Fallout 4 - Howard: Dialogue Not a Success

Todd Howard has come out and admitted that Fallout 4's dialogue system wasn't a success.

While chatting up with GameSpot's Danny O'Dwyer at this year's E3, Bethesda Game Studios game director Todd Howard admitted that the dialogue system for Fallout 4 "didn't work as well" as other features of the title. While I'd personally argue that's the understatement of the year, as the way the dialogue was designed and recorded behind the scenes are utterly baffling to me (suffice to say, Bethesda didn't make this design choice because they wanted to be cheap with VO), it's a good thing that the company is at least aware of player feedback.

The full interview covers some other interesting topics, such as Bethesda's experiments with VR, their internal culture, why they decided to make a Skyrim remaster, and more. It's only 18 minutes long, so I'd highly recommend you give it a watch.

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More information.

You think one of their expansions errr DLC's would be to fix it

No point - there's already a mod that fixes it.

Honestly, I really wished Obsidian had made Fallout 4, I mean I liked FA4, but Obsidian really are better at storytelling.

elikal said:

Honestly, I really wished Obsidian had made Fallout 4... Obsidian really are better at storytelling.

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Not to knock Obsidian, but if New Vegas is anything to go by, their level design and exploration would be dreadful.

A collaboration where Bethesda did the parts Kyrer mentioned and Obs did the parts elikal mentioned

Kyrer said:

Not to knock Obsidian, but if New Vegas is anything to go by, their level design and exploration would be dreadful.

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There were aspects of FO:NV I liked, but as a whole it was a huge letdown for me. Weapon damage vs. armor was atrocious. The world seemed small and cramped to me and travel in and around the city of Vegas was a hot mess. I never finished the game and probably won't try it again.

Seeing as Full Dialog Interface is the fourth most downloaded file in the Nexus with nearly half a million unique downloads, I think he's probably right.

Except a full dialog interface can't fix the lack of effectual dialog options. It actually even highlights the game's lack of options, detailing just how identical each of the four options often are.

Can't fix stupid.

Zephyr said:

There were aspects of FO:NV I liked, but as a whole it was a huge letdown for me. Weapon damage vs. armor was atrocious. The world seemed small and cramped to me and travel in and around the city of Vegas was a hot mess. I never finished the game and probably won't try it again.

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That exactly reflects my experience with FO:NV as well… apart from the not finishing it bit: I've been trying to complete it for a while now, and the only thing currently keeping me going is my OCD (I WILL COMPLETE EVERY QUEST WITH HARDCORE MODS! ) As for F3, I was sorry when I finally completed it; it was just more might sort of game.

I actually like both of them.

The only problem for me is that Obsidian cannot write for female characters or even seem to understand females at all. It is as if everyone that works there has never had a relationship with a woman.

Bethesda can't really write dialog at all and a lot of the rest of the writing isn't very good either. Rolston was the only halfway decent writer and he's long gone. It'd be cool if they got one of the better FR writers to join the team.

crpgnut said:

I actually like both of them.

The only problem for me is that Obsidian cannot write for female characters or even seem to understand females at all. It is as if everyone that works there has never had a relationship with a woman.

Bethesda can't really write dialog at all and a lot of the rest of the writing isn't very good either. Rolston was the only halfway decent writer and he's long gone. It'd be cool if they got one of the better FR writers to join the team.

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That's funny, because Obsidian has at least a few female writers that I know off.
Whether or not they have had a relationship with a woman is outside of the scope of my knowledge, but that doesn't really matter.
I don't agree with your opinion on that, just thought I'd give mine.
I personally thing "writing for female characters" should be more than catering to teen males, which is what Bioware does (and is praised for doing).
I know you didn't mention Bioware, just saying.

Still waiting for Skyrim New Vegas

I actually prefer Fallout 3 over New Vegas.

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Honestly Bethesda need to rip out the conversation system & build in choice and consequence for every quest. Also completely rebuild the skill system to encourage specialisation over Master of all current system for Fallout 5.

Bring back attributes!

Fluent said:

I actually prefer Fallout 3 over New Vegas.

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Agreed. For me, Fallout 3 felt like it had more of a big picture story and my character was integral to it. That's why I enjoyed it. Well that, and it had more of an open world feel. New Vegas just seemed like some character wandering about, and it somehow felt more constrained.

rjshae said:

and it somehow felt more constrained.

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Yes!!

I'm shocked someone agrees with what I've been saying since it came out. New Vegas also felt very constrained to me.

I keep telling people, I saw pretty much everything there was to see in that game in like, 40-60 hours. Yet in Fallout 3, to this day I haven't explored that entire map!

New Vegas just felt very limited to me in the exploration and discovery aspect. Fallout 3 definitely has a more open-world feel to me.

I don't want to bash New Vegas too much. It was a fun game for the 40-60 hours I played. I beat the game and had fun. But if I were to re-play either game right now, I'd go for Fallout 3.

Maybe folks just needed to explore more in FNV? I got over 200 hours played in FNV and that was before I even knew about modding or ENB or any of that. That was pure vanilla. Too long ago for me to remember if that was all with one character or not though - maybe my memory is distorted on how big it is. Getting too old.

I admit to some bias as well in that I adore companions in games and FNV had some of really good companions (IMO of course). I also enjoyed the whole faction aspect to the story a great deal and was pulled into it. So I felt like I had a great story, good company, and had a lot of fun exploring and pretending I was like some wasteland Ranger.

I pretended to blame technology for the worlds problems. I refused to use a gun or most technology except when I had no choice. It was challenging and fun.

For whatever reason FO3 didn't grab me. Weird I suppose since FO4 did. Although I love the companions in FO4 as well as the graphics. All I recall of FO3 was that it felt a little empty to me and that I was disappointed in follower options.

It probably did have more content to explore and do but maybe the lack of other things just made it feel more empty to me. Guess our memories and the way we play games depends a lot on what we value in them and what we focus on.

Very easy for multiple people to experience the same thing (like a game, a party, or an accident) but take away very different memories of it.

Maybe folks just needed to explore more in FNV?

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I think I explored the entire map in 40-60 hours, though. Did every quest in the game I could find, explored the optional side stuff, talked to all the NPCs, beat the game, etc.

I came away thinking it was a pretty good game, but also felt underwhelmed. It had some cool moments, for sure, but I liked the DC Wasteland more.

Maybe I just prefer the modern Bethesda take on open-world RPGs. I never had problems with Bethesda's writing coming all the way from Morrowind. I even read their in-game books in Elder Scrolls games all the time and have fun doing so.

There's also a mod for Oblivion (maybe Skyrim, too. Dunno.) that adds in hundreds of in-game books from the earlier Elder Scrolls game, such as Daggerfall, etc. Loved that mod and recommend it to anyone who wants to play modded Oblivion soon.