When it was confirmed, I thought it would break immersion. In Fallout, for example, when you saw non-named NPCs, you already know they weren′t involved in any quest.


That, for me, broke immersion a bit. So I have made this little and simple poll, to see if people thinks like me.

Probably the new dialogue system will improve this but...

are you talking about that you don't want npcs saying the same things over and over again like in new vegas?

and you want the npcs in skyrim to say unique stuff instead

I don't think full dialogue is limited to quest-givers only; just as there were people in FO3 / FONV that gave you no quests but still had dialogue, I'm sure there will be the same type as in Skyrim.
EDIT: And I'm sure the above will apply to people that aren't directly involved in quests, either.

He is talking about (I think) the generically named NPCs in Fallout, the ones that you couldn't even engage dialouge with.

"Other. I will explain it."

I hate the term "immersion" so much by now.

If anything this is way better, because people will still have things to say you just won't have to go through a generic dialog tree every single time while staring straight into their face. This should avoid the problem of changing voices like in Oblivion where you talk to a beggar and all of a sudden they have the voice of an upper class person then you finish talking and they say goodbye in the beggar voice again, etc.

It reminds me of how it's done in Mass Effect where you can eavesdrop on conversations and such, and also reminds me of old console RPGs.

So your saying that unless a NPC gives out a quest, you wont be able to talk to them?

For one thing, the "staring straight into their face" is fixed in Skyrim, now you engage in dialouge in real-time, and if they have generic NPCs, I hope they improve the conversations:

A: I saw a mud crab yesterday. Nasty creatures.
B: Aye.
A: Nothing I like to talk about.
B: Bye.

Sorry if I haven′t explained it well, english is not my native language. What Warnek3m has said.

I don't really care what NPC's have to say. They're not important enough to be a major part of the game, so why should they say something important. ZOMG!!1!! IMMERSION!12!1

Yawn. Put a bunch of NPCs in a city to make it feel full and alive like the Assassin Creed games but I honestly couldn't be bothered less to talk to them about anything. They rarely say anything interesting, especially in Oblivion where you can ask 50 NPc the same question and they'll all give you the same answer.

"We're obviously all talking about the emperors death!"
"I hear the Fighter's Guild is hiring, that's good work for someone looking to make some extra gold."
"Blasted thief, I hope they string him up by his toes!"

Seriously, shut up, nothing you say interests me at all.

Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, it caused me to get more immersed with New Vegas. I was not the center of attention, I did not stand out, I was not behaving like a big weirdo going around talking to everyone in sight. I was minding my own business and they were minding theirs. It's more likely to break my immersion to consider how I've talked to pretty much every single citizen of Cyrodiil. I loved going into the casinos in New Vegas and seeing a bunch of people gambling and not paying any attention to me whatsoever, because after all, they had no reason to.

To me it's more realistic. Try talking with everyone you encounter in your day to day life. Most of them will sort of nod and walk on. It's incredibly weird to imagine every person in the world telling you their life story.

Or, like with Morrowind, where you could talk with EVERYONE, but.... 90% of them said the SAME...DAMN...THING and had the SAME...DAMN....TOPICS...

Sorry, but I'd prefer for like 10-20% of them to actually talk and interact with you, and the other ones to act like how people act in real life. They'll say hey, or say a sentence or whatever, and continue on with their lives. You are not the center of Skyrim, after all.

The more dialogue the better.

I think people are misinterpreting this. This allows Bethesda to put in more NPCs, making the cities and world feel even more alive. However, it's not going to be like Fallout and it has already been stated as so. All NPCs in the game will still have their own unique names and not be "Generic citizen #349". This dialogue system is much different than what people think. It's not that ALL non-quest NPCs don't have a dialogue tree, there are still plenty of NPCs that aren't quest givers that can talk. The ones that don't have a dialogue tree are the run of the mill citizen walking through the streets. Instead, they all just respond to the choice "rumors". So they won't all just respond the same, they just respond with the "rumor" choice. This isn't really a big difference from the old system. Instead of having "Talk about the city" and "rumors", now they just do rumors. It's nothing like Fallout.

I have added to the poll the option "I prefer it"

This.

Thanks!

This.

Really? I didn′t know that. Well, this new system is getting better...

Go up to someone in the grocery store tomorrow and say "Tell me some rumors."

You'll hear things you wish you hadn't, at least over here where I live. :whisper:

Remember that the convo system is totally different now too, I bet people will still make remarks on rumors and stuff but it just won't show a dialogue tree for them. In oblivion and FO3 talking to people was always a zoom in and ask topics affair, now that's been done away with.

Ah I understand the OP, and I agree. You could tell right away if an NPC is involved in a quest because if you cant initiate dialog theyre just 'Red Shirt', or simply by their name "Random Townsperson 01".

In Oblivion even Guards had the dialog menu. Random people still had an actual name, and you could still talk to them even if it was just "Gossip" you wouldnt know right away if theyre important or not because quest dialog pops up when the quest is active.

New Vegas did away with relatively useless generic topics but I dont think it worked well(and I liked NV far more than FO3 for the most part).

I think this new system is a step in the right direction. Instead of...

"Mudcrabs are nasty little creatures aren't they..."
"Hello"
"Hello"
"There's trouble in the land of the elves"
*Clears throat*

We can expect Radiant AI to start building "idle" conversations based upon very specific criteria... While you might not be able to talk to some people directly, their idle conversations will make sense... and you'll be able to overhear quest information in public.

People (Even people who normally cannot be talked with) will start to interact with you based upon programming (Their relation to you, or someone you've interacted with) and might even approach you with dialog if you trigger it.

Also, you could essentially triple (Or more) the number of NPCs in cities. The most beautiful part of all this is that once these systems are in place, the Bethesda developers can still hand-craft just as many (if not more) quest lines as there were in Oblivion! While allowing systemic quests to be triggered by player actions, "Activating" the once quiet NPCs.

The amount of content will be busting at the seams! We're starting to see the future here, guys.

I think it was mentioned in the IGN interview that activating a non-important NPC would have them talk to you and once they were done if you activated them again, it would act as a tell me more indication, so the NPC would tell you more.

If handled right this could make every insignificant NPC feel like a unique person.

But with no zoom in for every one it's not going to be drastically different between "important" NPCs and generic ones, like Fallout 3.

In short I think they've got a winning formula and I don't see how they could mess this up except with extremely repetitive dialogue for all generic NPCs.

"Patrolling Skyrim almost makes you wish for a ash storm"
If I ever hear this or something similar in Skyrim, I'll smash my face with a hammer.
If I hear "Do I know you?" or "Sometimes, I dream about cheese." I'm laughing real hard.