I agree that the first one sounds better, but for me, the second one is too personalised. But obviously if you change the grammar to that of a caveman and put HERP and DERP in it it's going to look bad. "HERP rose by other name smell DERP same sweet!"

I like how...


I mean, really? That comes off as rather rude and bull-headed to me, not to mention in general the lack of responses we are afforded. Seems like they basically wrote our character to always talk and think exactly like the default Nord character that is marketed all the time.

I know it was a bit personalised. But it stood to serve a point.

Its not hard or time consuming to make something sound intelligent. Well more intelligent the what Beth writers make our characters seem at times.


Yep, I thought the same thing.
What it actually made me think of, is the attitude I got from 15yr old apprentices.

Confronted with a eon of knowledge and experience. You treat it with contempt and disregard, and we're forced to.
We're forced to act like a spoiled know all teenager.

Having at least the OPTION for immature remarks makes plenty of sense to me. Many heros from actual mythology, epics, and saga's are in fact quite childish in what they say / how they act (Thor, Hercules, Achilles). Many are also clever and sophisticated, of course, so there should be both options, or perhaps the sophistication shown in the text of your options should reflect your speech skill.

But anyway my point is with basic, simple responses, it's far easier to elaborate and characterise them mentally, as you get the impression they are just representations of your replies rather than literal, and don't come with preexisting connotations, which as previously mentioned, are largely disrespectful, snarky, pig-headed, dumb and immature sounding in Skyrim, but equally could end up sounding too intelligent or kind-hearted or frightened or any other connotation (unless they had options going every way, which would be a pain to implement and as a player go through to choose from) and make roleplaying harder for less sophisticated characters.

For the time it would take to have half a dozen options. I don't see the big deal with having an option to suit most archetypes?

RPG's of old did.

I wish you had more than one option most of the time :/

Yes

Do you mean one option as in one response available after every bit of dialogue or do you mean as many as necessary to give you multiple dialogue paths but only one "connotation" of speech style for each different sort of reply. If the former, I agree there should be multiple dialogue choices when it is logical, for the latter, I prefer the single all-encompassing reaction style rather than saying, for example, "Fine!", "Oh yeah!" "Totally man", "It would be my honor" or "Sure, whatever" which all mean the same thing but express different personalities.

Its a logical conclusion to assume he means literally more the one single option, basically just forcing you to click the action button to continue.

It happens all the time in Skyrim.

Well to me it sounded like he could have meant it either way given our existing discussion.

Could have, but would have been rather obscure.
Simple answer is usually the correct one.

I agree that Skyrim's dialogue (PC response options, and NPC dialogue in general) is about as bad as Oblivion's. Which is to say, awful.

I'm not convinced these games have actual writers working on them, though. Quest designers and programmers, sure. Otherwise talented and hardworking devs often don't have the most robust grasp of literature, or much of a background in fantasy, that would allow them to take their imagined worlds more seriously. The result tends to be hammy, childish and/or comedic writing, which is often just an excuse for the unattainable alternative [serious but good]. American films seem cursed with the same phenomenon.

I'd actually prefer PC responses to be short descriptions of dialogue, rather than actual dialogue (ie, describe what the PC says, don't quote it). For example:

Whiterun Guard
"Stop right there criminal scum! You can't enter this hold capital in broad daylight despite the presumed constant traffic of farmers and traders through these very gates!"

PC
[Ask to be let through ^PERSUADE]
[Tell of the dragon attack on Helgen]
[Aim an arrow at the guard's knee ^INTIMIDATE]

That way, roleplayers are able to imagine for themselves the specifics of what their character says, not to mention how they say it. One can also give the roleplayer more options for less text.

Not that "roleplaying" or "text" even feature in, uh, RPGs nowadays.

That's a very good method.

And now that you explain it like that - Why the hell don't Bethesda do it like that?

Very good idea, this is the way it should be done. Leaves more to the imagination without seeming underdone.

Isn't that pretty much the way it is now for entering whiterun?

Subtle difference in the wording of the responses, rather than the game telling what we said, we choose our actions and can make up our dialog in our heads.

'the one they fear, they call him yes man'
It gets old real fast, like some one else pointed out just having a monologue of characters explaining there problem to you, most of the time you dont even get 'no' you have to back out of the convo and walk off...then if its a quest it triggers anyway! (?!€#%￡'s) Dynamic conversation my right buttcheek...

It like beth complains during dev that voiced dialougue uses to much disk space so they punish us by getting the same frelling lines voiced by different actors!? I dont even get why youd do that... haveing to listen to diferent ppl say the same thing like theres a shop keepers guild that has a code of voice conduct and a list of optimum catchphrases... what the hell! who evers idea that was should be slapped for having tiny raisin balls and a grave stone in his head marked 'brain cell died of lonleyness'.
Ill tell you what probably costs money and time and thats not getting voice actors or wrighting text its the translating it to different languages so some smart prat desided to get him self a gold star and save beth a ￡1000 by only have to translate the most perthetic spoken dialougue and replys listings, i have no idea why tes suffers from this sydrome crappy dialouge but its a damn shame, i have to try and mently voice my own character which is a shame and hard when you get bratty opinionated combacks like when talking to parthanaxe, town guards, yarls ect you name it there crap dialougue for it!? Wah rant over the end...

Not bad, but this one tells what specificially your character does to intimidate. I would prefer having something to say, even "Nice day, isn't it", and imagine for myself how my character makes it intimidating.

Having spent hundreds of hours painstakingly re-writing that Whiterun Guard's dialogue, I'm afraid it's just too late in the development schedule for me to change it now.

I agree with this. What is the most common thing you will hear Todd say? "We changed such and such in this game because people complained about it a lot in the last game."

I always like to think that my Argonian is good at convincing. Either giving the pleeding, innocent reptile hatchling eyes or puffing up the neck area, hissing and licking her scaly lips. Also, summoning my fearsome Horker companion always does the trick. Who wouldn't agree with anything when a huge, pissed off tusked walrus is eyeing them?

What bothers me the most about the general dialogue options, is that I seldom if ever see any difference in the outcome of the conversation, no matter what I choose to say. No consequences. Just 'pick one out of column A' and move on. They're like 'no-fault' choices (and I use the word *choice* with a huge bucket of salt) that just herd you to where the dialogue session was going to herd you to anyway, no matter what you said.