Kotaku Ranks The Fallouts
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shihonage said:
Sure, I wasn't surprised by the idea that Fallout was Tim Cain's baby and Fallout 2 wasn't, I was surprised by you bringing up Fargo for that. Brian Fargo was not more involved in Fallout 2 than he was in 1, as far as I'm aware. He wasn't on the design team of either.
From my point of view, there are almost no enjoyable/involving dialogues in FNV.
You have some dialogues which are very interesting and that tell you more about the lore but are in no way very interactive.
The problem is in the answers your PC can make, there are mostly very boring, blank and humorless. They do the job by providing you different outcome but don't have any characterization so even if the NPC have a good text, it's more or less a one way dialogue.
The style of answers of your PC in fallout1/fallout 2 is much more personalized and remind me pen and paper when you roleplay.
You can really feel cool and a bad ass with the answers you had in F1/F2 unlike in FNV.
While i can recall some interesting FNV character conversation I can't recall a single good answer of my PC.
I can recall plenty of great PC answers in F2 : with Sulik, Myron (when you have high med or science, awesome), one of the drug dealer in New Reno (Jules i think?), Renesco (how you can troll him, was hilarious), the boss of New Reno, the bodyguard of Salvatore, Lynette (how you can insult/bother her), etc...
The style is hugely different from your PC FNV answers which are very neutral,mostly short and unimaginative.
Fallout 1/2 dialogues are more "lively."
You have some dialogues which are very interesting and that tell you more about the lore but are in no way very interactive.
The problem is in the answers your PC can make, there are mostly very boring, blank and humorless. They do the job by providing you different outcome but don't have any characterization so even if the NPC have a good text, it's more or less a one way dialogue.
The style of answers of your PC in fallout1/fallout 2 is much more personalized and remind me pen and paper when you roleplay.
You can really feel cool and a bad ass with the answers you had in F1/F2 unlike in FNV.
While i can recall some interesting FNV character conversation I can't recall a single good answer of my PC.
I can recall plenty of great PC answers in F2 : with Sulik, Myron (when you have high med or science, awesome), one of the drug dealer in New Reno (Jules i think?), Renesco (how you can troll him, was hilarious), the boss of New Reno, the bodyguard of Salvatore, Lynette (how you can insult/bother her), etc...
The style is hugely different from your PC FNV answers which are very neutral,mostly short and unimaginative.
Fallout 1/2 dialogues are more "lively."
Which is kind of how Obsidian wanted it, as stated by Josh long time ago. They don't want to force any kind of emotional tone on your character, as it would limit the roleplaying value / it eats up your imagination.
It's not a lack of good writers, but design decision.
shihonage
Made in USSR
Per said:
It was close enough. Both methods load up the other person's position as something it isn't, in order to make it easier to dispute or ridicule.
Lexx said:
I have guessed it was by design but i don't buy the "because it limits the roleplaying value" argument.
For me, they do it this way because it was an AAA games and they wanted to reach the biggest market possible and in order to do that better to be blank than displease some player with your style.
And It's also much easier and faster, everybody can do it.
But style is what make cult games, makes it more memorable and dialogues more lively even of some did not dig it.
In FNV it's like your PC is a robot without any personality.
It's bad design for me.
I can understand some dislike the Fallout 1/2 dialogues tone but it was a fallout characteristic and a huge plus for me.
And they could have choose to make different answers with distinctive tone in order to roleplay it like you want instead of everything neutral.
Baldur gate 2 PC answers for example was much less characterized than in the Fallout game but it was not completely sanitized. Your PC did not feel like a robot.
But for not limiting your "roleplay" no more clever lines, bad ass lines, funny lines, complex lines nothing.
Great.
shihonage
Made in USSR
Indeed, you don't need all-bland dialogue, just a couple of generic lines, and the rest you can have match some of the player's possible current moods.
Those who want bland dialogue will just ignore the "wacky" stuff and those looking for "wacky" will ignore the bland choices.
This serves to help player further project themselves into their character, or breathe life into whoever they imagine them to be.
Making it all bland is a short-sighted design decision. This is not a blank slate, because blank slate implies something can be built upon it. This is just... forced sterilization of character.
Those who want bland dialogue will just ignore the "wacky" stuff and those looking for "wacky" will ignore the bland choices.
This serves to help player further project themselves into their character, or breathe life into whoever they imagine them to be.
Making it all bland is a short-sighted design decision. This is not a blank slate, because blank slate implies something can be built upon it. This is just... forced sterilization of character.
If you want the game to be coherent, you then would need a lot happy, sad, angry, neutral sentences in like every node of a dialog. Yeah, have fun writing all that and not fucking up the dialogtree.
shihonage
Made in USSR
Lexx said:
Not a lot, but more than ZERO would do, yeah? There are games that did it better than FO:NV so let's not go into "if FO:NV didn't have colorful dialogue options, it's impossible".
Well, I never said that.
Just pointing out that what you want is not without problems.
Remember the cathedral in Fo1. The dialogues in the whole location have a very aggressive tone. Everything is pointing at you kicking the shit out of everyone there. Even if you know nothing about the Master or his mutant army. It's a obvious design flaw.
Just pointing out that what you want is not without problems.
Remember the cathedral in Fo1. The dialogues in the whole location have a very aggressive tone. Everything is pointing at you kicking the shit out of everyone there. Even if you know nothing about the Master or his mutant army. It's a obvious design flaw.
Walpknut
This ghoul has seen it all
The Dialogue in New Vegas that has character is the one that has an specific effect, Skillchecks, perk dialogue, taunts and delivery of uncovered information. The only blanks slate dialogue was the one that just asks basic Information and accepts quests. That's a good use of the dialogue system.
I strongly disagree, they are very neutral, they have absolutely not style and almost no tone.Walpknut said:
Damn as i said i can understand that some people like it better this way but it's hypocrite to deny it.
You should really replay Fallout 1/2 the difference is obvious.
As i said Baldur for example did not have colorless dialogues option without being as extreme as Fallout.Lexx said:
Worked well and as far as i know fallout 1/2 have almost always neutral dialogues option if you want to roleplay neutral you could do it.
Also your are pointing a mistake in the scenario, have nothing to do with dialogue style.
shihonage
Made in USSR
Lexx said:
That's like claiming that a burned down tree is the same as a tree that has a few burns because they both have been subjected to fire.
A disingenious comparison of gross total of quality of a game's dialogue to a mere scenario in another game.
I realize that sometimes one has a kneejerk reaction to say something back, but flailing wildly isn't always the best option.
Walpknut
This ghoul has seen it all
Sobboth said:
I sometimes got annoyed in FO2 because a lot of the time the only way of going through certain dialogue lines was to choose very goofy or overly agressive lines of dialogue without an alternative and forced you to break character just to advance, which defeats the point of role playing.
shihonage
Made in USSR
Walpknut said:
Balance is hard to find, and apparently FO:NV designers opted for what they saw as the safest path. The unfortunate result of course, is blandness.
I gotta say I would probably prefer blandness to being forced to select from constant bipolar derp, but neither is optimal.
Ilosar
Vault Fossil
shihonage said:
That's pretty much how many RPGs, including Baldur's Gate, roll. Having 5-6 different intonations that make sense in most dialogs would be a writing chore, and you always have the possibility that even the offered choices do not satisfy the player. Fallout 1 and 2 had lots of choices sometimes, and several times I found nothing that was exactly like I wanted it. No solution is perfect. But personally I prefer that random, informative dialog be toneless, and skill checks have a tone because you can clearly know what's going on in that case.
It's not like the first two games had the PC delivering hours-end, passionate monologues either. Most responses were also terse and brief, save for the more important ones (IE skill checks) and some flavor text which half the time were wacky references. So I don't see what's the big problem here, and unless you want a Mass Effect/DA2 style dialog which has set tones in every conversation I fail to see what could satisfy.
shihonage
Made in USSR
Ilosar said:
I mentioned this earlier. It's a mistake to assume that good writing means "long writing". In fact one has nothing to do with the other, and games are served very well by having compact dialogue which carries a lot of information in it.
Instead the usual case is that the sentences are pointlessly long and describe something that at times could be relayed by merely a wink from an NPC.
GOOD!
Yeah I'm not a big fan of giving out skill checks that way but no game did it properly thus far.
Incorrect. This may be true for Fallout2 and later, but Fallout 1 was designed with a specific directive from Tim Cain, where all references are subtle, and they should not be recognized as references by those not familiar with what they're referencing.
Let's not be revising history here.
Balance. You may pick out anecdotal cases to the contrary here and there, but Fallout 1 as a whole mostly struck the right kind.