The dialog tree actually feels worse than Mass Effect with only 4 options.

I don't think we only have four options, I think there's much more to it than what we've seen so far.

But then Ive got no direct evidence of that, even with the leaks we've seen very little, and ive only been watching the gameplay parts of it to avoid plot spoilers. So meh. :/

Yeah sorry I wasn't trying to imply that the whole game was like Mass Effect. My bad.

What I'm saying is I dont want a mass effect style dialogue system. That worked for Mass Effect where Shepherd was his / her own character that you were merely influencing. It doesn't work well if you want to establish your own personality for a character beyond "I'm a saint", "I kill everyone", and "Pay me".

If that's the road Fallout 4 is going down, then I have little interest in it.

In all the conversations we've seen so far there have only been 4 options displayed at most

Yeah I can see your worries, and I share them aswell. In the end though I think everything will be a lot more clear when we have the game in our mitts and can judge everything in context and not in that clouded leak-vision that happens with almost every major game nowadays. I'm heavy into the roleplaying side of the game aswell, and I am holding onto the hope that things are a lot more open than the roleplaying of Mass Effect ever was

Yeah, but I don't think those options are just going straightline down a single tree, I think asking a question will open up more question options that you can then go back to the main tree with. It'd be kinda weird if it didnt.

This is my issue. Nothing, that has been revealed so far, contradicts the idea that the dialogue has been horribly simplified

Neverwinter Nights 2. It was also released in 2006, same as Oblivion. Sure, NWN isn't really an open world game, but it had a great story and companions! (and it was made by Obsidian!) But yea, I love both actually NWN and Oblivion. As for FO 3... eh, I prefer NV honestly.

Back on topic though, for now, I LOVE the idea that my character has a voice. I'm so over the brooding, silent protagonist. We will see how the story unfolds and how the wheel will work. I bet that after the 4 initial options, the dialogue will open up more follow up options on the same topic. Let's just first play the game and then "rant" about it.

But it does not work that way, you can not go back like in ME, and one simple keyword does not tell you anything really. To me the conversation wheel looks like it is made for a super mutant, and a particular dumb one, at that. It is not the wheel or the possibilities of branching out trees that irks the people but the lack of information from the keywords and the lack of defining your character by choosing a fitting answer.

In the initiate quest you are making a morally grey decision, maybe one with an impact on the game, yet the conversation wheel tells us in no way how the PC feels about it. The game tells us he is mentally impaired: Feral/Yes/No/Unsure. Trogs talk better than that. And then you might choose yes, because you feel the initiate did nothing wrong but the PC might say: "Yes I love these things like you do, let us all make perverted love." Now this will not be the option, but you will never know unless you pick it because the wheel does not tell you anything.

What would you have said to John Henry Eden in Fallout 4? Suicide!/Kill you!/Purifier?/Goodbye

Or the master? Yes/No

Wow we make decisions that might be heavy on our hearts yet this in not presented in any way by the wheel, although it could be. ME did it alright, though I like my stuff written out more.

Also having only four options limits you in other ways of course, asking about the BoS takes up time and you want to ask specifics. You might want to reask stuff you did not get. And even the simplest characters had some stuff to tell, just look at Gob at Megaton, he does not serve a purpose really, yet you can ask him about his life and what he did to get stuck there and he tells you about Greta in Underworld, too. Choosing Ghoul?/Moriarty bad?/Radio good?/Goodbye does not look like a flow of conversation to me. It appalls me even to look at it.

By the way this was not all directed to you of course, I just quoted you for the first paragraph. The rest goes to the people that think this whell in this game is a tremendously good idea.

Yeah I can tell that this isnt directed at me, since I don't think the wheel is a good idea to begin with

If the 10th comes around and all of my fears about this stuff are correct then it will have been the second time that Bethesda has dissapointed me in some aspect or another. It's not the end of the world though, they moved on from what I didn't like in Oblivion, and I enjoyed the next iteration on those aspects. And even then it didn't entirely kill my enjoyment of the game, I still have my forever roleplay character in Oblivion just like all the others. I hope that I am able to look past this stuff in Fallout 4 if it becomes the same issue as Oblivion.

This exactly. The apparent lack of ability to give your character a personality and the inability to go back and get more information are the worst parts of this, and that isn't even the dialogue wheel's fault.

As I said, I do not know of a screenshot showing the end conversation in FO4.

I chose the ending conversations from Fallout and FO3 because they were of the exact same concepts, but with different writing style; and you can see that in FO3, it just blurts out a telegraphed command, that's indicative of their [IMO bizarre] need to inform, and never surprise the player.

*Is it your belief that the end conversation in FO4 would not look the same as any other abridged four choice screenshot?

I disagree. I do think that every interactive aspect of anything in a game should have a function. Two choices that lead to the exact same result [in conversation] are a devaluation of the player's choice. It does not matter if normal conversations have this. A game is a structured series of choices, and none should be arbitrary. This is why I have no qualms with so called 'magic pants', because the elective choice to use one garment or another, has a defined change in the mechanics of the game. Dialog should always offer the same; it's a player choice; and one that players may put thought into, and having it be useless decoration ~a meaningless choice, I find that insulting.

Have you played that far in the game to actually get into a conversation with John Henry Eden?

That the thing... apparently a lot of times you can't actually go back to ask about previous topics. At this point I'm hoping this was the case only for the conversations we've seen so far. Either way having only 4 conversation options/topics on screen at once is pretty bad design in a game where you talk and are talked to a lot.

Dialog wheel can be good(Deus Ex) or bad. However i don't know if there are new dialog options for perks. If there are then i won't be bitter about new system. If not then it's a failure after New Vegas.