Skyrim was the first game to feature it, and to me, it seemed to come with as many downsides as upsides. Not better, not worse, just different. Feels more real cause the world isn't pausing and time still passes, but it also has the issue where sometimes something will attack or appear while you're in dialog, which is just annoying.

So what do you guys think? Which dialog style do you prefer?

Real time. I have never had an enemy interior a dialog in Skyrim that I couldn't pick up after the interruption had been dealt with.

I liked it better. Going back to oblivion it was just weird how everything stop in the background. Also in skyrim npc's will exit the dialogue themselves when you spend to much time in idle or not doing anything at all I hope they keep it real time and hope they make lock picking and reading books real time.

Unless they actually have radioactive dragons or random vertibirds spawning, it shouldn't be an issue.

or a tunnel digging deathclaw?

I didn't care for the way Skyrim did it so much, but I like the way Fallout 4 is doing it by doing away with a dialogue mode altogether. You just point your reticle at an NPC and conversation options pop up. You can ask them something, then do other things while they talk, continuing the conversation simply by glancing back at them and choosing more dialogue options. You can even maintain conversations with more than one NPC at once ... not that you would want to, but dispensing with a special dialogue 'mode' is cool.

The amount of dialogue I've missed or had to repeat because some random dragon, vampire, rat or whatever appeared is simply far, far too much for me to ever like real time dialogue.

And all sense of immersion is gone when the guy I'm talking to says the exact same thing in the exact same tone after we killed a [censored] dragon.

I liked the realtime dialogue in Skyrim, especially the way a third npc could join in. Also not having a passing guard frozen in time while the conversation takes place is less immersion breaking.

I voted Yes, but...

Gone are the days of Oblivion mid-air conversations

Though nothing beats jumping off the tallest cliff only to fast-travel 2 ft away from death.

I don't have strong feelings one way or the other, dialogue mode doesn't factor into my immersion. I generally prefer paused to avoid unwanted interruptions, but I think real time dialogue is a good choice for a more personal action RPG like Fallout 4.

I voted Yes, but I didn't vote because of immersion. I just voted because it's just an interesting change, that's all...

I like the idea of real-time conversations in theory but I disliked the way it was handled in Skyrim. Some of those force-greet conversations (like the Thief who gives you a weapon and the Hunter who follows after him a few seconds later) have gotten more of my characters killed than Dragons. If Fallout 4 has more force-greet random encounters I would be inclined to vote against real-time convos.

Another problem for me: sound. During real-time conversations other NPCs continue to talk. Several conversation going on in the same room at the same time can make it very hard to hear the NPC I'm talking to. If other conversations were paused or at least muted while I hold a conversation I might like real-time conversations a little better.

I'll wait and see how I like it before I make any final judgements. I'm hoping they have made improvements since Skyrim.

No problem! It is said that we could exit the dialogue whenever we can, or shoot them in the face (or bash them or melt them, whatever your preferences are)

Real time dialogues yes, dialogue wheel, no.

If only they retained the old system combined with the new changes...

If I could, I would make everything real time.

Well... they have to dump their extra money somewhere, like paying 2 main voice actors for the 2 years, or hire some famous actor like they did for Oblivion, Skyrim and Fallout 3 and then have about 10 regular voice actors for several hundreds of NPCs

Also, having annoying "color" audio from background NPCs babbling over your conversation.

This. Especially because I'm still not sold on this "immersion" thing. I honestly prefer good gameplay/functionality to annoying interpretations of "realism". Gameplay trumps realism, every time.

....really? Ew, that sounds awful. Much worse than Skyrim. I don't want to multitask during conversations, I want to focus on them. And have the time to think about them/what they said/what I want to say back/etc. Gotta say, this is the most disconcerting thing I've heard about the game so far (most of the stuff people are panicking about don't seem like a big deal.)

I like the idea of not being "locked in" to the dialogue window. Too many times in FO3 and NV, an NPC initiated dialogue from around a corner or behind an obstacle, so all I could see was a zoomed-in wall texture, and I couldn't move to get them in frame. Also means I can stop and pop a Mentat if I think it'll benefit the conversation.

I'm intrigued about the dynamic interaction aspect--look directly at an NPC to see the conversation options pop up, point at a chest or corpse to get dynamic looting options... If done well, it could really streamline the menu interaction in a good way. If done poorly (hard-coded keys that don't correspond to my remapped keybinds), it could be a real pain in the ass.

Agreed. Those were pretty bad.

I liked the old way of doing things. To me it felt cinematic and that conclusion was only brought about by seeing it in Skyrim and feeling that it lost that touch. I am curious of it in Fallout 4 though.

I would prefer real-time dialogue, but at the same time I can appreciate time being paused. The reason I'm saying this is because I can remember the times in New Vegas where I'll be in the middle of a fight and some guy will come up to me and give me a gift, or an NCR trooper will give me a radio.

I prefer real-time dialog from an immersion point of view, but with some caveats.... if the surroundings are loud to the point I can't concentrate on what the NPC is saying, that is bad. If I can get attacked while we're talking, that's fine ~except~ that I either miss out on what he was saying (or was GOING to say, perhaps, especially if the NPC dies)... but just as bad, the NPC could pick up his conversation from the beginning as if it were the first time we were talking. That's a little immersion-breaking. But it almost has to be in there, or else we just miss out on potentially useful / relevant information. Picture this:

PC walks up to Bob, says, "Hi, Bob, where is the doo-dad?" And Bob starts to talk, "Oh, the doo-dad? Sure, I know where that is, it's ----" and then a Deathclaw jumps up and attacks and Bob helps me kill it. Then I mouse over Bob and say, "So, Bob, where is that doo-dad?" and Bob says, "I done toldja once, I ain't tellin' ya agin!"

So while I may get a map marker on my map (even more troublesome if not), I miss him describing where the doo-dad is, perhaps even mentioning some dangers I might face or some trick to getting into the secret area or something.

So missed dialog or repeated-as-if-nothing-happened-but-we-were-cut-off dialog are the two dangers of real-time dialog. Neither solution (missing the info or having him talk as if we'd never spoken) are ideal.

Mixed Feelings, on the one hand I liked real time dialoge, made it easier to get out of dialoge but on the other hand you have enemies and dragons interrupt your conversation. If I had to choose, I would go yes but either system works for me.

What they should have done is make the world sounds in dialogue mode get duller and have the person talking with the player become more sharper. Ive see/heard it done in other games