It is somewhat bothersome (though understandable from a writing perspective) that conversations NPCs have with each other do not offer dialog options when the character goes to speak with him/her.

However, those character wells did grow particularly frustrating the last time I started (two months ago, then was distracted by Oblivion again). Especially as so much seemed filler.

Now that I said I loaded up Oblivion, I will say I flinched as the intro movie played and I felt I was in Lord of the Rings with the orchestral music blaring and the slow panning of the Imperial City. There are many games where I turn off the music after the initial listen because I’d rather set my own mood (ooo, implementing my own options). However, I feel this is normally because the soundtracks don’t really feed into the game in the same manner.

Ah well, already preordered my Collector’s Edtion–I want that lunch box and will be using it. Thankfully, working in a Design department that enjoys discussing games, I expect to be the envy of the office.

(couldn’t help myself, sorry)

Good point. I had forgotten about the in-game literature. Those do make a difference for background/story arc/the world. Indeed, I’ve never had a complaint about the TES world… I find it a fascinating re-take on typical RPG fantasy. There is much to value in the TES games - especially Morrowind and (surprisingly!) Daggerfall. It’s just too bad that the same kinds of qualities never seem to make it into the interactive writing.

Personally I always found Morrowind much more interesting than Oblivion in terms of everything except gameplay (which is why I ended up playing Oblivion more and mostly just reading Morrowind via the above site); Morrowind does have a fairly well-crafted story (well, backstory, but that’s common in RPGs), although the dialogue still sucks.

But keep in mind, these are mere irritants, in comparison to Oblivion, where cookie-cutter dialogs comprise 99% of the game.

As for the second issue, again, I suspect that the game suffers from a lack of polish. Torment pulls so much further ahead in the sheer bulk of interaction.

I do think, though, that Bethesda is still worlds apart in terms of writing, and given almost 20 15 years of making TES games .. they still rely upon the same story mechanics as they did in Arena and Daggerfall. I agree that Fallout-quality writing would be easily attainable (and improvable!) - but only with the right writer. I’m not sure that Bethesda has that person.

Either way - your comment has given me quite a bit to think about. I’m planning on giving Fallout another play-through before the summer’s over. Thanks much for your thoughts!

Information well characters are what I’m calling characters who exist purely to describe the PC’s current location and usually give an idea where quests exist in the area. Sometimes they are blessed with more than a sentence describing who they are but most of the time they could be replaced with signposts. This begs the question why some towns have almost everyone in the town fit this dialog model.

The second issue I found is that Fallout can’t seem to decide what kind of voice it wants to give the player. In one town the player is given a choice to be anything from the selfless champion to a single minded survivalist through dialog, in another my interaction with a major quest NPC is sarcastically accept quest, sarcastically ask for information, and end dialog. While not every game can be the masterpiece that was Planescape, I think Fallout is getting a bit too much a free pass in the dialog experience department.

In terms of music you are spot on. The orchestral track style is overdone and unsubtle music becomes unbearable after around 10 hours.

Overall, I’ll give Bethesda some credit in that they recognize that the dialog in the Elder Scrolls was lacking. In my mind, though, Fallout level dialog is not an unobtainable goal and could use some improvement while they are at it.