Oblivion with that.
I sure did.

A lot? Heck, nearly all.

But then that's what Daggerfall did as well (and a lot of other old school cRPGs). That's how you have thousands of "unique" NPCs. Then you have Oblivion which tried to make the NPCs more unique with voice acting...but all that lead to was strained resources and limited dialogue. Sure the NPC has its own personality, but what good is it if it's limited to a single sentence?

I'm not surprised if Bethesda is really ditching the "unique" NPCs for the generic unimportant NPCs with no real dialogue (a la Fallout). That's one area of the series I'm happy to see changed. Just listen to Max von Sydow's dialogue in the Sounds of Skyrim video. Ten thousand times better than the dialogue in Oblivion. Fewer unique NPCs means focused resources and more time spent improving their personalities and higher quality writing/voice recording all around.