It's my assertion that the spoken dialogue system is the single most complexity-removing device in the game. I'm happy with the game's other aspects, they're more or less fine IMO, and those that are not are mod-fodder for sure. When people complain about lack of complexity they mostly seem to be referring to the number crunching and personality aspect. I think the streamlining there has been successful, now you just play how you wish to play and your character develops from that and not how you set it up. I guess that might be a simple preference thing.

For me, the complexity is missing as far as interaction is concerned, and IMO that is down to one thing - spoken dialogue. It limits the AI's responses to whatever has been recorded. If it ain't recorded - you can't talk about it. I might suggest that AI interaction be about generated conversation not recorded conversation. This means losing the spoken dialogue for the most part.

I say for the most part because IMO wandering around the settlements can still be populated with talking entities, overheard conversations etc. Nothing wrong with that and removing the AI interaction dialogue means that a WHOLE LOT MORE casual conversation can be used. So you wouldn't hear about so many guards with dodgy knees for example all the time.

Upon entering a dialogue with an AI, instead of getting both spoken and subtitled dialogue, I should like to see subtitled dialogue ONLY. That way an almost infinite amount of dialogue can be generated about just about anything the player should like to discuss. Need directions? Ask an AI and it can respond with basic or specific directions (north-east for [distance], or follow X road for example). Ask about a person and the AI might know where they are or what they're doing, and generate a response.

You could even have a system where your current highlighted quest allows you to speak about items, people & locations specific to that quest, giving you control over context rather than bog you down with dialogue options on every topic you know about. And your AI conversation can generate a reply based on it's knowledge of that topic.

This would mean that the game becomes more complex in that you need to actually interact with people to find stuff out for your quest, instead of getting magic arrows to follow or map markers to aim for, you'd need to track down your goal by interaction. The closer you get to your goal, the more specific (and prolific) the generated information. You would need to find locations by looking for them, and by asking about them. How can this possibly be a step backward? In a game about exploration and discovery, I'm often dismayed at the current method of spawning a map location and compass exactly where I'm supposed to go. That's not gameplay for me, that's following a built-in walkthrough.

This would mean that spoken dialogue needs to go though, and I doubt Bethesda would do that, it simplifies things a lot for them I'm sure.

*edit*
Consider also, that as far as your own character is concerned, you already use a text-only system. So you already know how to imagine a voice when you use that.

Well, not "all" spoken dialogue needs to go.

Fallout 1 and 2 had a dozen or so characters in each game with voiced characters and worked fine.
But I agree, with spoken dialogue and the size of this game it limits the content drastically.
Spoken dialogue works for other games that are somewhat more linear in how they work.
But in an RPG? An open RPG? With what? Over 500 NPC's at the very least? Then yeah, it doesn't help.

So I'd much prefer having subtitled dialogue cause in terms of quantity in dialogue it's far superior than spoken dialogue.
And if they miss out on a dialogue part they could just patch it in or reimplement it with a DLC.
With spoken dialogue, it can be done, but is much more expensive; facial animations and voice actor.

Some people might consider it to be superior to have immersive spoken dialogue.
But for me, I don't want to play "make believe" dialogue. I want to talk to NPC's in depth, with lots of branching dialogue that offers great RPing possibilities.

[edit]

So I suppose it's about:

A. I want to have spoken dialogue no matter how much it limits the amount of dialogue cause I can't handle a text-based adventure, this isn't the 90's.

B. I want to have text-based dialogue without voice actors as it increases the amount of possibly dialogue we can have. I'd much rather sacrifice the immersive voice actors for game quantity and quality.

Both can still be considered valid.
I mean, having a beautiful game like this and then NPC's that don't open their mouths and just have texts below their faces would look very off and ugly.
But on the other hand, voice acting is like an arrow to the knee for the dialogue system in an RPG and limits it.

I remember, during the build up for Oblivion, so many people being so excited about the 100% spoken dialogue. I, however, knew exactly what it would lead to. I made a few posts here and there, got into a few debates about the topic and was almost universally shot down. Everyone was convinced spoken dialogue was gonna be the magic bullet that fixed Morrowind's generic dialogue problem. Imagine my complete and utter lack of surprise when everything i predicted came true, exactly. Oh how it fixed absolutely nothing and oh how it made so many other things worse. Imagine my scorn for the people who willed Beth to crap this upon us. Imagine my contempt for people who continue to demand it.

I think the mods should ban the words "complex" and "complexity" from these boards. :whistling:

I tend to hear how voice acting is one of the greater evils of this game, ever since Oblivion really...
Then the cries about "immersion" appear and it all becomes really ironic.

Written dialog is not at all inherently better, it's a different medium overall. Written things don't have acting, you cannot measure the tone certain sentences are said, there are no accents, no emotion, no hidden meaning unless the text itself tells you about it.
And it's not even true how text is more "dynamic" or how voiced dialog is limited to the one recorded, because written dialog is limited to what is actually written. You won't get better directions in written form if the person moves away from the original spot, and you cannot create long text dynamically without making it sound unnatural even in text. At most they could do is to say "it's east/west/north/south/wherever from here" and these can be even recorded.
Only big difference that text can mention your name, whoopie-doo...

Limited funds is the single complexity-removing device.
:sadvaultboy: :sadvaultboy: :sadvaultboy: :sadvaultboy: :sadvaultboy: :sadvaultboy: :sadvaultboy: :sadvaultboy: :sadvaultboy:

Spoken dialog is a huge limiting factor on the budget and choices.

However many characters are much more impressive with good voice actors. Would Lucien Lachance, Sheogorath, Uriel Septim and the criminal scum Guards be so popular without their voice actors? I doubt so.

Yawn.

Yes they would.
Look at Barenziah, Divayth and Vivec.
In fact, with spoken dialogue they would have been far less popular, as they would only have 2 sentences to say and repeat them ad nauseum every time youre standing close.

Solution: Invent a natural sounding computer generated text to voice function!

This, essentially.

I think you expect too much of AI.
AI means 'artificial' intelligence...ie not real...it can only deliver what is coded into it.

Aye, I remember that too.

I think spoken dialogue is just one of those things that games "have" to have now. I remember a similar discussion for the prospect of a KOTOR3 (which obviously never happened). A load of people wanted the player's character to have a voice, because it "added" something. I disagreed - player voices can really get in the way of the idea that the character is "yours". But anyways - I can't say I understand it, but it just seems to be one of those things.

Hmm yeah. I get the feeling you crafted that reply before entering and simply haven't bothered to read or adjust your response. Do you simply not like the word "complex" or are you just fed up hearing the word so many times? And does every use of the word demand exactly the same response? Limited conversation choices are exactly what this thread is trying to discuss. I suspect you might be an NPC



Your above is limited by the abilities of the voice acting, which is variable. Also the nuances put into the voice recording instantly limit the context even more. I saw no problems with Morrowind's text dialogues when nuances were pushed, I guess it's all in the context...

...and, you've clearly missed the bigger picture if the only difference you can fathom is that your name appears.

However, I acknowledge the notion that spoken dialogue could work, especially in simple direction-giving scenarios, but I've experienced spoken procedural dialogue before and it ain't pretty



"Popular"? I don't understand your use of popular. They're more popular because their voices are great? Do you mean effective? Perhaps, but I think the benefits of more procedural dialogue far outweigh the benefits of happening on a good voice actor. This is after all an open world with procedural situations, and limiting the dialogue to scripted instances (which your examples can be used once, for the most part) seems wasteful of the game world.

Excellent post OP.

However, I think this guy says it right there:



I think that's precisely because of being a different medium that they should aim for a balance between the two; they offer different possibilites and complement each other very well.

I think Baldur's Gate II did it right. You'd get the initial lines voiced and the rest was all text. The result was long dialogues with lots of nuances, but with a good ammount of dialogue, both casual-banter and plot-essential ones, resulting in everlasting dialogues, memmes, etc. ("Go for the eyes Boo!"; "Luck be a Lady" etc.). Look at Jim Cummings (Minsc's voice in BG), the guy is all over Skyrim and a voice like that adds up to the immersion.

Curiously enough, I think Skyrim would be a good game for a system like that. I agree with the others that said a game of this magnitude in terms of graphic immersion would be weird, to say the least, without VA dialogues. I think if they focused on the initial lines - to get us going, sort of like setting the tone for that NPC - we would do the rest with our minds.

I think a hybrid system might work where you have the ore-recorded dialogue and some stuff that's contextual.

The problem is that all of the potential variables still have to be anticipated and programmed for. I've wolfed out in front of followers and been attacked. Haven't yet tried doing that, escaping and coming back as human. While it would be realistic for them to remain hostile to me after that, it would break the game. Sort of like how when you are sneaking, if you hide the alerted guards will forget you. Because otherwise one slipup and you now have to fIght the whole dungeon.

I would be up for that initial VA dialogue and then an option to go quest-specific text dialogue would be a workable solution. More work for not too many extra sales though, so I guess we wouldn't ever see it

I love the spoken dialogue, voice acting in games is getting sick, and adds so much immersion.

I completely agree that it hugely limits the scope of the game because of the cost/space overhead. We need computer generated voice acting to get up to speed fast (ie at a convincing quality) but it's decades away

If voiceacting wasnt required every quest in the game could have branching paths for different character values and beliefs. And the world could react to your accomplishments to a much wider degree.

Adding expansions eould also be a helluva lot easier.

Not sure whether cost or space is the primary limitation.

There's virtually no AI involved in dialogue, it's a simply generated by whatever the quest stage is or randomly by situation/character type. It has exactly the same level of complexity as Oblivion, i.e. none.

Why is that? Are the ones who have valid complaints making too much sense and now you think Bethesda has to quite us because you don't like complexity?

That's a Troika habit they always did, they did it in Arcanum too, the game was 80% text dialogue but

- Special Followers
- Main Quest dependent characters
- Certain Special independent characters.

All had spoken Dialogue and it was all freaking fantastic, the Voice acting in Arcanum was mostly awesome.
Vampire Bloodlines had purely spoken Dialogue too and it worked out fine, hell the whole RPG system in that game didn't suffer, the only real limitation was the World being slightly linear but due to the fact they were using a very buggy version of the Half Life 2 Engine, it made sense.

Which just makes me wonder why Beth can't get it right.
(I plan to mod some of Arcanum's voiced followers into Skyrim at some point too)

Haha, shoot, I'd still play Skyrim if it was text-based dialogue. Been playing RPGs with text-based dialogue for years. Nothing new for me.

Real question is would other people play? Would lots of other people play? That is the money question. Pun so very intended.

I think you expect too little of it I'm not asking for much more than was in Morrowind nigh on ten years ago. All that procedural dialogue has been lost because of the move to voice acting.

It's true that text is a different medium to voice and is not inherently "better", but it is more appropriate for a game of this type. I just believe that voice acting is the wrong medium.

Ahhh, but that's when you're wrong my good OP.

Think about what we can accomplish with mods.

Imagine if you will a fully modded Skyrim world with less generic NPC dialogues, even the core ones. We can add lots of depth to all the Jarls, Housecarls etc. Even tough it would seem a bit jarring to find brand new NPCs without any VA whatsoever, we could apply some simple mod tricks to just breath some life into it. If you look at Skyrim, a lot of the dialogue from different NPCs are done by the same actors. This would mean we could have some smart reusing of some VA dialogue on brand new NPCs, just to kick-start him/her. From then on we could just rely on good writting to add content to the game.

If the writting is good, I think you'd be able to achieve this balance we were talking about. If a decent modder is willing to try that road of mixing VA with written text, I predict good times for Skyrim in the future.

I think they would. They played Morrowind, and I believe plenty of people are playing the Zelda game, which I believe has text based dialogue.