Disclaimer: This thread was inspired by a post I read by http://www.gamesas.com/user/847054-broder-fisk/ so credit goes to him for this...

Which do you guys prefer: Morrowind and Oblivion style "Topics" when interacting with NPC (i.e. Rumors, Directions, [City Name], etc), or text dialogue like in Skyrim (i.e. "What's your name?" "What do you have for sale?"). I'm not sure which I prefer... I liked the topics from a role-play perspective certainly. I often find the written dialogue to be different from what I would want my character to ACTUALLY say... what do you guys think?

Ahh of course Skyrim's. anyone who says otherwise is most likely lying.

I just know I would like more written dialogue options.

I prefer the topic system. Topics allow me to create my own unique dialogue for my characters. Specific dialogue, as written by game developers, is rarely speech that my characters would ever be caught dead saying. I make up my own stories and quests for my characters, so I would prefer to have non-specific topics and make up my own dialogue as well

And no, I'm not lying.

Agree with this. I don't mind if generic topics are written out as things like "What do you have for sale?" because obviously that's still very generic, and easy to role-play around. What I dislike is when you can either accept or decline a quest, and the dialogue options are "I am the noble hero so of course I will lay down my life to rescue your lost sweetroll" or "I am total bastard and I don't care about you and after we stop talking I'm going to kill you and your children". Just give me the generic Accept/Decline option, and I'll make up what my character would have said.

That said, I really hope dialogue plays a more substantial role in VI.

Dialogues are fine if you are given different text choices depending on what kind of character you are, for more role-play realism. Like in the Fallout games. Skyrim forces a character with the dialog options ("but I really like this world..." really? What are you, five?) that are non-RP-friendly.

That said, I voted Topic.

Like New Vegas

I think the topic system allows more RP, at least compared to the way dialogue is implemented in Skyrim (railroading the player into being a [censored] often). Topics are more ambiguous, and the NPC response is open ended so I can insert what my character has said, with Skyrim dialogue my character has to use the preset dialogue options.

I vote, either preset dialogue or in depth dialogue with a myriad of options.

You can't really put a topic on "What's your name?", but overall I prefer topics. (although, What's your name could be a topic you can discuss with all NPCs). Topics can only do so much though, and written dialogue is needed. Would be great to have some general topics avaialble, which you can discuss with all NPCs in the game, such as rumors and directions.

I also much prefer Oblivion's dialogue way, where the buy-option is its own symbol at the bottom, rather than a long text-chunk in the middle of a lot of other text chunks.

What was that like?

I think that, in the grand scheme of things, written dialog is superior and as such I prefer it. There's no doubt that Morrowind's system worked better than Skyrim's on a 1 to 1 level (player to singular NPC), of course. The tech and art involved in written dialog is not yet where it needs to be to surpass the old way, just yet.

Dialog has the potential to far surpass "topics", but the costs and technical limitations prevent that. For now, I'd prefer something that's a compromise between the two, developing and using dialog where it has the most impact, but falling back on "topics" for more generic cases or where more alternatives need to be made available.

I feel like a lot of the written dialogue in Skyrim makes my character sound like an idiot who has been living under a rock for the past 20 years or something. Options like "What's the White-Gold Concordat?" or "Where's Cyrodiil?" "Who is Ysgramor?"... I mean, my character is a f*&^ing Nord he should know who Ysgramor and Shor and Kyne are... but if I want to hear what the NPC has to say about them I have to ask those dumb questions as if I've never heard of them lol.

I would much prefer what Oblivion had where I can simply say "Ysgramor" or "Cyrodiil" or "Shor" if I want to discuss those topics with NPCs. I'll input my own version of what my character said.

I inspired someone to start a topic? yay!

Yes, that's a good point...

I prefer topics... Dialogue would be allright if there were more options, but dialogue still can't cover any possible character the player could make up.

In some cases dialogue might be needed though... It's hard to have a philosophy debate like the one with Paarthurnax, with only topics. Dialogue is needed - but there should be more different options, reflecting the common character archetypes. It might still be hard to find an answer that fits my character, but it would be easier to at least find something that matches their general style/attitude/view.

One thing that I like is when there are different options though generically phrased, because that gives the writer room to make the NPC react on what the player said, and also room for the player to imagine the exact wording.

Such as if you want to make NPC X make up for something bad he has done, and NPC X is unwilling to do so. The dialogue options could be something like this:

*Threaten

*Quote (religious book)

*Persuade

*Goodbye

...where the success of "threaten" depends on your level compared to his, "persuade" depends on your speech skill, and "quote" depends on whether or not the character is religious. (In Morrowind the "quote book" option comes up sometimes if you have that book in your inventory, but won't if you don't own the book. A better idea would be to have the option if your character has read the book; that way you don't need to clutter your inventory with books.)

Im gonna say "do like fonv did".
It was both topic and dialogue. U chose what u wanted to talk and/or learn about BUT u were given options in alot of those to meaningful discussions to actually discuss and/or talk back to someone.

Bah, its basically the perfect blend. It was mainly topic that unleashed alot of dialogue, but let u discuss and have conversations with npcs were it felt right and needed.

Topics. And not lying. More people prefer it btw.

Talk about close.

Truth be told, I prefer dialogue Its still vague enough to leave how someone would RP the situation to make up how their character actually worded, but the way it was handled in Skyrim was pretty bad. What written dialogue needs is more topic pertaining to PC choices, and modifiers based on skills or attributes. Fallout NV is a pretty good example at how dialogue could be implemented in a decent fashion.

Topics, tends to be much clearer.

Both. Written lines for the quest dialogue, topics for the general questions like rumors, my trade, my guild, my background, nearby locations, important npcs, etc

Topics offer much more than the bland, boring dialogue in skyrim.

Written dialogue hands down. I like the game to be less synthetic and more natural, and the written dialogue seems more natural to me.

Doesn't honestly matter either way to me.

So you want to click on one single sentence your character probably would never be caught saying? Because this is the dialogue in system in Skyrim.

If you can't / don't have resource to come up with a proper dialogue system, at least spare me the effort to click on one-way or fake choices.

Topics by a long shot given Skyrim's dialogue. I would immensely prefer having dialogue, but the responses ranged from par to cringe-worthy.

Solstheim was particularly painful seeing as I was roleplaying a Dunmer from Morrowind at the time, not even a young one at that either. Thankfully I could tab-out of a couple of the blatent questions (I can remember an irritating one about the Houses, and another about the Tribunal that I just gave up on), but the fact that we're given one response just makes it unbearable. Even two; 'learned' and 'idiot' would be better than what we have. Shame Skyrim's just stuck on 'idiot'.

Never played Skyrim, but I don't like somebody else telling me how my character talks.

Topics, hands down.