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Skyrim's "laissez faire" dialog system

Callaxes

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 17, 2007
Messages
1,676
I haven't played TES5, but according to the youtube videos, you seem to be able to enter and exit dialogs without pausing the game. You can move around during the conversation and the NPCs will go on with whatever they're doing (cooking, lumbering, smithing, etcetera etcetera) while talking.

This "laissez faire" (I'll gladly take the opportunity to name this feature if it doesn't already have a term) system seems like a much better way of handling dialog than the way games have done so far.

It also seems cheaper I think, since you don't have to make animations for each dialog sequence which tend to get repetitive after a while.

Despite the fact that Skyrim's writing is mostly embarrassing, could this be the best dialog system to this day? And one that all games should follow from now on?
 
Self-Ejected

Excidium

P. banal
Joined
Aug 14, 2009
Messages
13,696
Location
Third World
You can't move while talking to people. You can look around by driving the cursor to the edges of the screen, though.
 

IronicNeurotic

Arbiter
Joined
Dec 2, 2010
Messages
1,110
No

The dialouge system isn't really complex at all at this point and visually it isn't pleasing either.

Secondly. What? How would something like this improve anything, least of all the role playing part?
 

octavius

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 4, 2007
Messages
19,184
Location
Bjørgvin
Is the game world still paused when you are in dialogue mode?
It's quite odd really, in this day and age when everything must be real time, that the whole world stops up in games when you talk to one NPC.
 

Mister Arkham

Scholar
Joined
Apr 24, 2008
Messages
763
Location
Not buried deep enough
Well the system isn't actually complex in any way...it's just an old fashioned and fairly minimal hub system. It doesn't SEEM to pause unless you enter a trading window, though, and the game lets you look around and drop out of dialogue whenever you want, and the game doesn't have the old Gamebryo zoom in where if you start a conversation you only see the NPC's face and shoulders. I will admit that it does allow for NPCs to keep doing little activities like sweeping and chopping wood, but it also doesn't stop walking characters from stopping their progress and turning toward you until they've finished their introductory line and delivered you at the main hub...which can be problematic. The first time I walked into Whiterun, I overheard a conversation between the blacksmith and a Legion captain, and hoping that it might be a quest trigger I followed after her when they were done. She didn't stop walking until after she had walked behind a post, though, so my entire conversation and trade session with her was done through a wooden plank. Hardly ideal.

There are also a lot more of the scripted walk & talk segments that they were starting to play with in Fallout 3, though they've opted to take the player off of the rails in this one. I haven't tried just walking away from one of them, but I imagine that you can because the game world remains active. And that's kind of a problem too, unfortunately. During the scenes leading up to the dragon fight outside of Whiterun I had several perfectly normal NPCs bump into me during their walk paths, stop, look at me, and spout off a line of dialogue over the conversation that I was supposed to be following and participating in. Being berated by a little girl--for my theoretical inability to bake good sweet rolls, no less--during the middle of a war council does not good immersion make.

So really, the system is pretty simple and straight forward. I won't call it shallow, because it absolutely isn't for an Elder Scrolls game. I also won't call any of the things about it new, because they absolutely aren't. I don't think I've ever seen all of them together in a AAA title, but they aren't new. There are things about it, though, that put the execution off.
 

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