The Elder Scrolls fans nostalgic for the days of charming guards and villagers via Oblivion‘s persuasion mini-game should keep their attention on Starfield. Bethesda is planning to bring back an upgraded version of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion‘s persuasion mini-game to promote dynamic player-NPC interactions in Starfield.
Starfield‘s design director Emil Pagliarulo and lead quest designer Will Shen discuss how they came about reviving this old mechanic during a recent developer diary. The developers mention that while they didn’t set out with the intention of evolving Oblivion‘s persuasion system, they always knew they wanted a persuasion mechanic for Starfield to add depth and believability to dialogue choices. Will Shen describes the goals of the new mechanic: “We didn’t want it to be a system where there was definitely the right thing to say.”
Oblivion is one of the earliest examples of the large-scale open world RPGs Bethesda is known for. Players are set free in a vast fantasy land where they can go wherever, do what they want and say what they want. The persuasion mini-game allows players to convince characters to do their bidding if they select the correct dialogue choices. Once the mini-game is activated, players choose between four different options: admire, joke, coerce and boast. The proper choices are hinted at based on the character’s facial expressions as each choice is highlighted. Each correct choice raises the disposition of the character they’re conversing with, and their disposition will count down the longer it takes the player to choose a dialogue option. Players must act quickly to reach maximum disposition and successfully persuade the impressionable NPC.
Violence is the most common answer when it comes to video games, which is why so many players gravitate toward Bethesda’s RPGs that let them talk their way out of sticky situations instead. However, Bethesda quickly abandoned Oblivion‘s persuasion system in favor of Fallout 3‘s speech skill checks. This streamlined the persuasion process into a quick pass or fail based on how many experience points players were willing to dump into speech.
By upgrading their speech level, players could increase the percentage chance that the persuasion would succeed. However, some players found a workaround by continuously reloading a save until the speech check passed and the character was successfully persuaded. This decreased the speech stat’s importance. Starfield seeks to advance beyond Oblivion‘s binary correct or incorrect dialogue choices.
The smartest way to improve upon Oblivion‘s persuasion mini-game is to minimize the game part of it as much as possible. The developers mention plenty of times in the dev diary how immersive they want Starfield to be, so by hiding the mini-game, players can stay immersed in the dialogue rather than getting distracted by viewing it as a game that they must win. In Oblivion, information about the mini-game is prominently displayed onscreen the moment the persuasion starts. No matter how engaging the mini-game is, this interrupts the player’s immersion by reminding them that they’re playing a video game.
Starfield should withhold as much information as it can during persuasive conversations so players aren’t sure which dialogue choices are “correct.” With this, they can engage in conversations as if they’re talking to a real person. This immersive approach is similar to Elden Ring‘s decision to hide as much information about the open world as possible, a choice meant to peak players’ curiosity and encourage exploration naturally, rather than just telling them where they can find items and side missions.
Dusting off Oblivion‘s persuasion system could be a wonderful way for Bethesda to create innovative dialogue options for RPGs–as long as they can figure out how to properly modernize it. If Starfield can deliver authentic conversations that alter questlines and organically change characters’ opinions, then Bethesda may have a freeform RPG mechanic that can rival the genre’s greatest.
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