Just read this and I thought it made a good point

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7290527/one-night-skyrim-makes-strong-man-crumble

Maybe the answer to some of the awful writing in Skyrim is less and not more. It would be nice to have a different lore delivery mechanism than long winded NPC speeches. Books are IMHO better. Better still is encountering it during quests in forms other than badly delivered dialogue.

I prefer that Voice Acting be limited to generic responses, background conversation and the like. However, topical conversations I still prefer text. Mostly because I can read faster than the words are spoken to me, so I am always cutting NPCs off to get to their next line. Plus, I can be told more in the game for less development cost. Morrowind had a nice balance to this.

When I play Planescape:Torment and go through the dialog trees (especially after they are unlocked in a patch) I really get more of the game's story and history that way.

Lore is not only an important part of the series but needs to be delivered through the NPCs around you and the world itself. I prefer text base dialogue and while playing Skyrim just mute the awful voice acting and read the subtitles anyway, but sadly, like an actual journal system, it's never coming back.

"Corny Lore" get over it, it's Elder Scrolls not GTA with swords and magic. The last thing we need is 'less' and more 'streamlining.' However, I agree with several points he makes about delivery.

I prefer the old days when everything was in text format. To me it made the games seem more alive than the current everything is voice acted and for the most part comes with limited dialogs and everything feeling more like all the NPC characters have dementia saying the same thing over and over again like a broken record. You feel it more when you have followers with you since they say the same thing over and over, and over again.

In this case you have hit the nail on the head (as did the guy who wrote the article). The 'old days when everything was in text format' allowed Morrowind to land a seemingly endless amount of highly detailed lore on the players who wanted it, and even more importantly when they wanted it. I at times wandered around Morrowind obsessively unlocking every topic in every dialog...but at other times hit the current quest topic and rolled on. To have voice actors spout every line of Morrowind dialog would be absolutely impossible, then, now, or ever.

This guy hit the reality right on the head, and it would be great if someone hit everyone at BGS on the head with the article. Voice delivered game information is a bust. The novelty value and technology wow factor wears off almost immediately. And scaling back everything to a level that it can be delivered that way has not helped the series, it's just been a handicap that so far they have been able to overcome.

I am definitely not a fan of more streamlning, and I don't think that is what the author was suggesting. At least I didn't take it that way. What I got was an opinion (that I agree with) that the delivery mechanism was clunky. I am not sure how to make it better, but I can see his point. Less emphasis on overwrought and generally badly delivered dialogue and more emphasis on other delivery mechanisms. Other could be visual cues, letters, overheard conversations that are a bit less in your face, etc.

Why not just improve the quality of writing itself? Much of the writing in Skyrim is awful and really wouldn't be helped by using a different delivery if it's the same people churning it out I don't see how things will change. The majority of new (and there aren't many of them) Vanilla in-game books are horribly written as well and do little to add to the world with the only decent new books appearing in the Dragonborn DLC regarding faifth/politics of the Dunmer post-Red Year and the New Resdayn as stated by Merari in a current thread in the lore forum. It's not just dialogue, the writing throughout is consistently bad.

People talking in the background when your trying to listen to someone is very annoying. A general improvement would be most welcome.

Though, i don't mind written information or spoken dialogue. And at some points it can get very boring listening to large chunks of information from e.g the Greybeards, and it's easy for me to tune them out after a while or just skip it.

The text tells more and yes, reading is quicker than listening. But when do the people you meet IRL hand you a script for their job or background and then stand there while you read it? (phone support doesn't hand you a script either - they make you run through it with them) As the tech improves the NPCs will speak better. People used to complain about the long list of dialog options, still do. I like listening to them yak on. On repeated run-throughs I skip, just like changing the subject when Joe tries to talk about his trip to Cancun again.

I'm looking forward to a time when different voices can be applied to the written word on the fly. When my little character gets a voice and I get to type my own answers. Pick option 3 but reword the response. Instead of, "Yes, I'll kill the dragon for you", you can try, "Oh sure, just let me grab some iron arrows and I'll run right out and kill that big ole fire-breather just for you, Jarl. Okay, fine! Fine! I'll do it. But you will owe me till you die. Not til I die -- as that might be real soon now -- but till they drop you in a box. *grumble*" That day will be fun. Instead of sword and board, it'll be sword and word. (*sigh* that just doesn't scan)

Honestly, I felt that Morrowind had the best NPC interaction. Just tons of dialogue and a wide array of questions to ask.

The problem with "just make it better" is that jsut making it better means making charcters say less, at least in some situations. The reason it feels so long winded and clunky is that real people don't talk like that.

But the quality or lack of quality can go both ways. Even npcs in text based RPGs have the same repetitious lines.

Skyrim is not horribly written it is just that it was toned down a lot since a lot of the playing population do not really care about the lore and just want to finish up as many quests in the shortest amount of time. Some of the books are still well written but sadly not as good as the earlier games. Yes there are a few not so well written books as well. What really bothers me is the quest journal, rarely you get a quest that has two or more sentences and most of the information is rubbish, so you are dependent on follow the quest markers. At least in Oblivion you got more useful information in the quest log.

I think the writing would have been better but I have a feeling that Bethesda was trolling the crowd complaining about the Morrowind and Oblivion quest and Dialog system and gave them what they wanted and then some.

True but it is usually not as annoying since you can skip that easier. Some of the dialog is not as easy to skip since some of it is background banter. Oblivion did quite a good job with the background banter and it made the cities feel more alive. You did get some alright banter in some of the cities in Skyrim but it really felt scripted and planned.

How about more player dialog about things the are actually important rather than being able to ask everyone in town to explain their life story?

^^This is exactly my thoughts on dialogue in this game, however Its only my first TES game I have played so far.

I'm one of the people who doesn't mind the spoken dialogue that much, especially when NPCs are having conversations with each other rather than with you. It's a nice touch to add some life to the game, though it loses some of that as the lines get repeated over and over again, and the Skyrim does need either more voice actors or voice actors who are capable of more than one voice.

I don't think that spoken dialogue is the problem with Skyrim's writing. I think it's just the writing itself is uneven and weak at times. I'm hoping that as we're in a new generation of consoles, the audio won't be eating quite as much room and they can add more dialogue options.

As for the big speeches, they rarely bother me, though I do think they could benefit from having more opportunities for the player to interject and ask questions/make comments.

I think a simple measure of practicality is available. How many words of dialog would there be in Morrowind?

Okay, now we can pretty confidently say that no one will ever be able to make a game like Morrowind using voice acting.

So, I'd think making a game where NPCs pvssyred as you pass by (good atmosphere) with NPC/player interactions handled in text (which the player side pretty much has to be anyway) would offer the opportunity to provide in depth quests and lore along with a lively environment.

I'm on the fence with this one. Text based computer games started with Zork and it makes sense considering the fact your character can't talk at all.

On the other hand while the voice acting may not always be up to par and NPC's especially followers are limited in what they can say I feel like it adds atmosphere to the game just like Ulfric's speech does or the dialogue with Tullius in the opening sequence.

There are a lot of good moments in the game that come with the NPC dialogue and I would hate for that to get cut out to be replaced by text, to me it would be a step backward.

So I guess that puts me on the side of the fence of keep the dialogue but add more lines and hopefully at some point they can add a voice to the player character. With the added memory I would even hope they can make some changes that would be able to breathe more life into the world of TES with greater depth in conversations and more dialogue options which of course means more lines for voice actors. Hopefully more voice actors along with it.

Maybe it's just me, if I wanted to read a fantasy novel (Oh how many Fantasy novels I've read in my time, probably over a hundred. I love Eddings, Tolkein, Roberts, McCaffrey and on and on) then by gum I would read a fantasy novel.

I play ES not to read a fantasy novel but to play a game and what I see satisfies me. Maybe I'm just an oddity, it sure seems like it on the forums and has since I got here.

@Arnithorn. Did you say you want a voiced dialog for the PC? I cringe at the very thought. No way would the voice actor sound anything like what my character sounds like in my head.

Re the OP, I am pretty much in the same camp as everyone else. A little voice acting for greetings and background conversation but text for everything else.

Gotta agree with this...my character has plenty of voice already since he just borrows mine, though my girlfriend seldom understands what he says or why he is interrupting her show on the TV. Usually his comments are not even remotely in line with any of the choices available to him in game.

Texted based dialoge will always be superior to Voiced dialoge, no matter how good the VA is. Skyrim's main problem with dialoge was that it repeated the same type of greeting instead of using traditional hello or hi like the previous Beth games. You didn't hear Cloud district in Megaton that's for sure. Morrowind's dialoge system would have been much better for Skyrim. Less resources in VA's, more emphasis on the RPG aspects of the game, which are lacking.

I don't agree with that. Some people can make terrible writing sound good because of their delivery, or further sell well written rhetoric by putting inflection in the appropriate places.

I think the initial article referenced by the OP summed this up...if Patrick Stewart couldn't make the Emperor sound like other than drek it's time to face a fact...game environments are not conducive to voice acting. There is no way, when the player is looking for a 'real dialog' to come up anything but woefully short.

On the other hand Oblivion had more unique dialog than Morrowind so it's possible.

I pretty much agree with CCNA, you tend to read faster than you listen and just interrupt their talking to get the next line anyway.

Any yes subtitles are useful anyway, if you are real lucky someone like Nazeem join the conversation you have with an questgiver and provides additional information.

The huge info dumps are actually not the problem as they tend to be one person only.

The problem is all the other information who lots of people have, that did not sounds good in Oblivion as the voice changed from person to person, in skyrim they removed it totally.

Another issue is the stupid npc tells their one liner time over, its not just asshats as Nazeem, but you also want to kill nice people like Adrianne badly if you do an long session leveling smithing. Here I liked Oblivion npc better, they talked nonsense but it was just funny not seriously annoying.

It also had an small chance for something like this http://imgur.com/G0aRXLF