Borderlands 4 dev says adding "skip dialogue" options may break the game: "It’s way more involved and riskier than it appears"

LectureMaster

Has Man Musk



Borderlands 4 has been out for just under one month, and players are already finding ways to make replaying sections more streamlined. As such, a mod to skip dialogue is gaining traction among the community, with calls for Gearbox to officially integrate the option; however, achieving this is easier said than done.


Borderlands 4

(Image credit: 2K)

Borderlands 4 has been out for just under one month, and players are already finding ways to make replaying sections more streamlined. As such, a mod to skip dialogue is gaining traction among the community, with calls for Gearbox to officially integrate the option; however, achieving this is easier said than done.

The 'Dialog Skipper' is available on Nexus Mods from users Yeti and itzSmugg, and it adds a button to skip over any current exposition, as well as an option to turn all of it off and to fast-forward longer animations. It's a handy little toolkit, whether you're a fledgling speedrunner or just want to tighten up your re-runs.

Borderlands streamer and video creator JoltzDude139 posted a clip of him using the mod, espousing its positives. This resulted in a call for the developers to formally include it in the sci-fi looter-shooter, but creative director Graeme Timmins was quick to ask everyone to slow down.



"I'd be cautious using this mod; skipping dialog could lead to broken mission states that might not be recoverable," he says on Twitter. "This request is way more involved and riskier than it appears on the surface with how dialog is integrated within our mission system."

A couple of fans have doubled down in his replies, while one points out they're saving regularly as they play with the mod in use. Ultimately, what Timmins is saying is that games often have complex structures that don't lend themselves to simple edits.

Giving players the option to just bypass dialog could lead to all sorts of hidden ramifications. Objectives and different facets of any given mission are often tied directly to characters speaking. If those lines are glossed over without being massaged out, things could get messy.
 
Last edited:
I used mods for 2/3 no problem. People have asked them for forever on consoles because you so.etimes wait for stupid banter to finish for a minute before you get your task added, its just waste of time. They should know people have been asking years for this
 
Getting flashbacks to the early days of Destiny 1 when Bungie claimed skipping cutscenes was a complicated thing to do within the framework of their game engine and design. 🙄

Snark aside, the end game of BL4 right now is poor, which I've articulated at length in the OT, but the fact that we have to sit through the plodding dialog makes me even less inclined to do Wildcard Missions — which make up one third of the entire current weekly "end game" activities.
 
Last edited:
One of the key elements you add to sequels, especially for your high playtime players is quality of life features. Those include gameplay features like not having to manually pick up consumables, but also includes features that allow you to optimise the gameplay to standing around ratio.

I infer from the dev's comment that he tried adding it and found out the hard way, then it was decided by management to not bother spending time on making it work.

If it is the case that objectives pop up mid sentence I would think the obvious solution would be to just run them all at the highest speed multiplier so that trigger points are still hit. If that still doesn't work then it's worse than I feared.
 
The writing and dialogue is one of the worst aspects of the franchise so I'll definitely not bother with this any time soon.
 
i really wanna play BL4, but im gonna leave it a year or so i think. plus fuck Randy, youll get £5 off me whne its on CDKeys
 
I have a hard time believing little timmy too simp ova here about the game breaking aspect of skipping dialogues when games like Witcher and Cyberpunk did it without any trouble whatsoever.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom