Fallout with the best written dialogue? (Please provide a quote from your choice).

[Makta]

"The thing about happiness is that you only know you had it when it's gone. I mean, you may think to yourself that you're happy. But you don't really believe it. You focus on the petty bullshit, or the next job, or whatever. It's only looking back, by comparison to what comes after, that you really understand that's what happiness felt like."

-one of the very few actual good quotes in Fallout 4.

I didn't remeber much from F4 but this topic did land me a few good ones. Overall F4 will probably be way behind but this one was great.

"You open the closet, it’s just a closet. You can never find the monster that hides inside. Not until it jumps out at you."

Edit:

Funny one from F3.
"On a scale from one to ten, I'd say it's a "shut the fuck up and fix me.""

One of my favorites from NV.
"Get up without my permission, I'll blast your ass so far through your head, it'll turn the moon cherry pie red."

And the one that hit me hard because it's something i've been stuck with for years.

"There is an expression in the Wasteland: "Old World Blues."
It refers to those so obsessed with the past they can't see the present, much less the future, for what it is.
They stare into the what-was, eyes like pilot lights, guttering and spent, as the realities of their world continue on around them."

Obviously removed the last part because.. Science!

 

[Kohno]

Fallout 1. To me is the game in which characters are more... Human like? They're all so *realistic* in their conversations, the situations, the way they live their lives, react to the world, it's always fascinated me.

Same here (and I include Fallout 2 in that). They were less verbose games, but there was just something in the original duo's set of characters, that was missing from the ones (most of them) in New Vegas, that made them feel far less... "written" is not the right word, but it's the best I can think of to fit here right now. I do consider "good dialog" to consist of more than just written lines. The delivery (context, characterization, situation...) makes a huge deal.

I suppose some of this has to do with everybody being voice acted and the awful faces in New Vegas that were inherited from Fallout 3 tech, but that's just a small part of it since there were really well done characters too (Doc Mitchell felt very good both in writing and how he was performed, and he was probably the best character to be put as an introduction -- the same can't be said of, say, Sunny Smiles for example). The characters in New Vegas are mostly good, but too many of them feel sterile and specifically set up for the occasion, and not as much an organic part of the gameworld as they were probably intended. That's my chief criticism.

There's nobody (or a couple at most) in New Vegas that would match someone like Loutenant, Lynette, Myron and a whole bunch of others in both, writing and delivery, how they feel within the game with or without a set of witty lines. So yeah, New Vegas does have good dialog, but it doesn't feel to me as having as much character as the cast in the original two.

Can't vote for two games, so I give my vote to Fallout just for Lou.

 

[naossano]

Another overlooked character when talking about Fallout dialogs.

 

[CourierFour]

I suppose some of this has to do with everybody being voice acted and the awful faces in New Vegas that were inherited from Fallout 3 tech,

For the record, and i dare say this on NMA but New Vegas' NPC faces were bad because of the game's development. The NPC faces in Fallout 3 - most if not all - met a level of quality acceptable for human eyes, in the base game at least. You can't really say it is a result of tech when you see this:

then this:

If Obsidian were treated like Bethesda treats their own studios then we'd have consistent quality for NPC faces, maybe consistent quality all around... maybe an entirely new game.

Anyway, i agree with what you are saying about the dialogue in New Vegas compared to Fallout 1 and 2, although i think New Vegas is a bit better than 1. In between the genuinely good moments there is a lot of dialogue that is just there for convenience and doesn't hold a lot of personality whereas most dialogue in Fallout 2 does, if not all. Was contrived the word you were looking for?

 

[Kohno]

For the record, and i dare say this on NMA but New Vegas' NPC faces were bad because of the game's development. The NPC faces in Fallout 3 - most if not all - met a level of quality acceptable for human eyes, in the base game at least.

I didn't see a big enough difference to make a distinction worth an argument. Shit looks like shit.

But I do agree, the game could've bee quite different if Obsidian was indeed treated like Bethesda treats itself. Here that probably means nothing but more time and money.

Was contrived the word you were looking for?

I suppose it's close enough.

 

[cratchety ol joe]

New Vegas

Example: any interaction with the Think Tank



</ any other possible options>

 

[gwfpro]

new vegas.

mr house:

"Nothing to impede progress. If you want to see the fate of democracies, look out the windows."

 

[Magnus]

Fallout 2, beyond comparison. New Vegas has good dialogue, but Fallout 2 is fucking fantastic.

Hakunin: "Many dark souls came, riding the metal birds like a flock of hungry chittick bugs, hiding their evil in shiny suits."

The Chosen One: "Oooo! Shiny purty!"

Hakunin: "*sigh* No. Not shiny pretty."

 

[Einhanderc7]

I don't know about all of you guys but the original Fallout had the best dialog in my opinion. To me it just seemed more sincere.

FO2 experimented heavily with more humor, where Fallout focused on the strife of the individual.

New vegas did a good job, however I often felt like it was trying to pander too hard, or simply felt flat or repetitive.

 

[Prone Squanderer]

I don't know about all of you guys but the original Fallout had the best dialog in my opinion. To me it just seemed more sincere.

FO2 experimented heavily with more humor, where Fallout focused on the strife of the individual.

New vegas did a good job, however I often felt like it was trying to pander too hard, or simply felt flat or repetitive.

Let's be honest, you're only saying Fallout has the best because of the glorious Lieutenant

 

[Einhanderc7]

Let's be honest, you're only saying Fallout has the best because of the glorious Lieutenant

Actually no, a lot of the dialog was very well written and the delivery of the lines is rather good, hell its still better than a lot of the shoddy voice acting you have encountered in recent Fallout titles.

The first encounter with the in game dialog is with the overseer which depending on your stats can be wildly different. This goes for all the talking heads of course, but what really made it shine was how unique each character is.

While I can say New Vegas did try to recapture the Fallout dialog mystique, its problem was that of quantity of quality. Making it very difficult to really do their characters the full justice I think they needed to make the exchanges more personal to their characters.

 

[Lexx]

Calling Fallout 1 dialog "more sincere" isn't a that bad description, imo. It's often more low-key and less over the top. With Fallout 2 you can see how the writers had waay more drive, adding more sarcasm and jokes into the dialogues. The player became the star of a movie with the way he could talk. New Vegas has a quite different writing style- it does feel a lot less personal most of the times, and I remember Sawyer saying that it was intentional, because they didn't want to "put words into the players mouth". For example, a "Fuck you *shoots in the face*" line would never happen in New Vegas, because it would force an aggressive tone on the player.

 

[Magnus]

Calling Fallout 1 dialog "more sincere" isn't a that bad description, imo. It's often more low-key and less over the top. With Fallout 2 you can see how the writers had waay more drive, adding more sarcasm and jokes into the dialogues. The player became the star of a movie with the way he could talk. New Vegas has a quite different writing style- it does feel a lot less personal most of the times, and I remember Sawyer saying that it was intentional, because they didn't want to "put words into the players mouth". For example, a "Fuck you *shoots in the face*" line would never happen in New Vegas, because it would force an aggressive tone on the player.

And this is what I sorely miss in every RPG that isn't Planescape Torment or Fallout 2. I *want* my main character to have a lot of personality. I don't want to have to imagine it myself. If the main character is just a glorified teleprompter then that takes away all the fun of talking to people.

 

[Einhanderc7]

I think people are beginning to confuse game play and dialog.

While humor can be great for telling a story, I find a lot of the recent titles rely too heavily on humor. We have to remember the the people surviving in the wasteland are "surviving". They aren't having a lot of fun or looking on the bright side of life all the time.

In Fallout the characters could covertly or overtly attempt to influence the player. Take Set for example, they ghoulish leader of the Necropolis sends the player to attack the water shed to kill the super mutants guarding it. And if you return he then tries to kill you as well. It's moments like this that build on characters and reveal their motivations. Not everyone is going to be up front with their intentions to the player.

In the newer titles its obscenely simple to figure out who is or who isn't trying to screw over the player. And even if they do attempt to get one over the player the games don't punish the player for the miscalculation. To be honest the game will actually reward the player for playing like an idiot.

Fallout has the capacity to be mysterious (Maybe not for the likes of us) where the overt dialog and actions of newer titles lack that mystery and completely defeat it by jamming it into your face.

Then you got FO4 where the only mystery is what exactly your character is going to say.

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

Fallout 1.