I am anti text dialouge, but I am pro more voice actors, there are more for SR, lets hope its enough(it will most likely be for me) for most.

As said before, most NPCs in OB didn't have anything to say, so what is the point of talking to them. Besides, why would everyone want to talk to the PC? Don't they have better things to do? (being the dragon born is not an excuse for everyone to talk to you)

To those of you who talk about immersion, let me ask you this. If some stranger came up to you, and began to ask about your life's story and what you do, would you begin to tell the stranger anything? I dunno about you, but I'd start to walk or run away, fearing that was some stalker or creep.

Personally, I don't mind; removes time that'd be wasted. And it's not like it's a completely bad thing, The Witcher did this sort of conversion with random NPCs, and I'd have to say that game was a really well written game. There were still lots of people who would hold a conversation.

I think the budget is high enough to afford all the voice work they want. After the financial success of oblivion, fallout 3, and new vegas plus skyrim is going move lots of units beth has the money to spend. Its a great time to be under the zenimax umbrella now.

In ES you are new to town and they say "Hey im Bruce see you round," or something to that effect, same with MW

I dunno. MW had plenty of options to ask generic NPCs their background, secrets, rumors, who they are, etc. The only time unique dialog came was when you're asking a quest related question or they themselves had unique dialog (which not THAT many had)

I for one, welcome this idea. I would rather have 50 well dialogued characters than 1000 horribly dialogued characters.

Hopefully there's more than fifty.

Agreed

I don't see an issue with this.

If you take Oblivion for example, all non-quest related NPCs had 2 topics to talk about. One about the city they're in, the other about Rumors.
What they're doing with Skyrim is that instead of initiating a full dialogue interface with a NPC that barely has anything to say, you'll hear him say a rumor or comment on something by simply "activating" him. Plus, those "generic" NPCs will most likely have more dialogue than Oblivion's generic ones, since they'll be able to gossip about more than two elements.


As for Morrowind... well... pretty much all of the "generic" NPCs dialogue was exactly the same thing whoever the NPC was. There was more dialogue than in the other games, sure, but it was all copy-paste for most topics.

It's a step in the right direction.
And it also means that the "non-generic" NPCs might have much more to say and will have more interesting personalities.

Fallout is certainly not the only RPG doing this. Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Baldur's Gate, Planescape, Arcanum, The Witcher... pretty much all of those RPGs does it. Result? The NPCs who have actual dialogue are way, way, way more developed and interesting those from any Elder Scrolls title. So I guess Skyrim's NPCs with the dialogue system will the most interesting to talk to compared to the other titles in the series.

Besides the celebrities, Oblivion only had 10 voice actors. So even if Skyrim has 20 general voice actors, it would be a vast improvement.

Yeah I remember that very first Oblivion presentation video where Todd said half of Oblivions DVD goes on voiceacting. I really doubt they'll dumb it down. I mean it is one of the main features for immersion wich Bethesda just loves to deliver to it's loyal community.

:(, Well, I hope there are non quest givers with stuff to say, just to add immersion

I'm sure there will be.
Shopkeepers, bartenders sharing the latest news or their problems of their own, temple priests, beggars to give money to and who would tell you about how they were forced to beg, etc.

* Most NPCs will not have a complete set of dialogue, with only "important" characters having substantial dialogue.

That sounds like a description of past TES games. Just going off the last game, 'generic' NPCs didn't have many dialog options. [Name] | Rumors | [Town]. Pretty much it. That sounds like not having "a complete set of dialog," as opposed to a branching tree.

I guess it depends on how you interpret it.

because i really wanted 700 npc's telling me about the Grey Fox in the same exact voice.

They really needed some more voice actors, or at least more things for those actors to say

oh well. the game will still be awesome. they are trying new things which is good. If they made the game exactly like morrowind and oblivion, then I would get bored real quick. annnnnnd as long as I get to go on rampages and kill everyone in the cities I will be fine.

Wish they'd do it like Morrowind wherin the record a craptonne of "generic info" that you can ask people. Makes the less important people good information sources.

it's not like it'd be that ahrd to do, just write some generic info, then get the voice actors to record it all in a few sessions. Bam, done. Unimportant people don't need unique dialouge, they just need dialouge, walking lore encyclopedias.



No elder scrolls game has had unique dialouge. Arena Daggerfall and Morrowind have had pretty generic dialogue for generic NPCs. The problem with oblivion was that there wasn't enough quantity in generic dialouge.

I say keep their idea for having only specific people have important voice recordings, but instead of making every other NPC into a meaningless ornament, bring back Morrowind style text. That way, you get the depth in all characters, but you don't rack up insane voice acting costs. Are people really that put off by reading? They act like they have to shovel their driveway or something. I love text in an RPG, and still prefer Morrowind's text to Oblivion's cheesy and ridiculously awkward conversations.

Depth = Immersion

Skyrim will be to Oblivion what Oblivion is to Morrowind. Less depth, more mainstreaming, less good. What's worse is that we'll all buy it no matter how bad we think it'll be.

If anything it looks like Skyrim already has more depth than Oblivion.

I can understand other criticisms, but this is just dumb. If this tidbit of news alarms you, you have a serious problem. No elder scrolls game has had unique dialogue for generic NPCs. No elder scrolls game. If it hasn't affected the genre in the past, it won't now.



I love Morrowinds text system, but when it comes down to it, it's really all or none when it comes to text. With the way Oblivion style NPC interaction works, having split text/voice wouldn't work. Old RPGs are partially "imagination based" wherin you have a bland generic face, and the game simply describes a lot of stuff to you, this is not so in the new games, they try to visualize it. You can't suddenly switch between voice and text.

BUT, Simply recording generic info options wouldn't be a lot of work. Basically the same system as morrowind with lore/info/news topics, but the responses are recorded for each race, gender, and voice actor so it's voiced rather than text. It really wouldn't require much work at all. (though it may take up at least 100-200mb of file space)

In your opinion.

Nah, an opinion needs to be based of fact. This is more baseless speculation.

I have no problems with this given that in previous ES games most towns folk had very little depth to begin. Besides with confirmed larger cities and with that greater amounts of NPC's this comes as no surprise to me not to mention Bethesda has already done this with Fall Out 3. The sheer amount of time needed to fleshen up commoner #98 along with other NPC's is not really feasble and better off putting effort into other areas for example implementing spell creation to list one example while having a city that doesn't have a population of 30.