Anyone else not like the dialog system? I prefer Oblivion's better.

[ReMeDy]

I think in Bethesda's effort to make it more appealing, they broke several aspects of it. This includes:

 

1.) The person you're talking to doesn't always face you. They're great at turning their head, but lousy at turning their bodies. This results in an awkward dialog exchange. In Oblivion, the game was superb at getting the person to both look and face you directly, with the exception if they were sitting in a chair.

 

2.) If talking to someone in 3rd person, the camera doesn't zoom very well on their face. It's hard to gauge any facial expressions or facial features. I have to remind myself to talk to people in 1st person. Unfortunately, if I forget to do this and talk to someone in 3rd person, the game wont let me correct the camera during dialog, so I have to exit the dialog, readjust my POV, then talk to the person again. I want to be able to study the faces of all the different Skyrim races and take in the graphics, yet 3rd person dialog is restricting me from this.

 

3.) Real-time dialog. While it sounds good on paper to have the world still moving around you, it doesn't always work because NPC's who are following one another on a pre-defined path will not wait on the NPC who is having a conversation. This leads to situations where, for example, the PC encounters a random entourage with a wealthy person and his guard escorts; the PC talks to the wealthy person, waits for the man's guards to leave, then kills him for his valuables without consequence.

[Med111]

Both systems have some flaws, but I prefer Skyrim's one. It would be perfect with fixed third person camera and turning around NPCs.

 

2.) If talking to someone in 3rd person' date=' the camera doesn't zoom very well on their face. It's hard to gauge any facial expressions or facial features. I have to remind myself to talk to people in 1st person. Unfortunately, if I forget to do this and talk to someone in 3rd person, the game wont let me correct the camera [i']during[/i] dialog, so I have to exit the dialog, readjust my POV, then talk to the person again. I want to be able to study the faces of all the different Skyrim races and take in the graphics, yet 3rd person dialog is restricting me from this.

 

Skyrim is a first person game, I can see, why Bethesda didn't pay more attention to dialogues in third person.

 

3.) Real-time dialog. While it sounds good on paper to have the world still moving around you' date=' it doesn't always work because NPC's who are following one another on a pre-defined path will not wait on the NPC who is having a conversation. This leads to situations where, for example, the PC encounters a random entourage with a wealthy person and his guard escorts; the PC talks to the wealthy person, waits for the man's guards to leave, then kills him for his valuables without consequence.

[/quote']

 

It's not flaw of dialogue system, but AI. Guard should wait for person he's guarding, but it has been overlooked by Bethesda. NPC walking together aren't connected by anything more than walking path.

[Symon]

One of the reasons I was less than impressed with Skyrim in the 'Bethesda boasting' stage of development is that they announced they were going to do all these things and how much better it was going to be.

 

I thought it sounded like a poor call. In real life, people DO stop what they are doing to talk, unless they are being rude!

[ragindude]

The dialogue selection problem makes me rage more than anything else. Damn console.

[Zolt]

The dialogue system is my single biggest gripe with Bethesda games in general. They basically haven't changed it since Daggerfall!

 

Dialogue is still 1 on 1, 1st person with a list of choices you slowly work your way through. It feels much too slow and static compared to other games out there.

 

I want to see:

 

- Dynamic conversations, involving 3 or more actors.

 

- Dynamic camera, there's no reason to be stuck in 1st person! Some good camera angles, with the focus changing during conversations would add a lot to the feeling of dramatic intensity.

 

- I want to *see* my character more. 3rd person cutscenes, mirrors, I'm even OK with a victory dance after fights. The whole point of the game, of any RPG is to create a character and invest yourself in it: You put a lot of effort into the look and feel of your char, yet to see your own face now, you have to take a break, rotate the camera, take off your helm, and find a place with good lighting too.

 

- Voices for the player character... OK I might be dreaming there, but other games have done it before. It's kind of required to make the above work. No point in having a view on your character during conversation if he stays silent and expressionless. Not even your lips move right now.

 

 

[Mouse]

I agree, Zolt. Mass Effect series is good example on your points.

[Shantotto]

I think it could be improved a bit but I would hate for TES and Fallout to end up like Mass Effect with all the cinematic shit going on. I can appreciate that in some other games but in these games I want to create *my* character, not some dude with a pre-recorded voice (that I may or may not like). And keeping the perspective (and not having the camera flail out into cutscene mode) helps with the feeling that I am in control.

 

I do think Skyrims system works a bit better than Oblivion even though there are some problems. I'm really glad they got rid of the zoom-in system personally and I like that you can exit most convos whenever you like.

[afro-herbalist]

Skyrim is a first person game

 

You DO know that you can change between 1st AND 3rd person right? Just like in Morrowind and Oblivion.

 

The worst thing about it in my opinion (not to say the whole system is bad), is that sometimes, when some1 talks to YOU, and your looking away from them, the camera doesn't even point at them for you. In other words, your camera is locked in a position facing nothing, while some unknown person is having a convo with you (and I mean a convo where you choose what to say). Only after the end of the chat, do you see who it was LOL! NOT good

 

An example of this, is when walking up the mountain to see the greybeards, this "scared woman" approached me, but while in conversation, I couldn't even see who I was talking to. I thought it was gonna turn into a bandit ambush (like in Red Dead Redemption).

[Med111]

You DO know that you can change between 1st AND 3rd person right? Just like in Morrowind and Oblivion.

 

Well, let me say it differently. Skyrim is designed to be a first person game.

[sora3]

To be honest, you can move the perspective so you don't have to see the person talking...

[afro-herbalist]

I think the BIGGEST improvement the series needs to add IMO, is this: GIVE US A VOICE!!! FFS one thing that annoys me about a lot of RPG's, except ones like 'Witcher' & 'Mass Effect', is that your character is a bloody mute. In the days of big hard-drives and huge capacity Blu-ray discs (for PS3 owners, sorry HD-DVD), there should be no reason NOT to FULLY voice a game. I love how Morrowind was seemingly one of the 1st games to have such a huge amount of spoken dialogue, but in those days it was pretty new, so no character voice was acceptable, but so many years later, I want to hear my characters voice.

 

You could even get away with hiring only 2 voice actors, 1 male, 1 female (for all races), but I dont think it would be "out of the question" to have a voice for each race. I'm sick of having to come up with my own "one liners" LOL

 

To be honest' date=' you can move the perspective so you don't have to see the person talking...

[/quote']

 

I tried that man, but I couldn't move it enough to actually see who this "scared woman" was lol. Its happened in other places too.

[Shantotto]

You could even get away with hiring only 2 voice actors, 1 male, 1 female (for all races), but I dont think it would be "out of the question" to have a voice for each race. I'm sick of having to come up with my own "one liners" LOL

 

For the love of everything that is holy, noooo... I get sick enough of my character's voice just from the grunts/screams. Let the character stay voiceless and spend that money on something else. I don't need more excuses to click through dialogue (read faster than they can speak the line).

 

Hell... I can just imagine how much money goes into hiring voiceactors like Max Von Sydow, Liam Neeson or what have you. I'd be happier if they would just rip out voiceacting entirely (pipe dream of course) or just have it for a select few characters since it would likely drive costs for these games down quite a lot and thus maybe allow developers to take some more risks with the design of the game. Or that budget could be allocated into other things (obviously throwing money at a game's development doesn't make a great game, but...)

 

EDIT: Just the thought of playing a Khajit or Nord with those accents makes me want to weep.

[chukkake]

My only real issue with the dialogue is the idle talk, where so many guards used to be adventurers before they got shot in the knee with an arrow. Is there some mad rogue mass knee-shooter that needs to be dealt with out there somewhere or something? Also, the number of guards with cousins fighting dragons makes me wonder if there's some heinous amount of incest going on in Skyrim or what. Maybe it's the same cousin and all the guards are related.

[Jexsam]

I think the BIGGEST improvement the series needs to add IMO' date=' is this: GIVE US A VOICE!!![/quote']

 

This is my biggest gripe with modern RPG's, actually; they force a voice or very small subset of voices on my character that completely strips away my ability to imagine my character as I wish to hear them.

 

It's a terrible idea for any game that claims to have a real alignment system. It kinda works in Mass Effect because you really can't ever play anyone but the hero; your only real decision is whether you're Chaotic Good or Lawful Good. It works in Final Fantasy because there's absolutely no deviation in the plot or meaningful choices to be made.

 

But if they ever shoehorned it into a TES game, I guarantee it wouldn't work. Too many choices, too many options, and probably more spoken lines for the one player character than were required for entire races in Skyrim.

 

tl;dr Mass Effect: Kawaii Space Romance Saga can keep that bullshit.

[dewguru]

I think the BIGGEST improvement the series needs to add IMO' date=' is this: GIVE US A VOICE!!!

[/quote']

 

I think this would ruin things.

 

Look at Dragon Age. Dragon Age 1 you had options to me a multiple races and classes in those races that offered unique play. When they added voice for the player in Dragon Age 2 - they had to pigeon hole you into a single character to fit the voice.

 

In other words, in games with a lot of game play and vast amounts of player interaction - adding a voice would severely impact the options you could have on what they offer you to play.

 

Would you really be happy if you got voice acting but as a result they restricted how many races you could be and the game went from an open world rpg to a vastly shorter point a to point b map experience like what Mass Effect and Dragon Age offer? I enjoy those games, but I enjoy the Elder Scroll series more because of its open world and larger character options.

 

[Kashked]

My only real issue with the dialogue is the idle talk' date=' where so many guards used to be adventurers before they got shot in the knee with an arrow. Is there some mad rogue mass knee-shooter that needs to be dealt with out there somewhere or something? Also, the number of guards with cousins fighting dragons makes me wonder if there's some heinous amount of incest going on in Skyrim or what. Maybe it's the same cousin and all the guards are related.

[/quote']

 

The one that annoys me the worst is Captain Caius I think he is called, in Whiterun. Every time you passes him he repeats "I am the captain of the guard" like a retarded parrot...

 

Piping down the random dialogue, or making it only activate when you click a NPC would be a huge improvment. If I didn't have to hear it all the time I find the comments fairly fun, especially as a lot of the actors are swedish like me and I sound basicly the same as them when I try to speak english...

[galgat]

I think and option for the Oblivion style conversation would have been nice. I find it disorienting sometimes, not knowing whom I am speaking to.

 

It would be nice to be zoomed in, and facing the person you are having a conversation with. I mean this is normal in the real world to face the person you are in conversation with.

 

However, in the real world there are times like, if you are using a hammer striking a nail, that you don't want to turn your head.

 

I mean in some ways it is and enhancement, this new style, but in some ways it is step backwards. ( or as i said disorienting)