Preview There is no dialogue in Oblivion according to 1UP

[Sabregirl]

Patronising.

And probably hard-coded. It might be impossible to get rid of even for mods.
I don't know why I'm surprised at this. It is depressingly moronic.

I wonder how it's determined there's more dialogue to say. If you wrote dialogue for a topic with checks that would NEVER be true for a particular character (i.e. race/gender/quest path), would the topic never grey out?

If it wouldn't grey out, I'm willing to bet there's little to no race/gender specific selectable dialogue . . . . again

-S

 

[Mantiis]

Taken from http://www.waiting4oblivion.com/developer_quotes6.html

On dialog

It was a representation of the mechanics of dialogue. With 1500+ NPCs, a huge number of quests, over 50 hours of recorded dialogue, do you really, honestly think that that E3 demo shows every facet of how every single conversation in the entire game flows?

Yes, there are conversations and quests that go in different directions depending on how you respond. No, we're not going to give any specific examples of that, because half of the fun of games like this is for you to discover these things for yourselves.

There really isn't any way we can respond to this, short of releasing an entire quest's dialogue -- and that ain't gonna happen. I know you don't want to hear it, but you're just going to have to trust us that the dialogue is better than Morrowind's.

I believe some people in this thread need to read the second paragraph and realise that possibly they may actually be wrong in the presumption of Oblivion not being a rpg as they define it.

 

[Uz0rnaem]

I don't want to get too involved in this whole discussion, but this sounds just lame and pathetic to me:

No, we're not going to give any specific examples of that, because half of the fun of games like this is for you to discover these things for yourselves.
There really isn't any way we can respond to this, short of releasing an entire quest's dialogue -- and that ain't gonna happen. I know you don't want to hear it, but you're just going to have to trust us that the dialogue is better than Morrowind's.

They've given us an example of how the AI behaves by showing that "burning dog" scene, something that would've been truly hilarious if you had discovered it in the game all by yourself, but when it comes to revealing the dialog system they give us this lame excuse.
I'm not actually demanding an in-depth dialog demonstration, but why can't they just say "We're not showing any dialog releated stuff, because we're afraid of the reactions" instead of this "no we wont sp0il teh funz 4 u!!" shit. No one's buying it anyway.

 

[Lumpy]

I don't want to get too involved in this whole discussion, but this sounds just lame and pathetic to me:

No, we're not going to give any specific examples of that, because half of the fun of games like this is for you to discover these things for yourselves.
There really isn't any way we can respond to this, short of releasing an entire quest's dialogue -- and that ain't gonna happen. I know you don't want to hear it, but you're just going to have to trust us that the dialogue is better than Morrowind's.

They've given us an example of how the AI behaves by showing that "burning dog" scene, something that would've been truly hilarious if you had discovered it in the game all by yourself, but when it comes to revealing the dialog system they give us this lame excuse.
I'm not actually demanding an in-depth dialog demonstration, but why can't they just say "We're not showing any dialog releated stuff, because we're afraid of the reactions" instead of this "no we wont sp0il teh funz 4 u!!" shit. No one's buying it anyway.

The quote wasn't for you, it was on elderscrolls.com, where some people might buy it.
I think it's reasonable not to want to release a whole quest, with all the dialogue and journal entries.

 

[galsiah]

It does seem a bit lame: why can't they just give a hypothetical example which exactly parallels the logic of an in game dialogue sequence / tree? They could give a funtionally equivalent example without giving anything away just by spending five minutes paralleling a quest.

Perhaps the dialogue is much better, but I'd want more than "...conversations and quests that go in different directions..." ideally. Quests could go in different directions in Morrowind, but there were vanishingly few occasions when that actually mattered to the world outside that quest. Not every quest should have medium / long term implications for the player character, but a significant number should. Will this happen, or would it get in the way of "FREEDOM!!11!!!1!"?

Obviously it is unrealistic to have all the quests cunningly interwoven into one elegant, nonlinear network. However, I do hope that there will at least be some long term / wide ranging implications. Perhaps there will be such consequences. We'll see.

 

[Stark]

We'll see.

aye. it's pretty lame they refuses to divulge more other than "trust us, it's good".

 

[Sycandre]

considering all the brain storming have done around their game and around dialogs, there must probably be some dialog trees they left behind, but which may still give us a good idea of how the system works.

Too bad they prefere to give us empty promises.

I can just hope to be happily surprised, but I got more and more doubts about it.

 

[Uz0rnaem]

I think it's reasonable not to want to release a whole quest, with all the dialogue and journal entries.

As I said in my post I don't expect them to do that either (a hypothetical example would be great though). The thing that made me cringe was the obvious lie and nothing else.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

On another topic: "sell her into slavery"

I dont remember selling someone into slavery as part of the main quest; had a quick look at a faq and couldnt find it either. Care to enlighten me DarkUnderlord?

It was that one quest where you had to buy a slave girl and pass her off as a black elf (or whatever) princess for that dumb-ass piece of shit black elf tribal leader. I would have much rather beaten the shit out of him and made him give me the ring. Of course it ended up with her all flapping her dumb eyes at you "oh, my marriage is going sooo well, we're really happy." In reality a man like that who has trouble finding a woman by himself is probably a drunken piece of shit wife beater. Just look at those guys that go for the mail-order brides. Hell, the elf guy even looked and talked like one. So you were forced into buying a sex slave for a drunken wife beater (you couldn't just kill the stupid slave driver, she gave you some dumb-ass quests to do). Way to go, Bethesda. That's probably the most mysogynistic quest in any game ever.

Yup. It's that sort of enforced decision making which destroys any and all "role-playing" that may have been present in the game.

As for walkthroughs which mention it (search for "slave" on page):

• Uniting the Tribes
• Telvanni Bride for Zainab
• Morrowind Quest FAQ v 1.03
• 4.13: Fifth Trial Zainab

You get the idea. The entire main quest is unavaiodable and full of things you *have* to do. Unless of course, you really like that "You've ruined the plot!" message that comes up. In some respects, Bethesda deserve some credit for throwing the option in to continue at that point and finish the game via the backdoor at all, rather than just ending your game right there and then. In Oblivion though, you can only knock important characters unconscious and I have this tiny little feeling that when they wake up, you'll be able to talk to them as if nothing ever happened. No consequences.

Yes, there are conversations and quests that go in different directions depending on how you respond. No, we're not going to give any specific examples of that, because half of the fun of games like this is for you to discover these things for yourselves.

I believe some people in this thread need to read the second paragraph and realise that possibly they may actually be wrong in the presumption of Oblivion not being a rpg as they define it.

How many though? Morrowind had some of those as well. There were a whole two of them I think. If we're once again railed down the same linear path as Morrowind though, then it doesn't really mean much if for side quest number #17266-123b, you can kill the annoying Elf and take his sword OR ask to come up to his room and get it. As others have said, they can give specific screenshots of monsters and things but not even one lousy quest?

I have no doubt Oblibion will be a fun "wonder about and look at pretty things" game as Morrowind was but I'm doubtful on the real role-playing aspects. Something that none of their interviews nor past game performances gives any indication of beyond "possibly very bad and linear".