No, I hate the system. Not because it removes content, because if an NPC only had one rumour before they only have one now - but because it distinguishes between quest-important and unimportant NPCs, and makes them immediately obvious as soon as you talk to them. Immersion? Bye.

Not being able to initiate dialogue with non-essential NPCs doesn't mean they won't still have a ton of things to say. They will still comment on the world, their lives, current events, rumors, etc. It'll just be more natural imo, with them seeming to choose to speak on their own. The design decisions and their explanations for them thus far indicate a goal of making the world MORE detailed and interesting, not less. They wouldn't just do this for the hell of it in my opinion, or without an alternative they thought was superior to the old system.

This may also mean there are much deeper dialogue trees and options (ala New Vegas, or more) for essential NPCs, than in Oblivion. They have said that dialogue and narrative is an area they can improve a lot in.

This sux. Total opposite of what i asked for in all my threads. Even if characters have nothing to say, allow us to ask questions. I like not knowing whether an npc might have a quest. Makes the game more of a mystery.

And engaging in some sort of conversation allows us to deternine a personality. And therefore making the game seem more real. I'll say it again, killing lucas simms in an angry mob was way funnier than killing "megaton settler"

Everyone complains that Oblivions land wasn't handmade and just copy and pasted. But one thing it had going for it was that all the people in the game were handmade (except guards and bandits...which sux). Now you guys are defending a game that copypastas PEOPLE rather than land? Sure the game will look populated but it won't be. Next weel be using people strictly to blend like in assasins creed

This seems like it could be a good thing. In a game with a world of this scope there's no way they could make it so you can have a meaningful conversation with everyone. Trying to give unique lines of dialogue to everyone would make them all kind of shallow. By focusing on a smaller number of people they can make more memorable characters.

I'm also thinking the difference between the talking to important and background characters won't be as wide as some people are thinking, regarding the interface. Since they say you can do things like walk around while talking to someone, the dialogue window seems to be less of a formal menu now. The only difference might end up being that they'd say something and you'd have nothing to click on for more additional lines, instead of for example, clicking on one person makes them just say something and keep walking while clicking on another brings you to the zoom-ed in face view.

I liked TALKING to other npc's, I don't care if they didn't have much to say, and A LOT of them said great, funny things, that were in no way related to any quests... and regarding your statement saying that almost none of the npc's had any dialog that would tell us anything specific about their lives, what about the personalized greetings in Oblivion, where an npc would state his/her name and a little about themselves or what they do, or even the "Imperial City" topic option (or any city for that matter)? If you clicked it then that npc would give you a unique opinion regarding the city he/she is in. I HATED that most characters in Fallout couldn't be engaged in conversation with and that they were just no-name "megaton settlers", it did get in the way of the immersion, and gave me no reason to care about any of the npc's unlike all past ES games where you could get to know the background of almost all the characters, regardless of their status. And newsflash, I think you might be surprised by the number of people who enjoy the ability to learn the background of characters other than essential npc's. Good day to you, sir.

Yes because spell making is a feature of ALL RPGs....ridiculous.

I find it very funny how something people dont like comes out, and now they start playing the mistranslation card lol Please people, give us a break. Translating languages is not rocket science. The chances to mistranslate something on the level you guys propose implies the people doing the translating are just starting to learn the other language.

Accept you are in denial and stop blaming translation. Its really stupid.

Wouldn't bother me much, as long as the dialogue is well-written. I liked the Fallout 3 method of having notable NPCs have dialogue but random civilians just made quick comments about the town, you, or current events. That worked well and is what I assume Skyrim will do.

I don't like the idea of only talking to quest givers, that would make the game feel a bit hollow really. I think Fallout 3 and New Vegas got the level of conversation right, you could have nice chats with people not involved in quests but there were quite a few individuals who just had some comments.

Huh, what are you talking about? They plan to make it like New Vegas and that is what everyone is complaining about. The people that have quests and add character to the world will have something to say, the others will just be the generic NPCs that spout a random line here and there.

Look at Mojave Outpost. There were only six characters there that had anything useful to say, but the place was full of soldiers like you'd expect it to be. There is no reason all those soldiers milling about should have something to say to you. I much prefer that world.

If you went around talking to everyone you met on the street, you'd quickly get labeled a crack pot and even people that had something to say to you would start shunning you.

Mystery solved. Would certainly love a Bethesda employee to come and clarify/lock this though.

I wouldn't mind only being able to talk to quest givers directly. But only if the game world is vastly more populated than previous games. By that, I mean populated like Assassins Creed. Bustling cities. People busy. I thought it was weird that there weren't hundreds of NPC's in the market in Cyrodiil.

If Bethesda dose that then it will be a EPIC FAIL!

@phyoshi If you will still "certainly still buy it" then what's the point of it being on your "wait for review" list?

As I understand, non important NPCs only will talk about rumors and about what they are doing. I think this is more than they do in Oblivion, where you they can talk about rumors or the city, NOT what they are doing. As I see they had improved non important characters dialog.

I think it is fairly obvious that apart from quest givers, shop keepers and other NPCs we will be able to initiate dialogue with (to trade, for rumours, involved in a quest etc). However, random filler NPCs might not have such an option, and instead they'll just have a greeting phrase. Totally OK by me, I don't need to be able to initiate a conversation with an NPC if he has nothing to say to me (i.e. the way non important NPCs work in Fallout 1 to New Vegas is perfect for me),

There were many npcs in OB and many other rpgs that just say one thing. Click on half the people in OB and all there is to talk about are "rumors", so now you click on them and they just say there one line/rumor,etc. Makes sense to me. Nothing removed as far as I can see.

Again, jumping to conclusions. There's not any official confirmation that states specifically only people who will give you quests will you be able to talk to. Especially when you logically think about the situation and deduce that this is impossible when in the GI article it mentions shop keepers and the likes walking around having a conversation system engage with you while buying goods (which isn't a quest). Thus one can infer that there will be other "characters" in the world that are also like this but might not have ties to a specific quest.

Random filler NPC's on the other hand won't be interested in coversations with you, just people who logically would be (shop keeps, quest givers, special character NPC's). Just like it was in the older games, to a tee. Except now it's all seamless and happens naturally in the game world according to Bethesda.

And one of the things I didn't like about Oblivion and the older TES games is that they treated every NPC like they were someone worth talking to, when in fact most were not (had nothing unique to say). Fallout 3/NV did a great job on this by making it so the filler NPC's didn't engage in conversation with you. This allows the world to be much more populated, in additon to the world being more immersive because realistically speaking you won't and can't really talk to every person on the street and have them wanting to do a formal conversation with you.

The only downside to this is is that it would be great to be able to ask people for directions around a town if you are playing with your HUD off, even if they are random people. Such as, "Where is X person?" or "Where is X tavern?" and they would point you in the right direction or something. But that's a pretty minor loss in my eyes.

Not being a massive tech man, but would this improve performance in say, bigger cities where there are loads of NPC's and you can only talk to some?

Good. I hate it in Oblivion when I walk up to someone and begin a conversation, only to find out that the only option is, "rumours".

This have probably already been posted, but here I go:
I think it will be somewhat like FO3/NV. There will be many unnamed people just like the "settlers" and the like, but each city, village et cetera will also have a decent number with interactble people. I belive that there will be quite a few that is not a merchant or involved in a quest that you can talk to.
Thats just my tought though.

theres no way this is true then you wont be able to talk to other people pertaining to a quest thats not the quest giver. I think it was just poorly translated.

I think most actual conversations will be quest-related, all this really means is cutting out the step in Oblivion between entering conversation and choosing the sole dialog option available. My only iffy spot is whether or not the unimportant NPCs will be named. I always liked how everyone was there in the other games, hell in Morrowind even generic bandits each had names, implying they were people with relatives and a history.

I would've said the same about nixing spellmaking. We'll just have to wait for confirmation on all these things. Dialog, spellmaking, birthsigns, etc. The Italian coverage was a pretty big bombshell and we'll know before too long how accurate we are.

So if we can only directly talk to quest givers how do we talk to shopkeepers and merchants?

You can still talk to everybody, but some people will only give you a single rumour. Not much different from Oblivion.