i kinda figured the fallout community was for fallout fans. all i see is hate 🤔
The animations weren’t great
Did you like the Fallout 4 Dialog system?
- Yes
- No (But Yes, possibly unhinged in tone)
- Irritated Yes
- Exit Conversation (But to continue you must come back and say yes)
I dont know who couldnt love such an immersive and wonderful system /s
“A lot of players were like, ‘That’s not the voice I hear in my head’.”
Dude completely missing the point, as usual lately.
The complaint was “That’s not what the dialog option on the screen was, that’s something completely different.”. It had nothing to do with the voice.
Also, the fact that, for all the dialog, there was almost never any actual CHOICE for players to make.
Y’all remember the mod that re-wrote the on-screen dialogue options to actually match the spoken dialogue?
You spent forever on that? It’s literally just a static camera position that changes to face the current speaker. Brother! These guys stink!
Maybe he meant they spent forever writing the dialogue. Which like, yeah, that’s what making a role-playing game is like, my guy.
Spends forever on cinematic dialogue system
Spend almost no effort on writing compelling storylines to use it in
Why doesn’t our game resonate with players?!
It’s a shame that Fallout 4 really locked you into a character with a pre-written name, a fairly detailed backstory, and dialog (both the actual words and the voice delivery) that gave a sense of laser focused motivation. I felt absolutely nothing for Shaun, and therefore the entire main quest was a chore.
It would have been so easy to just have some plot other than getting Shaun back. Removing that as motivation and removing some of the player character backstory would open things up for players.
Doesnt help we already did the same basic plot in Fallout 3.
Right? So-called “Cinematic Dialogue System”
The Dialogue:
Yes
Yes
Sarcastic Yes
No(Yes)
Except on few occasions, I felt the same with Mass Effect:
a) [PARAGON] space hero response. b) [RENEGADE] asshole space hero response. c) (broods).
Even then honestly, Mass Effect came our in 2007, Fallout 4 was 2015. Mass Effect was about a specific character that yes you were supposed to be able to shape and mold, but the expectation that the Fallout series had built up was for you to be basically anyone. And to my recollection 4 did nothing to temper that expectation going in with their new dialogue system and voiced protagonist.
Even worse it locked you out of responses unless you picked red or blue always. Idk it annoyed me, playing chaotic neutral.
The dialogue UI and the fact they introduced random checks for some of the options (that you could just cheese by reloading) are such obvious issues too.
Yeah, as soon as they kidnapped the baby I thought, “he’s going to be dead, or come back as the bad guy”
My first play through, the first thing I did when I got to the institute was shoot him in the face.
Imagine my surprise when the quest log immediately spoils the reveal that I didn’t even get to, as if i had done at least another hour of gameplay and politely told my son to pound sand.
I guess Bethesda never expected players to immediately kill the NPC that at that point your character thought stole your baby for some reason?
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For me, the cinematic dialogue system was one of the only welcomed change I liked in FO4, since I don’t like silent protagonists and the Bethesda (and Obsidian) fixed/zoomed-in camera dialogue
So if that thing is gone, there’s nothing positive I can expect from a future Bethesda game
I can understand and respect your position
but to offer the other side on silent charcters over voice acting, voice acting is expensive and time consuming. While if the dialog is just text, it can be much more involved, much more informative, can have sudden updates and changes without having incurr the cost of bringing back VAs and studio time, etc etc.
You can also have interesting mechanics like F1/2 had with how you can basically ask questions via keywords and discover new dialog that you never would have seen, or heard, otherwise.
also lets me slip into my character more easily when I dont have to hear the VA’s interpretation of it… unless the VA is Jennifer Hale, cause hers is basically the voice I hear in my head for any strong female MC, lol
One of the first mods I looked for after playing the game for an hour back in 2015 was one that restored the ‘classic’ dialogue system and let you see exactly what your character would say before you chose a dialogue option. I was already done with being confused and blindsided by what came out of my character’s mouth; it felt like I was rolling the dice every time, instead of being an active and knowing participant in the conversation. The system that shipped with the game was bizarre, I don’t know how anyone could ever prefer it. I also don’t understand how the devs went along with the idea. I can only assume Todd decided it should be that way and no one working under him was in a position to question it.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” springs to mind.
The “problem” with those mods is they lay bare how thin the dialog choices really are.
That sort of mod is an absolute must-have for FO4.
It was 100% Todd saying he wants that. That’s how most of the bullshit in Fallout came around.
Where the fuck is Todd getting this feedback from?
I’m sure there’s some people that didn’t like it because “but muh self insert silent protag”, but the usual criticism I see has been hashed out entirely and has been incredibly consistent for fucking years.
You weren’t given much in the way of actual choice, at times the short option summaries felt wildly disconnected from the actual dialogue the MC spoke, and limiting a series known for the roleplaying down to (at best) two versions of yes one option for later and one option to open a sub dialogue tree for more info was like removing a track and field runner’s kneecaps to try and speed them up through reduced weight.
You could technically summarize that up as people not vibing with the voice acting, but the issue is ultimately a profound reduction of choice, world, and story depth without anything to replace it.
Bethesda seems to think that they can have their cake and eat it too by simplifying existing systems in an attempt to appeal to more casual players, while adding more systems that are only an inch deep to try and keep the existing fans.
The end result is that everything in these games becomes half baked gruel. There’s nothing to invest yourself in because even if there’s tons of systems, none of them have enough depth or polish to be particularly enjoyable. All the new bells and whistles sound cool on paper (settlements, procgen infinite planets, ship building, customizing weapons and armor, legendary enemies with different modifiers, procedurally generated base defense missions) but end up as just disappointments.
at times the short option summaries felt wildly disconnected from the actual dialogue the MC spoke
The number of [sarcastic] dialog options that were actually just unhinged threats was wild. I’m convinced whoever wrote those doesn’t know what sarcasm is.
“Are you here for the synth?”
[Sarcastic]: “Uh… I’m here to pick up an order? Two large pepperonis and a calzone. Name is ‘Fuck You.’”
It was also hard on our designers to write that way
This is an interesting line.
The gems in Oblivion, Fallout 3 and such were little caves and crevies where it felt like some lone, unhinged dev went wild with environmental storytelling. You know, the posed skeletons, wall graffiti, the zombie you just read about, the mad painter or mad Daedra or mad robot or Vault social experiment or stuff like that. They were these self contained, cheap to produce but plentiful stories you’d stumble into.
…But writing stuff cinematically (and railroaded) feels more like a team thing. It must *be harder to eek good writing out of that, especially if they aren’t used to it.
Probably my favorite part of both games and the reason their worlds still felt lived. The same applies to Cyberpunk.
Yeah.
KCD II as well. This is even where ‘fillery’ games like AC Odyssey shine.
A successful dev strategy seems to be ‘let writers go mad in mini quests/dungeons’
And these little stories to find are what keeps the game fresh on every playthrough, even a decade later. There’s always something new I haven’t seen before, new little gags and hidden stories I had previously overlooked. And the best part is that many of them are very far off the beaten path, encouraging you to actually explore and take in the world instead of just fast traveling everywhere and rushing through it.
By “cinematic dialogue” he means extremely dumbed down four options dialogue for cretins who cannot even read a proper sentence to choose from? Where at least three options were giving the same outcome?
Learn from Obsidian, you morons.
- Yes
- Yes (sarcastic)
- Yes (but not right now)
- Tell me more, so I can decide whether to choose Yes, Yes or Yes
The cinematic dialogue system could have worked fine, if the dialogue was any good, and the diff story lines were actually interesting or had real consequences. It absolutely wasn’t the story that kept me playing fallout 4.
Wtf was there to spend forever on?? You pick four options and then respond?
If it was difficult, then it must be because the engine is hot-buttered arse.
I assume because there was a ton of voice acting and animating for all that dialog. That is a lot of work. Problem is just because it was a lot of work didn’t make it automatically good.
I’ll concede getting the takes for voices is effort but it wasn’t like every dialogue choice would be accompanied by custom animations. Both as a matter of realistic expectations and also based on what I remember from playing. Even mouth animations can procedurally generated based on sound files.
Note: all heat is directed at Todd, not you.
I’m just saying, that’s a lot of work to record and add in every bit of player character dialog (male and female character voices). It still takes development time to go through and make sure the dialog animations don’t look (too) messed up and make sure characters aren’t talking over eachother and things like that.
There’s also the fact that during game development, dialogs can change. Which means if an earlier version of a dialog was recorded, it needs to be re-recorded. It’s an extra layer of hassle compared to just changing a text box.
Part of the reason most RPGs don’t do voiced player dialog is the amount of extra work it takes. The end result in Fallout 4 was underwhelming because of the writing, but it was still a lot of (potentially misguided) effort to have everything voiced.
Keep gilding that turd in chocolate, Howard. I’m sure someone’ll nibble eventually. 🖕🏼
I think in another 10-15 years from now it’d be fine. With ai helping blend in changes in facial and tonal cues. Like you could see in their face a different reaction and hear it in their voice. But as it was, all those lines of extra voice (done twice over!) took up too much space. So you get my characters dumb goofy smile while his voice tone sounds sad as he’s delivering horrible news to someone. Sometimes it’s funny, but it really kills any immersion.
