I need your thoughts on something that I popped up in my mind:

What really bothers me about some RPGs is not the cheesy acting, clichéd overuse of tropes or the bad and utterly ineffective moral system.

It's the situation during any dialogue where you want your character to act in a specific way, or say something appropriate but the choices are so horribly incompatible to what you where thinking that it breaks immersion.

Interestingly, with all it flaws, I appreciated the dialogue options in Dragon Age 2. Except for one or two dialogues I just always enjoyed the possible options.
On the other hand I utterly failed to connect to Drakensang as I almost never got a dialogue choice close to my liking.

So what are your experiences? Which games had the most appropriate dialogue options and which the worst?

The dialog system that worked best for me was the one from Morrowind, where you just click on words in the dialog (or in a list of topics at the side) to steer the conversation in that direction. It doesn't actually spell out what your character might say, but in my mind, I knew what he would say, so that was never a problem for me. The system also _could_ force you to choose between pre-defined options, which allowed for more designer-controlled conversations in situations where that was appropriate.

With regard to RPGs with pre-defined dialog choices, I think the Fallout games and Vampire: Bloodlines went out of their way in giving the player a good selection of fitting choices. Many of those required certain conditions to appear, and so the system kind of adapted to your character and to the way you played it.

What I don't really like are RPGs which just offer you archetypical "good guy / bad guy" choices throughout. If I'm only ever given two choices, and if those choices are so far apart that it's always 100% clear which one my character will choose, then it would arguable be more immersive to just set a variable for "good guy / bad guy" during character creation and let the game handle the rest. _If_ a game is putting words into my mouth, then it better uses this opportunity to create interesting conversation and real choices.

Alpha Protocol's dialogue had some preetty interesting moments.

There's your answer. It is not an inherent issue of the system, it's all about writing.

and the translation. :D

I liked conversations in KOTOR, specially dark sided ones. They were so sick and beyond anything I could have thought of, they were seriously tempting despite me playing a good character.

I don't know about that, I don't think we're anywhere near the point where they have the sort of flexibility that's necessary to remove that issue.

I usually don't find most of the options appealing and wind up making the decision based upon karma and what I think I'm going to get. I'd go more the RPG route, but there usually aren't any appealing choices in that direction.

I guess I prefer jRPGs in that regards as the well written ones, and the ones following that style, tend to make it painful and hard to choose at times.

I haven't played many JRPGs (especially not more modern ones), so I wasn't aware some give you dialogue options or choices, too. That's interesting. Out of curiosity, can you name the ones you were referring to?

Fallout and Arcanum had a great implementation of a true roleplaying dialogue system – the responses reflected your character's intelligence. So conversations with NPCs ranged from simple grunts to complex scientific discussions. VtM:B added insanity into the mix, which is even more hilarious. Anyone remembers the conversation with the traffic sign? :D

Strictly speaking they probably don't, but I'm thinking more of games like Infamous which are clear descendants of that genre rather than of the more western RPGs. You're not really given much choice in terms of the dialogues, you get a positive or a negative choice and that drives the character development.

And so, you get a little bit of choice, but mostly the game designer is leading you through the game and at times dragging you through things you don't really want to be experiencing. I remember pretty much yelling f**** you at the TV a few times when I played through those games.

True, and it doesn't stop at that. It was hilarious when the "civilized" citizens suddenly started making shocked remarks on how my scantily clad heroine was dressed improperly for a lady and looked like a savage. :D A welcome change to other WRPGs where you can say and do whatever you want to and are still hailed as the (name- and faceless) hero.

Worst:
Morrowind - Tribunal. It was so obvious that Almalexia was a lying, conniving bitch, but the player can't say or do anything about it, and are force fed dialogue "options".

Best:
Ultima V to UU 2, maybe?
Planescape: Torment is probably better, but I haven't played it yet.

Not to mention everyone being racist to you if you were a Half-orc of Half-ogre. Reactivity!

Also, it was really nice that Arcanum's evil main quest is different than the good one. Because in some games you can be evil in the side quests, but the main story forces you to be a hero anyway.

I'm aware of how much work it is to give the players a lot of choice and keep track of all the choices, but in the cases where the developers cut down on relevant choices, personally I much prefer if they give me a predefined character and let me discover his or her (interesting and well-written) story instead. I don't really need the illusion that I'm playing my very own character if the game ignores his/her personality anyway.

This, and nowadays I want to not have a choice in what my character says. Better to experience his / her story, then make me not care about 'my own'.

... like the Ghoul city in Fallout 3. That place with its stupid dialog choices pissed me off that I stopped caring about the characters and just obliterated the whole city.