» Wed Dec 14, 2011 1:41 am
Some quests the quest giver will go on discussing with npcs after you have fixed the problem. Again like they have simple forgot to disable them once a point is reached.
The comments guards make are so easily obtained and certain phase seem to have higher priority over others meaning even with a possible 20 or so lines they may comment on you'll frequently hear the same few. Practicually with sneak thief (pickpocket sneaking and stealing are 3 seperate things, ignoring the oxymoron that is this saying, although not as bad as OB's) having about 90% chance of being said. Feels like I walk round with a dark cloud enshrouding me and a swag bag on my back.
Dialogue triggers are easy to set off and don't seem to turn off, being in a house with a housecarl you can end up hearing "my thane" over and over due to being so close all the time, frequently with my back to someone they'll say a greeting including when I'm moving further away, no guard no one stole my sweet roll, im 10ft away from you looking at the blacksmiths shop about to go in, I never owned a sweetroll let alone started complaining to you about it.
Npc's have highly limited amount of phases most of the time, maybe why they where afraid to turn off some of them so you end up being treated like a stranger not the saviour of the city they named you 2 mins earlier. Your also rearly given even sensible dialogue varieties to pick from, not an infinite amount of things you can reply with, but if you can give 3 yes's why not one no, oh I can roleplay and just press b and walk away, genius, that goes right up there with rping a good person so you ignore all the murders, haunted houses and other things.
Not just dialogue and the scripting associated that is lacking, action scripts severly lack where npcs won't adapt their daily routines to your actions, even for quests, it's one thing to have every npc being able to recognise someone close to them has been killed if you chose freely to do so, but another to not have it after a quest you've been given.
There are some points where they seem to apsire to greater things, hint at things that lack depth, but then you're never given to option to delve deeper, yes your brother is a tricky one, I someone completely lose the ability to ask how he came across this claw, or why a barman has another. Similar to the the intro, your given a choice but it matters so little that choosing for the opposite side you intend to play for doesn't have an effect. Or one of the hot topics at the moment, dropping items in cities, if your lucky enough to have someone react to it, theyll usually just shove it back in your inventory, thats much more sensible then the as advertised version, and on the rare occassion they do ask if they can have it, theyll happily exclaim how theyll use it right away, but never do. Same as shopkeepers being replaced if one dies, lucan constantly tells me how he AND his sister can help me, she'll even stand at the counter at times, but never has she given me the option to buy from her.
The shooting an npc and hiding one, didn't oblivion fallout 3 and new vegas all have the comment "they must have run away" if they had been attacked.
Yeah there are some nice little touches here and there, but they as so frequently and completely detracted by the constant base level flaws in it they may as well not exist, frankly I would have prefered to have the basic stuff sorted, proper recognition of your character, especially if they are a certain npc's boss, npcs not commenting on things Ive since fixed unless it's to mention that, over the little touches that vanish in the sea of other issues. Water physics are great with corpses, having it break over them is cool, shame it doesn't treat you alive the same or the world didn't act as one big slip n slid for the greased up corpsed on land.