From what I hear, you get 4 dialogue options that lead into other things. You cant go back and choose every dialogue option to hear them all either, so multiple playthroughs are necessary to experience it all.

I havent seen the new dialogue myself yet, so idk for sure how good it is, but I'm hoping it has more depth than were assuming.

Yup, although roleplaying, well I guess everyone is roleplaying in some way but most people would never say they "roleplay".

We can get into deep discussions but I think the smaller number of options really comes down to the fact that people don't like to read. Oh and making it work best for controllers is also very important. I'm not shouting from the rooftops about dumbing down, I try to not use that term actually, but we all know this is a big IP and the goal is to keep expanding the audience, within reason of course . Skyrim hit as the RPG for people who wouldn't normally play RPGs, and I'm sure Bethesda's goals for Fallout 4 were to continue that trend.

Who cares if the dialogue didn't lead to anything? I think people forget that not everything has to have a direct practical purpose to help you "win" the game. Some things just give you more information, context, and help you flesh out your character's personality. That's being gimped with the new dialogue system.

I won't make assumptions until I see more information but I agree with you in regards to why you liked the old dialogue style. For me, it helped me learn more about the world, it helped the NPC feel more alive, and collectively helped settlements feel more like settlements, than just goal oriented NPCs who don't acknowledge you after you complete their quests. It was also just something that helped my overall roleplaying experience, even if it did require some imagination. I do really hope that the dialogue quantity won't suffer, however. If it does, then that will kill my expectations for TES VI's dialogue being much different.

Dialogue options are actually probably the most important thing to me in BGS's games, along with quest writing.

From what I saw in the leaked footage, the PC dialog summaries were a bigger issue than the dialog format.

I don't like the idea of asking a tangential question and then not being able to go back and ask other questions. If its just specific conversations then it's fine but if that's the primary mode of interacting? Ehhhh. If they want to take a page from Bioware they should at least do it right.

From what Iv'e seen in the leaked videos, I'm not impressed with it. In fact, it's kind of annoying in many ways. To me, this is Beth's way of "improving" their dialogue, which it doesn't.

I agree, because about 40% to 70% of all the dialogue options back in 3 and NV were downright useless.

I prefer older deep system that gives you rp freedom. But I saw some leaked Spanish screenshots and like I am Spanish myself I could say you could ask about other stuff The Upper choice is asking more about x button. Also there is some return previous topic. Also I read and listen voice actors interviews were they hinted you could select between various personalities in extras. Is that true?

Exactly this.

Dialogue in RPGs is not just a straight forward means to progress some quest or locate things. It's a way to learn about the world itself. The character you're talking to, information on or what they think of other characters, locations, factions, or events throughout the world, learning history of the game world itself, and so many more options dialogue has to offer. You know, conversation stuff. Dialogue is an element in RPGs that expands exploring to more than just "where is this dungeon" or "where is this general store", it gives the game world and everything in it actual depth.

Honestly, I find it rather saddening to see this is the mindset for some people when playing RPGs nowadays. Dialogue that is more than just about what gets you from point A to B is one of the important factors that has separated RPGs from other genres.

I heard something about that too.

This sounds promising. For all the talk about better role play with the old games, there weren't actually a lot of times it where it actually made any difference what you said.

I watched a bit of leaked dialog, in that sample conversation I saw the dialog choice descriptions were pretty tight with what actually gets said. no trickery that gives you unexpected results. but that was just like one minute of the whole game so who knows. I think people worrying about comparisons to bioware are over thinking it though, one thing i remember about playing their games with that style of dialog is that it seems like they deliberately gave you options that had unexpected results. not to spite the players, but more to spice up or make the conversation less boring. I don't think bethesda will be following that step for step.

I played most Bioware games and can say that a bunch of well-worded answers to choose from is better than choose from different keywords. You can set the tone of the conversation and know exactly what your character will say, this is really good to define your own character in RPGs. This synergizes well with having no voiced-protagonist, as your answers happen in your head only then.

That being said Mass Effect, for example, generally had a couple of keywords, so the meaning was mostly pretty clear, also you had two Karma levels, that were represented by different colours. THe voiced protagonist, while being decent, did not always hit my expected tone, could be my mistake or his. However there were still situations like: "Disagree." being turned into "[censored] off." Or a provocation that turned the situation hostile.

Now what I saw from the dialogue system in Fallout 4, we usually only have three words maximum to judge what is going to be said. That is ridiculously low, you can not judge the tone of your answers and what is going to be said exactly. Furthermore I found a nice example of another problem. So the Vault-Tec rep is on your door and you ask about Vault-Tec, then your doorbell rings or you are distracted somehow and miss part of the answer. So then there is the option to choose: "Enough space?" Now you do not need to be a rocket scientist to see that you would be asking about the vault size. But of you are new to the series you are missing an important part of the lore and have no clue what these keywords mean. With a dialogue option like "Is there enough room in your vaults for me and my family?" it is quite clear what is meant, as it summarizes the stuff heard before.

Also with less keywords, obviously the amount of times where "No." means "[censored] off." increases greatly.

Another problem is that you do not seem to be able to get back in dialogue, so many options are missing. This is not logical at all, why can you not ask about the Power Armour after you asked about BoS history in DC? As for the example before with the Vault-Tec representant: At first you can ask about Vault-Tec, ask him to tell more, tell him to go away or say Good Morning. So when I am polite and greet him at the door, I do not have time to ask about his company any more? How stupid is that?

And how is it easier to navigate a dialogue wheel with only ever four choices? You have two sticks and a cross to navigate scroll through options, this is just as intuitive. It is, how questionable it is, clearly a design choice because they wanted to get away from the face-to-face dialogue they had since 2002. They wanted it to make more dynamic, more "in-game" and focus on their voiced protagonist (like Shepard in ME). This is what they came up with. They avoid all the "facial animations are bad"-criticism, too if the face is further away from you in dialogue.

Honestly I think it is a huge step back. Bioware can do this because they are masters in giving you a defined character as PC and NPCs. They are also masters in writing conversation. Bethesda however is not, which is okay. Fallout has other things that are outstanding. However, and this hurts the most, the deliberate choice to not go back in dialogue and the cuts after each answer, give way less background about the lore and history, less context to quests, give few cluses about your or NPC's motivation in dialogue. So the lore, their strong point, is being dumbed down by their design choice. This hurts.

Yet we have not seen all that much, so it might take a turn for the better. If not, they might patch themselvers. But do not count on the mod community at all. The first weeks people will develop nvde mods. Also I guess the number of mod-users is quite low comapred to not modded playthroughs.

This is just one stop short of the next step: having only a single button called "next". It's detrimental to the ability to flesh out the world, the characters, and letting you emphasize different characteristics of a persona. I'm *not* pleased.

We'll know soon enough...

If will definitely hurt. Just one more thing that we can thank consoles for, a maximum of 4 conversation options in [censored] year 2015. I especially detest how you cannot ask everything once you choose something, you're locked on that path. So even though they did 110k lines, we might actually see less in the game if that's true.

I will have to play the game to see if the voiced PC dialog gets in my way or not. I predict I won't like it, but I will try it first before I come to any conclusions. If I decide I don't like it, I will just put on a mod that stops the speaking for me.

Exactly. It's about context and roleplay. Dialogue is not something needs to be "simplified" in my opinion.

I LOVE Bioware games, but the dialogue wheel is the bane of my existence.

Yeah, I'm afraid of this as well.

I had the feeling it would hurt the game quite a bit and watching some of the leaks confirmed it for me. Easily the worst addition.

That wont solve the only 4 dialogue options, nor will it solve the issue of the player saying things in a different way than you intended or expected.

And yet even they cannot truly master this dialog system, perhaps because it's just flawed, and cannot be mastered? I remember clearly moments in DA2/DAI where my 'defined' characters turned psychotically bipolar, because the 'What's going on' at the start of the conversation was a 'green' choice and thus spoken in a calm, reasonable way, but the 'No thanks' at the end, if you didn't want any part of whatever deal was offered once you learned all the details was 'red', and therefore translated to 'I will eviscerate you and eat your dog for dinner. Oh, and also let's trigger combat'.

Same. I have no idea why developers keep stubbornly insisting on keeping the dialog wheel, it clearly doesn't work all that well.

(Though I fear it's for simplicity's sake and to appeal to the gamers who don't want to read dialog. But saying this makes me feel like a grumpy old nerd, so I put it in the side notes).

Still, I prefer to stay optimistic until I get my dreams crushed, so maybe it'll all just work.

I don't think this type of dialogue system has any impact on the story itself - only the writing really effects that. The quality of Fallout 4's story will come down to how well its written, not whether or not the protagonist is voiced, and whether or not you're saddled with a dialogue wheel... which are both completely irrelevent.

I do think this type of dialogue system hurts role playing, however.

I don't like the looks of it, but I hope the key words at least closely reflect what the dialogue ends up being. I remember being very surprised in Mass Effect by the outcome of some of my word choices. They went in way different directions that I believed they would.

From some screenshots, it looks to be way worse than even Mass Effect unfortunately. Think of Alpha Protocol without the Telltale time limit. One of them literally was:

FERAL?/UNSURE/NO/YES

Remember to quicksave before dialogues now!

Think of Alpha Protocol and Deus Ex HR. It's like those now.

Is the dialogue as a whole really this limited now? I was hoping that there might be a larger menu for topics or something. Are there only 4 topics that can be discussed with every single NPC now? Also, is it confirmed that you're unable to go back and select different dialogue responses for dialogue you've already engaged in?

Do we know what happens if we've already pressed all of an NPC's dialogue topics once? Do they go silent/non-acknowledge-mode like they often did in Skyrim?