I enjoyed the story in my first playthrough until the point you are forced to stick with one of the factions AND youre not told that you have to go slay the entire faction down, which I NEVER intended when I joined it.

The only thing you are told is that you cant go back to the Institute which I was fine with, but not this bull.

All my other playthroughs have so far been avoiding the main story and just exploring and killing stuff, which is the strength of F4...but story? Not at all.

KOTOR without Star Wars? I am pretty sure that is how Bethesda came up with Mass Effect.

It was probably not very clear, I meant another story within that framework. Equally about Light/Dark. Perhaps not ending with the Star Forge but with something else.

It would have been exactly the same, since the gameplay/engine is static and that's as far as the game can offer.

this i highly disagree with. what exactly is wrong with seeing multiple ways to talk to a character?

I was happy with the writing for the most part. The Main quest was very interesting, and the factions were all well written, which is what i cared about the most. The companions are interesting, or most of them, a few bad eggs. So yes all in all it was quite solid, more so than any other Bethesda game on the dialogue/plot quality. Small edit - The envoirmental storytelling was as always exceptional, but that is not really any surpise, it is where Bethesda excels.

That is not what I meant at all.

Creating multiple ways of talking to characters is my passion, it is the whole reason I mod Bethesda games. When I was in highschool I learned to 3d model because I wanted to go work for Bioware some day because I loved what they were doing THAT much.

This is why I play videogames, it isn't just an added feature on a game to me, it is the game and the guns and fighting and all that stuff are just the icing on the cake. I would never say there is anything wrong with seeing multiple ways to talk to a character.

If you saw my website you would see that I have spend countless hours developing interactive dialogue systems and charts and writing essays about how I can move the medium forward.

I personally just think 10 options is the kindergarten way to present choice. It is a waterballoon to the face as opposed to using a clever approach, as opposed to letting things branch and develop in an organic way. My goal is to create a system that leads the conversations down a more natural path with choices that don't feel so much like a menu, but feel like you are actually developing a bond or hatred for this person over many different choices.

Basically I am saying that instead of having 10+10=20, I would rather have 2x2-1+5x3-4=20.

The writing was poor for the most part, but that's to be expected from Bethesda. My real issue however, lays with how inconsistent it is, and how badly the lore and canon were handled.
The key offenders here are:

• Pre-war Jet, despite the fact that it was established that Jet was invented after the war.
• A ghoul child living inside a fridge for over 200 years, without having to eat or drink to stay alive. Yet Fallout 4 also establishes that ghouls need to eat, just like a human.

Bethesda didn't even try.

Those are two things, among a million other things. But its your opinion, and they did try, even though you do not appreciate their attempt.

Fallout 4 easily has the worst dialog system in the series. I'm not sure where you got the idea that it has branching conversations, if anything I feel like it has the least branching. In almost every instance of dialog that I've encountered, all four dialog options have been near identical. I've saved and reloaded just to see how the NPC responds, and they literally say the same thing no matter which dialog option you pick. Conversations in Fallout 4 are incredibly linear.
My favorite example is when you're forced to help an NPC with a quest, and all four dialog options are "I'm here to help" with minor variations.

I thought it was very good. I was quite pleasantly surprised. Of course, the writing wouldn't be anything without some good VA and Fallout 4 definitely has that going for it too.

I wasn't referring to Bethesda when I was talking about branching dialogue, I was referring to my own personal method of writing. The way I write things when I mod, and the reason I am excited to work with the current system. My last post was a very self centered monologue about me.

Nothing I said in my last 2 posts was meant as a critique of the actual writing style of Bethesda, which is a conversation worth having, but it isn't what I was referring to at that particular instance in time.

I personally think the system is great, and that Bethesda barely scratched the surface of what you can do with it, so as a modder I am excited to kick things to the next level. I don't think there is anything wrong with the dialogue wheel.

But see I don't understand this. The only difference between the dialog wheel and the original dialog window is that now we're limited to four dialog choices, and our responces are poorly summarized in a maximum of three words. It's a direct downgrade in every way.
It features no improvements and offers us nothing new.

Moving dialogue and narrative forward is something laudable to me. I have followed AI and narrative systems in games for a long time, and it has been static for a number of years. A very large number of years.

[aside] I am just a music graduate, for what that might be worth, yet I find these systems fascinating. Almost to the level of "highbrow" musical composition, with structural and artistics levels not strictly comparable to more commercially viable forms of music composition. [/aside]

I find something by Richard Evans, like GOGAR or "Blood and Laurels," innovative for the gaming industry. Something which can move AI forward, which can create truly emergent narratives, and conversations instead of 20 lines of "Yes" "No" [Faction] Let me Deal with him" "[Faction" For caps, I can do the do" etc...

This is not exclusive to this game, it has been the same for a very long time. Pre-scripted "romance" option, pre-determined outcomes which form a funnel which essentially leads to the same outcome.

From what I have observed, and my own experience, players don't care. They want to shoot or win the game. I gave up on anything meaningful a long time ago, despite systems claiming otherwise.

I don't say this to be mean or to try to bring you down or anything like that, I say this in order to not waste your time, but if you really think that a) Bethesda didn't try their best b )That Fallout 4 has worse dialogue that Fallout 3 and c) That you need more that 4 options to tell a story.

Well... if you believe all of that, there is no reason for me to continue this conversation, because fundamentally you don't understand me.

I think several of the other people on here have very good points that I could learn from, so I am going to respectfully decline from debating any further with you on the subject. I respect your opinion but we are fundamentally to far apart to be worth debating.

Well clearly I don't understand you. I can't believe you don't see the dialog wheel as the downgrade that it is. It's essentially just a more limiting version of what we once had. Not only does it limit players into having only four responses, but it puts the developers into a position where they're forced to restrict themselves to writing exactly four lines for every conversation. Whether that limit means they have to cull choices, or throw in multiple choices of the same exact response, it's downright bad design and offers no improvements to what we had before. There was no reason to turn the dialog system into the wheel.
Not to mention how much I hate dialog wheels that don't let you know what you're actually going to say.

What he means is that he think its better to have fewer options, but more variables. If you've played any Bioware game you can clearly see how much a conversation can change from one alternative to another, it will trigger a different response, and it can be remember later on by that NPC. Bioware makes it works cross-games even, its quite amazing. The old dialogue system had alot of options, but not as many outcomes and variables, so its mostly flavour. And while that is great, not everyone favors that. Atleast i i think that is what he meant. To me the new conversation system has exactly that, variables and most importantly good pacing. I do understand however that this is not for everyone, and old fans of the series will be dissapointed.

The new system doesn't offer more variables though, at least Fallout 4 didn't. New Vegas already did this, having not only tons of different responses from NPC's for what you say, but also more dialog options than just four every time. Fallout 1 and 2 were like this too, in fact those two in particular were very strict about what you said. Saying the wrong thing could lock you out of content and conversations.
The worst thing about Fallout 4's dialog wheel is that not only do we only get four dialog choices, they they all receive the same response from the NPC no matter what. Your choices are completely meaningless.

Very well put.

I am all about not being pulled away from the pace of the game by having to sit there and read too much. Also, if I am playing a character that is a die hard goodie-goodie, then having to read an entire option written for an evil character is going to break me from the mindset and decrease the flow of the story I am living out.

I believe that the point being made by the person before was that it is disappointing to have all 4 options lead to the same thing. In this case I agree, but as a writer of interactive dialogue myself I do have a certain degree of understanding that Bethesda isn't all powerful, and I do believe they tried their best.

What I don't agree on is that having 10 options that all lead to the same place is better than having 4 options that all lead to the same place. I think the focus should be put on quality and having change, as opposed to trying to fix the problem by having even more empty options.

Give me 2 options that lead to two separate places as opposed to 10 options that all dead end or lead me to the same place.

I think New Vegas liked to throw in a bunch of options so there was the illusion of depth, but then they just dead ended everything. I would take Fallout 4 over New Vegas anyday.

This whole discussion has gone completely off-rails by now, for some reason you guys are talking about the general ideas behind the dialog wheel, and the potential it may offer. But I'm trying to talk about what we have right now in Fallout 4, as well as what we had before it. I agree that dialog options need to be more meaning and branch more, but I don't think you need to have a dialog wheel to accomplish this.

Oh this bit bothered me though:

Then why are you playing a bloody RPG series then?

I don't know what a 'bloody RPG' is, but I am not worried about what title you put on my genre.

Whatever genre Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, and Fallout 4 are, that is what I want to be playing, because despite the individual flaws of each game, I just love the way they tell a story and let you customize your play style and path. I love how the pacing of those 3 games keeps a good balance between doing some action, then experiencing some story, then doing some action again, and then experiencing some story.

To me it is a media experience that lets me be part of a story that I have control of, I get to do the heroic actions or be the jerk or tell the funny joke.

If I want to sit there and read, I will buy a book, they cost about $10, I have tons of them and enjoy them a lot. I'm not paying $60 to read though...

This is what I think is funny, you say stuff like this, even though Fallout 4 does that the worst in the series. The Fallout games prior to 4 had far greater customization and depth to your character and play-style in every way. Fallout 4 is extremely restrictive, shallow, and linear compared to the others.

Have you even played a Fallout game aside from Fallout 4?

I think it's one par with Skyrim(so it's better than FO3 at least). So it's just eh to me.

It's called a difference in opinion. No need for you to get so aggressive with him about it.

The age of the DnD-inspired, numbers and text heavy RPG is on its way out. No, scratch that, it's over. Fallout 4 has more "numbers-based" gameplay and customization with it's SPECIAL and weapons/armor system than practically every other major AAA RPG recently released. Hell, The Witcher 3 is getting praised as one of the best RPGs of the year, and it doesn't even have a customizable main character! "Stats and text" RPGs, as I like to call them, are now a niche genre. That's not necessarily good or bad, but that's the trend.

Anyhow, let's get back on topic. There are other places to discuss the extent of character customization.

It doesn't though, that's what I'm saying. It has the least customization, the least depth, and the fewest mechanics and features of any Fallout game in the main series. It's incredibly dumbed-down compared to 1, 2, New Vegas, and even 3.

It's a huge step back from what we had in previous installments.

I generally liked the writing, and in particular I enjoyed the personalities of the various companions and the way they insert themselves into conversations during quests. However, the main quest had some very irritating things, and a lot of the writing didn't seem that well thought out. For example (major plot spoilers):