Yes, a new UI interaction. The interviewer is clearly inquiring about a system, not about a scope. He is aware that Bethesda is making changes to Fallout, yet he observes that Bethesda is doing nothing different with dialogue, but is going for something "very traditional" instead. Pete's answer addresses that question.

By "unlimited monkeys," Pete obviously has in mind something that places demands on the same guys responsible for designing, programming, and balancing VATS. He cannot be thinking of the writing or of the quality of the writing. The VATS effort doesn't impact the quality of the dialogue. It is evident that Fallout 3's dialogue system is capable of delivering proper Fallout dialogue (as evidenced by New Vegas if not by Fallout 3). The ones responsible for putting that system into place got their job done. All that remained for the system to yield the proper results is writers (quest designers and level designers) with a better grasp of Fallout's application of writing. The ones responsible for for supplying that dialogue had no conflicting responsibilities. There is no clash of priorities, no reason to interpret "unlimited monkeys" as meaning that resources were not seriously allocated to making dialogue right.

I'm a dialogue lover. The more the better and I want to hear/read every word of it. Once. Only once. If I hear a "rumor" I want to hear as many different versions of it as are out there but I have no desire to hear/read the same one said exactly the same over and over again until I have it memorized word for word. I tend to opt out of dialogue when it's something I've already heard or read before. And I would hate being forced to listen or read it all again. With reading it, you can opt out anytime you choose, when it's voiced you should be able to do the same.

"Oh, I've heard that before" *walks away*

And that is what I felt like he was referring to here. I don't think he was saying dialogue was all too boring to listen to but that if you had already heard that line like a hundred times already the option to walk away is good to have.

@Gizmo: OMG, OMG, OMG the destruction of the mighty and holy RPGs already started with Fallout 1. You can skip dialogue there. I think we are all doomed.

I can understand by people want to stay and listen to the conversation, but I also don't want to be stuck there while someone is hitting me like th scenario with the courier in Skyrim.

Where? In Fallout you have to select a response; and cannot leave with an interaction in a state of flux.

I think it is purely quality question, like, i could listen to mass effect 2 dialogues for very long without getting bored, while the dialogues in mass effect 3 have almost exact the opposide effect.

i hate unskipable dialogue. I tend to read it and then have to wait for the speaker to finish. Plus once i've heard it, i don't really want to hear it again. As funny as fallout new vegas's old world blues opening was i'd hate to have to listen to it in its entirety more than once.

Agreed you have to be careful about what you say to anyone your words or thoughts can be twisted on you. A PR guy should should know this by retrospect.

Curious that this so called 'gaffe' is only of any interest to the chamber orchestra of the disaffected on the Fallout forum.

The gaming press has been falling over themselves to print any Fallout news, even when there isn't any,

but this 'bombshell' fails to reach even their threshold of newsworthiness (including the site that published the article).

Pete Hines is the VP of Marketing and PR. Take what he says with a grain of salt. He's not a developer. He is a salesman. He's just trying to say you can walk away from conversations in Fallout 4 where you can't in most other games with dialogue. He's also not saying the dialogue in Fallout 4 is bad, you just don't have to wait and listen if you don't want to.

I do not share Pete's feelings, though playing devil's advocate, I can see why a player might want to walk away from dialog they already heard before. My suggestion would be for NPC's to have circumstantial responses that pick up where you left off.

Like if you rudely walk away from a convo and return later, that NPC may sarcastically say 'well, well, if it isn't Mr. 'walking away because I have a short attention span'. Think you can handle more than two sentences of dialog this time?'

Or if the convo gets interrupted because of a raider attack, that NPC may say 'Whoa! That was a close call! Good thing I had my ready for action, bodyguard watching over me!'

Right so, Pete Hines finally says something and you all jump down his throat?

Just stop it..

Good points.

And while I'm sure he has fun playing Fallout, it is also part of his job to know the game.

He is just pointing out a nice feature especially if you like to do multiple play throughs (which I'm sure describes the majority of Fallout Fans.)

If this is how anyone from Bethesda gets treated for talking about the Fallout 4 in a honest and slightly unguarded fashion, then it is not surprising that no one from Bethesda is talking about the game except for the PR guy and the lead developer.

And they are going to be sticking strictly to the PR script.

This is assuming he wasn't being careful.

Consider how it could have been (mis)-interpreted if he had said something like "We've made it so you can just walk away from a conversation you've started with an NPC, because a lot of our customers will welcome that." How many people would have said "Hah! Proof they're dumbing down Fallout! They think their customers are dumb and don't have the attention span to listen to dialogue. What a gaffe!"

At least, when talking about this feature, he's trying to get across the impression that "We're gamers too, some of us like to play the same way our customers do." And you can be very sure that they've chosen to draw attention to this feature because this is something people have complained about before.

Honestly, I suspect he'd be damned if he said anything other than presenting bald facts with no elaboration or context. But that wouldn't be very effective salesmanship, would it? Perhaps he could have done this better, perhaps not. I haven't spent the last 16 years trying to market computer games, so I've only got an outsider's view.

True, people largely hear what they expect to hear.

He likely knows that no matter what he says beyond the bare facts, a certain percentage of the fan base will interpret it as additional proof they are dumbing down Fallout 4.
Still, no reason not to call them on it.

I'm not downsizing the scope. That is the primary scope of the series - dialogue was supplemental to the core experience of dungeon crawling. It [dialogue/quests] was used as a means to send people off into the dungeon and complete the objective or find loot - old school.

There's no harm in wanting to see improvement in an area of the game. But, it doesn't make any of what I'm saying less true, nor do I want to downsize the issue. Every game has something that it does well and things that it doesn't do well. The reality being that when it comes to a finite budget, you make sacrifices in ensuring that what you do well is up to par/better than it was before. Going forward into Fallout 4, I think we have seen plenty of the combat which is greatly improved, but the dialogue remains to be seen - and Pete Hines saying he skips dialogue doesn't imply that dialogue is [censored].

And that's specifically what they're trying to avoid.

Must be a joke or he's a simpleton who can stick with long dialogs.

I'm normally pretty tolerant to dialogue,

but I recently replayed Old World Blues...

Wow I was thankful of the dialogue skip, as those robots would not shut up....

You can tell when Chris Avellone is doing the writing for a game, lots and lots of dialog.

So...I'm the only one who enjoyed it? It was fair, since the rest of the DLC was all exploring.

First time I played Old World Blues I enjoyed the dialogue... on replay... I didn't have the patience to sit through their monologues.

If it is an RPG then that's what I expect to get out of it.

Gabriel77Dan hits for 20 hp
Enemy looks: severely wounded

Yep. Pretty much what I did.

Yeah, as much as I liked the humor of those robots, I did find myself having to repeatedly mash the skip button on my second playthrough to get through all the dialogue. Just get me to the MQ, I don't want to hear robots whining to each other, or Dala having sixual urges towards my human avatar. Ew.