Yeah, if the writers are good. They haven't been very compelling storytellers lately, and all they've done with Fallout is transplant Core Region story to the East. The rest of the game will be fun, I'm sure.

Not sure why people are expecting greatness from BGS, in the area of dialogue and narrative. Nobody remembers their games them for those reasons. They make sandboxes.

Far fewer for the player, the npc tell a story the player response, most of the responses are standards: Yes, no, go on, I see that I can do.

Well Mr. Howard in the after interview for the e3 presentation did answer a question about what features did you take from previous games and use for FO4. He stated that they got a pretty good idea of how people play open world games and that they wanted to take this and add a strong narrative to the game so they didn't really take a feature from them so much as use the past games as a starting point for their next endeavour which is strong narrative. So if people are expecting good writing from FO4 it is because that is what Bethesda said they wanted to do with FO4.

So long as they improve in this area I will take it as a success. Bioware tried their first open world game with Inquisition, it was not as good as the open world experience one expects from Bethesda but it sure was a lot better than their normally narrow linear world design in the past one could expect from Bioware. Likewise if Bethesda doesn't match CDPR or Bioware's level of storytelling but it is a lot better than skyrim or FO3 I will view it as a success as this is the first time they are trying to add a strong narrative to their games.

I don't expect a company with little or no experience in one aspect of game design to become the industry leaders on their first attempt. (Even if so many gamers have that unreasonable expectation.) improvement is all that is needed in my book.

13,000 line of Dialogue does not mean that once you use up any give line of Dialogue you never use that line so after 13k lines spoken you run out of dialogue. many lines will be REUSED. You don't record 500 different greetings and good byes for the 500 npcs you can talk to. (Using NV as an example) So that doesn't take up 1000 lines of PC dialogue. It only takes up about 10 to 20 lines of dialogue because. If you make a 6 to 10 different greetings and good byes you can create enough variety to make it sound natural because we as humans pretty much say hello and good bye in the same way most of the time. Responses to NPC questions about our past can also be handles with a few line of Dialogue not 500 different ones for each NPC. Again this is how we naturally respond to things as well so it doesn't sound too abnormal. People ask you questions about yourself and you are going to tell different people pretty the same information in the same way with slight variances. Add it a few lines of variance to this and your response to generic questions about yourself can be handled in a 20 to 30 lines depending how many variants the dialogue system offer. ie Truth, lie, none of your business, vague response, ect. Two of three variation to each of these type of responses and you have that covered.

Responding to a question in the affirmative or negative can also be handled a few variations recorded and every yes or no question an NPC asks is covered.

This idea that if you have 13k lines of dialogue means you can only have roughly 13k lines of NPC dialogue is built on the false premise that the PC never reuses dialogue lines and that just isn't the way Dialogue is written in games. And this reuse of Dialogue is used in both text only dialogue systems and voiced systems so it is not a inherent limitation of voiced systems. 13k lines of Dialogue for the PC is a hell of a lot.

Wrongo. That's 65,000 lines of written dialogue total, split between the Courier and the NPCs. The number would be the same. If there are 13,000 lines for the PC, that means we can expect ~26,000 lines of dialogue total in 4, many of which will probably be used on multiple occasions, ex. phrases like, "What happened here?".

Not really, there were a large number of multi-line responses. Also that number includes idle lines where the NPC's have short conversations with each other and the only involvement the courier had was overhearing them.

We haven't seen any evidence yet of a strong narrative story telling style in Fallout 4. All that the demo showed us was new mechanics and gameplay features as well as teasers of a few enemies - we still don't even have a definitive answer on how level progression, skills and perks will be handled, just speculation based on a few frames of that demo. I understand that Todd Howard does not want to spoil the story and I can respect that, but until we see more, I have to consider the jury to be very much out on how well Bethesda handles the story telling, or whether they define "strong narrative style" differently than most people do.

And I'm still skeptical about how well integration of a story-driven narrative and a completely open world design can work. the consensus on DA:I seems to be that it was a major disappointment. And while I think CDPR has done a tremendous job with their first effort at an open world game, it's still pretty obvious that it is a first effort and they need more experience getting these two different styles to really mesh, if it's even possible to get them to fully mesh.

Well they've had 4 years of development time and more space to develop onto. But for the most part I'd say we're safe, but this could be a possibility.

I am not saying we have seen evidence for a stong narrative. I can only restate what Mr. Howard stated in an interview on the "aftershow" of the bethesda showcase. There was a definative reason for going to voice which was they felt they had delievered on the open world experience they have good metrics at how people play open world games and their "next frontier," if you like, is taking their open world games and delieving a strong story. Did they succeed? No idea, guess i'll find out in december as it takes more than a couple of sessions to determine if the games various stories are any good.

Err what are you talking about? The consenses is that DA:I was great. It won not only multiple industry awards but multiple gamer choice awards. This is the problem with the internet, a minority if they shout long and hard enough can create a false narrative. By any obective measure of success DA:I is a success. It has been the best selling Bioware game, and won critic awards and gamer awards. That is the only objective bars you can measure this kind of success. Now this doesn't change an individual's SUBJECTIVE take on the game. If you don't like something its success means zero, it doesn't make you like it. So I am not suggesting that the people who didn't like DA:I are wrong. Only that they are the minority opinion which is born out by the sales and awards the game got.

I expect FO4 to be a weaker story then DA:I and Witcher 3. Why? because as you stated before DA:I and CDPR both were new to the open world game design so they did not create a bethesda quality product on their first attempt. What REASONABLE person expect a company to top the industry leader on their first attempt? I don't. Both CDPR and Bioware gave a strong story with an imperfect open world setting but it was an IMPROVEMENT to their previous narrow and linear level designs of past games. And that is all I expect from people doing something for the first time keep what you know as good and make an improvement on the area you are trying to improve.

I would agree that two games with open world features and strong narrative do not prove the two systems work well, but so far Witcher 3 and DA:I have been high selling games with lots of positive feedback from gamers and critics. Which again isn't to say that those people who dislike either game are wrong only that there seems to be a desire by gamers for both open world and strong stories. And the purests ie those who want just the bethesda style open world game or those who want just the strong narrative of a Bioware or CDPR are going to unhappy, Which we are seeing now, Bioware had vocal fans upset that the game went open world because they don't play Bioware games for that and now we have Bethesda fans upset that FO4 is going the route of a stronger narrative. The purest have either got to svck it up or move to an indie kickstarter company to get the game they want. The reason is simple three major RPG developers are all moving in this direction and they have all come to this same place from different directions which is more evidence that the market is pulling these companies here.

As long as FO4 gives me the same open world experience I expect from Bethesda and gives me an IMPROVED story over FO3 and Skyrim I will view their experiement as a success. Will it have been perfected? No but that takes time. I expect TES VI to be better than FO4 for integrating story and open world, as the sales for witcher 3 and DA:I were huge I have no reason to expect FO4 numbers to be poor. And if those numbers are good there is no reason Bethesda will change direction, making it a pretty safe bet TES Vi will continue this trend.

That is false.

13,000 line of Dialogue does not mean that once you use up any give line of Dialogue you never use that line so after 13k lines spoken you run out of dialogue. many lines will be REUSED. You don't record 500 different greetings and good byes for the 500 npcs you can talk to. (Using NV as an example) So that doesn't take up 1000 lines of PC dialogue. It only takes up about 10 to 20 lines of dialogue because. If you make a 6 to 10 different greetings and good byes you can create enough variety to make it sound natural because we as humans pretty much say hello and good bye in the same way most of the time. Responses to NPC questions about our past can also be handles with a few line of Dialogue not 500 different ones for each NPC. Again this is how we naturally respond to things as well so it doesn't sound too abnormal. People ask you questions about yourself and you are going to tell different people pretty the same information in the same way with slight variances. Add it a few lines of variance to this and your response to generic questions about yourself can be handled in a 20 to 30 lines depending how many variants the dialogue system offer. ie Truth, lie, none of your business, vague response, ect. Two of three variation to each of these type of responses and you have that covered.

Responding to a question in the affirmative or negative can also be handled a few variations recorded and every yes or no question an NPC asks is covered.

This idea that if you have 13k lines of dialogue means you can only have roughly 13k lines of NPC dialogue or 26k total, is built on the false premise that the PC never reuses dialogue lines and that just isn't the way Dialogue is written in games. And this reuse of Dialogue is used in both text only dialogue systems and voiced systems so it is not a inherent limitation of voiced systems. 13k lines of Dialogue for the PC is a hell of a lot.

I don't get how you came to that conclusion about my comment. My position is the same as yours. Every line from the PC has to have a response from the NPC. Many of the lines that aren't contextually specific are going to be reused. I never said anything about it not being a lot of dialogue. At the beginning of my comment, I merely pointed out that the 65,000 WRITTEN lines wouldn't double with a voiced protagonist, as that figure already includes the PC's lines.