I agree with your statement but I feel most people who complains about Fallout 4, Skyrim, etc don't necessary understand the type of RPGs that Bethesda makes and loves to focus on.

Other than the terrible dialogue system, Fallout 4 is pretty much an improvement in every aspect from Fallout 3 and even from New Vegas in a lot of areas. (Though, New Vegas also has a lot of it's own charms due to how Obsidian did it).

It's not the dialog wheel per say. It's the misinformation of the simplified dialog vs the actual dialog spoken by the PC. A simple and friendly "no" selection results in the PC actually telling the NPC to do bad things to themselves.

I cannot envision this being implemented into TES. 33K lines of dialog spoken in male and female for every race?

I would have much rather wanted that voice over budget to be spent on other content and or features.

The fact is, as someone else stated, they're trying to appeal to a greater audience and they have. Call it 'dumming down' (hilariously ironic BTW) or call it whatever you want but it is achieving what any company wants, which is expanding their market. If you for any reason think that a company is going to limit their potential sales to appeal to their previous customers, you're living in a wonderful fairytale. The people complaining about the things that have changed and they don't like are probably outnumbered by new customers 100x over. But hasn't this always been the thing with their games? People don't like things and their openness to modding is really what keeps people around. How many people would be happy with vanilla Fallout 3 unpatched with no DLC right now? I'd guess very little. Beth mentioned them rolling out free patches and updates including new features. We don't know what's on the horizon it hasn't even been out a month yet. And with mods coming to all platforms, the people that preferred the older mechanics can can change much of that.

Silent protagonist can burn for all I care. I like voiced protagonist, I actually find it more immersive since you take an active role ins speaking rather than just reacting to what the NPCs are saying. The problem I have with the voiced acting in Fallout 4 is the male voice actor is just terrible, his emotions are all over the place.

I like Fallout 4 a lot more if there wasn't too much glitches. It's a pretty good RPG.

I would say the consensus is that not one of Bethsada's games are RPG's, now that is finally established how about going to websites and RPG producers that make RPG's rather than constantly reminding those of us that enjoy the game as it is that its not an RPG.

As I for one am not enjoying the constant drivel that is your slander on a game that is fun as it is.

Your never going to get your RPG fix here with Bethsada...Its just a fact.

BSG is about something else that your not into.

The amount of success that the company has had would seem to be a clear indicator that what they do is good for them.

I would like to be able to influence people more with speech options, I feel very constrained not able to convince the people I'm working for to change their ways.

I honestly hadn't really experienced that many glitches except for the obvious ragdoll glitches, which really doesn't do anything except make me laugh.

I am among that group. I don't plan a purchase until the modding community has a couple of years invested.

People that haven't or will not buy the game will still voice their concerns for the game because they are passionate about the series. One doesn't have to play the game to know the details of why they didn't buy it.

There are a thousand LPs that reflect all of those unaccepted elements and fuels the posts of discontent.

I've been playing video games since the 8 bit console, and I feel the same way. The RPGs were fun back in the day, but once I played games like the Mass Effect series, I got hooked to the voiced PC and find it hard to go back. I do understand why some people are against it if they grew up playing pen and paper RPGs and are used to roleplaying in their head. Games like Pillars would be suitable for them. But I wouldn't mind at all if Bethesda stuck with voiced PC, as long as they give us more choices and consequences. ME basically only had paragon/renegade, and you were forced to play a premade character, but it didn't matter because it felt very engaging and immersive.

I had some pretty weird glitches, Curie always goes back to the Vault despite sending her to the Sanctuary, Dogmeat suddenly disappears, Danse (after his personal quest) becomes mute after you destroy the BoS, you can only open the trade window, he has no voice clips. Tina De Luca won't go to your settlement unless you kill Bobby, and after she comes to your settlement, she doesn't say anything, it's very similar to Danse.

I didn't feel like there were less options than in any previous Fallout game. The options are just integrated more into the game (chosen by the actions you take or what you find/do in game) rather than being plastered obviously into selectable lists like in previous games. It does make it more difficult to plan a character build ahead of time though, unless you have the guide book and read through all of it (which ruins the game with spoilers). I think this was on purpose though. I think they want you to sort of muddle through the game and just end up with whatever character build you "fall into" for your initial play-through. Then once you get an idea of how to find perks and character options in the world, then you can seek specific things out on subsequent play-throughs to make focused "ultimate" character builds. That way you're experiencing what the devs wanted you to at least once before you go all weird with the character builds.

I was discussing this with someone on facebook who was complaining that the perks and character building options they liked were gone from this game and he was giving up on it because he was so disappointed. He hadn't made it past Diamond City, and was still around level 17. He was under the assumption that the perks were gone from the game because he couldn't see them on the perks chart. They're still there though... but now they're attached to unique armor or guns that you can seek out and use, or to missions you can seek out and complete. I think another reason for this was to help balance and prevent people from having too many perks at once and building an omnipotent character toward the end of the game.

I agree the voice acting limits the character a bit though, I would have preferred him voiceless or at least that they recorded more different voice options per gender. Maybe in the future voice mods will be an option.

They also should have made the dialog options more clear on the wheel. I want to know exactly what my guy is going to say, and not be surprised. I've become pretty good at using the new system but I was upset at the dialog system more than a few times.

Also the initial scenes of the game pretty much set the character up to be a good guy, ruling out any really evil character dialog options for the rest of the game, but I can't think of a way for them to have done that opening scene and set up for that plot while maintaining the option for the character to be anything worse than a sarcastic good guy. Maybe they should have gone with a completely different opening or plot... but I really liked the opening sequence and thought it was a great addition to the Fallout canon.

I don't like the whole new voiced protagonist thing, I think it drags down the game.

But all this talk about dumbing down and ruining the RPG elements are just a copy and paste from 2002 with Morrowind. Give it 10 years and this game will be held aloft as a true RPG compared to Fallout 5 or 6 or TES VI, just like Morrowind is now despite it getting the exact same hate because it made changes back in the day.

Fallout 4 is a great game. But its not a great rpg. When it comes to rpg elements its eclipsed by games like Divinity: Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity, Wasteland 2 and others.

I think Bethesda could make a great rpg if they wanted to, with speech checks, branching dialogue options, consequences, a greater importance in stat allocation, good writing etc. But thats not the customer they're interested in because the audience isn't big enough for them. Ever since western action games started adopting rpg characteristics like perks, levels and unlocks (Call of Duty comes to mind) thats the market Bethesda has been edging towards.

There isn't much left to lose anymore, though. Perhaps once the next games roll in, there'll still be some laments of losing what little there was left, but after that... probably not anymore.

Exactly this.

An RPG needs these core elements of choice and consequence with quests obtained only through dialog selection and checks against many different aspects from complex arching dialog to previous completed tasks to inventory items.

No [censored] captain obvious. You're really comparing those to Fallout 4? You do realize how absurd that is right?

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/55/e6/08/55e6083035274d80103af3502e0a714d.jpg

People will always be complaining about change, since Bethesda doesn't like to make exact copies of the previous game. Just as Morrowind was "Dumbed down for console players and not a RPG" in 2002, I am sure that people will be saying that Fallout 5 is the exact same thing in 2022.

I don't expect anything to change about the complaints in future years. Its just a white noise, and it happens with every game thats gone on long enough. X-Com is dumbed down, its for 12 year olds who can't handle real choices in a tactics game. Europa Universalis was so much better in my day, back before Paradox started chasing the money. And so on and so on.

I see what you did there with December 18th coming on quickly.

I do hope that this voiced protagonist thing doesn't carry on. It makes me feel like my Fallout 4 character has even more elements of him delegated to the game and Bethesda than all the others.

I can handle it being a Fallout 4 thing, but im going to be disappointed if its in TES VI.

Disturbing? No. Highly dissappointing? Yes, very much so.

I think they've been pretty dogmatic in how they simply reiterate their previous game with every new title (regardless of franchise, even). But that much is true that complaining will never stop, it may change depending on how much of it is taken into account, but it'll not stop; in the light of which it seems pretty irresponsible to downgrade it to just "white noise" without any merit or reason.

Ppl will always complain it's just the way it works...and in business majority rules..and unfortunately the rest get hung out to dry...it makes sense for bethesda to target a wider audience...even if I'm not a fan of some of the changes...oh well tis the world we live on

It would ruin the future of the series for me. Trying to implement a voiced PC for Male/Female of every race will be detrimental. We will either get a shared voice for every race or the dialogue will be even more streamlined then in Fallout 4.

That is such a great explanation. Boy I never thought a eye rolling picture is why ME 1 is a RPG but ME 2 isn't.