Morrowind & Oblivion (Didn't play the others) had subjects you could choose from and they would begin to speak about it, now its done a little like knights of the old republic or baldurs gate. Do you guys prefer this method or did you like the subject form best? I don't really have a preference, so I am just curious if others did.

I prefer the Morrowind/Oblivion method. I have a vivid imagination. The old "topic" system allowed me to make up my own dialog. The dialog I invent myself is better - and always more appropriate to my character - than the dialog I am forced to read or listen to in video games.

I prefer full phrases for my character not just topics. I wish there were more possible answers to pick though, too many of my dialogue "choices" are yes or no.

new system all the way

OB's system still gives me nightmares XD

I'm torn between Morrowind's encyclopedia with key words hyperlinks (but fully voiced) and good old dialogue a la New Vegas. Skyrim just doesn't cut it for me, the improvement from Oblivion is minimal.

Not possible with the limited capacity of DVDs and the cost for the voice actors, hence Skyrims/Oblivions system. I would still prefer it for the non-important NPCs, not every line from everyone needs to be voiced imo.

As long as they don't do that pie wheel thing again for speech craft I don't care either way, both systems are fine with me.

I prefer Morrowind's style of dialogue.

Among other things, the lack of a significant need for voice actors will cut down production costs dramatically, allowing for Bethesda to create a great deal more in terms of quests and storylines that have different branches, subplots, side stories, etc. Plus there's a lot more detail that an NPC can give me in regards to virtually anything. And I like being able to walk up to anyone I want to and ask them about who they are, or if they've heard any of the 'latest' rumors. Even though there are a lot of generic or 'canned' responses it still felt good being able to walk up to the first person I see in a new town and just get the lay of the land from that person, no matter who he is. Conversely, in Skyrim a lot of townspeople won't even engage me in a conversation about anything other than their one topic, apparently the sole reason for the existence. How is that better than having different NPC's repeat the same lines?

This, all the way. Every time I play Oblivion I realize how awesome its speech/disposition system is. I can mold the conversation the way I want to, and it feels more immersing.

With no branching or variation in what the NPC's say, after you've listened to all their lines once, that's it. Any later playthroughs, I end up just fast-clicking through all their repetitive babble just so I can get the quest prompts. Ergo, talking to NPC's quickly gets boring and adds zero interest to replays of the game.

I perfer Skyrim's full dialogue choices, The "keyword" style just makes it seem like NPCs are hive-minded robots or a walking Wikipedia.

How is that different from the other style? I get tired of Oblivion and Morrowind's dialogue just as easily as Skyrim's.

What if you imagine your character is a complete jerk but everyone talks to them like they're the second coming of Talos?

Well... I'd be quite confused. No, actually, I'd abuse it.

Skyrim's is better imo but I wish there were more branches for all (npcs and meself)

I was thinking more of Fallout:NV style of dialogue. NPC says something, or asks you a question, or offers you something to do, and then you have multiple *different* choices of how to respond, and depending on which choice you make, then you often have multiple different dialogue forks down that discussion path, as well. Options are good. NPC's with no choices but to patiently listen to what they have to say then accept the one 'choice' they offer, or otherwise just bail out of the conversation, is not good. In an 'RPG', it's pretty pathetic. Every quest in the game should be optional, and you should always get a dialogue option to say 'no, i don't want to accept that one right now, or have it in my quest log'. A large percentage of the quests in the game, if you talk at all to the NPC that gives it, you'll end up with the quest stuck in your log, and no option to remove it. Unless you never talk to them at all, of course. Pretty lame.

Think main problem with Skyrim is that npc just talk to you, they don't talk to each other much. To make things worse they often uses an very specialized sentence, saying "I work at the general gods store" 4 times a day for an month and it get annoying. more so then you follow people inside houses to say it.
This is mostly an Whiterun problem, other cities has less special dialogue and it work much better.

Started playing Oblivion again a bit and found how much better the npc to npc dialogue work, yes it's stupid hearing them talk about mudcrabs but it's not annoying.

I always thought that was one of the main criticisms of the OB dialogue system - the utterly random things they said to each other.

Tbh, I haven't found it such an issue with Skyrim. Being random-ish interactions, it probably depends on th eluck of the draw whether you get a lot of it or less.

Subjects.

I like both equally. I love how Skyrim has more choices in conversations but I also like Oblivion where you had Rumor topics. Morrowind is even more indepth due to a low amount of voicing acting.

Ideally I'd say Skryim's, but the lack of response options and the frequently awful selections you're given mean I can't support that style. As I've said a few times, for every NPC response there should be at least two player options - it'd be so easy to have a couple options that lead to the same resposne but come from a subtly different angle. It'd let us feel far more in control than the current "Let's go hunt some vampires" or "Not right now", which almost never reflects the kind of speech anybody I play as would use. Knights of the Old Republic was great because, although there were many clichéd and cartoonishly 'evil' responses, there were many shades of grey so you didn't have to choose between happy hero and moody/uptight. A great example is when I was invited to join a certain secretive faction (not the most obvious one) and I had to choose between "I don't know what to say" (as in I'm speechless, it's such an honour) and "It's about time you asked me".

Player dialogue is the only area in which I will say that Bethesda are outright lousy. There's no excuse for it, half the people on this board can write better than that. In such situations we should at least be given the option of a generic -Yes- -No-, this is why I loved the 'stay silent' option when speaking to Dark Brotherhood members.

So basically I'd rather have the earlier style if they insist on not hiring better writers. Please make the effort with dialogue, Bethesda, you're letting yourselves down.




While the characters in MW do tend to speak for longer, hardly any of them have anything new to say at all and are just carbon copies of all the other guys in that location. The ones with unique dialogue typically have around three topics which they'll speak on - they could easily voice act this amount of speech. As other people have mentioned in other threads, a hybrid of the two might be ideal wherein they speak at length on non quest related issues in text (so people who don't want to read backstory etc can ignore it) and voice act the main dialogue.

I have to go with Skyrim for one reason. Oblivion's conversations are about the same as Skyrim's, except for the fact that it mainly use subjects instead of complete sentences. By this, I mean Oblivion's conversations are just as shallow and undetailed as Skyrim's. Simply have subjects wouldn't change that, only doing away with voice acting for the majority of characters like in Morrowind, where you could ask someone more info than you wanted to know.

Due to the fact that voice acting won't be taken out (as having to read paragraphs of text isn't what most gamers today want to do), I think Skyrim's system is the best.

There is a method to the new one?

This is a no-brainer.

I'm sorry to say, but the Elder Scrolls series as a whole has a terribly poor dialogue system. I would much rather have fully written phrases to choose from - emphasis on choose, not just one or two responses - each one representing a different standard personality type, so that I can choose the closest to what my character would say. For instance, a "good guy" response, a "bad guy" response, a "sarcastic [censored]" response, etc.

Every Elder Scrolls game is basically the same way. You click on someone, they say some things, and you're hardly ever allowed to select from different responses. Morrowind was somewhat better than Oblivion and Skyrim, but it still falls into the same piss poor category. And being number one in the piss poor category isn't saying much.

Morrowind and Oblivion compliment imagination far more than Skyrim does, though, by a long shot. Skyrim is horrible. Nobody says anything interesting, or worthwhile. Not even a hello or "go away". They just happily share a piece of their life story when you bump into them.

That's just terrible.