It's non-branching quests and lack of decent dialogue choices. I loved how in Fallout 3 and New Vegas there were always multiple ways to complete the major quests and side quests. You almost always had the option to take to good path, the evil one, or be somewhere in between. I also liked how the dialogue choices were more dynamic and felt more "real". For example, certain conversation options were unlocked based on your skills. If you were skilled with medicine, you could heal a wounded person through dialogue or you could fix the broken machinery with high repair or what have you.

I also liked how your skills had an effect on the world around you and how you could change the outcomes of certain events based on those skills too. In Skyrim, Oblivion, and to a certain extent, Morrowind, your skills don't have any effect at all on npcs or the world. See some wounded soldiers in a camp and you have high restoration or alchemy? Not a thing you can do.

I think Bethesda learned a lot from Fallout that translated well into Skyrim like better leveling, a handcrafted world (as opposed to Oblivion's cut and paste), and expanding upon the crafting present present in Fallout 3 with the smithing skill in Skyrim. Hopefully dlc will do a bit better in terms of quests and dialogue. If not, I'm sure our wonderful modding community will come through.

There are many quests that allow you to take different paths; the paths you take, however, just aren't done in dialogue.

TES in general goes with the "Actions speak louder than words" philosophy. It's not about what you say that makes a difference, it's about what you do.

I know there are some that branch, a certain dragon comes to mind and a few other instances as well as well. But I can think of a bunch of other times when I was basically forced to kill someone or I could have double crossed someone but the game wouldn't permit it. As mentioned previously as well, I miss how certain skills allowed you to interact with npcs and objects in the world in interesting ways. I've played the Elder Scrolls games to death starting with Morrowind. In my opinion however, they could have done a lot better job in this regard seeing as they did such a great job at it in Fallout 3.

Fallout is a far more superior rpg. And fallout excels in choices. Most quests have like 3-4 options with more unlocking with your skills/perks/attributes and covering every aspect of roleplaying. Whether you want to be evil or benevolent and good or a mercenary who cares about money or just a selfish bastard - they cover everything. Even side quests and especially FNV. There is almost not a single fetch quest as even with the most simple-looking quest, there are more things at play than what you would expect. It's an unfair comparison, really.

PS: oh and each choice usually has actual impact in the game

Kill stuff?

Basically. It feels like most of the quests are fetch quests. It's a general feeling that what I do isn't effecting the world as well as a lack of choice in many quests that should have branching paths. The other parts of the game are great: combat, graphics, the world, etc.

Well, that can be mostly credited to Obsidian's writing team, if only their handled the technical side half as good as they wrote, they would be serious competition for BioWare if you ask me. They're not though, but Bethesda should really look at how Obsidian (And BioWare for that matter) write stories, quests and dialogue.

I love TES games, Morrowind is probably my favourite game of all time, but the one complaint I have always had is this, my character never really feels like a well developed character. I know the blank slate is meant to let us decide for ourselves who our character is, but there is no way to let the game know that and so the game doesn't have the means to respond in the right way, thus every character is pretty much treated in the exact same way, often to the letter. In the end that means my choices don't really matter in the grand scheme of things, they have no impact. Why choose to spare someone when I can kill them and steal their stuff? The game doesn't care either way, why should I?

I could go on, but I've stupidly pulled an all nighter and need to shop for christmas presents today...so that'll be awesome. Point being, I am in no state to write out a full essay on the subject.

Bottom line is this. While I love Morrowind and I've put several hundreds of hours into it, TES games in general all suffer from the "problem" mentioned above, my characters never feel iike they evolve or change in any meaningfull way. Obviously I'm not talking about levels, stats, skills or anything like that, but actual character development. There is virtually none to be found and it is the one thing that keeps me from truly enjoying Skyrim, it's one of the things that kept me from enjoying Oblivion. If I am to make choices in a game, I want those choices to matter, right now they really don't.

^^^^^

What's most bizarre to me is that some dialogue is written reasonably well, but it's not delivered by the player but by the other side.

For example in Kynesgrove there's a radiant "convince dude to do x" quest. Said dude is some nord miner, and x is to let go of his bar tab because the innkeeper doesn't care. So you ask him to do it, and he responds:

"You're right... I shouldn't let my nord pride get in the way of someone offering a helping hand. Tell y I won't bother her anymore."

While all you said to convince him was "Let it go mmmkay".

And this is how all persuasion works. You say some generic "Don't/do it mmmkay" and then the NPC comes up with a reason why he/she should/shouldn't do it. Instead of it being the other way around - you should be the one saying "Don't let your nord pride get in the way of someone offering a helping hand" and the NPC should be the one responding "Mmmkay".

Since whoever wrote the dialogues had both lines right next to each other on the script sheet, how could they go with the current "NPCs convince themselves" version is just incomprehensible to me. The proper version even saves voice actors time, because they don't have to record the "convince myself" line, just the "mmmkay".

Very odd.

Yup, it's completely backwards.

The reason is of course that Bethesda wants the character to be, as I mentioned, a blank slate for the player to project him/herself onto. The thing is, I don't think that makes for a compelling character. I don't want to play myself, I am myself every day. When I play a game, when i roleplay, I want to make up a new person. Create a personality, morality and way of thinking. Putting myself in that characters shoes is infinitely more challenging and rewarding than just pretending I'm inside the game. Unfrotunately, this is almost impossible when the game offers you nothing, or even worse offers you a single choice that does not fit your character at all.

I have an example. I will put it in spoilers but it involves the quest "In my time of need"



No. Forcing that one option on me pulls me out of the game like nothing else, there is nothing worse than having the game put words in your characters mouth that the character would never say. Of course options will be limited to some extent, they have to be. But one option is not good enough, it is detrimental to the experience in every way, unless you happen to be playing someone who would say that one line.

This is just one example, but what I feel is holding TES back is it's dialogue and character development, if Bethesda worked on that then their games would go from great to brilliant.

For me it's just the opposite. I feel more freedom to roleplay because I have a blank slate to work with. I don't know, maybe it's because I have a vivid imagination, but I feel very comfortable mentally supplying my character's dialog. I want to be the one coming up with my character's responses, I don't want to entrust my character's dialog to a developer. The developer knows nothing about my character.

I have a very hard time roleplaying in a typical Bioware or Obsidian game. The reason for this is that the dialog is rarely anything my characters would say. The more specific the dialog, the greater the chance that the dialog choices will not fit my character.

bump because this thread was created at an ungodly hour this morning/last night

^^^

This.

I agree 100%.