I'm beginning to get even more excited about the voiced characters, and the changes with the conversation dynamic. Even more so than I was before after seeing the Piper conversation clip. Granted the Piper clip was just a segment of a conversation. Even so I think it shows how much more fluid and engulfing dialog scenes will be, which is something I feel BGS has always lacked at.

With the changes in scene work and the newly introduced voiced PC I think we have a fantastic chance at having the worlds we have always loved AND a story you can actually get into.

What do yall think?

Yeah, the Piper scene makes me really excited about the quests in this game. I want to interact with these NPCs!

I've thought about it, and in terms of consistency and logic Fallout 3's story was probably the weakest Bethesda's ever done (although it's still not as bad as people make it out to be)... but then I remember that it actually had some really solid emotional beats to it, probably more than most of Bethesda's other games (although the sequence in Morrowind's main quest with Caius Cosades and Mehra Milo I liked a lot).

The voiced protagonist and the improved dialog animations are really going to amplify that. I'm pumped.

Definitely. My biggest complaint about 3 and NV were that you couldn't talk, and that their was not enough music/music randomization svcked. Now that we at last have a voiced PC all I need is some kind of custom playlist mod or feature. After that ill be golden.

Customized music is basically already in the game. You have to ability to craft jukeboxes for settlements/homes and choose which music plays. I'll be happy if this includes being able to point to our own MP3 files, of course, but the customization is already stated by Todd during one of the interviews after E3. He said he wanted to include it in the presentation but that it was one of the things that it turned out just didn't fit into the 30 minutes he had.

I'm super excited for the voiced protagonist, it's one of the most anticipated new features for me along with the crafting and base building.

Everyone is the hero of their own story.

Some, however, prefer to be villains.

True I often go through on one of my first play throughs and kill everybody that is expendable. Often with some sort of historical or fictional theme. Once I did Hannibal Lecter with the cannibal perk.

I can hardly wait to see what, if any, improvements have been made to being bad!

Anyone got a link to the Piper clip?

This^, also, I'm not sure that I'll enjoy a voiced protagonist more than the text dialogue of past games, but it does seem like an improvement so far. What I would prefer would be for beth to implement some comprehensive voice recognition software so that i could voice my characters.

Story is not something i really play a Bethesda game for. If it's good it will certainly be welcome, but i play these games to just kind of get lost in the world.

Haven't heard to much of the voice acting yet, but i do honestly feel the voices fit the characters very well. Having listened to interview/podcasts with Courtaney and Kal, and another one with Brian, i do have faith in the quality of the voice acting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kizzTSyvoLQ
Mid way through is the in game conversation with piper from gamescom.

Like the idea of Voice rec but my character would sound like fallout 2 conversation with a low intelligence due to my mumbling.

Not sold on the Voiced PC yet. It may be great for one play-through, but I never play these open world games once. I imagine when my 5th, 6th character whom I'm playing as a totally different character and personality than the PC's I played before, ends up having the exact same voice as all the other PC's, I'm going to give up on the game. I've played 30+ characters in FO3, FONV, DAO, MW, OB and Skyrim, but could only play ME with two different characters due to the exact same voice being used. You can't play a good guy, bad guy, crazy guy, silent type, Mr. Personality type, etc. all using just one voice. So instead of getting 1,500+ hours of game play like I have other games I'll be lucky to get 100 hours.

And hearing the same dialog every time I play is going to be really old really fast.

I am also a little apprehensive but one thing I remember that kept me from replaying ME (the way I would a Beth rpg) is that the ME world is rather limited. Hopefully the depth of the world in F4 is so great that it makes up for having only two voice options. Also hopefully the voice actors are so good that I don't mind but that is all left to be seen.

The dialogue scene in the clip was awesome though in that the characters actually seemed like they were having a real conversation.

True but what are our skip options in that situation? Do I really want to hear the same dialog over and over and over again. Is there a way to 'jump' to the next set of four dialog options?

Also what about repeating the question? I generally exhaust all the dialog options for NPC's in Skyrim. Will I be able to prompt the question from Piper again and then select a different option to hear her response to that one? Or would I need to save the game at the beginning of every dialog so I can actually hear all the options and then go back and play the one's I want? The whole conversation system just seems a lot more linear.

There's a ton of story potential?

Well...there always was. The big question is how Bethesda will surprise us this time.

I don't see it...It's the same as before just with less potential for different options.

I'm just worried there will be less chances for me to be a sarcastic jerk to people. Those are some of the best lines in these games.

I definitely hope they allow for skipping dialogue and most other voice protag games I have played allow skipping the dialogue. It is also pretty standard to be able to choose the option for subtitles so you can read the dialogue which is always faster then spoken dialogue. This is a must for minor character conversation in my book unless it is really interesting. Like every time I go to a merchant I better not have to hear a whole conversation before getting to the barter screen.

As for repeating questions, I think most of the questions (asking about the factions and the like) will allow for the PC to revisit them. I do the same thing as you, running through the whole dialogue screens to get as much info as possible (especially during the first few playthroughs). I would hope though certain conversations would be locked out afterwards because of the decisions we made in conversation.

Well, in real life you can't ask the same person the same question and get a different answer in order to "exhaust" your dialogue options either. They'd think I was an idiot if I kept repeating myself, so I find this to actually be a good thing. You have to really consider your words carefully this way. And if you want to go through the same quest multiple times, you'll still have to complete the dialogue. I'm sure there will be a subtitle option and that you can just click your way through the dialogue of you don't want to hear it, just like in FO3 and Skyrim.

I would be curious forever about the other options though. If I had chose another option for Piper would she have still explained that she runs a paper? Would she have still asked me to come by her office to see her collection of postage stamps (cause you know that's what she wanted to do)? Would saying 'I hate Newspapers' caused her to become hostile to the NPC and not speak to them anymore?

And this is a problem. Do we really want every option to end with the exact same result? Or do we really want some options to actually end permanently dialog with NPC's but not know what they are until we say them?

Isn't that why you play 30+ characters though.

My biggest problem and I don't know why they don't fix this is tone. So taking your example of her asking for the PC to come upstairs to see her postage stamps (of course that's the reason). The dialogue wheel will have something like choose "Yes". But it should have choices like "Yes" [Flirty] and the PC will say "Yeah baby, I loved to come and check out your stamp collection" while giving a wink or "Yes" [affirmative] - "I am very interested in stamp collections, mam".

Haha, yeah a tone of voice option would be awesome! In that video, however, our hero looks like someone who would always respond in the "affirmative". Probably the most bland looking person I've ever seen.

True, for all the acting that Piper does, the PC seems rather robotic (cue synth theory...).

And honestly there is no way I'll play 30+ character if they all have to sound exactly the same way, or I have to go through all this spoken dialog every single time.