Games with player-input dialogue (not dialogue trees)?

[Blaster395]

I am trying to find games that have experimented with NPCs you can directly communicate with instead of being forced to choose between dialogue options. So far, the only game of this type I have found is Façade, where it's implemented so poorly as to be unintentionally hilarious (One of the characters loses his shit if you say "melon").

Is Façade the only game to try this, or have other games attempted to have direct dialogue?

 

[DoPo]

Is Façade the only game to try this, or have other games attempted to have direct dialogue?

Aside from, maybe, some Interactive Fiction titles[footnote]even then, I don't know how many, if any, there are where you interact with NPCs[/footnote], I don't think I know of other games. I don't think natural language processing has advanced enough to be in games.

I guess, somebody could try to do something with chatbots in games but I don't know of games that do use that[footnote]I only know the basics about Façade, so I'm not sure how the developers did the interaction - it might be some sort of chatbot underneath[/footnote].

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

This was kind of a common thing back in old games. They ran off of key words where if you said something with that word it would trigger something. It was common in muds and ended up being used in everquest.

 

[Jak2364]

Well, Binary Domain sort of tried this. It was really limited though, you used it for giving orders and answering lots of simple yes or no questions. Your answers determined whether your allies would like you or not, which had an impact on the story and whether or not they'd follow your orders when the shit hits the fan. The game was actually a pretty damn good cover based shooter, nice story and solid gameplay that actually tried something that's not done very often, since you're fighting robots you could actually shoot off individual body parts and they'd react accordingly.

 

[Nooners]

The first several Ultimas, particularly 4 & 5, were big on this.

 

[FPLOON]

This thread reminded me of The Count for the Vic-20... Don't know why, though...

Other than that, if I remember correctly, Façade was an "interesting" game to say the least...

 

[SerithVC]

I am trying to find games that have experimented with NPCs you can directly communicate with instead of being forced to choose between dialogue options. So far, the only game of this type I have found is Façade, where it's implemented so poorly as to be unintentionally hilarious (One of the characters loses his shit if you say "melon").

Is Façade the only game to try this, or have other games attempted to have direct dialogue?

Have you tried Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder? Video games are severely limited in the reactions a given entity can have, this is why i am recommending table top role playing games or a multiplayer game without NPCs (monsters and such aside). It will be a great many years i fear before we have truly interactive characters in video games.

 

[NeutralDrow]

If you have a Dreamcast, you could probably play Seaman. Bonus points for being audio dialogue.