http://uk.ign.com/articles/2001/02/16/arcanum-behind-the-scenes-pt-2 http://uk.ign.com/articles/2001/01/26/developer-journal-arcanum-pt-2

I've heard of people trying the 'kill everyone' approach before, but not about people completing the game without ever saying anything to anyone. On the face of it, the second quotation seems problematic, since Virgil initiates dialogue as soon as the game starts. The first quotation refers specifically to 'key characters' (in the main storyline questline?), though...

Has anyone accomplished this? (Presumably it rules out interrogating ghosts, so you'd be relying on documents and, probably, meta-gaming knowledge.)

I suppose you can exit the dialogue without saying anything and then kill virgil.
You'd get a lot of loot for sure.. but does trading count as talking? Guess it does, so no point.

You'll need to know what you're doing though.
Without accepting any hints from anyone as what to do next, it'd seem practically impossible to find your way.

Is there a key to exit dialogue without saying anything? I had a vague idea it was 0, but I tested it on Virgil's introductory chat and it had no effect, so I may well have been thinking of a different game altogether.

If there isn't a way to exit dialogue without a word, then a wholly uncommunicative run does look impossible; besides Virgil, even some random encounters force-initiate dialogue.

What I'm still wondering is whether you can escape dialogue with 'key' characters in the main quest. That probably means people like Bates, Loghaire, etc. but maybe not, say, the Hand assassin who initiates dialogue near the crash site, or the gnome who pretends to be Radcliffe's cousin.

So e.g. you couldn't let the Schuylers talk to you (if memory serves they initiate dialogue when you get near them), but you could try to dispose of them somehow before they can (invisibility?), or meta-game around that part of the plot. The scene with the apparition of 'Arronax' would be a problem too; I wonder whether it's possible to avoid it by teleporting around.

You can use 0 to exit dialogue in Fallout 1/2.

"In fact, you could complete the entire game without talking to ANY key characters."

My takeaway from this is that Virgil is NOT a key character. Which is pretty much what I've been saying all along. ;) IIRC, even preset dialogues won't initiate while you're in combat mode. So you could avoid talking to the crash site assassin or the Schuylers, for instance, by hitting 'R' before approaching them and then attacking them head-on. S'what I do. There is supposedly a way to meta-attack Arronax; but teleporting by itself won't do the trick. He just shows up as you're about to enter the Wheel Clan, says his bit and does his thing, and then leaves.