Looking for PC RPGs with more talking and persuading than fighting.

[ninja666]

Honestly don't know how to search for it myself cause my request seems to be so niche that Google gives me nothing, so here's another one of my universally loved "recommend a game" threads. Hope you can help me out.

Recently, while replaying Fallout New Vegas, I found out that talking your way through quests and solving them peacefully can be incredibly fun, not to mention persuading people to get more/better rewards. Are there any other RPGs out there, aside from the obvious one - Planescape Torment, where a diplomatic approach and intelligent, charismatic, speech-based characters are viable options? Games with complex dialogue system and large variety of dialogue options, where I can talk my way through most of the quests and only fight when absolutely necessary? Preferably morally grey (please warn me if your suggestion has a black & white morality), so I'd have to think twice before choosing any option.

Thank you in advance for pointing me in the right direction.

 

[Tragedy's Rebellion]

...Nope. Most of the examples I can give slowly devolve into fight fests in the end. Arcanum, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer, Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader, Fallout 1 and 2, Knights of the Old Republic 2 etc. RPGs usually tend to be combat heavy anyway. Why don't you try some adventure type games like The Longest Journey and its sequels or Broken Sword?

I don't know what you mean by "only fight when absolutely necessary", since being randomly assaulted in a dungeon counts as absolutely necessary. All the examples I gave are of RPGs which are very well written and I can even give more, but they don't give you the option to skip 90% of the fights with dialogue.

If we count FPS RPGs then Deus ex the first and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and also System Shock 2.

 

[ninja666]

Why don't you try some adventure type games like The Longest Journey and its sequels or Broken Sword?

Cause I'm absolute shit at puzzles, that's why. Plus, most adventure games don't really give me any dialogue-related outcomes and consequences of my choice of words - they're just simply dialogue-heavy.

I don't know what you mean by "only fight when absolutely necessary", since being randomly assaulted in a dungeon counts as absolutely necessary. All the examples I gave are of RPGs which are very well written and I can even give more, but they don't give you the option to skip 90% of the fights with dialogue.

By "only fight when absolutely necessary" I mean situations where either you're pitted against entities that are hostile to you by default (which is a standard in every RPG) or you screw up the dialogue royally and make an NPC hostile towards you because of that. I never said I wanted no fighting at all. The thing I want is extensive dialogue options that let me take a diplomatic approach and avoid some of the combat by talking my way through.

 

[DoPo]

Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines - it doesn't quite fit what you want but it's close - you can usually solve the quests by talking, fighting or sneaking. Usually at least two of those - sometimes talking isn't available. However, fighting is not that necessary, at least until you get towards the second...third or quarter of the game when it becomes more and more necessary. However, just to give you a quick example - the first main quest you get is to get some drugs from criminals and you can approach it however you like - charm them, persuade them, sneak in and steal from them, sneak in and kill them, or straight up shoot all of them. All viable options. Two notes on this - first you need the latest Unofficial Patch [http://www.patches-scrolls.de/patch/4647/63013]. Second - you have three social skills to choose from - Intimidate, Persuade and Seduction, of them Intimidate straight up sucks - do NOT pick it up, I'm serious[footnote]I've tried specialising in it. All in all, it helps you out in really minor and really rare situations - most of the time, though, it backfires and the NPCs either stop talking to you or attack you and stuff. Generally, the opposite of what you want. The few times it does help you can either use normal lines to achieve the same effect or the help is negligible - getting an extra 75$ in the beginning of the game is probably the biggest contribution Intimidate would do. And that is not a significant amount outside of the beginning.[/footnote] - Persuade is normally the best but Seduction is a viable alternative. Females benefit slightly more from Seduction than males.

Arcanum of Steamworks and Magick Obscura - it does have some fighting, but the amount of persuasion you can use is quite a lot. You can even engage the last boss in conversation and convince him to stand down. And what I found really funny is that there are random encounters as you travel - quite a lot of times, you come across some mercenaries who go "Are you the chosen one?" - you can confirm and they'll attack you, or you can deny and they'll go "Oh, sorry to bother you" and leave you alone. Arcanum also has its own Unofficial Patch [http://terra-arcanum.com/drog/dest/uap.html] worth getting.

Postmortem: One Must Die - this one is actually a bit further than what you want, perhaps but I think it's worth noting, here is the premise: You play as death (one of many, apparently) and you have to kill a person at a party. Apparently, doesn't matter who. You can, however, explore the party and talk to the party guests. That's the entire game, in fact - talk to people (or not, if you want) and then pick somebody to die. Your actions would change the world maybe for better, maybe for worse. And it's not only who dies, you can influence people by talking to them - first time I played, I decided to see what would happen if I picked somebody at random and I literally killed the first person I saw. The results were...not good. The second time, I talked to them, and made a careful decision and...the results were disastrous. Apparently, I hadn't said the right things to the right people and my choice pretty much worsened the situation. It's a nice short game to play - it should take you about an hour tops to play through it once, but you may want to replay it a few times to see different results from your choices.

 

[ninja666]

Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines - it doesn't quite fit what you want but it's close - you can usually solve the quests by talking, fighting or sneaking. Usually at least two of those - sometimes talking isn't available. However, fighting is not that necessary, at least until you get towards the second...third or quarter of the game when it becomes more and more necessary. [...] Second - you have three social skills to choose from - Intimidate, Persuade and Seduction, of them Intimidate straight up sucks - do NOT pick it up, I'm serious - Persuade is normally the best but Seduction is a viable alternative. Females benefit slightly more from Seduction than males.

I've heard that in this game a speech-based character is literally the worst option you can pick because, as even you mentioned, late-game has gradually more and more fighting. Any advice on how to balance it out if I wanted to play this game?

Arcanum of Steamworks and Magick Obscura - it does have some fighting, but the amount of persuasion you can use is quite a lot. You can even engage the last boss in conversation and convince him to stand down. And what I found really funny is that there are random encounters as you travel - quite a lot of times, you come across some mercenaries who go "Are you the chosen one?" - you can confirm and they'll attack you, or you can deny and they'll go "Oh, sorry to bother you" and leave you alone.

I'm not sure about this game having "a lot" of persuasion. I could talk my way out of a few encounters, true, but most of the time my pistol had to do the talking for me because there was no other way. Unless it was my fault and I just made a character that simply sucked at speechcraft...

Postmortem: One Must Die - this one is actually a bit further than what you want, perhaps but I think it's worth noting, here is the premise: You play as death (one of many, apparently) and you have to kill a person at a party. Apparently, doesn't matter who. You can, however, explore the party and talk to the party guests. That's the entire game, in fact - talk to people (or not, if you want) and then pick somebody to die. Your actions would change the world maybe for better, maybe for worse. And it's not only who dies, you can influence people by talking to them - first time I played, I decided to see what would happen if I picked somebody at random and I literally killed the first person I saw. The results were...not good. The second time, I talked to them, and made a careful decision and...the results were disastrous. Apparently, I hadn't said the right things to the right people and my choice pretty much worsened the situation. It's a nice short game to play - it should take you about an hour tops to play through it once, but you may want to replay it a few times to see different results from your choices.

Sounds interesting. I think I'll play it just for kicks while waiting for more suggestions, since it's short and all.

 

[Tragedy's Rebellion]

snip

Then yes, all the examples I gave. Bonus round: The newly released Pillars of Eternity (it has some issues with a lot of stuff and their forum is ablaze of intellectual discourse(not sarcasm)) is actually surprisingly well-made and it's worth it just to support these kinds of games. Divinity: Original Sin is well-made too, but their writing is iffy and wouldn't recommend it just for the writing. Anachronox is fun if you can stomach JRPG style combat, but it's well written and not in a JRPG kind of way.

I can give examples of not so well written, but also kinda worth it: Dragon Age: Origins and even 2 (DA2 actually has the better narrative, because it isn't filled with bioware-isms; but not Inquisition, that game is just pain incarnate), Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, the Mass Effect trilogy, Gothic 2 if you can get into it, Vampire the Masquerade REDEMPTION is kinda fun and worth it if you like the World of Darkness setting (very combat heavy though)... what else, maybe Inquisitor? It's really old school, but tons of dialogue and it gives you many options.

EDIT: Just read your response about Arcanum - you have to realize the tortured history that game has, it's just a mess of enthusiasm and failed dreams. Mechanically it's really bad, but the writing is very solid.

 

[bluepotatosack]

Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines - it doesn't quite fit what you want but it's close - you can usually solve the quests by talking, fighting or sneaking. Usually at least two of those - sometimes talking isn't available. However, fighting is not that necessary, at least until you get towards the second...third or quarter of the game when it becomes more and more necessary. [...] Second - you have three social skills to choose from - Intimidate, Persuade and Seduction, of them Intimidate straight up sucks - do NOT pick it up, I'm serious - Persuade is normally the best but Seduction is a viable alternative. Females benefit slightly more from Seduction than males.

I've heard that in this game a speech-based character is literally the worst option you can pick because, as even you mentioned, late-game has gradually more and more fighting. Any advice on how to balance it out if I wanted to play this game?

I haven't found that to be necessarily true. I usually played through that as a persuasive malkavian, and just maxed out their Dementation discipline by the end of the game. That's a useful power to have when fighting humans. You'll have plenty of points to put into combat skills by the end even if you focus on social skills anyways from what I remember.

Fallout 2 I believe can be played mostly peacefully too. Even in the combat trial you're supposed to go through in the temple at the start of the game, you can convince the other guy to just let you pass.

 

[DementedSheep]

Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines - it doesn't quite fit what you want but it's close - you can usually solve the quests by talking, fighting or sneaking. Usually at least two of those - sometimes talking isn't available. However, fighting is not that necessary, at least until you get towards the second...third or quarter of the game when it becomes more and more necessary. [...] Second - you have three social skills to choose from - Intimidate, Persuade and Seduction, of them Intimidate straight up sucks - do NOT pick it up, I'm serious - Persuade is normally the best but Seduction is a viable alternative. Females benefit slightly more from Seduction than males.

I've heard that in this game a speech-based character is literally the worst option you can pick because, as even you mentioned, late-game has gradually more and more fighting. Any advice on how to balance it out if I wanted to play this game?

It's not that bad, you get enough points that you can invest some into combat, bosses aren't that hard and many of the vampire clans you can pick from have access to a power that can take out most minor mobs for a small point investment. The only part of the game that it really felt like I was handicapped by being a speech based character was the sewer although that level is still a drag as a combat based character.

 

[Req]

About Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, you might consider trying out a tremere vampire. They have some pretty devastating powers early in the game, AoE and single target, so they can easily put most of their points into social skills and still manage when combat becomes neccesary. Do keep in mind, social skills are very viable early in the game, and through sidequest can give access to some considerable xp, so building a character with a decent split between social and combat skills doesn't harm you as much as you might have heard it would.

 

[ExDeath730]

Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines - it doesn't quite fit what you want but it's close - you can usually solve the quests by talking, fighting or sneaking. Usually at least two of those - sometimes talking isn't available. However, fighting is not that necessary, at least until you get towards the second...third or quarter of the game when it becomes more and more necessary. [...] Second - you have three social skills to choose from - Intimidate, Persuade and Seduction, of them Intimidate straight up sucks - do NOT pick it up, I'm serious - Persuade is normally the best but Seduction is a viable alternative. Females benefit slightly more from Seduction than males.

I've heard that in this game a speech-based character is literally the worst option you can pick because, as even you mentioned, late-game has gradually more and more fighting. Any advice on how to balance it out if I wanted to play this game?

@Ninja 666

Just buy the Flamethrower. No joke, the last boss you can just shoot him a little while when he is flying and after he is in the ground, you can run up and cook him. Besides, the game as so much XP, that even if you're going for a diplomatic character, you will have points for fighting skills, and don't forget the Disciplines, they are the gamebreaker of the game.

Some other games?

Baldur's Gate: The expansion not really, but BG 2 have a lot of situations where you can convince people to stand down, or to straight up not fight you. Most quests with a diplomatic option, gives way less XP if you go for the combat option.

There are anothers, but mostly are from the old times of PC RPG games. After Black Isle broke up, both Bioware and Obsidian have gone the way of the unnecessary combat.

Edit: Sorry, had problems with my quotation.

 

[WolfThomas]

In VTMB guns are a good solution for a speech characters. They suck early on (where speech is effective) and rock towards the end of the game. The flamethrower you get towards the end is pretty OP and requies no skill points.

The sewers level wasn't a drag the second time when I knew it was coming. I had an automatic shotgun, pump action shotgun, glock, .357 magnum and hunting rifle. Lots of ammo. Just blasted all the enemies in my way.

The last missions actually have heaps of ammo boxes to loot so you don't need to go in with max ammo. Also you need something to spend the cash on, why not bullets?

 

[Asita]

Doesn't quite fit your criteria, but Deus Ex Human Revolution does have a fair bit of conversation wheel stuff. Refreshingly, it's not entirely set in stone. Yeah, the 'optimal' dialogue path is consistent enough to go into guides, but what the characters will be receptive to will vary somewhat based on your prior conversation choices. Which is to say that if the guide would suggest that you choose 1A, 2B, 3C, and then 4D and you answer the first question with 1C, then their reactions to 2B, 3C, and 4D might very well be different as their rationalizations will be different. It suffers very much like VTMB, however, in that while Speech, Stealth, and Hacking are very viable options for much of the game, the boss fights require that you go in guns blazing. It's not impossible, but it does severely penalize attempts at nonlethal playthroughs (bosses don't count against against the achievement, but nonlethal weapons are not effective against them).

Edit for full clarity: For anyone who has yet to play the game, when I say that "Speech, Stealth, and Hacking are very viable options for much of the game", I do mean that in the sense that they work in concert with one another and occasionally overlap. Speech can help avoid some fights and occasionally will get people to voluntarily give you access codes, stealth will allow you to avoid most direct combat in the game (though you are still greatly advised to snipe most enemies with tranqs or bullets), and hacking will allow you to disable alarms and cameras to make stealth easier. They synchronize very well, but none of them can stand on their own.

 

[ninja666]

Doesn't quite fit your criteria, but Deus Ex Human Revolution does have a fair bit of conversation wheel stuff. [...] It suffers very much like VTMB, however, in that while Speech, Stealth, and Hacking are very viable options for much of the game, the boss fights require that you go in guns blazing. It's not impossible, but it does severely penalize attempts at nonlethal playthroughs (bosses don't count against against the achievement, but nonlethal weapons are not effective against them).

Well, I guess you can't have everything. RPGs tend to be combat-heavy, after all, as Tragedy's Rebellion mentioned.

 

[shrekfan246]

the boss fights require that you go in guns blazing. It's not impossible, but it does severely penalize attempts at nonlethal playthroughs (bosses don't count against against the achievement, but nonlethal weapons are not effective against them).

Just as a point of note, the Director's Cut release changed that. All of the boss arenas were heavily redesigned. You still have to kill them, but you don't have to do it yourself anymore.

I don't really have an answer for the thread, though. As per usual, the premise of the question would make for a very unique and interesting niche game, so the games industry hasn't bothered to try making it (or if they have, it flopped horribly and as such very, very few people have ever heard of the game in question).

 

[ninja666]

I don't really have an answer for the thread, though. As per usual, the premise of the question would make for a very unique and interesting niche game, so the games industry hasn't bothered to try making it (or if they have, it flopped horribly and as such very, very few people have ever heard of the game in question).

Looks like Fallout and Vampire Bloodlines is as close as I get, then. Close enough, though, I think. Too bad there's no game matching exactly what I want as for now. Maybe one day...

 

[The Madman]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Alpha Protocol yet. The game had some pretty mediocre combat and gameplay but the script and dialogue as well as the way your decisions could have an effect on the plot of the game was spot on.

Obsidian in general quite enjoy putting a heavy emphasis on dialogue in their games, whether it be Fallout: New Vegas or the above mentioned Alpha Protocol, there are in almost all their games some form of rewards and incentives for players that choose to try and play diplomatically as opposed to running in weapons ready. That said there's pretty much always also mandatory combat as well, Alpha Protocol had some terribly annoying boss fights and even the more recent Pillars of Eternity has a good number of wandering monsters and such.

Otherwise yeah, the old Fallout titles, Planescape: Torment, Vampire: Bloodlines, Arcanum, etc. Most of the big 'talky rpg' have been mentioned here. Another that hasn't been mentioned is that if you're interested there are also a couple fan-made campaign for Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 that get pretty heavily into dialogue choices and such, as does the developer expansion Mask of the Betrayer for NWN2 though that's been mentioned.

 

[Asita]

Not sure how good this will end up being, as I don't have direct experience with most of them, but Google did turn up a Reddit thread on this topic with about 20 suggestions (at various ratings of how effective they are at it) in the OP.

http://www.reddit.com/r/gamingsuggestions/comments/1d5efg/games_where_dialogue_choices_are_a_major_gameplay/

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Maybe Alpha Protocol also made by Obsidian. I never played it but always wanted to give it a whirl. Maybe the Telltale games might do the trick as well, they really aren't that far from being RPGs.

This is a HUGE problem with RPGs, they are supposed to FOCUS on the role-playing, not combat. Hell, you don't even need combat for a game to be an RPG. This is exactly why I consider very few games to be RPGs because almost all of them focus on combat. And, most RPGs have shitty combat so why am I playing a combat focused game with shitty combat when I can just play an action game with good combat? It's quite hilarious that something like Mass Effect is called a shooter with RPG elements by a lot of people yet most of your playtime is actually spent role-playing unlike pretty much 99% of video game RPGs.

 

[Pirate Of PC Master race]

Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines - it doesn't quite fit what you want but it's close - you can usually solve the quests by talking, fighting or sneaking. Usually at least two of those - sometimes talking isn't available. However, fighting is not that necessary, at least until you get towards the second...third or quarter of the game when it becomes more and more necessary. [...] Second - you have three social skills to choose from - Intimidate, Persuade and Seduction, of them Intimidate straight up sucks - do NOT pick it up, I'm serious - Persuade is normally the best but Seduction is a viable alternative. Females benefit slightly more from Seduction than males.

I've heard that in this game a speech-based character is literally the worst option you can pick because, as even you mentioned, late-game has gradually more and more fighting. Any advice on how to balance it out if I wanted to play this game?

Better get use to the sewer levels now, because mother of them all is in there.

Also, book abuse, which will hopefully divert your points to charisma.

 

[bluepotatosack]

Actually, I just remembered a game that might suit you. Maybe.
Kings of Dragon Pass [http://www.gog.com/game/king_of_dragon_pass]
You play as a leader of a tribe and have to make loads of decisions that effect the path you go down. It has some strategy elements in there too, as you have to watch your tribes resources and population and such. For now I'll just copy the first review because it does a much better job of giving you a feel for the game then I'm going to.

""A girl sees a great shadow of a passing bird."

Is this a bad omen? Can you laugh it off? What if you do and something bad happens later on, will you be blamed for inaction or can the village chief convince people it's a coincidence? If you act, is it enough to perform a simple ritual to ward off bad spirits or is it necessary to sacrifice cows? How many cows is enough? Too many and the farmers won't be happy then either.

And where are the explorers, shouldn't they be back alread? Will there be enough harvest this year or should you launch a trading mission or attempt a heroquest? Do you have enough warriors patrolling your tula?

Leading a tribe in a land of mystery is inviting trouble and an experience full of depth.

But amazingly, the learning curve isn't steep at all, you can just start playing right away. Granted, you'll probably make bad choices and ruin your tribe, but it's a great experience anyway and maybe you'll do better next time..."