Dragon Age Inquisition did a good job with it aswell. In choices, it mostly went with 6 approaches that were based on your feelings on the topic. Like anger, or beeing sad about it etc, or just confused. It was actually a highly detailed and decent dialogue wheel. You still had the occasional miss on what you wanted to say, but i can take a miss here and there.

You misunderstood The "are you kidding" is an expression. I agree with what you said and I actually was positive about the wheel and voiced protagonist prior to release. Even if I was worried that choices would be fewer I was hopeful they would be meaningful, but...

For all of my complaints towards Inquisition, I will say that their dialogue wheel implementation was solid.

Though, I still would have prefered Origins dialogue box and response variation - I mean, did you not miss the "Kill Knife" response? That was hilarious

Knife killing in convo was amazing, but it looked silly as all hell. I think every Dragon Age fan prefers Origins in every way, but we take what we get from franchises we love. Or i do atleast.

I don't

Eh, I was never that thrilled with DA:O. The combat just got so damned tedious. Even with all the different origins & quest options to try, plus fancy clothing/graphic six mods , I couldn't bring myself to play it a second time. (It probably doesn't help that I had basically no AoE attacks while playing Dragon Mage:Origins. Shale as tank, Leliana melee rogue, old lady healer, and my char was a melee rogue.)

But that's not a dialogue or interface issue.

I can totally see where you are coming from, but artists don't have a 'please everyone' button that just allows them to make every person happy. Trust me, I have tried and it doesn't work that way.

I am not saying that games where you have to use your imagination to read the lines in a certain way to create depth yourself are a bad thing or that I am in any way against them. I am glad you like what you like and I like what I like. I personally just don't enjoy games that make me imagine something is happening as opposed to experiencing it.

I am a writer as a hobby, I spend over 10 hours every week writing stories and now stuff for mods, it isn't that I lack imagination or am an idiot who can't read and just wants action. It is just when I pay for a game I am looking for an entire media experience, with animations and voice acting and music and cool visuals and story, not just story that I read like a book. It is the marriage of all those media forms that I love about games.

So I understand that people who are looking for something more along the lines of oldschool rpgs would be disappointed. I have been disappointed in the same way many times when I discovered that things that I loved were on their way out because the views of the general public were going in a different direction. I totally understand your pain.

But I also don't for a second think it is a valid argument to say that Fallout 4 is just worse... Fallout 4 is great and engaging on a level that the previous games were not, and that is because of the voice acting and because of the animations and because they got rid of the long options and cluttered looking dialogue screen.

Fallout 4 is a win for people like me, because it gave us the artistic experience we were looking for. And I am sorry that the industry has turned its back on players like you, it really is a sad thing... Just please don't bad mouth the game I find amazing just because it is different. (That is more of a general statement, not directly pointed at you, WW Dave, because you actually seem like one of the more rational people discussing this as opposed to some people who just shoot back insults at me)

i do over 2 and not so sure about 3 =P

But after seeing how DA universe grow on each and every game, i just love the entire thing =P. That something Bioware do really well for me making a universe that grow in each game and it feel connected.

I mean dont get me wrong Bethesda and CDproyect do something similar but each game is contain in what happen there. Something i love about DA is how each game end on the opening on the next. I really wish to see where DA is going next.

Heresy! Blasphemy!

I found that the new perk system added to the story that made my character in a way the old cluttered Skills system never did. Skills to me were just an unnecessary menu crawler.

My particular Special build was not very good to start off the game, and as a result the things I did reflected that. I spent the first 10 levels being a scavenger and collecting stuff, spending my perks on things that allowed me to better gather supplies.

From level 15 and on, however, I started building my character into the scientist I envisioned, she started to take on a more evolving personality and started doing quests that represented that, still avoiding large scale combat because of the whole 2 endurance and 2 agility thing with no perks spent in combat.

I would simply overpower my enemies by having superior guns, because I had supplies I had scavenged and I had smarts.

By the time I got gun nut level 3 and science level 3 and had several good quality weapons crafted, I finally started spending points in upping my agility and getting the perks for pistols and vats and all that fun stuff. I crafted most of my stuff into pistols as a result of that choice, so my 'Righteous Authority' Laser Rifle became an over the top powerful long laser pistol.

At this point I was ready to take on the world and started doing the more aggressive missions of the game. No longer did I need to rely on just my brain and lock pick skills, but I could take out an entire room with my newly crafted pistols that only a truly awesome scientist character could make... All built off those first 10 levels I spent building a scavenger.

I love how that story comes from the gameplay dynamic in a way that Skills never did. I love even more that if I create a different Special build in my next playthrough, I am going to be seeing the game from a totally different order as a result. I might be more brave, but I also won't have the master lockpick perk the very second it becomes available.

WANTZ MOAR OF DAT!!!

Go play Farmville you filthy casual . ( Pls don′t take it the wrong way, I beg of you! )

Exact opposite; when I played a mage in DA:O I had a ball. One of the easiest fights I ever had with Loghain at the Landsmeet was with my mage. He barely got a hit in, between crushing prison, and being petrified and frozen. The melee combat could have used some tweaking and improving, but tossing the whole thing out the window and retconning so much was a total waste. Especially if it was simply to have the dialogue wheel of maybe close to what I want to say and voices that didn't fit the characters some players wanted to make. Again, I couldn't stand the male voice [Vaughn the wedding crashing rapist] so the default was female, and I didn't like her that much either.

For me the voices matter, and when they don't appeal to me, the whole game is basically trashed.

How does it make me a casual tho?

I mean I beat Origins solo on nightmare

, I agree with everything you've said. These conversations are not constructive in any way. They just bring up subjective arguments and nostalgic desires.

OK, first off, I regard the lack of skill checks as a bad thing. I've only seen one instance of them, when there could easily have been many more.

But, you have kind of reinforced what I was trying to say. There were a few skill or SPECIAL checks in the Fallout 3 dialogue, most were for things you could do outside of it. You could say what you like to Mr Burke about the bomb in Megaton, but you make the choice when you step up to it (yeah, OK except for the black widow option, I miss that), even if it was ridiculous in that case).

Compare to New Vegas, where the majority of skill and SPECIAL checks were in the dialogue. Because that's the way Obsidian does things.

I could only speculate about why there aren't more skill checks. Maybe Bethesda thought with lots of perks instead of a few skills, it would lock out too many players (with the absolute freedom thing). IMO, that would have made these checks more special ™ when they do happen, even if they were minor things or there was another way round. But if they had included more of them, I would have expected them to be like the ones you posted.

My point is that the lack of options to handle things in different ways isn't because of the voice acting or due to the dialogue wheel, it's just the way they have designed the game. For better or worse. (And I think it could have been better in that regard)

PS. I regard EA's micro-transations as their business plan. I'm not a fan of the system.

Ok, you took it the wrong way, dang. It was meant as a joke, not as an insult. I apologize for any misunderstanding.

OK, first off, I regard the lack of skill checks as a bad thing. I've only seen one instance of them, when there could easily have been many more.

But, you have kind of reinforced what I was trying to say. There were a few skill or SPECIAL checks in the Fallout 3 dialogue, most were for things you could do outside of it. You could say what you like to Mr Burke about the bomb in Megaton, but you make the choice when you step up to it (yeah, OK except for the black widow option, I miss that), even if it was ridiculous in that case).

Compare to New Vegas, where the majority of skill and SPECIAL checks were in the dialogue. Because that's the way Obsidian does things.

I could only speculate about why there aren't more skill checks. Maybe Bethesda thought with lots of perks instead of a few skills, it would lock out too many players (with the absolute freedom thing). IMO, that would have made these checks more special ™ when they do happen, even if they were minor things or there was another way round. But if they had included more of them, I would have expected them to be like the ones you posted.

My point is that the lack of options to handle things in different ways isn't because of the voice acting or due to the dialogue wheel, it's just the way they have designed the game. For better or worse. (And I think it could have been better in that regard)

PS. I regard EA's micro-transations as their business plan. I'm not a fan of the system.

I totally agree with what you said here.

Yes, Bethesda could have done better, because it is a really cool feature I very much enjoy. But it isn't missing because Bethesda is waging war on dialogue or because the system itself is bad or that voice actors make it impossible to skill check... And overall it is still a 10 out of 10 for me without those skill checks I liked.

It seems like skill checks were one of those things they just ran out of time and forgot to do it, much in the way I forgot to wash my car last week... I don't hate my car, I just though buying groceries was a better use of my time.

But the dialogue wheel could potentially incorporate skill checks in a much more awesome ways than before. I am super excited as a modder to work with this and actually use some things that incorporate the real time dialogue that has changed since previous games and put in skill checks that actually have a timed element to them and create some sort of action real time, as in Mass Effect 2 and 3.

It seems like Bethesda made this cool system where the characters are free during conversations and not locked in a super awkward frozen stare in the center of your screen... But then they never implemented the mechanic in any way. They don't have the ability to do stuff in the conversation used... Stuff like if you are talking to your enemy and you see out of the corner of your eye that one of his men is creeping up with a gun, you can do something about it. Maybe taking that second guy out scares the guy you were talking to so much that he has changed his tone and is now giving you all the information he has.

What about a science check that shows up for about 3 seconds and then disappear that allow you to interrupt when someone is saying something dumb. But once they finish talking it is too late to take the interrupt path. I want to have a science check and half way through what Maxson is saying have the player interject, 'Let me stop you right there, that is not actually how things work blah blah blah' and to see Maxson looking dumbfounded at the player as a result as he gets schooled by a smart player.

What about if you are talking to a mercenary or something, and you start to get the notion that this is going to end in a fight, so a perception check pops up and allows you to subtly signal your companion to move into a more strategic position, and then you layer a charisma check on top of that where you try to draw out the conversation a bit longer and distract the mercenary until your companion is in position to lay an ambush.

So basically...

- I think Bethesda could have done better, but I still think the game is great.

- I think the new direction they are taking opens up a whole new world of possibilities that are yet untapped

- I personally am glad they are taking a new direction and moving forward

- I still respect the old systems and I truly hope some developer out there makes some great games for you, just not Bethesda

One of Bethesda's game designers was in this thread just minutes ago. So I think they've got the message loud and clear and this thread has served its purpose.

That's not to say that they're about to do a 180 on their dialogue mechanic, but at least they've seen what many people think of it.

Absolutely. I could real off loads of suggestions for things they could do with it. That's why I find the whole "the voice svcks!" argument and counter argument unproductive.

For instance, the "dynamic dialogue" system. That probably took a load of programming effort, but what does it add? I'm sure they could have used it to make things more interesting-

If turning your back on someone mid conversation caused them to react, maybe chase after you to finish what they were saying.. Or pulling a gun on a character to threaten them had a chance of intimidating them vs a chance of them turning hostile. That would have been cool.

The survivors personality doesn't even match the Beth's story character. Person from story got his wife killed and son stolen plus he has awoken in world completely alien to him, but appart from first few minutes after exiting the pod and couple of emotional outbursts in first dialogue with Codsworth he sounds so incredibly unfazed by it that it effectively breaks any pretence to realistic character development. In the context of Bethesda's own story sole survivor sounds like a emotionless psychopath. I just don't buy him/her.