Need an "other" in the poll or something. I wouldn't say its worse or better than 3 or NV. its different and I like it.

One word: crippled.

It would be fine if they would show us a preview of what each option would say. Just when you hover over the option it should give us an idea of what you are saying

Well I guess the main difference between you and me on this seems to be, you quicksave and reload until you pass the check, I accept when the check fails. For me this is part of the game

All things aside, one major benefit of the dialogue system is that my wife actually enjoys watching the game now. That means more play time for me, so I'll take it

Definitely much worse than FO3, never mind NV.

1) Half the time what my character says doesn't follow from the label on the dialogue option. It's not impossible to get this kind of system to work well. Mass Effect uses basically the same arrangement, but there were only a couple of cases in the whole trilogy where I was coming out with dialogue which was really different in meaning or tone than what I expected from the label on the dialogue wheel. Here it's happening all the time. They've just done a really awful job on labelling the options. Some of them like the ever present "sarcasm" you might as well just pull a line out of the dialogue file at random.

2) New Vegas was a major step up from FO3 in that all kinds of skills, SPECIAL, and even quite a lot of the perks unlocked additional dialogue options. It really allowed far more role play of different characters to be able to call on say medical knowledge, or a character being a sneaky type rather than limiting it just to speech and charisma. This could still have been done using relevant perks.

3) Random chance? Only really tolerable if the speech checks don't make any fundamental difference to the outcome. Imagine how differently talking down the Legate in New Vegas would have been if it came down to whether the RNG smiled on you rather than you building up a character that had the skill to do it. Again, an improvement over FO3 which seems to have been deliberately undone.

4) Was it really a technical necessity to have exactly four options at every step? There's quite a few where two of them might as well say "Wrong button! Try again!" since there's only one or two options which will actually progress the conversation.

I'm fairly indifferent to having a voiced PC. In itself it doesn't make a lot of difference, though I suspect it'll be a nuisance for modders.

Whenever I feel something good about the dialogue there's something bringing it down.

Example:

It's 10 times better than FNV just because there is a chance of failure. The conversations flow and go off on tangents like an actual conversation, not choose the option with the helpful success level next to it.

Replay value.

I loved how the dialogue system was before, especially in New Vegas where you could get extra dialogue options based on S.P.E.C.I.A.L (including funny low int dialogue), skills, perks, faction reputation, karma, etc...If I had my medicine skill high I could save patients and people would call me "Doctor" and a lot of the lines were so charming or hilarious. Now it's just...it's so limited and it's not memorable at all. Plus I hate paraphrasing.

It's... Different. Not bad, just different. I'm starting to get use to it myself and I honestly enjoy it. It makes dialogue flow better and breathe better in my honest opinion. Though, I dislike how it doesn't fully show what you are going to see, forcing you to make assumptions but that's just something for Bethesda to work on.

To those of you that are saying that this system is more realistic: Are you saying that in a conversation in real life you are unable to ask more than one question?

To those of you that are saying that this system gives better dialogue flow: Are you saying that it is impossible in a real life conversation to go back to something you've talked about earlier to ask another question?

Because in this system, you can't ask another question, and you can't ask a different question. Realism and the flow of conversations is all well and good, but this is a game, not a movie, and it is not real life either. The new system removes the ability to add character flavour in dialogues, making FO4 less of an RPG and more of an adventure game; it removes the ability to ask a different question, or to ask for elaboration on a topic, making it more like an adventure or a film than an RPG; it removes the ability to let your character build influence your options in conversations, again making it less of an RPG.

For me, an RPG is mostly about building your character, both in stats, with gear, and... wait for it... through developing the personality of the character by how you interact with the world and the NPCs you meet therein. With the new system, Fallout 4 is less of an RPG, and I, for one, find that sad.

I dunno, pushing Dikstra and, instead, breaking his leg was a pretty surprising choice. Pretty much [glass him] in a nut shell.

** To be honest, I don't think Witcher 3 did the whole dialogue wheel any better or any worse than Fallout 4.

Its quite simply not, atleast for me. Its not the questing or the choices that I think are damaged, those are still fine. Ive met a lot of interesting characters and unique situations, but this new system means that I don't have as much control to be creative with my character's roleplay as I did before. Is it game breaking? No, with everything else combined I honestly think this edges out Fallout 3 as my favourite Fallout game, atleast while im still enraptured with everything new inside of it. Is it some sort of casual dumbing down conspiracy? Ive talked before about how that's less of a reasoned argument and more like ranting about how a secret cabal of cats are seeking to enslave the world.

Fallout 4 is a improvement above Fallout 3, New Vegas, Skyrim, and all of the rest in almost every way. Except, of course, this new voice that my man Leon has. In the end, I would hope that this is a Fallout 4 thing, and not a TES VI or Fallout 5 thing. I don't want this to continue, but I can deal with it if it does. Bethesda listens to fans, and the more people present humble reasons about how they don't like this new thing, the more likely it will change.

I completely agree with this statement.

I don't think you necessary know what an RPG actually is. I would've agree if you say something like "Fallout 4 is less of a free-range RPG", which is true. Thing is, that is also true with Fallout 3. The differences between Bethesda's Fallout games and Bethesda's Elder Scrolls games is that the with the former (Fallout 3 and Fallout 4), the player's protagonist is given a backstory and has their own development while in the latter case (like Skyrim or Morrowind), the player's character is given literally nothing and allows free-range to the player.

And I like how Fallout 4 did it more so than Fallout 3. Fallout 3's character development was based more on karma than anything else, making it kinda weird and having bad ending effects, depending on what you do in the Capital Wasteland. With Fallout 4, your character development isn't based on karma (no good vs evil ordeal). Your character's development is based around your own ideals, which is why Fallout 4 has 4 main endings (and meaning possible minor ones to go with each ending). Fallout 4, just like Fallout 3, gives you a base of the character and allows you to develop that character into your own wishes. Just in a different way...

So in a sense, Fallout 4 is as much as a RPG game as Fallout 3 is, maybe even better. Though I'm not saying that the dialogue system itself is good or bad... I'm pretty much neutral about it since Fallout 3's dialogue system wasn't that good at all. (Having more choices doesn't matter if they all have the same conclusion, at least in most cases).

I don't like it, I thought I'd get used to it but alas no. It just seems lazy, dumb and limiting if in some situations you'd want more than 4 responses, although the game would have to be designed around only 4 choices, as will modders. But it's what we have really and it's not gonna change, so we must endure it. At best I hope it was a nice little experiment that's not to be repeated (hopefully)

Another thing, sometimes an NPC will force a conversation when I'm just walking along. As I'm pressing the forward key for moving, now I'm suddenly in a conversation without realizing it, and I've pressed the top response. Then I just have to pray it wasn't the inappropriate initiate combat response.

If we just endure it, then Bethesda will assume it's a success and do it in the next Fallout and Elder Scrolls games.

Witcher 3 doesn't have a dialog wheel (or maybe it's different on consoles? I've only seen the PC version). In Witcher 3, you're given a list of responses which offer complete, albeit brief and paraphrased, lines. And while Geralt may say it a bit differently, it's far better at getting across what it means, and you can attribute any differences and unexpected moments as being a quirk of the Geralt character. Further, the responses are color-coded so that you can tell which lines are just going to offer more information and which ones will move the story/quest along. If you don't pick a bolded entry, you generally will end up back at the same responses (though sometimes you can cause options to appear or disappear, depending on what the dialog was), before making a commitment to move the story/quest forward. The game will also have and allow for more than 4 responses to select from.

Fallout 4 doesn't have a preset character like the Witcher 3 does. The devs even proudly proclaim that in Fallout 4, you can make the character you want because player freedom is so important. So those moments of unexpected replies, coupled with the extremely poor text on the selection wheel that doesn't tell you what "your" character is going to say, and the limited number of responses, utterly fails in that mission.

I've already seen a mod that puts the responses back into a proper list instead of the wheel, and improves the displayed text (http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/619/?). Hopefully modders will be able to find a way to have more than 4 responses (if not, perhaps F4SE will be able to allow for it one day).

Definitely not better than New Vegas, but I find the dialogue better than Fallout 3, which wasn't spectacular to begin with.

This +1...

I'm hoping the mod crowd can fix the patient so to speak, but conversation seems much more fluid and real than in previous fallouts. Perks and other specials need to have an impact, charisma can't be the only influence. As it is, I like it more than I hate it but they do need to take the Russian roulette out of the equation and give a better description of what it is you're going to say. Add in meaningful perk/special impact and it would be near perfect.

I miss skill/SPECIAL checks and i think limiting the choice to X/Y/B/A wasn't that great of a move. I can imagine it frustrated the writers at some point to cut choices they liked just because they couldn't fit in just one more.

However i do think the writing,characters and voice acting makes up for it. In FO3 it felt like you were responding to a lengthy monologue with a bunch of crap options(most of the time anyway, i remember being generally unhappy with them), the dialogue this time around feels more like a conversation, while you might have less options each time it's your turn to speak, you get to speak more often.

this