High-quality writing is even more important than having many options in dialogue and unfortunately, this is something we won't see until the game comes out.

I also remember seeing this. There's this taken from the French Official Playstation magazine: http://boards.ign.com/elder_scrolls/b5312/200177620/p1/

"Not every NPC will have a complete set of dialogue like in Oblivion. It’ll be more like in Fallout 3, where only the ‘important’ NPC’s have anything substantial to say."

I am very afraid that there won't really be much "dialogue"... there wasn't in Oblivion, and, to be honest, there wasn't much in Morrowind either. In Morrowind you had a list of topics you could ask about, or occasionally tell about; I didn't like it at first, but it kind of worked, and it ended up being immersive and informative.

I really disliked the dialogue system in Oblivion. It felt artificial and lacklustre. Most characters I met (I just played one third or so of the game, and then stopped) had just one thing to say at best, and interaction was minimal. I hope that someday in the future they will have a proper dialogue system worthy of Fallout 2, Arcanum, Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate, but that it too much to hope for in an age where all dialogue has voiceovers. But still... much was lost, and it's regrettable.

:tops:

how is this ANY DIFFERENT

in Baldur's Gate you had a million people who only ever said rumors, and then a couple hundred people who actually had dialogue choices. Fallout was the same way, but with floating text.

In Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate and Fallout (1 & 2) you had much more dialogue than in Oblivion and F3. What's more important, the writing was excellent (characters, story etc.). Bethesda is known for having expansive open worlds and tons of stuff to do, but not for quality writing. I hope that this will change.

I agree the dialogue writing in Oblivion was not inspiring. Having choices and speechcraft options in dialogue would help too.

Planescape Torment way too much dialogue, and it showed on the other parts of the game that were pretty weak.

And I don't think Skyrims dialoge system will be that horrible. The Radiant Story will probably make it a bit more interesting, and I guess you could still ask the people for directions or quest leads.

It's confirmed that in Skyrim you can have conversations with different dialogue options with NPC's. So if that's possible it's possible for every NPC, in theory. Maybe not every NPC will have full dialogue options but that's to save time and stuff, it has NOTHING to do with the system.

In Fallout 3 you can't talk with every NPC while it uses the same system as Oblivion.

Skyrim's system is superior to Oblivion/Fallout 3's time freeze face zoom dialogue.

Hmmmm. I hope Bethesda have played Mass Effect. The dialogue system in them games is sublime (in my opinion).

We had dialog in oblivion? Oh, you mean the interactive walking sign posts with the horrible minigame. Dialog was horrible in oblivion, it isn't just getting info and quests, I wish you could actually *interact* with them, or even have some branching choices with what you say and do. Everything was way to linear on the quests, you had no free will besides doing the quests or not. I would love to play a elder scrolls game with with the writing/dialog/interactive complexity depth of dragon age origins.

I was kind of eh on it. It's a good system but the main selling point is how you could interrupt people with what you wanted to say. The way they said it made me believe that cutting someone off would open new dialog options but really all it was was a skip dialog button. The only time it really made sense was when you interrupted with an angry remark.

This is so true
However, voiceovers are not mutually exclusive with good writing (see The Witcher, where the main protagonist is fully voiced, or the bioware games where the dialogue is exceptional). I understand why we can't have voice acting for the main character, but that doesn't mean we couldn't have longer and more in depth dialogue lines for both our character and the npc's.

Unfortunately, there is a limiting factor for voiced dialogue. Disk space. The difference in file size for voiced dialogue vs text dialogue is enormous.

It would be SO nice to have an Elder Scrolls game with branching dialogues and quests. As in, plenty of different outcomes for conversations and quests.

My gosh! Come on people, where is your faith! I'm pretty sure that the dialogue system will be fine.

I don't think everyone should talk with you. If you walk from person to person talking to everybody, they should start talking behind your back. "Man, I hate that guy more than snowcrabs".

Jokes aside. I'm a little bit afraid of it turning into FNV. (Not the static bit.)

I do wish Bethesda would drop the idea of having all dialog voice acted. Having key lines and greets, as in Morrowind, was sufficient - and it allowed you to have MUCH more dialog than if you had to voice act every single line. I know you can use silent MP3's to simulate this, but still.

I'm guessing this is a consequence of the console migration, where reading can be painful.

the best part about the way this dialogue system seems to be shaping up is that there's a really good chance it'll actually work magnificently for unvoiced dialogue.

like in Oblivion and Fallout 3 unvoiced dialogue was terrible because everything FROZE AROUND YOU and the face zoomed in and the person talking would do nothing but talk to you. you could have unvoiced dialogue but since everything around you went completely still and without lipsyncing the person just stared at you and it felt really awkward.

Morrowind (and STALKER, actually) cover this really well by just having that huge dialogue window pop up. in Skyrim, NPCs will move around a lot more and actually do other things besides just standing there talking to you, and they'll be facing away from you and doing their job and whatever and the world will go on around you. this system would make the "immersion" barrier much less of an issue when coupled with unvoiced dialogue.

if it actually feels as organic as they've described it i can see the potential a lot of really good less generic NPC mods and quest mods and stuff coming out of this.

I wouldn't worry about Dialogue, This is an elder Scrolls game. Although I can't say that I'm worried when I haven't even seen the system itself yet.