Re: the game's writing. All I can say is no kidding it's bad. I've said it would be since they announced it. Bethesda's writing staff could not write their way out of a wet paper bag. Morrowind had a lot of quality stuff, but after Mark Nelson, Michael Kirkbride, and Ken Rolston all left it's been a downhill plummet. More like a cliff than a hill really.
I can't say that Morrowind's writing was all that good - rather Kirkbride's fevered ramblings created an engaging enough world. For example:
Caius Cosades said:
I don't know much about the Ashlanders. Most people say they are murderous savages. But most people are idiots. I know they hate their settled Dunmer cousins almost as much as they hate Westerners. They must be tough to live in the Ashlands. I don't think outlanders can become members of the tribes. I don't know why anyone would want to.
Balgruuf said:
"With good planning and constant vigilance. Even now, my court wizard, Farengar, continues his research into ways we might drive back these terrors. We must also have ample reserves of water to combat the fires that will surely spread after an attack. But our greatest weapon? Courage. For if we cannot kill the beast, we must at least have the tenacity to drive it back. Until brave heroes step forward to destroy these monsters, that is the best we can do."
I don't see the difference besides Morrowind dialogue being wordier and way too often collapsing into infodumps.
Quest writing wasn't much better. Just about every quest in Morrowind was a non-interactive fetch quest with faction questlines being pretty bland with any story painted in broad strokes. For example, the Fighters Guild has a backstory with how the guild is being taken over by the Cammona Tong but basically nothing comes of it. Eydis Fire-Eye (first Fighters Guild quest giver) stands there and you learn later she is corrupt.
That's some character right there.
I won't deny that Bethesda has gotten lazy; but it isn't like their writing is any worse. They just lack Kirkbride's fevered ramblings and ability to devote paragraphs to minor NPCs in stilted language.
Unfortunately, the Fallout wiki doesn't list all of the character dialogue for FNV but I don't remember being particularly blown away by the quality of the writing - especially when compared to F4's companies. I'll give up a bit of writing quality for
not having to play with a guide open to avoid screwing myself out of the companion quest because I didn't have an NPC in my party when I first visited a location.
If we're comparing it to all video games, no, it's not terrible. But single player cRPG's are generally held to a higher standard, one that Bethesda regularly falls well short of.
I think part of the issue is that all of Bethesda's NPC interactions have to be character neutral. For example, in the Witcher games you are Geralt. Geralt's character and approach to situations is pretty much set in stone. Same with Mass Effect to an extent. Expecting Bethesda to write dialogue for NPCs taking into account your faction, reputation, and prior actions isn't feasible. One of the big decisions in Witcher 2 is whether you sided with Roche or Iorveth after Flotsam. It is pretty easy to write good dialogue that takes into a controlled event in the game. Suppose however that you were under no obligation to choose Roche or Iorveth before proceeding in the game, and instead decided to wander around the Kaedweni camp and make A Very Important Decision before making your decision regarding Iorveth or Roche.
That would be a lot harder to write for and would require either basic dialogue or have audio files so large it would eat up several hard drives.
That doesn't make it excusable.
It does, however, make it an odd thing to single out Bethesda for.
They could use a whole new DLC just making that part of the game playable.
