This.

I know that Fallout is Bethesda's pet project, but does that really mean that we need perks and a Fallout style dialog system in Skyrim? Keep your Fallout out of my Elder Scrolls, please.

In Morrowind all the dialog was text based so that allowed for NPC's to have a lot of different topics you could talk to them about. A lot of the dialog wasn't unique but a lot of it was, and it just worked really well. In Oblivion the dialog was voiced acted so NPC's didn't have as many topics to ask them about but as a trade off there was a lot more unique dialog. That system worked as well. If the NPC's in Skyrim really turn out to be one line robots that could go a long way in killing immersion, at least for me.

The only TES game where most people had a complete set of dialogue was Redguard, and that was because the game was only one town. They can't make it so you can have a realistic conversation with everyone in a province, so they have to cut corners somewhere. I think the way they're going for Skyrim has more potential to make more interesting characters than having most people share dialogue like Morrowind or having very limited lines like Oblivion.

I hope all NPC's at least have names like they did in OB, hated it how loads of NPS's in Fallout were just labelled 'Megaton settler' (or whatever) and just said a single line that would be repeated by NPC's the game world over. Atleast names though please.

It's hilarious that you've got these "baww this is TES" pseudo-purists who apparently haven't played arena, daggerfall in which basically nobody has any unique dialogue, and then morrowind in which everybody has the same dialogue topics with almost no variation.

When was unique dialogue ever a TES feature? What they are doing in skyrim is nothing new.



How does that kill immersion? You can't walk out onto a city street and strike up a conversation with some random city-goer. In life there's always going to be unremarkable people who will play no purpose in your life. Seems to me that the fallout style system is a lot better, in which you simply have "generic NPCs," that will help populate city streets.

I mean really, realistically not everyone even needs to be "unique," what possible interesting conversations could you have with an errand runner or random street vagrant, maybe the vagrant could tell you about how he defecates on the street, and maybe the random street goer could stop to tell you "I really have better things to do than talk to somebody I don't know." Unless each town is going to be populated with a whopping 10-15 people, then I think you're going to have to settle for a few "generic" npcs. The only difference this is going to make it that you have those same 10-15 people, and a bunch of other "filler" to actually make the city seem populated.

We don't know if this means every non-important npc will just have "rumours", they might as well talk about other things, like recent deeds you've done and so on. It's just that we won't have TOPICS in the traditional sense. If the character is of no importance at the moment, he/she might just say something randomly out of all the topics he/she has, without you actually selecting a topic.

You have a cool name and a cool post! Most sense I've heard on here for quite a while!

What depth? Ive never played Daggerfall but I got into the series with Morrowind. The majority of Morrowind NPCs only had generic repeating 'dialog', I cant see where the argument of depth comes from.

Dont even get me started on the "real, and had lives" part either.

I personally have no problem with games that only voice important NPCs, and have 'lesser' NPCs text-only... or even if the important NPCs are only voiced for plot-related dialogue. Unlike many people, I'm not allergic to on-screen text. <_<

Then again, I guess it helps that after a lifetime of heavy reading and having a strong imagination allows me to spontaneously generate my own in-head voices for written dialogue that probably beats actual recorded voice work. ^^

I actually believe this will be better.
It allows more NPC's making the world more immersive.
Not every NPC in oblivion had usefull stuff to say anyway.
It waill allow them to get more out of the game in other areas too,and will help with the radiant AI.
There will probably be more NPC's in cities,plus children= more lively world,i think thats a fair trade off.
They can't do everything.

Voice acting is to blame... Should have stuck with Morrowind style text, much more depth. But honestly, did the average NPC in Oblivion really have anything unique to say anyway? I don't think this will be that big of a change.

Actually, yes, yes they did. Go to any city in Oblivion, and talk to non-beggar and non-guard NPCs. You'll see. Morrowind's, on the other hand, generally had more text per average NPC, but only ones referring to quests had anyone unique to say.

Neither am I, but unfortunately you cannot have face to face text chat and combine it with voice acting for other characters. Fallout did it, but they had the "talking head" system.

Beth said that people go about their business while you talk to them, that would look very confusing if you were getting text dialogue while the guy silently stares at his wood-cutting. It either has to be all or none when it comes to text speech.

:intergalactic: :intergalactic: :intergalactic:

THIS

I think this is a good thing. OB was way too sparsely populated. I think in Skyrim there will be just as many if not more NPCs with dialog trees plus all the NPCs with no dialog trees which will add to immersion for me. As long as the random NPCs have basic schedules and fit in nicely.

So out of the hundreds of characters and fillers who all talk you're upset that every single character that has no purpose except to fill up the world doesn't have hundreds of lines like the main quest characters? You need to either get realistic expectations since there has never in history been an RPG with every single character having tons of dialog (most of them in other RPGs don't even talk - think Mass Effect and it's filler characters) or you need to play the game and form an informed opinion instead of complaining about a game you've never played.

Chances are there will be many more NPCs then in Oblivion and because of that they couldent give them all full lines of text. I think of it this way, most NPCs in Oblivion only had rumors. Now instead of walking up to them indavidualy and asking about rumors they will be talking about them with others and you can overhear it. This would allow for more rumors to be heard in less time as well as more side quests picked up in a much more organic way.

Again, no they didn't. Oblivion's NPCs typically had some unique topic pertaining to the city they live in, their background, or both, and I loved that!

What is really the point then? They have gone to great lengths to establish a world and a gaming series that is build on free roam play and a tremendous amount of lore.

Yet the game design decisions they are making are steering this game and franchise into an area where fans of the genre and the series really do not want it to go.


Oh, we cannot have a full voice system with many actors because it would be too expensive. Then stop with the mandatory voice acting. You can write volumes of text, put in a integrated text-based NPC system and those NPCs will come alive. My goodness, these games started 30 years ago with games that were totally text based. A person's imagination is the key to these games and it seems Bethesda forgot that a while ago.

Well, we want to put horses in but we want to do it right and seeing that we cannot do it right, we are not putting horses it. The answer isn't to not put horses in, but to do it right. Fix the cause, not the symptom. Go back to the roots of RPGs on the computer (well before any voice acting) and find out what made them special.

Planescape, still one of the greatest single player RPGs ever made was all text and few voices.....and people still love that game more than 10 years later. Why? Because it had a story. They took the time to create the lore, put it in as text, and the characters came alive.

These games are so focused on having great graphics and sound that the totally neglect the other areas that are not only vital but of the founding principles of computer RPGs.

This game will turn out to be like Oblivion....which was a good game but not an all time great game. Bethesda needs to re focus on what made them successful in the first place.

As long as all NPCs have names, I'll be fine. I'm just afraid they'll have a bunch of NPC #1092 to live and die as dragon fodder.

:intergalactic: :toughninja: :icecream: :bowdown: :goodjob: :cookie: :mohawk: :hugs: :rock:

That's all well and good, but unfortunately Beth has to worry about their bottom line. Yes, hardcoe RPG fans will love a text-based game, but selling 50,000 copies is not gonna offset the cost of making the game in the first place.

So, if pretty graphics and celebrity voice acting is what actually causes the game to fly off the shelves, they're gonna go with that.

Yeah. All hail copy and paste dialogue! Let's all pretend Oblivion did something completely wrong and ignore that it actually had unique dialogue for its typical NPC. No, Morrowind's copy and paste NPCs without lives or schedules are the way to go! That's definitely much better than NPCs who just don't bother saying the repetitive stuff but actually move! Or even greater, it's better than Oblivion's NPCs, who had the unique stuff and actually moved! Yeah, praise for the old stuff for being old is the way to go!

/sarcasm

:confused: your reading to hard and not reading what he is trying to say.

he's not saying move back to 2D Displayes and text only Dialog with Dice rolls and 8 bit sounds


He's saying beth had originality in their past games, and they should look back at what made them great, no matter what the era in time..there are always aspects of originality and things that simply just work and fit togetherr While still being able to remain idependant from the generic spectrum of games. capitalize on this and the game will sell far better than they percieve it would.

You don't need to follow the stream just to catch a few dollars, making a whole seperate way diverts even more funds to your bucket that know one else fishes out of :thumbsup:

lol Seti your last post I actually fully agreed with, why your jumping on the emoticons is beyond me like Kobold said OBlivion was good, just not all it could have been

Actually, he was saying move back to text-only.



See?

And I stand by my position that while awesome, it wouldn't sell.

Yeh I enjoyed reading the same text over and over and over again when that was all there was too. But now? Not so much.