I do like it as well. I'm not noticing any great loss of capability. All these people complaining about the lack of skills, what happens when you put points into charisma, perception or intelligence? I suspect that like the changes to the AP/fatigue and health/radiation bars there has been some consolidation in the perks as well. Basically if every perk is 25 points, you are seeing exactly the same thing as in FO NV without the tedious fractions. Its also not as clear cut as NV, you don't get told you need 80 points in some skill to succeed, you just have yellow, orange or whatever comes next, and a pass/fail advice after. I shall keep loading up on charisma and perception and see what it gets me.

Just laughing at the amount of no in this poll. Polls will never lie.

If you add up yes with the ones that think it can with change, it almost rivals the no. It is as i tought a 50 - 50. Then again we are on a game forum for hardcoe fans, and not asking in general outside of the forum.

Except skill checks other than charisma / persuasion literally dont exist anymore. This is something that was blatantly removed from the Fallout series, and I'm baffled as to why. It added more flavor and expression to the dialogue and led to different story arcs and ways to complete quest objectives.

Because Bethesda games don't feature a premade protagonist. Every time you play a Witcher game, you're playing Geralt of Rivia... sure, you might be able to change and select various nuances in your interactions, but it's still the same character. In Bethesda games, you make your own character. Todd even proudly proclaimed this during the E3 presentation, that their games are designed to allow you the freedom to create your character as you want. Limited dialog options and a fixed-voice protagonist don't play to the strengths of the stated goals of their games, and means every character you make of a particular gender will sound just like all the others, and have the same scripted speech interactions (you want to make a right bastard who's glad or doesn't care what happened to their family? tough, any time the character speaks about them it will be with an air of melancholy or determination). Besides, "because they do it too!" is a terrible reason to do anything.

Note that I never referred to myself in that explanation. It's based purely on what they stated they wanted to do, and why fails to live up to that, compared to other games that also have a voiced protagonist.

FO4 dialogue:

NPC: We've been attacked by raiders! Can you help us?

PC: Sure!

NPC: Good.

FO3 dialogue:

NPC: We've been attacked by raiders! Can you help us?

PC: Sure! Do you know where they went?
NPC: Yes, they went through that tunnel.
PC: How many were they, and were they well armed?
NPC: There were about a fnarkel of them, and they all had many weapons.

PC: [Explosives] Can we blow up that tunnel to make it harder for them to attack again?
NPC: Well, it would mean a longer trip for us to take our shrooms to market, but safety comes first, I guess. Sure.

PC: And what about...

And it goes on. You could ask about history and motivation, about friends and enemies. Was the FO3 system perfect? Far from it, but with the FO4 system the depth of the system is removed, not to mention that it's been so streamlined that going over the same point twice is impossible.

I miss the old dialogue system...

so.......not much different, not really, all had about 3-4 options that might or might not actually be what you want to say.

Here you are right, it has more of an natural flow.

However the downsides are to large, lack of options, not knowing that your character will say, having to speculate that you character will say breaks immersion hard. Also you get far less information out of this, so lite it sometimes impact quests, and yes if you select yes you rarely have a chance of get an update.

note that they could easyly combined Skyrim system with FO4, using the same window as you have for looting containers, it could support far more than 4 items. Texts could also be longer

Fallout has always had a premade protag though.

Fallout 1 - you were the vault dweller, someone who went out of their way to leave the vault and go get teh water chip to help teh vault (this is part of the main quest, and is non-negotiable), then you go out of your way to stop the master (yeah. you could "Techincally" join, but it was a game over screen...so.......)

fallout 2 - you are a relation to the vault dweller and are the chosen one to bring a lot of hope to the wasteland (yup, fallout 2 used the most generic plot EVER) and you eventually wipe out of the enclave. Once again, this is all part of teh main quest and non-negotiable.

fallout 3 - you are the kid of the guy who started project purity, and the main quest is go finding him, help the BoS stop the enclave, etc, again, this is nto something changeable

So yeah, actually, out of all of them, New vegas is the one with the least amount of characterization, and even then the DLC gives a lot of background on what you did before

as for the OP's question, depends, some parts, yeah, kind of annoying, but have had several scenes in game that would have had nowhere NEAR the impact had the main character not talked.

If anyone wants to call F4 crpg then this dialoque system is catastrophy. Dialoques are the main media transporting game's world to player. Without it you ended up with plain shooter game like Far Cry 4. My first dialogue in New Vegas' village Goodsprings in saloon with some old guy who used to be scavenger in his days was more interesting than all the talking in F4

There's a difference between a premade character, and character's history and starting task. A character is essentially defined by their personality traits, their outlook on things, and how they want to proceed forward. A character can be made to fit many various backgrounds and histories, and a given background or history can produce many different types of characters.

To take Geralt for instance, not only does he have a preset history and task, but the majority of personality traits and the way he sees things are based on what his creator wanted him to be like, not the player. The world of the Witcher has other characters that have a similar history and job as Geralt, but they're not at all like him. Similarly, an archetypal character is so defined because they share so many common personality traits and a similar outlook on things, even though they may have wildly different backgrounds.

I miss being able to show off my medical expertise, or my skill in lockpicking, or my knowledge on how to survive in the wasteland. I Miss being able to define MY character through dialog not THE character.

How do you know? There was someone else saying strength has an effect, and I expect all of them will have an impact somewhere. I simply don't care about all the FO 3 pointless dialogue compared to the dialogue I get now. I'm finding far more intuitive and immersive that either of the previous Fallouts.

I loved the voiced protagonists but that's probably the Bioware fan inside of me talking. I wish it was more in depth and gave you more leeway to add to your character rather than being forced into a specific set background. What if I wanted my character to be a sleeper agent pre-war or a doctor? Or hell, even some Communist? I wish they put more effort into the dialogue and didn't opt for the short and sweet wheel. I love the game and I've played more than 50 hours of it yet I still can't help feeling underwhelmed. Where's the >3 intelligence dialogue? The ability to chime in about your knowledge regarding a certain area because of how you leveled up? What bugs me the most is the relationships with other characters! I didn't have high expectations for the game because I knew that I would be disappointed but it's hard to think of how much potential these romances, friendships, etc. had. Still bugs me that you've only got like 3-4 scenes for companion romance, a weak perk, and maybe 2 lines afterwards. "Romance" and "Flirt" doesn't give me a glimpse of what my character is going to say.

I think when Electronic Arts did this to Dragon Age 2 it killed the series and Bethesda is repeating the same mistake.

DA 2's problems existed FAr beyond the dialogue system.

Not really.

Ive come around many times where I could use a speech check to change how a quest played out, either immediately or in the long run.

I like the "new" ( or better said copied ) system because it feels more like a real conversation. But some flaws need to be fixed, like the "I don't know what I am going to say" issue. The written text for the options should be more clear, and if Bioware is already copied, why not add some icons to the options?

I selected the 3rd option. It could be dramatically better with some rather significant changes. Why Bethesda adopted the Dragon Age 2 what-will-I-say-next dialogue wheel, I don't know, but it is pretty clumsy as far as RP aspects go and a fairly bad dialogue system to begin with. Inquisition would have been a better inspiration for their dialogue, or better yet, The Witcher 3. But both of those were very recent so I guess I have to cut them some slack on that front.

They really should have redone the entire UI for PC though. There is no excuse for it.

As a first attempt at fully voiced dialogue I have to say I'm really enjoying it. Nobody can deny that it has limited the options somewhat, and anybody who expected to have their cake and eat first time out are simply deluding themselves. There's room for improvement, but I've been sold on the voiced protagonist thing. I hope that Bethesda take this ball and run with it to build back up to the multiple dialogue options we saw in previous games with the voiced protagonist.

I dislike the system, despite FO4 being a great game, if not my all time favorite. Great art design, great gameplay, great scenery. But under par dialog system. And to be honest, it is not about not knowing what is going to be said. Most of the time it is quite clear (although I by accident mugged a poor woman... Damn you, tempting yellow speach option!). Seing the old system reminds me of how great that was. I've never even noticed that the player character isn't voiced, because I read out the spoken text in my mind before choosing it. Also, by having the unspoken options there, you often get a deeper dive into the franchise, seeing your possibilities, as well as a glimps into the "wasteland mentality".

In the long run, if it is fleshed out, it could become good. But to me, it seems to be an unecessary addition. The greatest thing it adds, is that it allows some conversatoins to "linger", if you want to do something and go back to the conversation, you can.

I can get why people are not overly happy with it. It doesn't really bother me though, I'm actually quite liking it.

I do feel more like I'm having a conversation, and I am now more than ever likely to have a punt on the % success stuff and when it fails it feels like the dialog just flows really well. I'm enjoying the flow of conversation now more than ever. In previous games I've always the found the conversations to be bland, stunted, info gathering - now I actually feel like my character is able to actually talk to someone.

It's one of a number of things that I was skeptical about, along with no holstering etc., but have actually really impressed me.

I'm fine with it. I just want to have the copies of these earlier games that gave so many more options becuase I don't see them in Skyrim , FO4 or FONV ( as far as I can remember, Like Highlander 2 , I kind of like to pretend it never existed)

I can understand if folks had a drastically different voice in their head but I'm playing several characters and the variety of answers is enough to make them seem quite different. Playing back to back with Skyrim , I seem to have just as many if not more choices.

It is not an improvement, but it is not much worse either.

From RP perspective, absolutely none of the many RPGs I played, both old and new, have options that my characters would say so I just imagine my characters saying different things then offered by the game anyway. As long as there are enough dialogue effects (choices and consequences if you will) by dialogue, I am fine and as of now, FO4 seems to have more choices than former Beth games even if the dialogue is simplified.

Still, I wish the dialogue wheel goes away. Not because I think it is harmful as much as it is freagin' ugly.

Utterly shocked that anyone would say anything except https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdJm3DVg3EM

I liked the voice protagonists, but I don't like the content of the dialogue.

The skeleton is there, but there's not enough meat on the bones.