PieFed.WorldTodd Howard says that Fallout 4's cinematic dialogue system 'really did not resonate' with players, even though Bethesda 'spent forever' working on it
Agent_Karyo
www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/todd-howard-says-that…
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Skyline969I mean, when the dialog options were yes, yes, yes, and sarcastic yes, and then choosing one said something entirely different sometimes, yeah it was a steaming turd. There was nothing wrong with the dialog system before. I’m glad they figured that out by 76.
talThere was that mod thst changed it back to the standard style.
Absolutely, and that was such a welcome mod. Instant install as soon as I learned about it.
Huh, that is a pretty simple solution. They could've had a checkbox for that in the game settings...
ArxCyberwolfAnd don't forget the "sarcastic" options that usually aren't sarcastic and it's just your character being a sudden dick for no reason.
They spent forever on it because it fucking sucks. They had double the text for every single line because you had both a "summary" text for your choice and what the actual line spoken was. I bet the localization teams got a big check for that game
I remember all the dialog options sounding the same regardless of which of 4 options you picked. Fallout 4 looked great. But everything else was just okay.
The story boiled down to which group do you want to kill off?
DrDystopiawhich group do you want to kill off?
I don't want to discriminate, I say kill'em all.
The (main) stories of Fallout 3, Skyrim and Oblivion were comically bad as well. For me those games are about atmosphere, exploration and environmental story telling and I love them including Fallout 4 for that.
I actually loved that it was voiced but I did get a mod to change the one word labels to like what the dialogue actually was pretty fast
Do you folks think Bethesda is still capable of creating the type of experiences they used to?
SanctusPretty sure everyone that made this experiences good is no longer at the company.
I hear that about most of legendary game companies like Blizzard, Bioware, etc. So I wonder where do those people work now?
If they are in the US, either at another game company by now or out of the biz. The gamedev industry is incestuous and unstable.
They have the potential to. But these days, I personally focus on indie, AA and large mods of older games (Morrowind, New Vegas).
CDPR is still good though.
BurgerBaronTES I dunno. Fallout...playing 76 now, maybe? It seems they learned what folk want. Seems.
TES has the problem of a simple fact that dumbing it down brough a lot more players that it took out.
As long as they don’t hamper mods or modding too much, then yes, sorta. The de facto experience for many is the modded experience. Which is often leagues above vanilla. Maybe they can’t ship a good thing out of the box, but they leave reasonable tools out for people to make the thing actually good.
But of course it shouldn’t be like that. Unfortunately it is. But if you think of the games as sandboxes for modders, and expect nothing more, then in a sense I guess, they do deliver.
But it takes years for the mods to mature and the games to reach actually reasonable prices for what they are.
ZorsithMaybe, if they decide to ditch the janky gamebryo engine and/or stop glueing things on to see what sticks.
TrackinDaKrakenI'm fine with it being voiced. I like mods that spell out the entire response choice, and even tag which choice will advance the game, vs just adding exposition.
I'm fine with voicing, though before generative AI voice cloning, it made life difficult for mods, because all the vanilla game menus were voiced and the mod menus silent.
There's also a mod to silence the PC voices, if one wants.
- The default options often did not match up with the simplistic descriptions provided.
- The world itself was empty and void without mods until you built out all of the settlements and had the supply line perk.
It took the sim settlements 1 mod to fix this by building out the empty settlements into places you could work with or take over.
- Too much of the game was left on the cutting room floor.
3.1 the psuedo-implemented bandit hierarchy ending with the forged that was hinted at.
3.2 Cait and the arena was criminal.
3.3 that it sets up a fairly interesting synth and human dilemma a few times but outside of the one kid/family vs Justin Ayo in the Institute it just drops it for no reason.
3.4 it likes to pretend you have choices but rarely actually did.
I wanted to customize one or two settlements. Sim Settlements reduced the drudge work of building up fleshed-out settlements, which was nice.
I still feel like the bigger changes were cosmetic, though. And while the questline (IIRC Sim Settlements 2 only) was long and good for a mod, I felt that it wasn't as good as the base game.
I still feel like the building feature went so underused. Like, they had one level, the fight wirh the Mirelurk Queen in the Castle that really let one set up defenses. Just not a lot of gameplay around it. It was mostly "shield some critical stuff in settlements and make things pretty". Every game since *Fallout 4*, including *Starfield*, has had building, and I still feel like they haven't really used the potential there for gameplay.
Cait and the arena was criminal.
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/21498
Why did Bethesda cut this?
- Because almost nothing worked the way it was supposed to work.
Personally I would even prefer if they went all the way back to FO1/2 or Morrowind style conversations - I usually skip half of the voice acting anyway once I've read the subtitles and only needing VOs for portions of what major characters say gives the writers so much more room to go wild with everything else.
Completely agree. I’m veteran of the OG Fallout games, and I feel like I must be entirely wrong thinking how bland FO4 was based on its reception. Dialog was poor and every mission was just go there and kill that. It’s the only Fallout mainline game I never managed to finish.
I’m pretty sure in Fallout 2 one mission had my female character fuck a mob boss’s wife as a result of dialog choices. More wild variety like that and less settlements needing my help in the future please.
It’s the only Fallout mainline game I never managed to finish.
I think that my least favorite was Fallout 3.
I also really liked the Far Harbor DLC for Fallout 4. If you haven't played that, I'd recommend it.
I'm not particularly familiar with Fallout 4. Is the player character being voiced really all that is described here as "cinematic"? I expected lots of cutscenes or camera fly-bys or explosions or something beyond basic voice acting...
They have camera shots and stuff.
I think that the idea is that you don't know exactly what your character is going to say in advance, just the general tone, so it's supposed to be interesting to watch still, like a movie.
It didn't work very well, in my opinion. Too frustrating when your character does something that you didn't want, and too hard to pick among the options.
Dialog was Fallout 4's major weakness, IMHO.
Ah okay, thanks, that makes some sense at least.
I can certainly see how that would feel like you're watching two strangers converse, though, rather than it being good for roleplay...
Yeah, well put. I think that that's also why many people didn't like their character to be voiced. Broke the sense of immersion where they could be the character.
Honestly now that you explain it like this it makes more sense. Might even be fun in a game besides fallout.
I actually didn’t mind it too much but remembered to save often in case I disliked my choice
Right? So-called "Cinematic Dialogue System"
The Dialogue:
Except on few occasions, I felt the same with Mass Effect:
a) [PARAGON] space hero response.
b) [RENEGADE] asshole space hero response.
c) (broods).
Even worse it locked you out of responses unless you picked red or blue always. Idk it annoyed me, playing chaotic neutral.
Even then honestly, Mass Effect came our in 2007, Fallout 4 was 2015. Mass Effect was about a specific character that yes you were supposed to be able to shape and mold, but the expectation that the Fallout series had built up was for you to be basically anyone. And to my recollection 4 did nothing to temper that expectation going in with their new dialogue system and voiced protagonist.
Yeah, as soon as they kidnapped the baby I thought, "he's going to be dead, or come back as the bad guy"
My first play through, the first thing I did when I got to the institute was shoot him in the face.
Imagine my surprise when the quest log immediately spoils the reveal that I didn't even get to, as if i had done at least another hour of gameplay and politely told my son to pound sand.
I guess Bethesda never expected players to immediately kill the NPC that at that point your character thought stole your baby for some reason?
I did the same thing on my first as well. Then I started looting while being attacked and I got lost as it was my first time in there. Had to put down every single being in there, and as I wasn't expecting all that, I was running real low on ammo by the time I made it out, heavily overburdened with loot.
It's a shame that Fallout 4 really locked you into a character with a pre-written name, a fairly detailed backstory, and dialog (both the actual words and the voice delivery) that gave a sense of laser focused motivation. I felt absolutely nothing for Shaun, and therefore the entire main quest was a chore.
It would have been so easy to just have some plot other than getting Shaun back. Removing that as motivation and removing some of the player character backstory would open things up for players.
Doesnt help we already did the same basic plot in Fallout 3.
The dialogue UI and the fact they introduced random checks for some of the options (that you could just cheese by reloading) are such obvious issues too.
This is an interesting line.
The gems in Oblivion, Fallout 3 and such were little caves and crevies where it felt like some lone, unhinged dev went wild with environmental storytelling. You know, the posed skeletons, wall graffiti, the zombie you just read about, the mad painter or mad Daedra or mad robot or Vault social experiment or stuff like that. They were these self contained, cheap to produce but plentiful stories you'd stumble into.
...But writing stuff cinematically (and railroaded) feels more like a team thing. It must *be harder to eek good writing out of that, especially if they aren't used to it.
Probably my favorite part of both games and the reason their worlds still felt lived. The same applies to Cyberpunk.
Yeah.
KCD II as well. This is even where 'fillery' games like AC Odyssey shine.
A successful dev strategy seems to be 'let writers go mad in mini quests/dungeons'
And these little stories to find are what keeps the game fresh on every playthrough, even a decade later. There's always something new I haven't seen before, new little gags and hidden stories I had previously overlooked. And the best part is that many of them are very far off the beaten path, encouraging you to actually explore and take in the world instead of just fast traveling everywhere and rushing through it.
Dude completely missing the point, as usual lately.
The complaint was "That's not what the dialog option on the screen was, that's something completely different.". It had nothing to do with the voice.
Also, the fact that, for all the dialog, there was almost never any actual CHOICE for players to make.
Y'all remember the mod that re-wrote the on-screen dialogue options to actually match the spoken dialogue?
One of the first mods I looked for after playing the game for an hour back in 2015 was one that restored the 'classic' dialogue system and let you see exactly what your character would say before you chose a dialogue option. I was already done with being confused and blindsided by what came out of my character's mouth; it felt like I was rolling the dice every time, instead of being an active and knowing participant in the conversation. The system that shipped with the game was bizarre, I don't know how anyone could ever prefer it. I also don't understand how the devs went along with the idea. I can only assume Todd decided it should be that way and no one working under him was in a position to question it.
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" springs to mind.
The "problem" with those mods is they lay bare how thin the dialog choices really are.
That sort of mod is an absolute must-have for FO4.
You mean you don't want to choose a simple, sane option and have your character unprovokedly run into an unhinged psychotic screaming session for absolutely no reason?
You are really disappointing Mr.Howard with that kind of attitude /s
It was 100% Todd saying he wants that. That's how most of the bullshit in Fallout came around.
i'm convinced the only reason Fallout TV is good is cause theres theres enough people in enough positions to tell Todd Howard to shut up with his idiotic ideas.
Where the fuck is Todd getting this feedback from?
I'm sure there's some people that didn't like it because "but muh self insert silent protag", but the usual criticism I see has been hashed out entirely and has been incredibly consistent for fucking years.
You weren't given much in the way of actual choice, at times the short option summaries felt wildly disconnected from the actual dialogue the MC spoke, and limiting a series known for the roleplaying down to (at best) two versions of yes one option for later and one option to open a sub dialogue tree for more info was like removing a track and field runner's kneecaps to try and speed them up through reduced weight.
You could technically summarize that up as people not vibing with the voice acting, but the issue is ultimately a profound reduction of choice, world, and story depth without anything to replace it.
Bethesda seems to think that they can have their cake and eat it too by simplifying existing systems in an attempt to appeal to more casual players, while adding more systems that are only an inch deep to try and keep the existing fans.
The end result is that everything in these games becomes half baked gruel. There's nothing to invest yourself in because even if there's tons of systems, none of them have enough depth or polish to be particularly enjoyable. All the new bells and whistles sound cool on paper (settlements, procgen infinite planets, ship building, customizing weapons and armor, legendary enemies with different modifiers, procedurally generated base defense missions) but end up as just disappointments.
The number of [sarcastic] dialog options that were actually just unhinged threats was wild. I'm convinced whoever wrote those doesn't know what sarcasm is.
"Are you here for the synth?"
5 bucks says its AI.
You spent forever on that? It's literally just a static camera position that changes to face the current speaker. Brother! These guys stink!
Maybe he meant they spent forever writing the dialogue. Which like, yeah, that's what making a role-playing game is like, my guy.
Did you like the Fallout 4 Dialog system?
I dont know who couldnt love such an immersive and wonderful system /s
The cinematic dialogue system could have worked fine, if the dialogue was any good, and the diff story lines were actually interesting or had real consequences. It absolutely wasn't the story that kept me playing fallout 4.
By "cinematic dialogue" he means extremely dumbed down four options dialogue for cretins who cannot even read a proper sentence to choose from? Where at least three options were giving the same outcome?
Learn from Obsidian, you morons.
Wtf was there to spend forever on?? You pick four options and then respond?
If it was difficult, then it must be because the engine is hot-buttered arse.
I assume because there was a ton of voice acting and animating for all that dialog. That is a lot of work. Problem is just because it was a lot of work didn't make it automatically good.
I'll concede getting the takes for voices is effort but it wasn't like every dialogue choice would be accompanied by custom animations. Both as a matter of realistic expectations and also based on what I remember from playing. Even mouth animations can procedurally generated based on sound files.
Note: all heat is directed at Todd, not you.
I'm just saying, that's a lot of work to record and add in every bit of player character dialog (male and female character voices). It still takes development time to go through and make sure the dialog animations don't look (too) messed up and make sure characters aren't talking over eachother and things like that.
There's also the fact that during game development, dialogs can change. Which means if an earlier version of a dialog was recorded, it needs to be re-recorded. It's an extra layer of hassle compared to just changing a text box.
Part of the reason most RPGs don't do voiced player dialog is the amount of extra work it takes. The end result in Fallout 4 was underwhelming because of the writing, but it was still a lot of (potentially misguided) effort to have everything voiced.
i kinda figured the fallout community was for fallout fans. all i see is hate 🤔
Buddy, that's what Fallout fans are all about.
If you want an actual explanation, this results from the fact that Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas were made by largely the same people, but 3 and 4 were not.
Fallout 3 was my first-ever RPG. I love that game. It probably has my favorite Bethesda world, and I actually like scavenging the wasteland. Fallout 4 is considerably weaker, in my opinion. But, I still had my fun with it. Especially Far Harbor, Far Harbor is fantastic. That said, they are downgrades if you are an RPG fan. Fallout has been a roleplaying game since its inception, and removing a lot of the choice that players had in the older titles is going to rub some people the wrong way.
I think the general hateful attitude in the community toward Bethesda does prevent a lot of fans of the Bethesda games from seeing the side of West Coast Fallout fans. That said, I can't exactly blame them. Fallout 3 and 4 are designed around exploring and scavenging, and the West Coast games are designed around making choices and having your choices affect you or the world in some way.
Like, if they took Call of Duty and made it the greatest fighting game of all time, people would not like it based on the pure fact that they wanted a shooter. The same thing with Fallout 3 and 4. Only I would say that Fallout 3 has an excellently-designed world for exploring, and Fallout 4 is middling. That's my opinion though. You'll read many in the Fallout community.
people are too often blinded by what they wish they had they forget the great things they do have
im not gonna complain that fallout 1 and 2 arent first person games. i appreciate there are different ways fallout has been made. even brotherhood of steel even though that game really sucks
Of course you're not going to complain about Fallout 1 and 2, you're viewing them in hindsight.
Imagine if Fallout 5 comes out and it's just a gacha game. Were you expecting that, or were you expecting something that stayed faithful to Fallout 4's crafting and exploration mechanics?
Same story with Fallout 4. New Vegas was the previous Fallout game, and people were expecting 4 to model itself after its roleplaying.
West Coast Fallout fans are, unfortunately, not blinded by what they wish they had. They wish they had a post nuclear role playing game that focuses on the utter humanity of the trials and terrors with which you're presented, and they have that in 1, 2, and New Vegas. They just also wanted the series to carry on that tradition. There's nothing wrong with spinoffs or trying new things, but to not have player choice as a design pillar in an RPG is a misstep, I think.
I say 'they,' but in reality I am a West Coast Fallout fan. Again, I love Fallout 3, and I've played a shitload of 4. But 3 is not exactly well thought out in terms of lore, and 4 feels more like Borderlands than Fallout in both gameplay and tone.
It's just not what I'm looking for in an RPG, and I do wish Bethesda would accurately respond to feedback. Because they still think that the voiced character was the main thing we had a problem with, when The Witcher 3 came out the same year to critical renown.
wasteland is what the og fallout fans have. it was the original fallout. that has had new games recently as well
and if fallout 5 came out and was a gacha game, I'd certainly be surprised, but if it was good like (almost) all the other games then that'd be cool too
Right. But do you think that marketing that game as Fallout 5 sets reasonable expectations, or should it perhaps be released as Fallout: Gacha? That's merely my point.
I'm not really sure what your point about the Wasteland series is. Yes, I can go play Wasteland 1, 2, or 3. I'm talking about how it's going to cause ire if you start deprioritizing foundational aspects of an ongoing series. Which Fallout 3 started, and Fallout 4 continued, and Fallout 76.
my point on wasteland is if people arent a fan of the direction fallout turned, they still have wasteland as an option
I think in another 10-15 years from now it'd be fine. With ai helping blend in changes in facial and tonal cues. Like you could see in their face a different reaction and hear it in their voice. But as it was, all those lines of extra voice (done twice over!) took up too much space. So you get my characters dumb goofy smile while his voice tone sounds sad as he's delivering horrible news to someone. Sometimes it's funny, but it really kills any immersion.
Keep gilding that turd in chocolate, Howard. I'm sure someone'll nibble eventually. 🖕🏼
It doesn't bother me to the point that, having pre-ordered with season pass, I have over 6,600 hours in the game so far.
However, I did recently play through London, and that reminded me that I was fine with the previous system, too. Either works for me, but the previous system makes modding easier, I expect.
I sincerely hope that Bethesda stops breaking their game for mods, they must understand that the reason it's still so strong is the modding community, and that they provide free access to the tools to mod it. Please, leave Fallout 4 alone! Go work on something else. If they ever do produce Fallout 5, and somehow try to further monetize the modding community, I think they'll fail, again. Hopefully Todd will get replaced with someone more attune to the reasons for Bethesda's successes so far, since he seems to be losing the plot, and they can get back on track.
I thought it was alright
For me, the cinematic dialogue system was one of the only welcomed change I liked in FO4, since I don't like silent protagonists and the Bethesda (and Obsidian) fixed/zoomed-in camera dialogue
So if that thing is gone, there's nothing positive I can expect from a future Bethesda game
I can understand and respect your position
but to offer the other side on silent charcters over voice acting, voice acting is expensive and time consuming. While if the dialog is just text, it can be much more involved, much more informative, can have sudden updates and changes without having incurr the cost of bringing back VAs and studio time, etc etc.
You can also have interesting mechanics like F1/2 had with how you can basically ask questions via keywords and discover new dialog that you never would have seen, or heard, otherwise.
also lets me slip into my character more easily when I dont have to hear the VA's interpretation of it... unless the VA is Jennifer Hale, cause hers is basically the voice I hear in my head for any strong female MC, lol