With 100 speech, and all the perks, you should be able to talk anyone into anything. That would make it fun, and not pointless to level. I mean, this is a fantasy game right?

In real life, Bill Clinton talked Kim-Jung iL (sp?) into giving up 2 "radical" types that were actively trying to promote a democratic revolution in North Korea. Bill Clinton loaded up his plane, flew over there, and even though it was obvious to all, everywheree, that he no longer, in any way, represented the intrests of the United States government, he just talked the dictator into freeing the revolutionaries.

Superman can just bend steel, leap over tall buildings in a single bound. In my life, I've never needed to bend steel or jump over a building. But talking a chick into a blow-job? Getting caught and then getting away with it? Just by talking? Dude, that's super-power, and it's really happened.

In a fantasy game that includes skill levels for "speech", you sould be able to talk anyone into anything with the maximum skill. That's just logical, when you look at what has actually happened throughout history.

Talking opposing sides into peace through compromises, that's happened over and over and over throughout history. It is not too difficult to believe it can happen.

I think it would make the game more fun. Like in Fallout 3's main quest, if you wanted to, and had the skill, you could end it just by talking, and making the speech "rolls". (I don't want to give any spoilers, but those who played it, probably know what I'm referring too).

I totally agree. I'd love to see more options where the speech skill is actually useful in TES games, rather than just being a way to not pay or not fight someone.

The way speech/persuasion was handled in games like Fallout 1 and 2 or Arcanum was amazing in terms of what you could do with it. You could virtually talk yourself out of any situation and not have to engage in any fighting at all. Not to say that it would make sense in this game to talk down dragons (though - I guess it would be rather awesome if you could "shout" at them in actual speaking if you had a high enough intelligence/knew enough words/were taught how to actually speak the language rather than just using it as a weapon/tool).

But that is another issue: the lack of statistics on characters other than Magic, Health, Stamina makes that sort of thing impossible. :/

i think that bethesda has never wanted to spend too much money on the voice acting, in oblivion they only hired a couple of people, and in skyrim they tried to add very little variation in dialogue.

They woudln't have had to have hired more voice actors, really. The player character never "talks". It's all text for the player character. They would have just had to add a line for the voice actors to respond with an "oh..ok..i guess" kind of dialogue. Much too late for that now though. Even for the expansions, probably. The expansions planned were likely nearly finished when the game itself went retail. But for future games maybe.

Lots of cred for mentioning FO 1 and 2, and Arcanum though! Those are some of the greatest pc roleplaying games of all time. Even in Fallout 3 (and New Vegas) the speech options seemed more useful than I've found it to be in Skyrim.

speech is flawed in skyrim, along, with optional dialogue, character effect on the gameworld, optional ways to achieve quests/activities, etc.

this area would have been great for added depth with text.

Unless they outsource the DLC to Obsidian, we probably won't be seeing any meaningful or diverse dialogues.