Do you think all dialogue will initiate cutscenes?

When it comes to Witcher I have to admit too that the interface for conversations sucks. The cinematics are pretty good if a little slow in the long run but choosing dialogue at least on PS4 feels bad. I don't like how it's a list of options and how the "choice" options are highlighted with yellow while the optional dialogues are in white. For one, half the dialogues would look like this on a BioWare wheel:


That's not really that interesting as far as choices go. You get to pick between exposition and Geralt's stock response. If the game was main story only that would be fine, but for the side-quests and how many different themes and genres the game explores in its open-world context it's very lame how linear side-quests can get, but only if you're the impatient type like me, since they all (or mostly all) have great stories in them and actual context beyond checking a box and getting "quest complete".

Secondly though, browsing through the options on a list feels bad and sometimes I would pick "goodbye" or simply a wrong choice because of how sluggish the dialogue menu feels in that game. I cannot stress enough how much I fucking love the BioWare dialogue wheel even with its shortcomings of morally good being on the top-right and morally bad being at the bottom-right etc. But it always lets you choose the next decision just a few seconds before the current spoken dialogue finishes, giving you an opportunity to keep the flow as if it's a real scene in a movie or something. In Witcher 3, the dialogue always halts before the choices even appear and it creates a bad sense of pacing. Along with the linear nature of dialogue and side-quests in TW3 and well, maybe the game gets just a tad too much credit sometimes, don't you think? That said, I still love it. It does so many things well, especially in depicting its world and being generally impressive to look at; something BioWare has only gotten worse at in the last 5 years, but I digress.

Agreed, they felt very impersonal and consequently unimportant, making it hard to pay attention, I'd much rather they zoom in on the characters.

Maybe the reason DAI dialogue scenes were not up to par is because it was limited by older consoles. MEA won't have that problem and the only reason the DAI dialogue scenes would exist is due to the developer's choice.

I doubt we will see a DA I style dialog wheel outside of cutscenes but more in favor of the 'press x, stuff happens' approach from ME 3, where you can even have unimportant conversations with you and your people on the Normandy.

Well, they already did it like that in ME3 and DAI... not sure they will go back.

It was either a dev, or Shinobi (most likely) that confirmed the DAI system is returning, but to a far more lesser extent than in DAI, so we'll see much less of it.

For PC users mind you. That's not an optimal solution.

I think they mentioned about a budget limitation/using that type of increasing the numbers of dialogues.
It doesn't matter much though, the DA team already said they were going to tone down the number of it for the next game. the MEA team likely did the same.

I would hope every quest, whether big or small, would lead to a cut scene conversation.

it should be noted as well that DAI got it from ME3 ;-).

The Witcher 3 definitely gets "Most over hyped game of the year" award. The slow, clunky cut-scenes turned me off straight away and I dumped the game, never to return.

ME2 got the balance right, but I do agree that there's too many throw-away conversations in DAI. One of the issues seems to be that the Dev's sometimes fail to realize how players will connect with the game. Like the Harding romance for instance. She was just a minor character but many players really warmed to her and wanted a larger experience.

For me, the benchmark is similar - Don't take too many cues from DAI, and try to bring the immersion back to ME2 levels.

Sadly, I think it'll be like DAI. We could already see the start of the trend in ME 3. Personally I hated it. It heavely impacted the enjoyment of playing those games for me.