I have been playing games since Space Invaders. The first game I ever played on a PC was the text adventure game "Adventure" back in 1984 or 1985 or so. I've played a number of text adventures - and yes, they can be immersive, because just like books they are all text. First or Third Person RPGs become immersive through entirely different means, and having conversations take place through text breaks that immersion. They're visually so real that it is a jarring disconnect when this quite-real-looking person walks up to me and "converses" with me via a text window - it really is the equivalent of speaking to somebody through written notes.

Text-only games are, as I've said, as poor a comparison as books because both use entirely different means to immerse the player/reader than do other games, and text is used to convey everything.

Absolutely. Played through the demo twice and was thoroughly underwhelmed. Whoever said the graphics were early 360 level was being too kind; they're more like the graphics of Fable mixed with those of World of Warcraft.

And yes, the combat is dull, dull, dull. Few games' combat gameplay measure up to that of Arkham City, in my opinion.

I would settle for some optional additional text based dialog options that were triggered when you turned the quest arrow off, so you could get Morrowind like directions. Getting lost is great fun.

That was a boring game. Asteroids was somewhat better. Defender was the best of the lot.

lol

Gauntlet was one of the best of the old-school video games, as was Marble Madness. And the old sit-down Star Wars game.

Anybody that remembers the very old Star Trek game wins 50 Crotchety Old Fart points.

Text based dialogue would most certainly be fine with me.
In Morrowind I got the directions for the quest.
Then I had those directions in my journal and that was good enough for me.
I disdain all of the handholding the compass does for you, like we are inept and cannot follow directions.

Who know I might rent it and try it, I have never been fond of button mash fest they drive me nuts.

Gauntlet was the shizzz! I remember spending an obscene amount of quarters on that game... playing with friends and random strangers trying to get to the mythical "End Level"... YEAH RIGHT! "Hey bra - gimme another quarter, quick! Valkarie is about to die and we're on level 98!!!"

Which old Star Trek game? An arcade game? I remember an old unauthorized rip-off Star Trek game I had on my Commodore 128D "fire Proton torpedoes" I don't rememeber what the enemies were, but they weren't Klingons. Klyrons? Klaxxons?

How the heck did we get on arcade games anyway? Lol.

Considering I end up getting bored with most of the dialog anyways, I find myself fast forwarding and skipping most dialog, especially it just doesn't matter. My choices don't matter, I don't have to be careful, there are not multiple paths (branches) available similar to an alignment system or rep system (paragon, renegade, or neutral), quest text does not matter since I get a giant indicator that says go RIGHT HERE. Outside of that, I find most of it to just not be very interesting or engaging. There are very few quests that I slow down and let it play out. To me, I have never really cared for voice acting at all. All glitter no substance. For some games, it helps to build the game. I thought in Mass Effect for example, voice acting was great. Then again, you had a rep system, interesting dialog options, and (to me) an engaging story. I have grown up with text only, I don't think it is outdated. I always turn subtitles on, always anyways. For me, I could care less but I think it can definitely add something to the game. I do feel that if given the choice for dialog branches and bland linear voice acting however, I would choose the text only branches ALL day long.

lol-

the first thing i do in EVERY game i play is see if i can turn on the subtitles.

Exactly I can read much faster than NPCs can speak. I groan every time I see a non-human or older NPC particularly. The devs are like "hmm they have to have this speech disorder thattttttttttt caaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuussssssssessssssss theeeeeeeeeeeeeeemmmmmm toooooooooo talllllllllllllllllllk (pause for 5 minutes) reallll sloooooooooow." I'm like, damn just get to who you want me to kill or who stole your sweet roll already man.

Honestly... I never try to 'feel like I was there' (not my interest). I'm not there and I was not born there... but my PC was and is. It is they who belong there and all I try to do is understand what happens around them, and decide how they would react to those events (based on what I know about them); I can do that with full voice or without, equally... but generally I find that if it's mostly text, then more things can happen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_%28arcade_game%29

Same here... plus i'm Dutch, so it's a extra help

Again we're totally off topic-- but I don't think it's fair to say that KoA has bad graphics simply because you don't like the art style. They're excellent graphics, just not made to be realistic. Yes, they're cartoon-ish in their own way but that's how they're designed to be.

Combat in KoA LOOKS pleasing. It looks great. If you think it's dull then I'm not sure what that says about Skyrim combat...


Yeah... I think you missed the point.

I get the argument and everything... But could people stop using the Daedric Quest for the Prince of Domination as a example of "linear" quest. Is the Prince of Domination and there are plenty of reasons to why that quest is the way it is. (IMHO)

Back In-Topic: I don't know, I got quite used to hear people speaking. If it's going to be full-text dialogues, then we need a lot of greetings to prevent even more sound-less taverns. Also, I got a question, doesn't full-text dialogues make scenes or scripted moments very slow-paced or even impossible? (If Text = Content, I'm all for it, I'm just playing Devil's Advocate here)

risky-

not at all. it just wasn't pertaining to the subject of your thread.

As for taverns: Look at Baldur's Gate (text dialogue RPG). Their tavern noise sounded like pvssyr. It sounded busy. There were lots of voices, a breaking glass once in a while-- it sounded livelier than Skyrim's taverns!

As for making scenes / scripted moments slow paced or impossible-- hardly. If the scene is important to the plot, it could be easily voiced over. The point is that the ENTIRE game doesn't have to be voiced over if it means you're sacrificing content, choices, and consequences (which in the case of Skyrim we most certainly are).

Okay, so you guys are talking about Kingdoms of Amular: Reckoning? Wow. I had to go back like a dozen related posts (in 2-3 pages) to find out what game you guys kept discussing. Figured I'd clarify that for others, since I went through the trouble. Never played that game, though.

I find combat in Skyrim to be fine; more exciting than Oblivion and Morrowind. and not as arcade-ish as stuff like Fable. Before I played Skyrim, I was kinda scared they would actually have unlockable combo-sequences or something.

Yeah, I got into a little debate mid-thread about combat in Skyrim and how I think it's very lacking in many areas... I used KoA as an example of an open world game with attractive combat. I don't think combat in TES has changed much since Morrowind to be perfectly honest. Enemies don't really react to being struck in any realistic way at all-- they'll stagger from a power attack and that's about it. Your own character reacts even less so to being struck in combat. Like I said, magic is basically "hold this button." Two handed is "tap this button." Archery is point and shoot. Sword 'n Board is fun, but that's about it.

Just my own opinion, and WAY off topic to voice vs. text

I agree sword and shield is a lot of fun; that's why I chose to use it. Next character will likely be one-handed plus magic, so I'll see how that goes.

Regarding my point about KoA, yeah, I wasn't saying the graphics were technically poor; I'm sure they used as high-poly-count models as they could get away with on consoles and ditto with texture resolutions. My point was about the art style, which is horribly derivative of World of Warcraft. I might have been impressed with it six years ago or so when I was playing Fable on an old-school Xbox, but in 2012 it's just bland and cheesy. They could do cartoony if they did it well, but they chose to go with a WoW-clone look instead.

As for the comparison of combat between the two, yeah, the combat in KoA is seamless, it's just that it plays like a coin-op video game. It's fine for something like a simple arcade-y hack'n'slash game like Gauntlet - I'd be perfectly happy with it if I were feeding quarters into a machine in an arcade or just playing a time-waster game on console. But for a supposed RPG with many, many hours of non-linear gameplay? Nah. Dull.

Skyrim's combat isn't perfect, but it's pretty damn good. It's certainly an improvement over Oblivion, and from what I hear, a huge improvement over Morrowind. What I would like to see in the next game would be a combat system as complex as that of Arkham City's. Not that style, of course; you aren't playing the masked, avenging son of murdered parents, waging a war of vengeance on the criminal world - well, most of us aren't, anyway. But I have appreciated how that game's combat system works so fluidly and has so many, many options and approaches to almost every combat situation. They got a good start in Skyrim with knockback, stagger, fatigue, vary speeds and reach lengths for weapons, shield bashing, and so forth. They should next move toward being able to give followers tactical commands.

If texts fixed the problems, I'd be all for it, though I agree that previous TES games didn't do much with their text. The othe problem is that voice acting helps bring life and personality to the world and its characters. TES already had problems with that, I know, but voice acting helps a bit. The other issue is that suddenly removing voice acting from a game that previously had it is an unheard of step that would not be supported by developers, and the GENERAL fanbase. Remember that we don't necessarily represent the "average" TES fan, especially since only a fraction of the fans use these forums, and those that do often have different tastes / priorities.

I think the problem isn't voice acting, but poor choices. I always reference New Vegas when I try to describe what Skyrim should have incorporated, built on, and improved upon. Vegas wasn't perfect either in terms of dialogue, or anything really, but Bethesda seems to have totally ignored what they did correctly, things that added more freedom, immersion, and promoted beyter dialogue withou resorting to text. Of course it wasn't made by Bethesda, but Fallout is their IP now, and they should have taken all the good things from it and added it to Skyrim. Long story short, there are ways to improve dialogue without resorting to text.
Edit: Sorry for all the typos. I'm using my phone to type haha

I have been going no HUD and either doing map checks or making judicious use of the clairvoyance spell. Still wish there were "directions" from the game world, like "go east along the White River from Whiterun and look for a tall tower straddling the river."

But the clairvoyance spell is not that bad when you have HUD turned off. At least it is a believable gameworld mechanic, and sometimes the spell fails (no known path). With HUD off, you don't even get the "no direct path seen" message," the spell just doesn't work.

HI Riskybiz13! Good to see you.

Your concerns are valid and yet the fact that to this day a number of RPGs still use text won't change my opinion that text-only or even text-mostly dialogue is the least immersive option of all . Look, next generation hardware is coming out in a few years. Let's wait and see what the future holds for fully voiced dialogue. We may be surprised. Meanwhile, going back to text is a step 180o away from the right direction. Indeed, text can be as shallow as voiced dialogue since the shallowness lies in the writing not in the medium.

I do like clairvoyance I also like that the spell fails and it sometimes gives me odd directions, I just wish we had some general directions that could point us in the direction we need to go to instead of that all knowing compass, I also wish there was a default option to turn off things on the HUD you want off.