UIm pretty sure it was like this in the other ES games, Oblivion at least, where you could basically only get one thing out of everyday people.

The real problem is them saying exactly the same things, but oh in OB they did that too.. Always the same rumours. More different things to say adds to the game, if no NPC ever would say the same thing twice or in the same way another NPC said it, it'd be done perfectly. Sadly, it takes too much man hours to do.

For people who think it breaks immersion - do you really believe if you walked through a town, every person would stop there activities and have a full conversation with you even though you are a complete stranger?
In oblivion lots of people(gaurds) had exactly the same dialogue options as eachother and some people only had rumours to chose from so I like the sound of the new system were they only have a drop box if they have something other than generic chat

I beleive that is called stalking

To me NPC are just that, scenery. If they have a name, they're most likely involved in quests, knowledge available to the player without a giant glowing exclamation mark howering over their heads. If not, i don't have to worry if i accidentally relese a small fireball in their direction. Well, apart from guards, that is :hehe:

And what exactly is "immersion"? Believable gameworld is all well and good, but not at the cost of playability. After all, when i'm playing a game i know i'm playing a game, it's pretty hard to convince myself otherwise.

I don't think dialogue is limited solely to quest givers. I'm glad anyway, not everyone in life would realistically randomly stop what they are doing and tell you their backstory or some rumours and if it means more resources have been put towards more in-depth dialogue and personality for people you CAN talk to then I'm pleased with that. Though I'd hope there is more random comments if they go this way. I'd rather not hear 'Guarding the Fall Forest almost makes you wish for a dragon attack' fifty times.

Has there been anything saying they wont have schedules. The only thing that is being removed is dialog options. The farmer is still going to farm, go to the tavern, and go to sleep. He just wont be chatty with you for no good reason. They might have standard farmer rumors, like I expect it to be a cold winter this year.

In Oblivion, at least, the majority of NPCs had more than just "Rumors". In fact, when I started playing around with modded Oblivion, that was the first thing I noticed... that the new added NPCs just had "Rumors" and nothing more, which made them stand out and frankly quite boring. Most NPCs had a line or two to say about themselves, their associated faction(s), and/or where they live, in addition to the general rumors. I wish people would stop with this "Oblivion NPCs only had rumors anyway!" nonsense.. it's not true.


Well, when you're working at 1/10th the scale of the real world...

I don't really care either way, but now that I think about it, the only generic NPCs that had anything useful to say in OB were beggars. Just saying. I also never really understood immersion. The only thing that feels real to me about an xbox 360 controller is that two buttons feel like a trigger on a gun.

its hard to say because we haven't seen it yet but, this all sounds like bgs trying to make a short cut look like an inovation. I am convinced the whole point of this is so they cant just cut out as much dialog as possible.

That's the same as Oblivion. I thought you guys were talking about "generic NPCs" who do nothing. If you weren't what's the point in this topic? They were ALWAYS like that. Most people have nothing or little to say unless they are quest characters. As long as they all have names, schedules and somewhere to sleep at night, I'll be happy. I mean I'd ideally like dialogue for everyone once you get to know them and they like you, but I realise that due to cost/time and disk space that's an impossibility.