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[itisnotlogical]

Morrowind is really unsettling to look at with the animation. Especially the way that NPCs instantly pivot to look at you, turning 180 degrees in a single frame because you walked past them. Everybody walks like they have a stick up their butt, and some of the attack animations are pretty laughable too.

I'd take Morrowind's animation over FO3-NV-Oblivion conversations, though. Those dead, emotionless eyes... *shudder*

[SOLDIER First]

how could you talk about new Vegas like that

[KingofstarrySkies]

The animations weren't great, but the dialogue was.

and at least in those games, people looked like people and not whatever the fuck morrowind's nightmare creatures are

[smirk]

Oblivion's dialogue was pretty crap, tbh. You'd regularly get two or occasionally even three different recorded voices in one npc's dialogue, and combining that with their samey appearance made it feel like the world was populated entirely by just 3 or 4 people. Skyrim does better on both counts, but I still ultimately prefer the old just-read-it system.

Also, for some reason the Morrowind pivot bothers me less than the way NPCs in Oblivion and Skyrim turn to stare at you whenever you're near, even if they're currently talking to another NPC. It is straight-up disturbing.

[Vendayn]

The next Elder Scrolls the dialogue will be good in terms of voice acting, but you can only talk to an NPC once and then can never talk to them again. Your character will be voiced, and given a dialogue wheel of 3-4 choices that end up being the same outcome no matter what choice you make. Also the choice you do, the character won't even say what it says on the dialogue wheel and say something completely different. The game will be more linear than any Elder Scrolls before it, and it will resemble very much a fantasy Bioware game. They will have removed a lot of features and made the game easier. But the story will probably be better than a typical Bethesda story, but still not nearly as good as a Bioware story. And finally amongst many other other things, quests will be incredibly simplified.

[itisnotlogical]

how could you talk about new Vegas like that

Every character, from an insane explosive-wielding maniac to a weary prospector to a gun-toting badass sheriff, will stand perfectly upright and use absolutely no body language or facial expressions, regardless of what the voice acting would have you believe that character is feeling or expressing right now.

New Vegas is an amazing game, just populated by emotionless golems. I was actually about to play it as soon as I finished this post.

[SOLDIER First]

;-;

[forsaken1111]

how could you talk about new Vegas like that

Every character, from an insane explosive-wielding maniac to a weary prospector to a gun-toting badass sheriff, will stand perfectly upright and use absolutely no body language or facial expressions, regardless of what the voice acting would have you believe that character is feeling or expressing right now.

New Vegas is an amazing game, just populated by emotionless golems. I was actually about to play it as soon as I finished this post.

I'm not sure what the production cost would be to have every actor in an open world game like Fallout using meaningful body language for appropriate situations and not have it be repetitive or look awful. I mean you'd need like... at least 3 sets of 'body language' animations for each emotion you want to portray so its not immediately obvious, each of which needs to be motion captured by a real actor and translated into computer animation for the game actor's skeleton. That is potentially hundreds of hours of work for a feature that I have never missed or cared about.

Do you think this would significantly add to the game? Genuinely curious, not being sarcastic. I've been looking at stuff like this recently.

[itisnotlogical]

I do think it would. Not every character needs to have it, but it'd definitely help in certain unique conversations.

For example, the insane Powder Ganger outside of Nipton. His voice actor is going ham, giving his best insane madman performance, and he actually sounded genuinely crazy and disturbed... while his model stood stock-still with a neutral expression on his face. It was very disconcerting. And also plenty of other situations, like characters that are happy to see you but aren't smiling, or "laughing" by just opening and closing their mouth very quickly.

I don't think there needs to be unique animations for every cutscene, but a little bit goes a long way.

[umiman]

how could you talk about new Vegas like that

Every character, from an insane explosive-wielding maniac to a weary prospector to a gun-toting badass sheriff, will stand perfectly upright and use absolutely no body language or facial expressions, regardless of what the voice acting would have you believe that character is feeling or expressing right now.

New Vegas is an amazing game, just populated by emotionless golems. I was actually about to play it as soon as I finished this post.

I'm not sure what the production cost would be to have every actor in an open world game like Fallout using meaningful body language for appropriate situations and not have it be repetitive or look awful. I mean you'd need like... at least 3 sets of 'body language' animations for each emotion you want to portray so its not immediately obvious, each of which needs to be motion captured by a real actor and translated into computer animation for the game actor's skeleton. That is potentially hundreds of hours of work for a feature that I have never missed or cared about.

Do you think this would significantly add to the game? Genuinely curious, not being sarcastic. I've been looking at stuff like this recently.

Witcher 3 is something like this.

I mean, they don't have unique animations for EVERY SINGLE PERSON, but it pretty believable.

Edit: Here's an example of the animations for the Witcher 3: https://youtu.be/e7K8bnrhxVo?t=9m32s

That's from a random-ass quest.

[Teneb]

Yeah, just having a few animations for happiness, a few for despair, and so on helps a lot.

[LordPorkins]

Cicero has an animation for Happiness! And by Golly is it a good one!

[smirk]

Yeah, just having a few animations for happiness, a few for despair, and so on helps a lot.

Agreed. Going back to Morrowind again, one of the things I really enjoyed about Sixth House lairs was stealthing in and watching the Corprus Stalkers. They would shuffle aimlessly around, but they also had this animation where they would hunker over, grab their head in their hands, and shake it around as though they were trying to get rid of the voices screaming at them. Just that one animation really helped drive home that these were crazy, diseased people rather than mindless zombies. (And of course you could talk to the more advanced ash creatures, ghouls and wights &c., and listen to their unhinged ramblings. But we're talking about animation =D)

[Kot]

I mean, they don't have unique animations for EVERY SINGLE PERSON, but it pretty believable.

Edit: Here's an example of the animations for the Witcher 3: https://youtu.be/e7K8bnrhxVo?t=9m32s

That's from a random-ass quest.

Yennefer, Triss and Ciri have unique ones and it's enough for me.

[Silverthrone]

The question is; how important is a state-of-the-art conversation systems to the overall game?

At its core, the defining activity of an Elder Scrolls game is going into a dungeon, beating up the tenants and stealing their pensions. Of course, there's more to it than that and a lot of different activities besides that, but that is the core. A realistic dialogue and conversation system would be nice, yes, but unless it connects back to the core of the experience, it's more of a decoration. Those are important, too, but not nearly as much as making the tomb raiding fun and engaging.

Better animation, better voice acting et cetera would improve the experience a lot and be well worth doing, but the NPCs are part of the background. That is where they belong. They're there to buy your loot, give you tasks and add flavour to the environment. Skyrim was a big improvement, and there are plenty more little tweaks that would be worth doing, but the NPCs and dialogue shouldn't be the main focus. Hell, I'd say Fallout 4 suffered more than it gained from trying to re-invent the dialogue wheel. It's a different property, but I'm really worried they'll do something similar in the upcoming TES game, too.

Improvements all around for the NPCs and dialogue system would be nice, but more varied dungeon tilesets would be time spent much better. Unless the whole game is an Agatha Christie mystery.

(Of course, no one in the thread is suggesting a big Smalltalk Simulator: Tamriel Edition, I'm being rather hysterical as well as merely apologetic. But I wonder what some people want from TES, sometimes.)

EDIT: Come to think of it, I think I've got an example. I really like Oblivion, despite its many problems. But there is a lot I don't like.

I had read in some book about the ancient Alessian order, which said that their headquarters used to be somewhere by Lake Canulus. So I went over there on an Alessian expedition and found nothing at all. Other books said the place had been razed, certainly, but at least the tiniest trace would have been nice. There was a ruined fort, but it was the standard, interchangable fort that could've been anywhere. An Alessian statue, some old murals or even just a plaque somewhere would have done. Same with the Ayleid ruins, not enough little details to connect it to history or the lore.

There was a lot of other little details like that missing that really dragged the game down for me. I can't help but wonder how many man hours that new dialogue system and disposition mini game took, and how else it could have been spent.