Posted January 10, 2009
pkt-zer0: Actually, I would be curious what your response to my example brought up as a counterpoint in the first paragraph would be. Other than that, I'll leave things be, if you wish.
In that case, I'll give you my answer:
pkt-zer0: Not true. Stats are what define the character in the game's world, if they aren't there, the world can't hope to realistically react to your actions. For example: does your character get swindled by a con man? There's no way to tell with only self-imposed restrictions in place. The best you could do is choose "yes, I am fooled" or "I see through his lies", regardless of what character you're supposed to roleplay.
That's what I like about Morrowind's 'dialogue' system - it's not really a dialogue system and you'll end up imagining what you just said anyhow... (just for the record, I like Fallout's dialogues more, I just think Morrowind's one fits in Morrowind's concept perfectly - merging the two in Fallout 3 was not the... Best idea - which, obviously, means I agree with you, to a certain degree - if they want to do a 'sandbox' game, they should do it properly).
I was in the middle of writing answer along those lines when it occured to me that it's really just TES fans who's going to actually LIKE the dialogue system because of their approach to the game - that's why I rather just wrote 'it's matter of personal preferences' (how the hell did I invent the world preferations?)
But I think we'd end up in the 'personal preferences' with all of our points eventually, because it's obvious your approach is just too different from mine