A Little Less (dumb) Conversation

[Jodah]

anc[is]"In BioWare games this is bad because the paragon / renegade system punishes you for "moral" inconsistency."

Protip: Paragon is always up, Renegade is always down. Smart ass comment aside dialog wheels and the skipping dialog button issue infuriate me. How is it that it hasn't been fixed?

That's not really what he's saying. He's saying if you are a Paragon you can't get mad and punch Puppy Kicker the Third. It's not about knowing which is the Paragon and which is the Renegade option. It's about knowing what each actually means. In the example given the Paragon would say "Stop kicking puppies you jerk!" and the Renegade would say "Cool, I think I'll join this puppy kicking party!" Where is the "vigilante" option to kick the jerk like he kicks puppies?

 

[Dreadjaws]

I don't know if it was BioWare that pioneered the "summary" style dialog wheel, but I first encountered it in the original Mass Effect

The first instance of such a system I remember encountering was in Lucasarts' Sam & Max Hit the Road. Instead of dialog options you'd have a symbol-based UI. You'd have a question mark to ask a question, an exclamation mark to give some info, a squishy toy to pull the other guy's leg or symbols relating to other characters or objects in order to talk about them.

The clear difference, of course, is that the humorous nature of the game, combined with its linearity and its no chance of dying would never make you feel you did something wrong.