My Easter holidays have just began (a bit late i know), and have started playing Fallout 4 for the first time in months.

I am still impressed by the quality of the dialogue system(in the context of it being a BGS game), i believe they should build on the philosophy used when creating dialogue in F4. If it is possible to remove the voiced protagonist without losing quality, that would provide more time/cost/etc for npc dialogue.

Changes i would make to (F4) dialogue system if possible -

• more detail with each option.


• more options (you could double it if you had two sets of options that you can switch between (think DA:I skill buttons)) http://i1-news.softpedia-static.com/images/news2/Dragon-Age-Inquisition-Combat-Gets-More-Details-New-Skill-Revealed-456003-4.jpg (bottom right)


• tens of player voice options. But seeing how unrealistic that is, i would go for no player voice, allowing more time/cost/etc for npc dialogue.


• voice variety in F4 was decent enough that i have yet to notice repeating voices.


• dialogue camera remains locked in 1st or 3rd person, depending on what perspective you play.

This i'm not sure is necessary. The problem with Fallout 4 is, your response is voiced, so you need a better idea of what your character is going to say before picking an option... but if the PC isn't voiced, that ceases to be as much of an issue. You can more easily just use topical options, like in Daggerfall and Morrowind, without really losing anything...

I hadn't even thought of that interface as an option... I think it may still be too limited on it's own (you're basically limited to 8 options) but it actually makes gated branching more versatile... of course, it depends on a lot of other controls too...

Of all the weird decisions they made in Fallout 4 in regards to limiting what could be a fantastic dialogue model, this has always annoyed me the most. I understand WHY they did it (to maintain a more cinematic approach) but it's slapping shackles on probably the best part of the system; the ability to move and interact freely throughout dialogue. The whole thing's going to be stuck in a rut unless they do away with the self-imposed limitation...

On the whole though, I agree. I think, in terms of Disposition, Characterization and Persuasion, moving forward with the Fallout 4 model offers the easiest and most versatile foundation.

It would only be used within the parameters in which is makes sense. So insofar as it needs to be within a particular location (a specific city, a specific tavern, whatever) then that would remain constant. But any superfluous variables can be alternated that aren't relevant to the character's story. Currently it's not as if 99% of the NPCs make any specific reference to family or very many other specific details of their life that are verifiable or falsifiable anyway, but obviously if and when they do then you take that variable off the table.

I wouldn't bet on that happening - I can't help but think they're going to try and find some way to keep voiced protagonists in. No idea how, but I just suspect they will.

Perhaps they'll do a Bioware-esque thing and have about 3 or 4 voices for each gender, maybe retconning the beast voices a bit. Actually, I find the beast voices a bit forced and jarring so I probably wouldn't mind if they found some kind of gravelly voice that was believable enough to fit both humans and beasts. Orcs too, I suppose.

Maybe. For the sake of discussion, though, I think living in denial is acceptable. That's not to say I'm against a voiced PC. In fact, I think it has great potential... But at present its just not feasible to have sufficient volume to maximise that potential while offsetting the limitations. Bethesda may well do it anyway, but that doesnt mean I would agree with it, or think it's a good idea.



Anyway... I personally think that NPCs, not including hostiles, should have 3 things.


Permanence. NPCs, regardless of their complexity, should never just 'vanish' without good reason. If a quest resolution requires someone to leave, that's fine, but someone you pass in the market shouldn't despawn just because they're out of sight. The faces you see should be persistent, so if someone, even a minor, simplistic and one dimensional NPC disappears, it's not something that goes entirely unnoticed.


Second, Interactivity. Assassin's Creed and The Witcher 3 are absolute rubbish at this, but Dragon Age, sword Coast and many other RPGs also fall into this trap. All NPCs should have some kind of interactivity. And stumbling to the side when you run into them doesn't count. Ideally, I'd want hundreds of moderately developed characters with their own relationships and opinions... But as I said above, that may not be viable considering the amount of voice acting required. At the very least, however, you should be able to talk to someone and find out major landmarks/locations in the area, who the important people are, and what that person does for a living.


Which brings me go number 3... Purpose. All NPCs should have some sort of purpose in the world. Be it farm hands, dock workers, legal clerks, serfs etc. Wild Hunt promised that everyone would have their own scedual and job, and that you could follow them arround as they went about their day... And then promptly failed to deliver on that promise. Even if it's just getting up and walking from a bunk-house to a field to play a Hoe-animation for 16 hours before walking back and sleeping. This might actually be a good basis to work on developing Oblivions Radiant AI more, while not interfering with more carefully scripted characters.

Lets not forget the Z fighting issue. No more flickering mountains! I'm not sure if its possible to fix it but, seriously nothing is more disturbing to my immersion than flickering graphics textures in the middle of running across a tundra....

Influence on Destiny

When the Dragonborn helped the Imperial Legion and/or Stormcloaks to take over a Hold, it would have been good if we could have had some influence over who the new Jarl was going to be, and that such choices would have ripple effects. Help X become Jarl = city becomes more corrupt, help Y become Jarl = crime increases/decreases, help Z become Jarl = merchants flourish and have more gold. Those sorts of things. I'm not saying it should be infinite choices like marriage, rather a choice of two or three, like Sven/Faendal, Maven Black-Briar or Mjoll. That sort of thing.


Better Continuity between Quests

I was playing the mission with Aela against the Silver Hand. We came up to the end against The Skinner, "I don't have to tell you why". My character was wearing The Saviour's Hide at the time. Yeah, I can't really throw that stone Aela...


Brand-Shei says he was raised by Argonians, but he doesn't talk like one. Shouldn't he call people land-striders, and talk about extending the spine of gratitude - his spine of gratitude may work diffently than an Argonian's, but surely he'd still use the phrase as, "this is the thing to say to someone when they do something nice for you".


Speaking of Brand-Shei, we help him discover his heritage, but then that's that. When House Telvanni was featured in the Dawnguard DLC, this would have been a good opportunity to extend his story and importance.


Hagravens as Followers

Especially if we're able to play Forsworn. We got to have one once. And sure, we'd probably have to leave them outside of a town before we went in, but it'd be ace if it could happen. Vampires, Werewolves and Necromany is OK for PCs, so why not the Forsworn religion and Hagraven followers.

I'm actually generally against this sort of thing in continuing franchises... It causes more trouble than it's worth going forward, as evidenced by the lackluster impact of your choices at the end of Mass Effect 3 and the bloody minigame they needed just to import things into Dragon Age Inquisition. Even The Witcher 3 resorted to a stupid questionnaire to determine what choices you had made previously.


Keeping choices low-key is fine. Deciding if a pesant girl live or dies, and having that shape the opinion of a small town, is great. But when you start getting too much influence over important figures and decisions, things that history will remember, you start barging into territory that, frankly, no one has managed well. For the sake of future games, it's better to just avoid that stuff, and at the sake time not flipping the bird to your players, it's better to just not push too much impact of your choices in historical storylines.


Anyway... I think I've got something on the 'Generic NPCs' thing... I'll type of up once ove got an actual keyboard...

Seeing as there seems to be hundred of years that pass between games, I would have thought that there would be room for this. It will be interesting to see how they deal with, did the Impeial Legion take control of Skyrim, or did the Stormcloaks? Because that will factor into how resilient the game can be for such things.


Then again, I've always taken the approach that just because someone else does something poorly, doesn't mean it can't be done; it just means that you shouldn't do it that way.

Well, that only actually happened once. Arena through Oblivion all happen within a 50 year period. Skyrim is really the outlier in the series, as it took a huge jump, but all 4 other games are during the reign of the same Emperor.


But yeah, Skyrims Civil War is basically what you're talking about, and I personally think it was a terrible decision. Bethesda needs to now either pick a side (thus basically saying that 50% of the players decisions were wrong) or leave it unresolved (making any commitment to it in Skyrim basically pointless). Games that are far more structured than TES have struggled to implement this sort of player-driven decision making while maintaining internal consistency, and the results have been sloppy at best.

Barring some kind of Dragon Break gimmick, I would say it's a foregone conclusion that an Imperial victory will be the canon outcome in future games. The Elder Scrolls have always been very "Imperial-centric." I doubt TES VI will be any different.

Just out of curiosity Lach, how would you have handled the Civil War in Skyrim if you had been designing the game?

I dunno. They put a lot of work into making the Empire look weak, authoritarian and have a general 'bad guys' vibe in Skyrim. The entire intro was basically set up to show 'Hey look! This isn't the Empire you love any more!'. You've got to actually dig to find any silver lining to the Empire, whereas the Stormcloaks start off sterling and get more tarnished as you dig.


There's a very strong Anti-Empire theme in Skyrim. Stronger than we've had since Redguard.


I'll PM you a response when I get to my computer, Cheshire. I don't want to bloat this thread with alternative histories...

FYII, some of us do not love the Empire, and never have. For me personally, Skyrim's treatment of the Empire was not so much "anti-Empire" as presenting a more realistic portrayal of the problems inherent in any Empire.

Oh, I know, but Bethesda has typicallly handled the Empire in such a way that it seems assumed that everyone loves it. Straight to the point of giving it a divine validation. The moments of question and wider perspective tended to be hidden or downplayed. But the handling in Skyrims intro was the opposite, going so far as to cut out Tullius's rebuke of Elenwyn's authority for the sake of creating the perception that the Empire was under the yolk of the Thalmor. Rather than the questionable side of the Empire being downplayed, it was thrown full in your face, while it's virtues and legitimacy are heavily downplayed.


Anywho, since it's technically related to story telling dynamics and structure, I might as well put it here instead of in a PM...


How I would have handled the Civil War (and how I feel similar opposite faction interactions should be handled)





You get two quest lines that, for most of then could even be entirely distinct, but they link up at the end to a common resolution.

So in that scenario did Ulfric still kill Torygg?

Oh yeah. The only events that change are after you join. All the backstory remains the same. Ulfric challenges Torygg, shouts him down, stabs him, and leaves.


And Tullius still captures Ulfric near Darkwater Crossing, hauls him off to Cyrodiil, and opts for a summary execution rather than hand him over to Elenwyn.


The only thing I would change is how the quest line plays out, none of motivations or background.


Killing Tullius and putting Rikke in charge would mostly be to reinforce the Nordic side. Make it more of a Civil War, rather than just Imperials quashing a revolt.

Two more questions:

1. If you were playing the Stormcloak side of the Battle of Whiterun in the above scenario, you wouldn't help Balgruf and fam escape, right?

2. Wouldn't the imperial faction still be pissed at Ulfric for killing Torygg, to the point of still wanting his head?

I like Lach's civil war. It sorts itself out by the end of the quest and avoids forcing Bethesda to resolve it between games with something that will inevitably feel like a cop out. Also, he mentions making Balgruuf the High King as an agreeable solution to both sides and I think this may actually happen. Balgruuf is the only neutral-leaning Jarl and is pretty much the only one that never comes across as completely inept in some important field (let's face it, Ulfric is possibly the worst diplomat on the continent and Elisif knows less about war and battle than my dog). Balgruuf is at the least competent in every field and genuinely cares about all of his citizens, not just the Nords. He is the only candidate that could possibly swing the vote away from the faction leader in both endings and he would probably make a genuinely good king. I would not be surprised if Bethesda gives Balgruuf a dark horse victory in the moot to resolve the war in the next game.

1: No, you'd kill Tullius.


2 : Pissed, yes. But there's enough technicallity that it was legal, and there are bigger fish to fry. Far worse enemies have worked together. And that's part of the reason for Rikke. Tullius is a Legion man through and through, but Rikke sits on both sides. She is loyal to the Empire, but she's still a Nord.

Ok, that satisfied all of my questions. I like it, thanks for sharing!

The point of that example is that you don't need to have a choice of outcome, to make two opposing factions feel distinct. In fact, depending on how you handled it, you could make both quest lines feel entirely unique, even in the parts where they cross over (such as Whiterun and escorting Ulfric to Solitude).

You're telling the same story, either way, but from different perspectives. You form and experience different relationships, and progress different values throughout, but even two radically different paths can lead to the same conclusion.

With smaller quests, mutually exclusive choices are fine. [I] In My Time Of Need[I] for instance. History is unlikely to remember or care if Saadia is captured, or Kematu killed, so the ability to have both options is perfectly safe But it WILL remember who won the Skyrim Civil War.

That doesn't mean that you can't have choices and allegiences, but it does mean that you should be a bit more crafty in how you deal with them. Sometimes the ILLUSION of choice is far more powerful than actually having a choice.

The more I think about it the more I hope the next TES game really just builds an awesome world and really makes the providence feel unique and full of culture. It's one of the main reasons people rave about Morrowind and it's the one thing I really feel is missing from Skyrim. If it's in Hammerfell give me large extravagant port cities, a huge desert filled with unique beast like Assassin Beatles, Harpies, Lamia's, Lions, etc... Have the people ride around on camels and horses specifically breed to run in the desert like the sand steeds from ASOIAF. Make the world large with plenty of ruins and forts to explore but don't make it feel crowded like Skyrim. If it's in Elsweyr show and teach us more about the different moon phases and Khajiits. If it's in Valenwood shows us the living forest and teach us more about the Green Pact and things like the Wild Hunt.

Just make the world and game feel completely unique from the other games.

Yes!

I still want a city-builder-esque system in a TES game, like taking over a Breton fiefdom or taking control of a city.

I think we have very similar thoughts on this (if i'm understanding you correctly, anyway). There are many companies who, quite simply, tell better stories than Bethesda. But when it comes down to it, no one builds better worlds. That should be what they focus on, Build the world to be as wonderful and interesting and authentic as they can. Give us (the players) a varied too-set that lets us experience that world how we please. And then sprinkle in some stories for us to experience throughout that world.

Some of those stories help to shape the setting and the political climate, but they shouldn't repeat Skyrim's mistake by making any of them overly crucial to the actual gameplay and ability to experience the world they create.