Firstly, Skyrim is a shining gem in the circlet of major awesomeness that is the Elder Scrolls series - too many people put forth their complaints without acknowledging how impressive the overall product is; I love Skyrim like a crackhead loves freebase cocaine.

Having said that, something that grinds my ancient Dwemer gears (or cogs, whatever) is the dialogue that the player is given to choose from. I think Bethesda has done a pretty good job with the NPC dialogue, but it feels as though they deliberately made the Player's speech feel significantly different to the NPCs'. The NPCs speak as if they're people of Tamriel, of Skyrim, but the Player sounds more as if he's a person who's been plucked off his couch and dropped into a computer game and is interacting with people from a fantasy world. Now I understand that that's closer to reality, but reality is not what I want to be presented with while playing an RPG set in a fantasy realm - I don't want to be a regular Joe who's been transported into Tamriel, I want to be the Dragonborn; the hero, the villian, the thief, the assassin, whatever.

It feels like they designed the responses to sound like something a gamer would say in that situation rather than what an in game character would say. At times it almost sounds like they made a point of making the Player's dialogue overly casual which starkly contrasts with the NPCs' manner of speech. This isn't a huge issue, but I often find myself looking aside as I choose a response (out of the one response I have to choose from!) and pretending that I'm saying something a little less flippant or nonchalant. Do Bethesda think that the player will be embarrassed by the gravitas of the speech that they'd rather respond in a throwaway fashion?

Again, it doesn't come *close* to ruining the experience of the game (oh how I loathe hearing people say that of relatively minor issues) but it's something that could be so easily remedied. I don't play *role playing* games so I can respond as I would if I were talking to my friends in the real world - so please no more "Oh, so I wasn't the first to come see you?" or "Yeah I guess" and more "So another has already reached you?" or "Yes, I suppose so".

Oh, and there shouldn't be *any* one option responses. I'm a self obsessed egomaniacal power hungry madman - I don't say "Sorry, so what was it you wanted to tell me" **ever**. If in doubt, Bethesda, just go with "..." or "(stay silent)" - come on, where it's text only there's no excuse for lack of speech options.

And once again, this doesn't mean "the game developers are lazy" or "this game let me down" or "Skyrim is fail" - it's just something I'd love to see changed in the next installment.

Love, Peace, and Sweetrolls.

Dialogue overall is disappointing in Skyrim. When you do even get more than one dialogue option, your choice rarely has any meaning and simply loops into the same results. Hell, oftenly the only way to avoid getting a quest is tabbing out without any reply.

If anything, our character usually seems to come off as pretty rude from what I've noticed. Also, as has been said many times, NPC dialogue isn't really much better.

is this suppose to be fact or opinion?

I'd rather have it more like Morrowind with just a list of topics and let me imagine what I say. Also no need to voice act every line for NPC's just major events a'la BG2. TES is so blank slate and free form the less character they inject into my character the better.

For the record I think the voice actors did really well in Skyrim I just would prefer less budget/time spent on the voice acting ... also voice acting for major scenes would make them stand out more.

Dialogue isn't very well written just like the most of the quest stories. But I think the daedric quests were well written and some side quests. Most are poorly written.

It is opinion but most agree, like I do. There are some people who probably think Skyrim's dialogue and story are the greatest ever conceived.

To each his own I guess, regarding NPC conversations with each other. I have encountered some that made me smile, and they were well done. For example, I recently did the first dragon kill again, early in the game. For some reason all of the guards survived, and they all came up to the dragon corpse and then started talking to each other, about whether or not the legends were true, and one of them turns and asks the Jarl's Housecarl, the dark elf, what she thinks, and she responds in a very dunmer manner. I've overheard snippets of conversations that were great - Maven Black-briar threatening the bunkhouse wench, for example. Awesome. And now at 250 hours, on a newish run though, I am still hearing some things I haven't heard.

Some companions have more dialogue and their situational triggers are better. The housecarl companions are uniformly dull, but Stenvar, Marcurio and others have quite a bit to say. I've been running around with Marcurio again and he's busted out quite a few new lines I did not get in an earlier play through.

As for the player responses, Bethesda did what I would expect them to do - largely keep it fairly... well, neutral. A polite response,a semi-snarky response. The questions you can ask for follow-up conversations are hit or miss. Half the time they are how I would say something, half the time they are rather flat. But if you think about it they have to keep the player voice pretty neutral. It's not like a developer that gives you a pre-defined character - like Geralt, or something, where there is sort of a basic personality that is going to flavor the dialogue. Bethesda would need to keep the player voice pretty neutral, because all of you are filling it in in your heads. Well, many of you are - I know I do.

I give Bethesda props for a lot of the writing on this outing.

I know what you mean. Often it's a toss up between "Is there any way I can assist you, I'd be glad to help" and "Just tell me what it is you want already". I don't like choosing between a boy scout and a flat out [censored] - responses like "I'm listening", "Go on", or "I might be interested" are far more flexible - subtlety is a writer's best friend.

I do think that NPC dialogue *is* much better though. It ain't brilliant most of the time (and *sometimes* it is), but they all seem to be taking their role seriously and most of the time they're not cookie cutter good guy/bad guys (the old woman in charge of the orphanage is the best example of an unrealistic, overly callous 'bad guy' though).

I really feel that they went into it thinking "what would a gamer want to say" rather than "what would the adventurer say".

Skyrim dialogue is like one of those old painfully awkward British ads from the 50,60's.It amazes me a studio like Bethesda can not grasp simple and interesting dialogue.

I've been some conversations where none of the dialogue choices even came close to what I wanted to say. I've made a few edits to the strings file to give myself choices that are more in line with my own thinking. For the most part though, I think Bethesda did a pretty good job on dialogue.

One of my favorite examples of responses that don't matter is when you talk to the priest of Mara about marriage. He asks you if you know how it works in Skyrim and you're given two responses. The first is (paraphrasing) "No, tell me more." The second is "Yes, but remind me anyways."