Fallout 4 did a lot wrong- from the quests to the leveling system, from the combat to the factions and story, everything in the game was dumbed down beyond recognition to the extent that at some point it was hard to believe that the game was an RPG at all. However, none of those sins was as egregious as the one committed by the game when it came to the dialog system.
You see, for Fallout 4, Bethesda decided to go for a Bioware-esque dialog wheel- but it never worked out. The wheel offered players only four choices no matter what the situation, which were almost always clearly marked as the best or worst responses for the situation on hand, and in many cases, were all homogenized. Players revolted, and multiple mods exist to revert the dialog system in the game to what it used to be like (not that that helps with the turgid writing in the game to begin with).
Speaking to Gamespot, Fallout 4 director Todd Howard admitted that the dialog wheel may not have turned out as well as he would have hoped.
“I think our fans are used to it over time, that we do like to try new things,” he said. “And we’ll have some successes, you know I think the shooting in Fallout 4 is really good, I think it plays really well. Obviously, the way we did some dialogue stuff, that didn’t work as well. But it was I think — I know the reasons we tried that, to make a nice interactive conversation, but [it was] less successful than other things in the game. For us, we take that feedback, and I think long term.”
So it’s good to see that he at least recognizes that there was a problem- now let’s hope that he takes this, and other, feedback to heart when he is working on The Elder Scrolls VI. The last thing I want for that game is for it to be as dumbed down as Fallout 4 ultimately was.
