I know that Fallout 3 had a limit on how many specific characters it could display in dialog - something like 60 letters, including spaces, if I recall.

Needless to say, so few letters is not enough for decent dialog, hence it's probably one of the reasons we got such stunning insights as "[Intelligence]You fight the good fight with music?" and the like. It also made modding involved dialog more difficult. Though, IIRC, it was possible to mod the limitation upwards.

So my question is thus: has NV raised and/or waived the character limit as part of its improved dialog structure and editor? Because nothing but simplistic one line responses are a drag, especially in a Fallout game.

Why did they have a limit in the first place?

yeah it was kind of stupid.

this is a good qusetion for j.e sawyer. lets hope he sees this.

i dont even understand why there is a limit

I honestly don't know. The cynic in me wants to say consolitis and Beth's traditional lack of focus on dialog. I don't *think* it's a technical issue in terms of the engine, since I'm pretty sure people told me the limit could be modded upward with relative ease.

I'd imagine it's because 480p/640p console screens can only hold so much text at once, and it has to be visible while you're on your couch, as opposed to a foot away at your computer screen. Since NV is a game for all consoles, not just consoles that are hooked up to HDTVs with HDMI cables, it stands to reason that FO3's dialog limit was established so the game would be playable on the proverbial "lowest common denominator", a console hooked up to a standard definition TV.

We increased the character limit (from 80 to 100) and we made the "challenge" text (e.g. [INTELLIGENCE]) something that's inserted automatically based on a drop-down in the editor.

Thanks J.E Sawyer :tops:

Thank you for enlightening me on this matter. Well, 100 characters is better than eighty, and switching the challenge text so it doesn't count against the limit is a definite step in the right direction.

Does 20 extra characters significantly change the way dialogue can be presented?

Considering that on average that would allow for 3-5 extra words? I'd say yes... While it may not allow the writer to offer a totally different piece of dialogue, it can make the existing dialouge sound more natural or in some cases 'flowery"... It's still less than an average text message allows, but like Sawyer told us in another thread: gamers are in the habit of skimming over large chunks of dialogue text, and when people aren't reading it, doesn't matter how good or how many words there are.

Consider it this way. "Does 20 extra characters significantly change the way dialog" That's 20 characters cut off of your question. If you've ever edited a statement to fit a character limit, you would know how significant 20 characters can be.