Todd Howard: The Dialogue System In Fallout 4 “Didn’t Work As Well” As Other Features

Todd Howard, the creative director of the beloved Fallout and Elder Scrolls games, had an interview with Gamespot at E3 2016 where he discussed Bethesda’s recent releases and some of their future plans. When he was asked about how the team tries to please the fans, Mr. Howard stated that they were trying new things with the game when it comes to the dialogue system in Fallout 4  and it just “didn’t work as well” as the rest of the game.

This is what he had to say: “We do like to try new things and we have some successes. 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 I know the reasons we tried that – to make a nice interactive conversation – but [it was] less successful than some other things in the game. For us, we take that feedback, and I think long term.”

I agree that the the dialogue system took a bit to get used to in Fallout 4. There is a mod that attempts to fix it by showing the full line of what the player character is going to say, instead of just paraphrasing it. It’s a small touch but it does improve the way the conversations go in the game.

Personally, I would rather have a developer that keeps on trying new things and experimenting with their games than to have them release the same thing over and over again. Let’s hope that this doesn’t discourage them from trying new things with Elder Scrolls 6.