Fallout and the Trouble with Speech
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- Опубликовано: 26 сен 2024
- Fallout has had a complicated relationship with the speech skill for over two decades at this point, but how did this come to be? Let's dive into the history of the franchise, and try to figure out whether this problem can ever be solved...
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Fanfare for Space, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
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Jon, never hover over the child perk while talking about seduction.
It's somehow creepy , if you read your comment 3 or 4 times
@@yiaboi2287 *Seduction*
Bruh.. 👁️👄👁️
@A M you've avoided being put on a list this time.
He knows what he was doing.
Honestly, I thought the idea of the child at heart perk was rather creepy...
The biggest problem the dialogue and speech in the RPGs is actually the workload it puts on the writer team. Designers can always can come up with a nice, efficient dialogue system, but eventually it all comes down to how many writers you have, and how good they are, and they have to be really good to overcome a system of this scope. And from what we have been seeing, there aren't enough qualified writers in the market, at least for one team to gather that many.
I don't know how hard it would be to write (for a professional writer) as the system does give a check list to the writers for what the dialogue should be as it tells you what a character is thinking. I agree with the point of quantity though, writing all the different scenarios would take a long time and drain resources
Lately, I've been playing a few graphic novel style rpg games and am enjoying them immensely. They offer on going replay-ability as every choice or combination of choices you make can yield different results including who lives and dies, who is ally, enemy or lover and ultimately how the story ends. One I played had over a dozen possible endings both good and horrifically bad. These are adult games and do feature intimate role play animations in addition to the main story and sub plots. So, to remain family friendly I will not mention specific titles and other details here in this public forum. But, they are certainly fun :)
Adventure on friends, Phat
Especially bad for Bethesda as they don't actually hire writers. Their designer's just wear two hats
You're absolutely right on the money, Serdar. As a modder, I've looked at the dialogue system of Fallout 3, New Vegas, and 4. Each system, to varying degrees, has the ability to implement and and all of the suggestions in this video. You could, for example, make the Knowledge/Reputation system Many A True Nerd described here happen. It would just take a bit of work, setting some invisible quests that mark whether you've met the prerequisites he speaks of, and linking the respective paths in the conversation to having passed said quest stages. It would just be a lot of work, and it's not how they did it in the game... but it's completely possible. All it would take is a determined effort to set it up that way.
The writers don't have to be better than what we already have, but you need more of them to cover the extra work, and restructure how you do the writing to split people into smaller teams, to avoid the synchronization penalty that comes with working in a large team.
Honestly, the game industry could use some internal restructuring anyways, because it's insane how some companies get any games out of the door with how they are structured!
My biggest issue with how speech is handled in Fallout is that it almost never opens up more gameplay but serves as a method of avoiding it. Rather than talking your way into a new gameplay path, you end up talking your way out of quests, like:
"go fetch this thing from this place"
"but what if I didn't?"
"that works too, here are some bottlecaps and directions to your next quest"
In Fallout NV there are several quests which are only accessible with a higher speech check
I love that the only retorts are “yeah but the one Bethesda didn’t make is good”, like yeah no shit. Obsidian found a way to make barter one of the best skills in the game FFS, they actually understand how to build a game in this universe.
@@ionceateapinecone Is that directed at me?
Thats fallout 3 not new vegas.
@@12halo3 ah yes because “come fly with me”, one of the longest side quests in the game can’t be skipped with speech right? That would be crazy
Honest hearts had a knowledge system involved in dealing with one of the caravaneers, ricky i think. If you had been to vault 22, you could call hin out on his lie about his origin, if you had power armor training or were a memeber of the BOS you can call out his lie about killing power armored troopers, as well as normal speech checks, as well as guns and medicine checks
DLC's are smaller thus allow developers to focus more on stuff like this.
Ricki and fantastic are my two favorite idiots
@@codsworth3996 It's not just that the DLCs are smaller it's also because they're made after the game so the time limit isn't at much.
Yeah, I forgot that I had installed a mod that made the gay perks give power armour training (which was obviously a bug fix since all the gay characters can use power armour) so I used confirmed bachelor to call him out.Just find that amusing for some reason.
Yeah, but that really doesn't count because of how limited it is.
There are better examples of that, to my mind. Lots of the quests have branching conclusions based on what you wind up figuring out - there's no reason that couldn't be extended to the wider wasteland.
A simple example is just Veronica letting you into the brotherhood bunker. She is the human embodiment of knowledge that you could gather to open a hidden dialogue option.
"Legate! What are you doing back here?"
"Brothers, we should give up and leave."
"What are you talking about! We outnumber the remaining NCR forces. Why should we give up the dam."
"I... I was convinced, that's all. If we stay in the west, we lose the east, because we'll be spread too thin."
"Uh huh, and who convinced you?"
"The, uh, guy over there in the armored vault suit."
"THAT guy? He's the dumbest person, unironically, in the whole wasteland!"
"He, uh, just convinced me. Anyway, my decision. We're leaving."
To be fair he was right, stay in the west lose the east, win the battle, lose the war.
Implying anyone would actually question Lanius
Lanius didn't seem even to be that intelligent to understand such argument. I find that a bit immersion breaking...
@@BoroMirraCz We dont know Lanius intelligence, for all we know he could be a master planning who just happens to like ripping people apart.
Conker The Cat Lanius was stated by Joshua to not really care much for logistics and such unlike Caesar but he is good at leading armies. Also I’m pretty sure that Lanius is a bit unhinged so his mental capabilities is probably all over the place
Wolfgang: You're gettin' mugged, kid!
Nora: No, you're getting mugged!
Wolfgang: Augh! How the hell does that even work?!
Seriously though, when he's told to get lost even he sounds disgusted that he has to obey the game's programming.
Whats funny is that you can have a better result if you ignore the charisma option and tell him you will talk to trudy. If you do that you can get both of them to be at peace and can use both as vendors.
lanius: ive been built up as a mindless murderer who WILL slaughter anyone in sight and the price of failure in the legion is worse than death
courier: go away
lanius: ok ok im going sheesh
One of my favorite examples of speech not done with the speech skill is the Ulysses fight where you can use the recordings and your own deduction to win. Now there is a way to win with speech which I find to be kind of dumb, but having the ability to beat him with knowledge you’ve gained along with having to properly use this knowledge should be the gold standard to speech winning a boss fight.
Metronic Magician and even if you do all the stuff, you can still blow it by making him believe you learned the wrong lesson 👌
Yeah, but on the other hand you encounter the problem of "facts and logic" speech boss battles being kinda stupid with people specifically like Ulysses.
Ulysses is irrational. He has this absurd hatred for you, for an accident. So his solution is to deliberately bomb something *you* care about, eye-for-an-eye mentality. While he *ALSO* plans to kill you, specifically.
His whole "i need to teach you a lesson that your actions have consequences" mentality is blown to the Nth degree. You talk Ulysses out of his vendetta by telling him "Hey youre wrong, stupid, you even said so yourself lol".
If you want a good skill-less Speech boss battle Id substitute Fallout NV for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2.
While I despise kotor 2 on the whole, the first major speech interaction with a jedi is precisely about ideologies, preconceptions, biasses and how we tread these things. It is *IMMENSELY* gratifying to naturally, through your own application of logic, "defeat" an opponent by robbing them of sensible counter argument.
That also happens to be a very appropriate way to deal with Ulysses given the nature of his character.
Heimskr, Prophet of Talos you don’t talk down ulysses with facts and logic. You do so by learning about him (or ed-e) and using that information accordingly. If you try to challenge his worldview with logic Ulysses will force you into a confrontation.
@@l33tspaniard
Hense why "facts and logic" is in quotation marks - im being hyperbolic, because the "facts and logic" meme is, as you may have guessed...
A meme.
Moreover, you invalidate your own argument.
"You talk Ulysses down by learning about him and usong that information accordingly"
Yes. By using the *FACTS* in his past and *LOGICALLY* concluding the "lesson" you need to parrot to Ulysses to get him to back down.
on the subject of splitting up the speech skills, I really think armor should influence the way people react to your skill checks. It always caught me off guard that I could walk into the white glove society wearing blood soaked raider gear, and have them respond to me the same way they would if I was in a 3 piece tux, especially since new vegas had a system of disguising yourself.
Sure.
The problem is, then you’re going to want the publisher to add some kind of macro functionality to the UI, so that with a single keypress you can have your character swap between his Talky Loadout and his Fighty Loadout.
So since you were going to use that macro function anyway, why not just simplify things by assuming that your character already changes to appropriate outfits automatically, without you the player having to allocate any time or attention to it?
Peter Knutsen cuz paying attention to it is what makes it meaningful
Real Human
No.
Gameplay, whether in a computer game or a tabletop RPG, is the process of making meaningful decisions.
It’s *not* a meaningful decision whether you’re going to change out of your power armour, take a shower, and put on your fancy tuxedo, before you go to talk to the polite NPCs.
It’s a no-brainer. You will always do that. It’s predictable. It’s the exact opposite of making a decision that is interesting.
@Peter Knutsen with that logic, then all of the disguises in FO:NV are completely pointless because the game should just automatically make myself look like who ever I'm dealing with. And in that same vein, why let the player choose what weapons they use, when you could just have the game auto equip the best equipment for you? Why even have an inventory screen at all? Giving the player the agency to choose what they look like is part of the fun of an RPG.
That's ignoring the fact that the player might also want to play the game in less then optimal conditions. I could see a play through where you have to wear the worst possible equipment at any given moment being really interesting to work out a solution for, but if the game just auto equipped the player the best appearance for the current circumstance a run like that wouldn't be possible.
edit: and I wouldn't want that to be a UI Macro. Changing your appearance shouldn't be easy, and as an aside, it would finally give a in game purpose to barbers and plastic surgeons. A clean shaven, well dressed business man wouldn't be the best build for intimidating a raider boss onto your side. However, if you dropped a few hundred caps to grow out some mangy facial hair, give yourself an 8 inch scar across your eye, and lob your ear off for a bonus on your speech check, it could be a very cool and immersive way of calling out the fact that you look nothing like you should in the context.
@@peterknutsen3070 I never did like how you could just change clothes in the middle of a conversation to arbitrarily raise certain stats. As tedious as it would be, the only way that clothing influencing speech would work in my mind is if you could only change clothes from a wardrobe in each settlement, that way, if you want to wear armour, you won't get any special bonuses, and adversely, clothing that gives you speech bonuses would leave you open to attack if you're ambushed whilst in normal dress, for example. Something like that, anyway.
It's refreshing to find a discussion of the franchise that doesn't boil down to Black Ilse/Obsidian = good, Bethesda = bad
yeah
The halo community has the same issue, but with bungie and 343.
Obsidian>Bethesda. Fight me
@@crimsonvioletproductions9897 Bungie>than 343. Fight me
Mr.Butter101 I’m good, it’s your opinion
I think one of the reasons why Fallout 4 felt so disconnected in terms of its story and factions was that the reputation system was pretty much nonexistent, despite the fact that it could have been implemented in spectacular fashion.
Like one of the big complaints from players about the Minutemen is that, if you are the General and have pretty much rebuilt the faction, why do people still not recognize you or the role that you've played? A reputation system could have definitely opened up dialogue options for that specifically and rewarded the player for joining said faction. Like, if you were the General before meeting Danse or Maxson, they would instead offer a chance to negotiate a peace treaty rather than ask you to join the BoS.
Something like that would have made the game feel a lot more connected, I think.
Your post is very good, Munchy. I entirely agree with you there. This is one of the many reasons why I have not played Fallout 4 in a long time, but recently started to play a new playthrough. After playing Fallout 3 that Reputation System was jawdroppingly great and horrifying at the same time. Great because your Reputation precedes you. You could up to easily convince others to do your bidding whatever that may of been in those instances. In Fallout 4 though... wow... the entire effin' world revolves around you yet does not at the same time. Almost exclusively through Random Events do the hostile NPCs *not* assail you the instant they see you. I remember in Fallout 3 the world did not revolve around you, and pretty much noone gives a crap about you. All because to the NPCs you are just someone else to pick on and/or worse. It is also natural for seemingly everyone in a post-Apocalyptic world to be some of the biggest dicks around. I wonder if there is a Reputation System mod for Fallout 4.
Also, Nuka World for Fallout 4 completely breaks the main game's storyline if you are aiming to be friendly or more so with Preston Garvey at least. To me Nuka World was a massively missed opportunity to set up the Raiders for ultimate failure with the faction(s) you have sided with prior to Nuka World, side with the Raiders, or go solo (with Dog Meat) and kill every Raider in Nuka World your way. It would of been fricken fantastic to be able to summon the BoS to Nuka World and watch your allies just slaughter the Raiders and other enemies with extreme prejudice. With the Minutemen it would of been fantastic to turn *every* area of the park into unique Minutemen Settlements, but the ultimate Minutemen prize would be the park itself. You take all of Nuka World as a Minuteman and you would have the ability to turn Nuka World into the *new* official Minuteman HQ. For the Railroad.. I am not sure. I have never actually sided with them nor the Institute (The Illuminati, lol). Though the Institute idea would turn the entire park into the Institute's official on-ground HQ for you to build up from a piddly operation to a new level of horror for the Commonwealth.
I mostly got annoyed that Garvey just went on and said "Hey you are the leader now!" the moment you join, when later quests clearly show that there's other more senior members still alive out in the wasteland. It would be better if the specific Minutemen reputation would had been a military system. Then you would start out as a private, being part of a group you don't lead yourself perhaps even have Garvey being your units commander. Once you officially become a commander you would start out as a 2nd Lieutenant, with a group of minutemen following you around(which would be affected by the charisma perks).
Once you hit the top rank(probably general), It would had been a fun interaction to be able to order squads out to defend settlements who was under attack or bring your own personal units. Then they could had used the settlement system to facilitate military headquarters. For example you always had one squad aviable from Fort Independance, but if you put some effort into it you could form a squad at the Red rocket truckstop, they would require settlers to help provide food, some special buildings, enought beds etc. Could also had been fun if you could invest into the squads making their gear better(without the trade - hand out stuff). Now Fallout 4 basicly means that you don't need any help since you eventually go god-mode, but it would feel like you had climbed in the ranks at least.
This would do been so much better than just artillery support, @@magnuscarlsson9969.
@@magnuscarlsson9969 You’ve got some cool ideas, but I dunno if starting out at such a low rank would make much sense, considering you essentially helped Garvey rebuild the entire organization at the start.
@@canadianchill6606 Well that's somewhat true. I just find it so infuriating that Garvey choose to be below you so early on. I highly doubt that any reasonable person would just hand command over so easially, even if they don't see themselves as a leader figure.
I think something similar to Deus EX: Human Revolution might work, where, to solve problems diplomatically, you have to pick the right dialogue options yourself and your speech skills/perks only help you make the right choices.
Imagine something like this: for each conversation, the game could keep a hidden score of how far you are to convincing that person. If you say the right thing, that score goes up and if, at the end, your score is high enough, you unlock the special speech option to actually get what you want. If your speech skill is high enough, the game could give you hints as to which options are the correct ones - at lower levels, you will be shown a basic personality profile for the person you are talking to, with more things added the higher your speech is, at higher levels, the game will reveal your current conversation score, and at very high levels, the score required to succeed will be reduced.
That way, speech would no longer be a guaranteed win button, and dialogues would be somewhat more gamified. It would also tie in well with the knowledge based approach, as learning about your target or what you are going to be talking about can help you gauge which options might be more convincing. Perhaps, this system could also be tied in with a reputation system - if people like you, they will be more easily convinced by what you have to say, further reducing the score required to "win" conversations.
Edit: Some further thoughts: How about having reputation be a multi-level system. You could have one global reputation, a faction reputation, local reputation, and person specific reputation all influencing your possible dialogue outcomes to various degrees, which will be impacted by a new value, call it "fame". Your fame represents, whether you are mostly keeping a low profile, or are acting very publicly. The higher your fame, the grater the impact of your global and faction reputation will be (everyone will recognise you as the famous person who did [something] and judge you for it). In contrast, if your fame is very low, only the individual persons opinion will play a factor (they have, at best, heard vague rumours about you and would rather make up their own mind about you).
Also, what if there were some sort of benefit to conversations going very badly? Say, you already know that you don't want to resolve a problem peacefully, then you could try to provoke your opponent at every turn during the conversation to try to get them to do something stupid and make the fight easier for you.
The problem with that system though is that anyone who isn't role-playing I'd just going to save scum, it won't be good for a every playthrough after the first since you could just remember which options give you the win, and most importantly the dialogue options would need to be written VERY WELL to avoid "glass him" moments where the player is confused by/misinterprets the option
honestly the problem with fallout speech, or most modern Bethesda rpg speech in general, is lack of characterization in dialog tree.
the reason why the knowledge-based speech for the master in fallout 1 stand out so much in my mind is that there is a lot of characterization in that dialog tree, while a lot of newer titles doesn't really offer that. they just basically all went "okay" and walk away. Granted improving the writing does not necessarily fix the game balance, but it helps with player enjoyment overall, and that is more important IMO
Interestingly, classic Fallout had a perk that would suit this system very well - Empathy, which tweaked conversations so you could detect how positively or negatively somebody would react to what you were about to say.
This proposed system seems similar to Vampyr, in which you have to learn more about your victims in order to get the most benefit from feeding off of them. I would also use a multi-opinionated system, in which different options increase different values, and those values are weighted differently depending on the NPC's personality. For example, you could have respect, fear, and friendliness, and different people are more responsive to different values. Additionally, increasing fear could decrease friendliness to add more complexity. Just some thoughts.
Dear lord no. Deus Ex: HR/MD's speech battles were terrible, unintuitive, awkward trainwrecks where conversations did not flow logically, and any given dialogue options may or may not work seemingly at random. And further complicating things in MD, you had weak and strong victories and defeats depending on how arbitrarily well or poorly the character decided to react to what you said during any given attempt. In short, keep that shit far away from my beloved Fallout.
"You cannot negotiate with radscorpions"
*fallout 4 has entered the chat*
True but also that's more of a threaten thing.
@@GameHub561 *PACIFY*
@@IMP_ROM Same thing isn't it, you got to threaten someone to pacify them considering pacify isn't a diplomatic term.
The pacify system could be great, if it took into account how many allies that npc has nearby, how many allies the player or their allies has killed since the encounter began, and how well armed the player is, you shouldn't be able to pacify a raider in a group if you are solo, unless he is isolated and at a strategic disadvantage.
@@protojager True.
All I want is for the people making the next Fallout game to watch these essays. Even if they don't go with your solutions, I just want them to understand these issues.
I just want them to think about those issues.
@The Nova renaissance that's not gonna happen. Skills are too RPG-ish, and that's sadly a niche these days. Bethesda have shown time and time again they want to market Fallout as a shooter with slight RPG influences, bringing back skills would be the exact opposite.
that's actually a really good point. They don't necessarily have to agree with the diagnoses and/or solutions, just understand what the fans are thinking
@@simonlindner693 Idk if i'd call RPG's a niche in the way the word niche is implied, The Witcher 3 has sold over 20 million copies since its release, Cyberpunk 2077 has at least over 1 million pre-orders so far. I think the main reason why Bethesda's game are getting simpler and simpler is a combination of laziness and dislike of RPG's complicated mechanics, When was the last time Bethesda made a innovating change in their games/development cycle?
@@simonlindner693 Yup - FO is going more and more FPS. It's sad. That's not why I played Fallout.
An option to scare Lanius because you had killed Joshua Graham in Honest Hearts would be awesome.
Or convincing him that you ARE Graham (or his vengeful ghost or something) maybe a check to see if Graham's gun is in your inventory: "Do you recognise this, Lanius?"
@@PrototypeSpaceMonkey That would of been bad ass.
PrototypeSpaceMonkey hohohoho that would have been so cool
Bring Graham to lanius and see a mega confrontation
PrototypeSpaceMonkey replaying NV now. Guess I know what I’m using to put a cap in Lanius’ ass
Lucius: Caesar is dead at your hands. This crime cannot go unpunished.
[Carousing 100] * Perform the Coffin Dance. *
Lucius: Understandable, have a nice day
In terms of alternate systems, there was also the recent Deus Ex: Human revolution's approach- every NPC you try to convince has a different blend of three personality types, the levels of which aren't revealed initially to the player. The player has three approaches they can take, which have different levels of impact for each personality blend a character has. The conversation has multiple phases, where your initial phases are spent gauging the personality of the character by their responses to your approach and the later ones picking the options most compatible with their personality and your desired outcome. The result were sorts of 'verbal boss battles', where things like convincing a suicidal man to put down the gun wasn't a straight skill check and involved a degree of intuition by the player. The downside being there wasn't much replay-ability- once you knew what someone is like, subsequent playthroughs are easy to talk through.
What year are you living in that Deus Ex HR is recent?
@@beskarbaron6503 I guess I was thinking compared to the original fallout. It's still within the last decade, though I admit I hadn't realized it'd been nine years. Compared to the one I played before that, Invisible War 17 years ago, it feels recent. I was in gradeschool for one and living on my own for the second, so my perception of time may be warped.
Isn't Kingdom Come: Deliverance something like this?
@@GradivusGFX Sort of. You have three diplomacy skills and choosing an associated dialogue option matched your skill with the other person's skill. If yours is superior enough, then the option succeeds.
@@beskarbaron6503 Once you get old, a decade will be rather recent. (And Deus Ex : HR is rather recent compared to Deus Ex, as well)
I think Disco Elysium is probably the best modern example of how to do speech checks in an engaging way. The attention to detail in that game is simply jaw dropping in that regard
I always thought the best way to deal with the Lanius issue would be to simply convince his bodyguards to side with you, both of the backstories given to Lanius give the impression that he'd fight to the death for the sake of fighting, wouldn't be too farfetched to say the praetorians with him wouldn't be of that mentality, and knowing things such has what happened to the burned man could intimidate them into betraying the legion to avoid being executed for being part in the high command of a failed legion military operation
Fallout 2 Spoilers (referenced in video)- that's exactly what happens with the Enclave Sergeant in Fallout 2. By that point you've activated the base's self destruct and they realize that their management has no real plans to get them off the rig. You basically say "Look, I have a boat and I'm leaving. Help me kill that mutant freak in our way and you can join me. Otherwise you die.".
That is such a great selution and would fix my biggest poblem with new Vegas.
This is a great idea. Lanius was hyped up to be a brute force of death. And then he ends up getting convinced by an argument he probably lack the intelligence to comprehend. Nice writing there, Obsidian...
@Son Gohan It's contrived bullshit that doesn't make logical sense in context, and it's purely there in service to you getting an achievement and unique armor if you dumped into Speech. Lanius is RIGHT THERE ON THE DAM, he's ready to take it, and as a killer and conqueror, that would be the one moment where you have no chance to talk him down. It's bad writing, stop making excuses for Obsidian.
@Son Gohan Well the other Fallout bosses are in a situation in which it makes sense Lanius is not. The legion does everything to get the dam and than just leaves because you say "bigger empire means that your army needs to be in more places at the same time". Duh. The hole point of the battle of the dam was that they need fresh water and energy but that they spend all that and just leave.
I feel like Acadia's fate was a step in the right direction for 4, even if it was too little too late - it's left to not only a charisma check, but how many people you helped in Far Harbor.
So the Courier, who cheated death in a grave near Good Springs, cheated death once more and the Mojave wasteland was forever changed.
And they somehow did it with speech 1
You mean with 1 Charisma
Isn't there a speech check with Dean Domino in Dead Money that locks his bad end?
Yeah, it's basically the very first Barter check you get the option of making with him
yup :) and I did it my first playthrough (and second)
Yeah... and it's one of the worst parts of the DLC. This goes so much against RPG design. Some random speach check that doesn't even imply it would lead to bad outcome... and it causes bad outcome hours later. Terrible terrible DLC...
@@BoroMirraCz I didn't mind it, myself. It made you _think_ before blindly reaching for the extra XP for passing a skill check.
@@BoroMirraCz I disagree with Dead Money being a bad DLC but I with you about it being an odd choice for a skill check to be a bad thing
I love these essays. When we going to get something of the classics? You promised, Jon.
He did promise.....
I still say he should attempt an INT 3 run of Fallout 2.
He promised but I don't remember if he said when he would do it so I'll just sit and wait *pulls out guns& bullets magazine* ooh this one talks about shotguns my favorite~
The old classic Fallout crippled limbs were terrible, I spent 3 hours trying to figure out wtf to do🤣
I’d give Fallout 2 more credit bc the speech options quietly have other stat requirements, specific dialogue paths, an sometimes die rolls
Quite a lot of Perception and Intelligence checks, too. Not that New Vegas lacked those, however.
That's actually a major and repeated failing of Fallout 2 - obfuscating mechanics is a bad approach, because a game is a transaction.
You can tell Obsidian/Interplay thought that way as well, because in Fallout New Vegas they made the checks visible and obvious. Even then, it still didn't fix the core problem of how goofy simple checks are.
Knights of the Old Republic (and even Fallout 4, honestly) does this a lot better, where you can have persuade options available that have a better or worse chance of working, and you have to sort through which ones will work and what kind of outcomes they will give. Rather than speech checks being the reward, they're part of the challenge.
Fallout 4's approach in particular was frustrating because the implementation showed promise but the execution was incredibly shallow, but that's honestly the theme of that game.
I think the final fight speech 100 option should have been something along the lines of "1v1 me scrub" so if you have speech 100 you would only fight Lanius instead of him and his guards.
There is a option for you to challenge him in a one on one fight. Can't remember whether it is speech related or not.
But we weren't in front of Orgrimmar.....
@@jf8350143 75 or 85 I think.
Lanius forfeit does make sense, as the courier explained to him that taking over hoover dam and vegas will be their downfall (Legion lack of resource), which is the same problem that NCR encounters, that also lead to NCR downfall as well (assuming the courier did not help NCR to fix their shit one by one. And Courier being not sided with anyone). The problem though, it should not be unlocked with speech only, it should also depend on your Intelligence stats (to understand the problem as a whole), and how many side quest about NCR's problem that you did. Otherwise people that rush the main quest would be confused with courier's speech check, as the problem is not so obvious (unless you do a lot of NCR side quest).
@akundaruratkalalupa9710 I don't think Lanius cares about the long-term. He doesn't care about the Legion, he was only loyal to Caesar. You killed Caesar, and so there shouldn't be a way to talk him down.
The way you convince the master he is wrong is perfect, as far as I'm concerned.
Maybe make it not rely on speech skill to do it, but make the skill act as a safety net in case you mess up though.
Indeed. Using speech as a failsafe for if you chose the wrong line/need more evidence to convince the guy you’re talking to that you’re right is how it can be improved
Having the skills as a safety net reminds me of the Shin Megami Tensei series. In that series, you can negotiate with the enemies to get them to leave, give you things, or even join your side. Most of the negotiating is done by the player choosing dialogue options, but having a specific skill can make the enemy overlook one bad dialogue choice, or maybe them demand less money in exchange for helping you. Skills supplement your decisions, rather than replacing them.
“Of course we’re not going to engage Lanius directly, we’re going to nuke his camp from orbit with that thing I set up at Helios One and then immediately use Esther.”
Its the only way to be sure.
"You brain-damaged lunatic! The Dam was in the blast radius! You've flooded the south Mojave!"
"[Intelligence 1/3] haha space laser go pew pew"
Thinking of knowledge-based speech checks, one of my favorite quests in good old Morrowind was the quest to become Archmage of the Mage's Guild. The current Archmage basically doesn't want you to advance any further in the ranks, and so he tells you to "figure out what happened to the dwarves" as an official assignment for the Guild, and it sorta seems like you are just being blown off - It being one of the major mysteries of the Vvardenfell setting, and all.
But you can solve it. The game won't tell you how, and it won't bloody hold your hand for a second, but the clues are out there, or at least enough to go back later and make a solid scholarly presentation for the guy, which will make him (grudgingly) acknowledge your effort. I miss Morrowind.
You can also look at LA Noire, which is basically knowledge based speech: THE GAME
Except you never know what Cole will actually say. "Doubt" can mean anything from an empathetic assurance to him yelling at a witness that she's a crazy old hag.
@@matman000000 *Presses x to Doubt*
@@matman000000 I fucking hated the facial expressions this game got so praised for
everyone, after answering an uncomfortable question, would just look like they just shat their pants and squint very weirdly
combined with the vague idea of your direction with an answer it felt mostly like a coinflipper
the last two deus ex games did a good enough job at persuasion imo
also I would like to see less shortcut dialogue checks in fallout but rather have just additional info on quests or just background story etc.
@@brohvakiindova4452 The game was ahead of the time when it came to facial animations. It's still arguably better than the games that come out today despite it being so dated (literally almost 10 years old, if not more). There's WAY more intricacies and details that technology can capture the face of an actual person. More so than you will ever see today and probably still for quite a while, no matter how many balls or dots are plastered onto an actor's face.
It's uncanny because the technology was not there. But if it brought onto the mainstream market today and modernized, it would be a significant improvement.
Facial animation today is: it's either servicable/generic or broken. Nothing new is being done, despite desperate efforts of trying to achieve realism (even photo realism) in everything else.
@@charlie1234500 you could argue that half life 2 was the last time the mainstream gaming industry did a major leap in facial expressions because what you said still holds true for half life 2 (to a lesser extend ofc)
LA Noire was a good first step technically but looked more artificial than a good looking game that lacks facial expressions
It’s funny, was just having this conversation with some other game dev friends. We all agreed that RPG designers need to start tying Speech skills into exploration skills. For example, maybe you know the Big Bad lost his childhood teddy bear, and if you find it AND also have a maxed Speech skill you can talk him down. Or do checks on Speech and Perception, like your character’s ability to notice something and properly express it.
TL;DR - straight Speech checks are boring and often *more* immersion breaking than not being able to interact with the world via speech
Confusing thing is, "Barter" skill is a thing, but it just doesn't do anything.
I'm always fond of these videos. I espacially like the inclusion of "Outer Worlds" and "Crusader Kings II" in the process, as :
-Series have been featured on the channel.
-I love these games, they are great.
-Video essays about only the 6 fallout games may at some point repeat themselves
I'd say The Outer Worlds kind of has some big flaws that you can bring up as well, seeing as how a LOT of people have come to think of it as an average and boring game after they praised it for so long. Hell, I thought it looked amazing until I watched an LP of it, looked it up, and saw that the 100% LP someone did was basically all there is in the game. No replay value is it's biggest flaw, but that's a pretty huge one.
@@Waskomsause What? The game has 2(could argue 3) distinct different endings, each planet has 2 different distinct story ends to them. Not to mention the build/companion variety you can do in-game.
Sure the game is not a 10/10 game, I never really understood the big hype when it released. But it's one of the few first-person RPGs that is above average in the last decade. (Which is a niche market in the age of third-person action games.)
@@NewbOoyNS yes but skills don't really matter because you're basically god by the end anyway
Something I loved about the old games, any insult or back talk resulted in a conflict. But it was to the point NOT having enough speech skill hindered gameplay. So even if you picked the right speech option, you had no idea it was a speech check, and when you failed, you'd again go into another conflict.
I've actually been thinking about the Legion and their philosophy a lot recently, and I'm not sure if Obsidian was incredibly sloppy or secretly brilliant with the Legion. Think about just about anything you're told about Legion strategy and military ideology - they frown upon the use of guns and explosives (or pretty much any technology), they want to face their enemy head on honorably, Lanius is a butcher who would never back down or surrender. All of that is claimed, none of that is true. Legion mine up everything, they had spies in the NCR well before the first battle of Hoover Dam, they have sabotage and infiltration operations, their elite troops often use anti-material rifles or riot shotguns, they use dirty bombs and radiation in suicide infiltration missions, and Lanius is remarkably level-headed and tactical and understands strategy enough to know to back down when a campaign is unwinnable. So I wonder how much about the Legion is intended to be propaganda vs. what is just sloppy writing or conflict between story and gameplay needs.
But that's a discussion for another video. Speech in New Vegas is blatantly broken. Speech is a necessary skill, more so than any other skill. I wish they had more speech checks like Ulysses from Lonesome Road. You can also use reputation checks, or have listened to his logs, or have upgraded ED-E, or have speech 100. But even with all of that, if you choose the wrong option and imply that you are trying to trick or manipulate him, regardless of whether you succeeded or failed, he turns hostile. Or like Dead Money, where some of the checks actually backfired in the long run because the companions resented you for what you said or did. There were ways to make the system work, but the final bosses of the main campaign were just not well designed.
It's all pretty intentional, it's even explained in game that the progression of the legion is that you start with bad equipment and with just melee weapons then as you survive you get better gear and given higher ranks.
if i remember correctly there is quite a lot of cut content about caesar's legion, i imagine it would have given us more insight into the faction, but we will never know i guess
Well, yeah. They're fascists. Of course their ideology is self-contradicting horseshit. It's the same in any society that's ruled by violence. The higher up the pyramid you go, the less and less anyone gives a shit about the stated rules, and just does whatever they want because no-one can stop them. The plebians are fed whatever excuse is most useful at any given time, and just have to learn to live with the contradiction, because they lack the power to take their "betters" to task over it. The Legion denies medicine to their grunts on the grounds that medicine makes them weak. But Caesar has an Auto-Doc attached to his bed, and a major Legion questline focuses on you fixing said machine so it can cure Caesar's brain tumour.
The Legion doesn't exist to uphold any grand idea of re-building civilization. It exists to empower and comfort Caesar, and let him enact whatever whims he likes upon the world. Every aspect of their ideology, every twist and turn... it all comes back to ensuring Caesar's power and comfort. The grunts are kept under-equipped and under-medicated, so that A. they're desparate for the privileges that come with rising in rank, that can only be attained by sufficient bootlicking; and B. if they realise how horseshit the system is, they can't easily overthrow their superiors. This is why none of Caesar's closest men point out the contradiction between his ideology and his actions. They don't care. They're there, not because they actually believe Caesar's horseshit, but because they bent the knee enough for Caesar to deem them useful. And now they're all living in the lap of luxury, they don't want to risk losing their privileges by pointing out what a twat Caesar is.
The Legion's ideology is a tool for controlling the plebs. The ideology-breaking privileges are a tool for controlling the nobility. Because that's all Caesar's Legion is - a feudal monarchy. It just happens to have a particularly well-educated monarch at the moment.
@@tbotalpha8133 The Legion Did Nothing Wrong. Death to the NCR!
@@tbotalpha8133 well put, however I will say aside from Joshua Graham, Lanius, Silus and Vulpes majority of his higher ups definitely drink the Legion kool aid, it's been stated before that Caesar would likely have mutiny on his hands if more of his legion knew that his whole "Son of Mars" claim is bullshit and his "original" ideas for an imperialist society are all a copied and pasted sham stolen from a long dead empire that existed almost 1500 years prior.
Deathclaw: *Unholy screaming*
The solde survivor: Easy there boy
Deathclaw: “Oh im sorry- here let me become your temp companion”
Deus Ex had a great Speech system where you, the player, had to choose the best dialogue option based on who you were talking to AND which of the 3 personality types they have and what you know. Fallout 1 had something like that but Deus Ex pushed it further.
Initially read it as “The problem with free speech”
kimball: hey I know this one too!
The Enclave: Good observation, will ban immediately.
That is the video the enclave would make.
Well, he is from the UK...
@@Pchlster
Underrated comment
My idea for a better Lanius speech fight has always been: different dialogue routes where you need to know about Lanius character and to what he would react to, saying too many wrong things would set him off and start the fight, but there are routes you can take to talk him down. This options are all locked behind three different things: skill checks (speech, survival, melee, guns, explosives, etc.) SPECIAL checks (Charisma, Intelligence, Endurance, etc) and in case you don't meet the requirements, having completed ALL the previous quest for allies in the Hoover Dam battle would by show Lanius that he has no chance of winning. Saying that 'We have a sky bomber you can't take down', 'We have everyone on New Vegas on our side, you can't cut our supplies', 'The Brotherhood of Steel's technology is superior to your army's primitive toys', etc would make more sense for him to see as Hoover Dam lost rather than 'you are extending too thin :/' something that shouldn't have stopped a blood thirsty warrior.
I agree that speech checks should rely way more on your actions, and information you've actually gathered. You can't talk down the master if you don't have definitive proof that supermutants are sterile, for example.
Ulysses does this in Lonsome Road and I loved it. More pls
A problem we have with lanius is that we don't know him as anything other then a blood thirsty warrior because that's all we are told. Which is why we need the options you and others have talked about because then we can then talk down a man we have no idea about with the knowledge of what he loves or cares for will die but there is also a problem with lanius not as in a flaw with development and the like it's the flaw that you can talk him down because the legion will die but we've heard from Caesar himself that lanius as no love for the legion only Caesar, so to talk lanius down about the legion isn't a option because he simply doesn't care about the legion only the man in charge.
You can't stall on FO4 YOLO forever, Jon, I've been waiting since you finished NV YOLO...This time, I don't think you're gonna make it
Is it too easy to die in FO4?
David Wellman To easy to take damage and any rads are less health permanently
Id think it be easier than fallout 3 which he did fine
He really has to do it after TLOU2, if nothing else comes up. Would be fun to watch, especially if he does it on survival difficulty
Watching his max health shrink as he hes through the glowing sea, simultaneously rushing to avoid rads and patiently dodging ghouls and deathclawd is what im looking forward to.... that sounded evil
I wasn't expecting to see GURPS in this discussion, but it DOES explain the use of Diplomancy in FO. I definitely skipped New Vegas' end boss by taking high speech Every. Single. Time. I'd love it if you needed special, hard to get items/skills to actually talk down someone in major quest points, not just the end boss, like the Master. But if they have the time, then Jon's recommendation of background tracking your rep. is a good idea.
Lady Crickett or just don’t use speech? Who plays the same type of character over and over again
@@vexili lol, me. I just can't seem to help myself. I will di different weapons runs but still always live charisma characters by the end of a run
@@vexili I do too. I play most of NV once a year or 1 1/2, always v. hard, hardcore, shotgun perks and good speech.
@@vexilistealth archers in Skyrim
It's funny to hear that 76 was able to IMPROVE on speech.
I well remember my OCD dad (real OCD, not the m&ms are weirdly sorted in a meme-OCD) save-scumming through all the speech checks and the "stealing back the money from winthrop after him repairing". Man.. these were good times.
@sgt dornan But then you don't get to have check fail dialogues, which can be pretty fun
@sgt dornan I really like how Fallout 3 does speech rolls. It feels true to table top role playing. I can't stand how New Vegas and 4 handles speech and other skill checks.
@@comicsans1689 the problem is that failing a similar check in a TTRPG isn't a complete game over for your character. Mostly because you had a party that covered your other blind spots so even if you failed, the other ways through were available, which Fallout 3 sort of does by making combat a mix of character and player skill, but in a very sloppy and ultimately unsatisfying way. But also because due to the presence of a GM such failures always had a "silver lining" of sorts so failing rarely feels damning and can even lead to different quest resolutions that Fallout 3 does not account for, making speech a very linear skill.
If Fallout 3 was more similar to say, Disco Elysium, with the way it treats skills, then I'd agree wholeheartedly, a dice roll would work fantastically.
@sgt dornan that's actually not true, at least for fallout 1. there's speech checks with die rolls, Identical load-outs have different outcomes from these speech checks, and the requirements are obscured. Same with certain lockpick checks - where there's a minimum skill requirement, beyond which the lock cannot be picked, and a maximum where the check is guaranteed. Between that the lockpick can fail on an individual attempt. IMO, it's a better game design than straight pass/fail.
The Lonesome Road DLC contains dialogue trees that after you talk to Ulysses and get enough information on the Legion and Lanius, you get a more unique method of convincing Lanius that history would repeat itself and he needs to withdraw from the dam to sustain the legion.
I like the idea of speech being heavily based apon other aspects of your character besides charisma.
And I really like the idea of having different choices with meanginful and diverse results.
I think the problem with wholly basing it on this is that to me the point of being able to have flexible character creation is that your character can adopt specific tropes that you like.
And being a charismatic leader or "sweet talker" "con man" etc trope requires a skill or at least perks to be able to focus on this area.
The guy/gal who is socially adapt, a high EQ. They might not be smart, or strong or even intelligent, but they are likable, can read people, and know how to manipulate
IMO a combination of player dialogue choice, reputation and skill/perks would be perfect!
A balance between actually making the right choice and putting player skill to the test, and your characters ability
Reginald Mudford This is probably the best way to fix this. EQ maybe as the new, charisma stat. And charisma more like a perk or a stat that can still be numerical over the npc.
What I like the most is when the speech skill is not even used in dialogue, but all your other skills are instead. You often use Barter, Guns, Sneak, Science, and the like to pass "speech" checks in dialogue. Hell, with a 100 Barter you can convince Lanius that the West is not self sufficient and too dependent on the NCR and its supply caravans, so it would be extremely difficult for them to maintain. This also makes him back down and it's brillant! This is basically your "knowledge" system, but still tied to a numerical value where your knowledge comes from how much you've invested in that skill. This is the best compromise in my opinion.
I wonder, have you ever played Deus Ex: Human Revolution? It has a dynamic form of dialogue challenges thar come up at specific points in the game - they're effectively boss fights, and sometimes result in a traditional boss fight you could have avoided if you fail them. This wouldn't work for general use case examples, but for scenarios on par with talking to the Master or to Lanius in Fallout, it's excellent for fleshing out the actual conversation involved. DX:HR's version is fairly simple behind the scenes - there's 3 lines you can say, and they increase or decrease the persuasion level of a character by a set amount. They then pick a response using a combination of where in the conversation they are, how convinced they are, and RNG, and you get to respond to each point that's mentioned. It's multi-stage like the Fallout games big speech encounters, but much more variable and much harder to read what you should be saying.
The place where DX:HR outshines Fallout is that incorrect responses are not easily identifiable:
Take Fallout's conversation tree with the Master - I noticed one point where you've got two options. "You're lying to yourself because you don't want to accept the truth" or "oh, you're right, the data I presented must be wrong." It's pretty clear which one is pressing the conversation onward toward the goal of proving mutants are sterile and which is backing down and either giving up or fighting it out.
Conversely, take the first dialogue challenge from DX:HR. You're talking to a terrorist who has a gun to the head of a hostage. He's part of a group that spurns augs - cybernetic augmentation - but you encountered someone from his group that has a hacking aug who committed suicide before you could capture him. He's under a lot of stress, the building is surrounded by a SWAT team and you, a character with a lot of heavy duty combat augments - a walking nightmare, from his pro-natural viewpoint - just walked into the room. One of the augments you can get will fetch a summary of their psych profile from some database, and in this case, the guy is listed as "Emotional, excitable, and irrational" and "slightly desperate at times, feels misunderstood, and has a high opinion of himself."
Your three options are to be humble, to empathize, or try to reason with them, though exact details vary and unlike with Fallout 4's dialogue system, highlighting an option actually gives you the full text, or at least a very thorough summary, of what you're going to say. No misunderstandings of the prompts, just working out which of three options (which are usually all pretty reasonable approaches to take in general) will work best to influence a specific character in this specific moment. And it's not consistent - even in the first and simplest example, there are possible dialogue options where the approach he responds best to in general will not be the best one.
Sounds like a lot of work to build these conversations, right? I'm sure it is, but so is any actual boss battle, too. At least, any satisfying one. There's 7 of these challenges over the course of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and they get increasingly difficult as you deal with more and more sophisticated, dangerous or simply stubborn characters, and the subjects of conversation become increasingly difficult to understand what will work best. As I recall, the last one involves a philosophical discussion of the value of cybernetic augmentation to society with a live broadcast to the world running in the background.
The game as a whole is pretty decent, but for me, this conversation piece is the one big game mechanic I remember fondly. I've forgotten like 90% of the game, and those conversations still stick with me.
25:40 Well if it wasn't a term before, "frogurt-ing" is now. Wouldn't be the first time The Simpsons embiggened the language.
I don't see a problem with "frogurting", it sounds like a perfectly cromulent word.
I feel the to point out that you used embiggen wrong. It's more along the lines of "possessed by", not "made larger".
@@peterprime2140
Citation needed: Marvel (a property of Disney, who also owns Fox who in turn own The Simpsons) uses the turn _specifically_ to mean "make larger" or "expand"
@@brosephnoonan223 In the episode that's literally how it's used, "The noblest spirit embiggens the smallest man"
@@peterprime2140 "embiggens" means "makes bigger". Thus its use when applied to "the smallest man".
It would be interesting if a speech check opened a new *dialogue branch* where a player could dig for new information, be clear to persuade/bully/etc. and of course, still possibly screw things up. Not just hit a bullseye. Awesome video, Jon!
Jon just needs to be hired as a creative director already.
Why when Bethesda can just watch these videos?
He has so many more good ideas that fall short of a full essay I'm sure
I can guarantee you that Bethesda's team has had similar ideas and even more. Problem isn't coming up with them, its implementing them in a timely fashion that creates a good game for a cheap cost. The whole "timely" and "cheap cost" aspects are what create the gimped mechanics we deal with.
Lucious Don't forget having to strike a balance between satisfying the hardcore fans, as well as the casual audience who makes up a lot of the sales. That's the biggest barrier when it comes to time.
@@ChlorideCull Very true. When it comes to RPG style games, "creative depth" and "accessibility" are often inversely proportional. It doesn't matter how gorgeous and well thought out your story is if normies (see: casual players) aren't willing to jump in that rabbit hole.
This is easy, put the Speech check up front and from there a player needs to make an argument as to why they are right and if they argue poorly then they fail.
That would be Persuasion or Coercion
"Oh dear... I gotta know what the cc algorithm has to say about this intro."
CC: "good afternoon unless you're what i'm john says buddy a true and welcome."
"... Yeah... that's what I heard too..."
I’ve always wanted a speech system where the “Speech check” is more like a lockpick check. If your speech/charisma is high enough you can enter into a dialogue mini-game where your success is based off the choices you chose during the mini-game. Perks, skills, quests, and even items might even give you the ability to say something that you otherwise wouldn’t have available. So for example having completed the main quest and killed the big bad guy might give you a dialogue option that allows you to point out you’ve taken on powerful enemies and won which would be very convincing to a lot of characters, assuming your have the skills to negotiate with them in the first place.
Gamifying Speech with a mini game has been done before alla the speech wheel in Oblivion. I'm not sure if you meant a system similar to that but in my opinion the Oblivion mini game was confusing and it broke the flow of the conversation. It has probably been the only game ive ever played that gamified speech in a literal mini game.
amouse213 no the mini-game in Oblivion was terrible because it wasn’t dialogue based. What I’m talking about would be dialogue based. You’d have the standard dialogue wheel and if you had the speech skill for it there would be the option to negotiate. That would open a new dialogue wheel (much like when you select the ask question dialogue option) in this new dialogue menu you’d have to select the right options to convince/intimidate them. More options would appear in the menu depending on certain conditions like quest completions, perks, skills, etc... To make things even better its very easily scaleable so a more difficult speech check would require you to select several correct options whereas an easier one might only require you pick one good option.
@@Mankorra_Gomorrah so like the Deus ex: Human Revolution speech system? Where you can get the upgrade that makes arguments easier and lets you interrupt people and stuff, or you can not get that and struggle a bit more.
Thats just Dues Ex
Please God no more fucking mini games
You can talk Eden into destroying the Enclave base, which is kinda like the speech check with The Master.
Using in-universe information as a speech checks is a really good thing for a post apocalyptic world, because of course information is scarce in a world with no internet. It would be the bottleneck that requires a protagonist to intervene.
This video speaks to me, the first time I played Fallout 3 without using the Speech skill was the most fun i'd had in a Fallout game. Having to actually discover evidence in the quest homecoming and more just made me love that game.
MaTN: Regards talking down Lianus with logistics as a negative because its against what weve established as his character
New Vegas Stans: *Crucifying intensifies*
That was barter, not speech.
I feel like a better ending to New Vegas would have been if instead of having Lanius standing down the player could trick him into going berserk or talk him into fighting the legion. Like how the master destroyed everything when he saw the futility of his own plans, Lanius may try to kill the Legion after seeing the futility of conquering the west. It isn't a perfect ending and I think any way of using exclusively speech to kill Lanius would feel weird but at least him fighting his way out would be in character for him even if he wasn't fighting the player character.
@The Nova renaissance yeah exactly, to me the best way to get rid of the Lanius problem is to cause a splinter in the Legion itself, Lanius is said to be loyal to violence so therefore it makes sense that he could be manipulated into fighting the Legion if he felt they were against him. He even has a history of fighting his former accomplices if he felt they weren't up to his standards.
I wonder if something like an alternate rule for D&D I’ve seen would work: basically all skills have an associated attribute, but the game master could change that attribute if it seems appropriate. The example they give is changing a Swim (Strength) check into a Swim (Constitution) check if you’re swimming slowly but for a long period of time, or if you’re holding your breath. In Fallout this could take the shape of Speech (Charisma) checks for talking at parties, Speech (Intelligence) for convincing someone to use a particular tactic, or Speech (Perception) to play off their reactions.
Plus Speech (Strength) for intimidation.
I think D&D has a great system for the difficulty of persuasion too. Though at the whim of the DM, the DC required for a speech check should consider, NPC's opinion, what the player says (i.e bringing up knowledge gained via intelligence or context), the NPC's agenda and more. All before even getting to how good the player is at persuasion/deception/intimidation.
While a DM will do it by rough judgement/gut feeling, all of those can be assigned numbers to calculate a DC.
@@DiceSully An important note for any discussion about D&D is that it is so very inconsistent between who and how competent the DM is
@@nicholass1280 haha that is very true! But a "cpu DM" behind a fallout game should at least be consistent
I do very much love these video essay's. I would say this one of my favourites, despite me initially thinking that I may find it the least interesting; this, I think, is due to the fact that it is a specific thing you are diving into meaning you are able to seriously talk about every element. Thank you!
Frank Horrigan is the only last boss in fallout games that you HAVE to fight, and if you try to worm yourself out with speech he just says "we just did time to die"
@Ring-a-ding-ding baby they can't and you can get Granite company witch shows how powerful Horrigan is
I thought that this would make the Charisma stat useless, but thinking about it, you could use the Charisma stat for your rewards for quest and trade like in F76, but also to improve your companions stats and you could also you it to reduce negative effects or improve the positive effects of your reputation and karma
Reminds me of a recent conversation I had about the cannibal perk. To my mind whole towns should shut the door on your face once word gets around that you eat people. Yet it never seems to come up.
I like to think it's from all the years of the townspeople enjoying 'igunana' on a stick. They have the craving, too
It’s probably because their fine with it as a concept because of the hard times everyone has fallen on but they just don’t wanna see it because it’s nasty
@@parrottarot995 that makes sense, but isn't the perk supposed to make people hate you?
@@deathbyunicorn5213 I don’t remember I don’t read the perks I just pick them and figure it out
@@parrottarot995 with cannibalism, anyone who sees you eat someone hates you because it's a crime against nature
I always preferred the New Vegas speech over 3/4, as you can't reload the game until you pass the percentage check. That being said, it does make the game remarkably easy in places. I recall several occasions in The Witcher 3 where you can do a speech check that is of short term use, but causes complications down the line. More things like that in Fallout would be welcome.
Yep, it's a bigger discussion than the scope of this essay, but there are occasions where New Vegas is weakened by having a clearly optimal solution, where everybody wins, everybody likes you more, and there's no downsides whatsoever - though these do most often show up as a result of speech.
If you do that (save scum), that is alone your problem. You can't blame the game for it. You're probably not too concerned with Roleplay or immersion anyway then. Literally every RPG system has dices or other means of randomising. When you talk with people, real players or story npc, you should not know that you WILL win (or not) an argument. That is not how dealing with people works! That ruins storytelling.
Even beyond "immersion"... a genuine gameplay/story downside is that you will NOT try an interesting option or way in a dialogue (that might open up a new option) because you are told (34/50) that you will NOT succeed. If you remove that, even failing could open up new options or development in story or dialogue, make them more natural and interesting.
That's why NV and especially Tow feel so mechanically and predictable in quests and stories.
I don't care if i get precise predictions for lockpicking or hacking, or combat it takes nothing away from gameplay. But that 34/50 bs in a dialogue system instantly disqualifies said game as an "real RPG".
MAybe that's why NV has to cramp all possible options in the first dialogues, while F3 layers and hides further variations behind choices. And if you have no chance whatsoever, a option does not even appear.
That's why people think Obsidians playing by number story games have more dialogue options. They very likely don't.
Of course Obsidian also wraps absolutely everything around a faction system, which makes 2-3 sets of options mandatory and quests predictable.
@@5Andysalive I respectfully disagree. I concede that every RPG has RNG elements in it, but other games do a much better job of preventing it from being tampered. In the Fire Emblem game released on the Switch last year, for example, you can turn back time in a battle, but it will not change the outcome of any given turn. If you missed a 95% attack, turn back time and try the same attack again, you will still miss, forcing you to try something different, or do the same thing albeit in a different order. Same goes for proficiency exams in the game; the percentage chance of you passing is locked in at the start of every in game month, meaning that you can't 'save scum'; you are forced to improve your stats and hope you pass the following month. If something akin to that was implemented into the aforementioned Fallout games, I wouldn't have as much of an issue.
@@5Andysalive This is why I really like Obsidian's system in Tyranny, if I'm not mistaken, where it hides the options you can't use. If you don't know what you're missing, you might be discouraged to save scumming.
@@5Andysalive I'll meet you halfway if we can agree on the point that The Nova Renaissance just made. Have it so that percentage rolls are invisible, and on top of that, make it so there is a manifestly clear consequence to failing on most occasions. One fair example from Fallout 4 was how you could extort more money out of people when accepting a quest. They might offer 100 caps, and you could raise it to 125, 150 and finally 200. If you push for 200 and fail, they'll send you straight back to 100 and refuse to budge. There's a sense of risk/reward there that could be better Incorporated into the dialogue on the whole, I feel.
These skill checks in dialogue would be much better without the [Speech 38/45] clues. Different dialogue options simply appear depending on what your skills are, and you might never know why, whether or not they will work or what other options might be available under different circumstances.
One of the best speech checks in all of game history is the final boss of Fallout 2, Frank Horrigan, in fact, i reccomend every new player to only upgrade your speech skill to 300% because that conversation is definitely worth it
Why? Can you show me a video of it?
Did Jon ever get around to playing Witcher 3? I'd be interested in seeing his reaction to how factions, reputation, negotiations, and speech are handled in that game. And since he's such a big fan of exploration being rewarded with new information that alters quest outcomes, it seems like he'd be a fan.
Unfortunately not. He's mentioned a few times that he is very wary of LPing extremely long games, so the chance of a full LP appearing on the channel of the Witcher 3 is practically zero in my opinion...
Witcher 3 is overrated in many aspects. The writing is OK, but that's all. Especially the exploration in Witcher 3 is botched beyond reason...
There is no factions, reputations and speech in Witcher 3.
@@jf8350143 All of those are ingame, however none of them are tied to any stats, since it's not a sandbox game.
I'm a simple man: I see MATN and Fallout, I click.
Hi, a simple man. You're gay.
@@joeysblackchild6948 No he's not, he's "a simple man".
@Bethesda You guys listening? This is a $350,000 consultation FOR FREE.
Unfortunately they would rather pay some jackass to tell them how to fix thing
Do you think they don't know these ideas? They are quite intuitive... every proper game designer would come up with them. The issue is implementing them. Ideas are cheap, but developer work isn't.
Cool. You wanna put in the *other* $350,000 of work to impliment *one* of these ideas? Or are you cool to just sit on your ass and pretend to understand how development works?
@@BoroMirraCz No, they don't. Everyone on the team with common sense does, then they go hire someone from the outside, and pay them an insane amount of money, and then do whatever they say because it was what they paid for.
Mirra Intuitive is the last word I would use to describe Bethesda 😂
Love how every clip of Fallout 4 on every channel, content creator and video has the "You're carrying too much and can't run!" message
[Speech 100/100] Mom said it's my turn with the xbox.
Tbh I just like hearing Jon talk about things he’s passionate about
Everytime Jon says 'Flippin' in his videos, take a sip of good old Yorkshire tea and BOOM! You've been colonised now 😎👌
There is absolutely no problem with speech. The only way you could ever think there is is if you believe there is only one way to play FO/TES.
You're joking right?
@@elderflame494 No. Why would I?
@@TheJollyKraut
There is a huge problem with speech, as of now Speech doesn't make much sense. How your character suddenly knows a bunch of stuff he wouldn't know because he has Speech 100 doesn't make any sense at all. There is a problem with speech, it's just not easily fixable without making entire trees of dialogue on a whole nother level.
@@elderflame494 Speech doesn't make you "suddenly know a bunch of stuff" out of nowhere. It never has. You get people to tell you what you want or need to know because you're extremely charismatic and/or convincing. But making Speech another minigame like lockpicking or hacking would be too much to ask and it pobably wouldn't be fun either.
Inside its limitations it works as intended just like a superior level of sniping lets you one-shot even the biggest enemies. There is no problem with it. And playing a none violent character who relies on speech is just as viable as playing a battle hardened killing machine.
@@TheJollyKraut 👍
Some people in the comments brought up the fact that in Dead Money, the first speech check you get with Dean Domino will lock you into a bad ending for him. I think the reason a lot of people are pissed about that one is because, up until that point, speech checks have never given you a negative outcome. And since you get some free XP for every speech check success, it's only natural that you'll click on that juicy option. But now picture a game where, early on, you can pass a fairly easy speech check but it has some negative consequences down the line. Maybe an NPC dies as a result of your meddling, or you tried to intimidate a shop keeper and now they won't sell the good stuff to you anymore, or a hit squad comes after you because you messed with the wrong people, etc... Actions should have consequences and so should the dialogue options you pick, even those locked behind a skill check. If the game makes it clear that not all checks will lead to a desirable outcome, then the player has to think before they click.
If you do the speech check with 3-Dog you can talk to him again to do his quest, but that time instead of your dad's last location you are rewarded with a key to a cache you can't get otherwise.
So, it's a bit of a messy design, but there is a good reason to use the speech check option.
The same thing happens if you skip ahead and find Doctor Li or your dad before you meet Three Dog if I remember correctly. It's either that or you just get paid 1000 caps.
This is an excellent lesson in the dangers of oversimplifying mechanics
I love how you have to have 25 explosives skill or whatever to convince Easy Pete to give you dynamite, and the line you use to convince him of your expertise is something like "I am familiar with the proper procedure for handling explosives".
"I would like to be CEO of your corporation. I am well-versed in the relevant duties and responsibilities".
"I am an expert practitioner of coitus".
"I am something of a financial savant. You should give me $1000 for this poor condition pool cue."
The amount of contrivances in NV that stem around Speech checks is one of the biggest issues I have with the game. NV is supposed to immerse you in its narrative and interaction, so when something like what you just described pops up (and it happens quite a bit), I have to say "this is some bullshit".
36:00 In Lonesome Road you can talk down Ulyses by analyzing his holodisk/Holotape whatever.
These essays are legit some of the best videos you've put out. Well done!
27:42 "Barclay, Barry, Bert, Bort? Ah come on man, Bort?"
Love the simpsons references!
Are u the real captainnoob that makes fallout 4 videos
When people complain about "save scumming" in a single player-non-competitive game I roll my eyes.
Who cares how other people play the game, it does not effect you in the slightest, or how you should enjoy the game. Self impose rules on yourself not to do it, and if your friend does then to each their own.
Honestly I really like Jon's idea about the NCR tactical route to talking down Lanius. The courier basically pulling a Zhuge Liang on him.
I think that Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2 handle dialogue checks far better than any other game I've seen. It incorporates all of a player's skills and attributes as well as the player's race, class, subclass, and cultural background, along with faction reputation and knowledge into the checks. The second game has about 4 different skills that are centered around speech alone (Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate, Streetwise) and depending on which companions you have with you and how you've leveled them will also influence the dialogue greatly instead of companions just being minions that other NPCs mostly ignore. It might be unrealistic to expect every game to have a system like this, but it definitely made for a much more immersive roleplaying experience that mimics pen and paper RPGs and has better potential for replayability as you can replay the games as a completely different character and import your saves between them.
Say what you want about the end of NV. The dialogue you have with Lanius at the end of the game is one of the most beautifully written and philosophical dialogue segments of any game I have ever played and is extremely memorable and one of my favorite endings to any game I have ever played. For all the shortcomings of the system itself, the ending is in my opinion extremely satisfying and one of the most nostalgic moments of all the fallout games.
"That" was beautifully written and philosophical to you?
...geez, you should read more.
I really do hope that Jon had the off the cuff chat with someone at Bethesda who said "we're working on fallout 5" and "we are big fans and see you as a voice of the community".
Jon's respond is several essays telling them how to make a decent game. I hope they listen.
Jon, your research revealing the GURPS connection to the Fallout past is greatly appreciated - as a at the time big time GURPS fan I was looking forward to a finally GURPS related CRPG to explode on the scene after the exposure the gold box AD&D games had on the genre - then the deal fell apart... yet, Fallout was still a great game. It's an overlooked aspect to the orginal game, with most of the focus on Wasteland's influence and not GURPS influence on the skill system.
I wish Fallout 4 had done a bit like New Vegas where even in the simplified SPECIAL only system that there were specific checks related to a SPECIAL stat. For example, that encounter you showed at the drumlin diner. They could've made this infinitely better by making it a Strength based check and you could say yeah well the system was simplified but not dumbed down. It would reward people who want to have higher strength for intimidation purposes.
As someone who has made his own custom tabletop RPG, I can personally testify that building a well balanced skill system can be really difficult. This video however has given me much insight and I'm glad that my game doesn't rely on a speech skill to allow my players to just talk their way out of any situation.
I feel that in the Outer Worlds, having your speech go up together until 50 makes sense. It makes sense in that one could say that you're learning "general" speech skills that can be applied in an intimidation scenario and a lie scenario, but that you then have to become more specialized in order to become more skilled in a certain area. It wouldn't make sense to have a person that knows how to shoot a pistol in a game but has no idea how to shoot a rifle in a game, the same "general" knowledge can apply to both, but the specialized knowledge will help you become more skilled with either of them. A lie can also be an intimidation or you could be persuading someone through a lie hence the "general" knowledge.
Quick trivia note: I always wondered about the name of Tenpenny tower..strange quirky name. I might have found its inspiration though. Idk but I live in las vegas and drive for Lyft/Uber. I have to pickup/dropoff at a fancy semi-exclusive tower named Turnberry tower..
Tenpenny tower is in fallout 3, not new vegas
I'm well aware of that... But they were develeped at the same time and very probrably had communicative overlap creatively
@@mysteryblankdspace4342 they weren't developed at the same time. And also 2 different companies built the games
@@mysteryblankdspace4342
Thats... Thats so wrong it hurts.
**Firstly:** Fallout 3 and NV were _NOT_ developped cocurrently. Not even remotely. The *talks* about Obsidian *potentially* developing *A* Fallout game began in mid-late 2008, and Obsidian wouldnt even get the go-ahead until later that year.
The game took 18 months to develop, releasing in the October 2010. Long after the release of Fallout 3.
**Secondly:** The two teams had little to no creative contact. New Vegas wasnt even intended to be exclusively set in Nevada, and had to be scaled down dramatically to its Vegas locale - making "Vegas" and its trappings as far an idea for the Fallout 3 team as you possibly get.
16:28 when I first started playing Skyrim (2 or 3 years ago) I knew Raven Rock sounded familiar
Me personally, I think Kingdom Come: Deliverance at least had some good ideas for a speech system that could be something great if it, like you said, didn't have the percentage chance of success. You don't see the percentage chance, but you can get a pretty good idea of success when you see that you have Intimidate 10 vs their 15. The game had three different types of speech you could use, and success was based on your skill vs theirs, not just a flat "I have Speech 100". Your level was based on your Speech skill, the armor you're wearing, how clean you and your armor are, how much the person likes you, perks you've taken (such as being able to speak to commoners more easily, but it makes talking to noblemen harder), and, what I think was the best part, saying the right thing. There are certain dialogue options that, even if you *should* pass the check, you won't simply because it's the wrong thing to say. I think it kind of plays into what you were saying about "having knowledge of the world", or in this case, knowledge of the character. If a character is a womanizer, he's not really going to listen to you when you try to convince him not to cheat on his wife, for example.
Another great Fallout essay. I think my ideal Fallout speech system would be that the speech skill unlocked your ability to attempt to reason with characters depending on your skill level, and then if you passed that check you’d still have to choose a few correct dialogue options in order to succeed at the persuasion attempt. This would also allow for evidence you collected or actions you took previously to show up as secret dialogue options that wouldn’t otherwise be there in the standard persuasion attempt. I feel like that system would take minimal effort to implement and would at least add another level of gameplay to persuasion attempts.
"Bloody hell, Bethesda, there were a lot of babies in that bathwater. Sorry, that was mean." Oh Jon, I don't think anybody really needs to apologize to Bethesda at this point, but bless you.
[Speech, 8%] Bethesda have a deep understanding of quality roleplaying game mechanics.
Didn't knew the dice roll was also calculated using the Intelligence stat.
@@deltaoscaruniform1316 I wasn't using Bethesda logic for my calculation. I was implying a high challenge ceiling. The two do not overlap.
[SUCCESS] I, too, have never played an RPG not made by Bethesda.
😂
When is Bethesda going to hire you? If u aren’t one of the lead writers on fallout 5 then i don’t want to play it
Man: you murdered my family
Player speech100:No
Man: Ok
These are arguably my favorite fallout videos from you. The way you break down the games, their strengths and weaknesses. The way you dive deep into the core issue at hand, with various facts and examples. You make me think critically about a game I should love no matter what, as I was raised on fallout and never once had a negative experience with the game as a whole. Keep up the good work man, you're my favorite gamer nerd by far, and I hope you stay that way
I always put points into speech, as I'm sure most of us do but I often find myself wanting not to use speech-gated choices. Often I use speach to end a quest, but then I figure actually the villain should die and I ought to kill them rather than let them go on to hurt others in the future.
Particularly in fallout 4 when as Jon says speech was generally just to haggle more cash I end up feeling a bit of a douchebag when my 1000 caps character is demanding some tormented soul to give me like 40 caps instead of 30. At that point I'll just help the peasant farmer for free, like 40 caps are worthless from a game perspective, and from a character perspective you seem like a gigantic arsehole. (I also found this a problem in the witcher 3. Geralt riding with like 100k but I'm meant to boost that reward slider as high as I can to earn 70 gold instead of 50. And yes I know that in lore the point is witchers are poor, nomadic vagabonds living hand to mouth, but in the game you end up the wealthiest man in the world. Feels particularly stupid when Emyr offers you what? Like 2k? Who cares? Its easy to deny that piecemeal reward)
Typical RPG problem: The economy is portrayed in a way that does not jive with game mechanics. RE: FO3 running around with 100 purified water whilst worrying about whether the "purified water for the wasteland" project is working. Basically, once you hit the snowball point, the story is left behind in the wake of your stupid bank balance. At least in a TTRPG, the DM can mitigate this somewhat by manipulating things to maintain the illusion of scarcity. Computer RPGs are restricted by their programming.
I recall thinking that while playing Skyrim.
There are Ruins everywhere, and it feels like you cant take more than a few steps without tripping over treasure.
The economy is pretty borked
I just love that in all of this there is a blinged out PipBoy 3 Billion. Great long essay Jon, keep them comming!
So glad you mentioned Crusader Kings 2. It is truly a fantastic game and the fact people remember what you have done to them really helps in that regard. Sure, you can throw your less skilled vassal off the council, but don't expect them to help you when you need some extra plot power.
I think the ideal thing would be to base it around SPECIAL like 4 but go deeper, maybe have one or even two different speech skills governed by each special stat, ie strength would govern intimidate, intelligence would govern reasoning, charisma for persuade, etc