Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 2: The Conversation Wheel

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

I really like the dialogue wheel approach. It makes the protagonist feel more like a character to me, rather than a husk in which I use to experience the game.

Also, nuts to Dragon Age and Mass Effect. Alpha Protocol did it best.

Convo Wheel: "I can't let you do that!"

Onscreen Character: "I'll take 5 carrots please!"

That's the crux of it.

Could you give examples where the text and speech are that different? I never had that problem myself.

Choosing "I don't work for Cerberus."
Shepard: "I'm only working for Cerberus right now."

 

[ImprovizoR]

There are games like Mass Effect where all you need is a dialogue wheel with 3 choices and it works amazing. It's a character driven game with some very strong character. And the trend of voiced character was established at the beginning of the series. Now you have the world of Dragon Age. In the first one you had some of the best characters ever created for a video game. You had great character development and a great story. And all of that because you had more options and choices. First thing, you could chose one of 3 races, classes and whatnot. Second, the character was mute, thus bringing you closer to the story. In DA:O I was the Gray Warden. I made choices and I connected with those characters. That creates immersion. It's something DA2 lacks and it's quite noticeable if you played the first game.

 

[Rusty pumpkin]

When you count up the responses you get on a conversation wheel compared to the old way of doing things (list with every word you say written out), its basically the same.

And whenever you had multiple ways of saying the "good" reply (for example) the other character's response was always the bloody same anyway, so you're really not gaining anything.

The only issue with the conversation wheel is that it can be a little obscure at times, but really, all that's needed to fix that is to sometimes have 4 words representing an option instead of 3.

That, and the bottom option is strange. At one point it had something perfectly reasonable as the description, yet it was still a picture of a red hammer or something. My character didn't even sound different.

 

[Zechnophobe]

I really like the dialogue wheel approach. It makes the protagonist feel more like a character to me, rather than a husk in which I use to experience the game.

Also, nuts to Dragon Age and Mass Effect. Alpha Protocol did it best.

Convo Wheel: "I can't let you do that!"

Onscreen Character: "I'll take 5 carrots please!"

That's the crux of it.

Could you give examples where the text and speech are that different? I never had that problem myself.

Choosing "I don't work for Cerberus."
Shepard: "I'm only working for Cerberus right now."

My personal Favorites are those like:

What the Option reads: "Thanks, I appreciate it."
What you actually say: "Come to my room later, so I can congratulate you properly."

Though to be honest, this was a problem even without the wheel. I just wanted to Encourage Zevran and say he was an important part of the team! I wasn't looking for hot gay Elf Sex.

Well, I guess it isn't gay if he's an elf, but you know what I mean.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

I really like the dialogue wheel approach. It makes the protagonist feel more like a character to me, rather than a husk in which I use to experience the game.

Also, nuts to Dragon Age and Mass Effect. Alpha Protocol did it best.

Convo Wheel: "I can't let you do that!"

Onscreen Character: "I'll take 5 carrots please!"

That's the crux of it.

Could you give examples where the text and speech are that different? I never had that problem myself.

Choosing "I don't work for Cerberus."
Shepard: "I'm only working for Cerberus right now."

My personal Favorites are those like:

What the Option reads: "Thanks, I appreciate it."
What you actually say: "Come to my room later, so I can congratulate you properly."

Though to be honest, this was a problem even without the wheel. I just wanted to Encourage Zevran and say he was an important part of the team! I wasn't looking for hot gay Elf Sex.

Well, I guess it isn't gay if he's an elf, but you know what I mean.

Yeah, the ability in DA2 to see when you would be flirting with someone is a godsend. Shepard hit on everyone.

 

[kuyo]

I have to admit, I saw this pic not long ago, and loved it.

I think its pretty relevant when you compare the two pics and see how much the "outdated" system destroys the fancy pants new voiced dialogue in terms of being faithful to roleplaying. One realises to push the selection to its limits, the other just plain limits it with the added bonus of not even allowing the player agency over the characters own voice in their head.

I could accept the tradeoff if the wheel led to something like a varied web, where directions on the wheel lead to completey different wheels taking conversations in different directions, but all the do is select if you want this part of the conversation to sound noble, snarky or bitchy/childish. Either way, the coversation is now a straight line rather than a series of branching directions. All you choose is if the straight line is blue, grey or red.

There's a reason why choices and dialogue have become so limited nowadays now that games have voice acting in them. Back in old games where all the dialogue was just text you could probably make up dozens of scenarios and endings for quests. Now that voice acting is done for most games, they simply cannot afford to do all of that anymore. You just can't write 20 different dialogue options that all branch into different conversations and have your voice actors perform all of them and to do this for every NPC encounter that you have.

That picture, by the way, is incredibly overused and aggressively juvenile to boot.

I say go halvesies on the thing and make certain key conversations fully voiced and have secondary conversations with the giant text-based branches. The only time I ever skip the text is when there are pages of it, and I'd be the same if it was voiced.

 

[FangShadow]

I like how the wheel keeps flow. DA2 tone addition does really make it so you can see what your implying. Plus, the lessened dialog allows for easier voice acting.

However, I do like the list format simply for the ways it extends conversation and more decisions and explanation

I'm a bit torn, but I will say the dialog wheel is currently my preferred option because I have more experience with it at this point

I like the old way because I like knowing exactly what my character is going to say. Rather then play "guess whats going to be said". Its just really, really annoying. However DA2 does the wheel much better then ME2. Thats for sure.

Also, it just makes "morally hard" choices simple by breaking your responses up into "Top = good, middle = neutral/just leave, down = bad". It would be better if they mixed up the choices so the top wasn't always the "good" choice.

Still, I wish more would do what The Witcher did. Have our option be exactly what Geralt will say, and have him speak it.

Bam, everyone wins. Bitchy fans like me don't have to guess what our character will say, and everyone else can hear their character speak. Add in DA2's "tone" feature that displays how you'll say something and put the symbol right in front of the lines, and you got yourself a perfect system.

I can get behind this idea. You, sir, deserve +1 charisma

 

[Easton Dark]

Yeah, the ability in DA2 to see when you would be flirting with someone is a godsend. Shepard hit on everyone.

Even Jack to my dismay. Stupid conversations.

Turned her down right quick. They need to warn me that just starting a conversation and being polite will lead to that. Could not refuse fast enough.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

Yeah, the ability in DA2 to see when you would be flirting with someone is a godsend. Shepard hit on everyone.

Even Jack to my dismay. Stupid conversations.

Turned her down right quick. They need to warn me that just starting a conversation and being polite will lead to that. Could not refuse fast enough.

Agreed. Friendly/polite =/= interest in a person in a sexual/relationship way.
Hey! I chose Jack. I had that reaction to Miranda and Kelly.

 

[DinkumFair]

So how would people feel if they added more options but it was still in the wheel format? Such as adding up and down. Making say up and down the sarcastic or snarky / crazy or chaotic versions of good and evil. Leaving the upper right and lower right to be the serious versions of good or evil. I think more options are always better, but we have to have reasonable expectation for voice acting, script writing, production budgets, etc. Eight options isn't that many more... maybe even 10 (not sure if that would work well in the 'wheel' format as it would be too crowded). You basically would end up with close to the options of DA:O but the ease of use of Mass Effect. I personally think that is the balance for RPGs... picking different options has to affect things, there has to be variety and the options have to be laid out so you can predict what your character are going to say, but realistically it also has to have an intuitive interface that keeps things flowing.

I have heard from a friend that reads all the news and rumors about bioware games that the idea of using Up and Down for more options on the wheel is a real option for future games (ME 3 specifically), but I have no clue if it is true.

 

[rsvp42]

I don't have a problem with it. Played DA:O, experienced it that way, that was fine and dandy. Now I get a chance to experience the world with a stronger character that actually talks to people instead of deferring to his/her party members. I don't get why people can't like both. Both have benefits and drawbacks.

I just love story and I love it even better when it's not being hindered by a silent protagonist. Some stories work great with the ol' SP, but others just feel like they're missing something.

 

[Easton Dark]

Yeah, the ability in DA2 to see when you would be flirting with someone is a godsend. Shepard hit on everyone.

Even Jack to my dismay. Stupid conversations.

Turned her down right quick. They need to warn me that just starting a conversation and being polite will lead to that. Could not refuse fast enough.

Agreed. Friendly/polite =/= interest in a person in a sexual/relationship way.
Hey! I chose Jack. I had that reaction to Miranda and Kelly.

Did not intend to insult your choice in.......uh......women.

Atleast Miranda gave signs early on (like right after the loyalty mission) that she was getting interested; gave me a red flag to stop there, and I did not regret being nice to her. But Jack just blurts it out the first time you talk to her after her LM. I was like "You? Phhh, Tali's right upstairs". I so wanted a renegade option to turn her down, but paragon was for a serious relationship and renegade was for sex. Darn neutral Shepard.

Wish I knew the consequences of the conversation wheel, but I guess that's life, you never know how someone will take what you say.

 

[Sjakie]

I like the wheel in Mass Effect as Shepard is a very defined character, however I liked being able to project myself in Dragon Age and I'll miss it.

This.
If i want to built a char from the ground up in a game i will need lots of extra choices to flesh him/her out. A wheel often wont help as much with that as the 'traditional way' does.
a pre-defined character gets more benefit from it, but those characters are usually in action-RPG's like Mass Effect and not in 'old skool' RPG's.

 

[Xaositect]

You're missing the point. Why choices are so limited is because of money. Voice actors aren't cheap, especially when making a gargantuan game chock full of characters and dialogue.

You have no right to call developers cheap and lazy, either. Have you ever made a triple A title before? Do you own a gaming company? Have you ever lead a team of developers and game designers? Making video games nowadays costs as much as making films, which is to say that it costs shit-zillion amounts of money and making creative, ambitious titles are so risky because of that. I mean, sure, they could make it exactly the way you or a bunch of other entitled jerks want it, but they'll probably have a bit of trouble feeding their families afterwards when the game ends up flopping.

Oh spare me. Most developers are greedy twats, just like their producers, looking only how to make as much money as possible from gamers. Since Im paying out of my ass for games nowadays, they get fuck all sympathy from me.

Nobody is forcing them to adopt a system where they go for the cheapest options possible that it limits creativity. They are doing it themselves.

They and you can fuck off if you think Ill be giving them sympathy because of their design decisions. I pay for the fucking games, and I can criticise as I please.

 

[drunken_munki]

I have to admit, I saw this pic not long ago, and loved it.

I think its pretty relevant when you compare the two pics and see how much the "outdated" system destroys the fancy pants new voiced dialogue in terms of being faithful to roleplaying. One realises to push the selection to its limits, the other just plain limits it with the added bonus of not even allowing the player agency over the characters own voice in their head.

I could accept the tradeoff if the wheel led to something like a varied web, where directions on the wheel lead to completey different wheels taking conversations in different directions, but all the do is select if you want this part of the conversation to sound noble, snarky or bitchy/childish. Either way, the coversation is now a straight line rather than a series of branching directions. All you choose is if the straight line is blue, grey or red.

There's a reason why choices and dialogue have become so limited nowadays now that games have voice acting in them. Back in old games where all the dialogue was just text you could probably make up dozens of scenarios and endings for quests. Now that voice acting is done for most games, they simply cannot afford to do all of that anymore. You just can't write 20 different dialogue options that all branch into different conversations and have your voice actors perform all of them and to do this for every NPC encounter that you have.

That picture, by the way, is incredibly overused and aggressively juvenile to boot.

I say go halvesies on the thing and make certain key conversations fully voiced and have secondary conversations with the giant text-based branches. The only time I ever skip the text is when there are pages of it, and I'd be the same if it was voiced.

BG2 and other games worked for me because of the mixture of depth in conversation plus the occasional cut scene with voice work. The main people in the game had a lot more voice work as well. I found it gave the right mix and kept me interested.

 

[drunken_munki]

I have to admit, I saw this pic not long ago, and loved it.

I think its pretty relevant when you compare the two pics and see how much the "outdated" system destroys the fancy pants new voiced dialogue in terms of being faithful to roleplaying. One realises to push the selection to its limits, the other just plain limits it with the added bonus of not even allowing the player agency over the characters own voice in their head.

I could accept the tradeoff if the wheel led to something like a varied web, where directions on the wheel lead to completey different wheels taking conversations in different directions, but all the do is select if you want this part of the conversation to sound noble, snarky or bitchy/childish. Either way, the coversation is now a straight line rather than a series of branching directions. All you choose is if the straight line is blue, grey or red.

It's funny because it's true. It's sad because it's funny.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

If we are simply discussing the problem with the wheel itself and nothing else associated with it, then the problem is that rather than having an explicit statement that your character will say verbatim, there is only room to give the gist of the comment. This has the potential, if circumstances are right, for the player to choose an option and getting an unexpected result.

Any other complaint regarding a wheel that I have seen has no merit over a list save those of preference. There are plenty of complaints regarding things associated with but not caused by the wheel system and these are also perfectly valid. For example, one might think that the game was written with all the skill and style that a six year old could muster.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I think its pretty relevant when you compare the two pics and see how much the "outdated" system destroys the fancy pants new voiced dialogue in terms of being faithful to roleplaying.

The modern expectation that dialog be voice acted is the cause of the discrepancy you mention more than anything else. Writing a new line of dialog is trivial. Hiring an actor to read the dialog while an engineer records it and other people insert it into the game (along with other little things) is somewhat more difficult.

The problem with the Convo-wheel is that EVERY dialog option hast to fit into one of the slots.

Even if we assume this to be true (which is only true in that it is what the game in question uses rather than an inherent rule of the system), your argument does not work. The wheel is simply a mechanism for presenting information. A list is precisely the same thing. If we applied the same restriction inherent in the wheel to a list (that an option in slot one is good, in slot 2 is neutral, in slot 3 is evil etc), the same problem arises. Even with these restrictions, there is nothing (beyond user convenience) that keeps us from displaying an arbitrary number of options, even if the user would have to do a great deal of work to actually see what they all were.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

I'm not a fan of the conversation wheel, at all. I liked that at least in Origina I knew exactly what my character was going to say and I picked my speech choices on reflex, choosing the one that immediately jumped out as sounding like something I would say.

I've found with the conversation wheel I just go for the humour because I don't want to wind up as Kirkwall's resident asshole or saint; I want to be a believable character.

Still, I wish more would do what The Witcher did. Have our option be exactly what Geralt will say, and have him speak it.

Honestly The Witcher has the best dialogue system I've seen in any game. The dialogue choices are always sensible answers to questions and dilemmas and there are no obvious moral implications with the options.

Spoiler: First major quest

I mean one of the best examples is when you have to face the angry mob after saving Alvin. After collecting all of the information and evidence you need there seems to be no decisive evidence whether or not Abigail or Mikul, Odo and the Reverand are at fault. You then have to make clear, concise decisions based on what you have found out.

Plus Geralt has a fucking awesome voice...

 

[Harb]

First of all, I'd like to point out the Conversation Wheel was the deal breaker for me.

I understand (Bioware's logic) why it has shown up in DA2. People have been praising it in ME&ME2. However, what Bioware missed is that in ME it worked as a part of the whole and sometimes you can't just strip one thing from working game, put it in another and expect it to work. ME has very strong character and storyline, supported by movie grain as well as outstanding voice acting of female Sheppard which allowed me to enjoy the game in "cinematic" way and I accepted that (I will 100% buy ME3).

However what Bioware missed is that people weren't buying DA:O because of conversation wheel in ME (at least I wasn't). If I look back at DA:O, it's pretty much a generic RPG (elves, dwarfs, big apocalypse, ect.), but it reminded me so much old RPGs (Planescape: Torment, Mask of the Betrayer, KotOR, Icewind Dale) that I was able to enjoy it.


For me good RPG is evaluated by the degree I can link and embrace the character I play (it's Role Playing game afterall). Some games do it through atmosphere (Fallout), story (Planescape: Torment), dialogues with party characters (Mask of the Betrayer), ect.
With the dialog wheel, I no longer have the direct control over what the character would say, giving me "the cinematic experience". And in cinema, how often do put yourselves in one's place? More ofter people are spectators, granted, on the scene, but still just spectators, stripping away the role playing part.

Dialogues have always been core part of every good RPG, allowing people to decide exactly how would THEY answer (the picture posted above is sadly so true) through diversity and often surprising options. Hell I remember myself going through the conversation with Ravel about 7 or 8 times the first run, just to understand and try everything.

Since the conversation wheel no longer offers what I listed above, for me personally the game is no longer a RPG, but more like "Action Cinematic Game". And for similar experience I could just go to cinema with my friends and enjoy it more.
Saying that, I will be very, very cautious (and maybe upset) every time I see the conversation wheel in any other game.