On Dialogue Menus

[Therumancer]

Hmmm, well I think that the dialogue options have not changed because they work perfectly for what they do. In general I am playing a video game presumably to adventure, and do stuff I can't do in real life. As someone who is not mute, I am not especially excited by the idea of a more realistic coversation system, or even a more complicated one. Conversing with NPCs does it's job of filling in details about the world and enviroment, while at the same time providing information I need to advance the plot.

Oh sure the idea of walking up as some blood splattered warrior and instantly getting all kinds of valuable information from a surprisingly friendly fellow I just happen to stumble upon isn't really realistic, but if we wanted to be realistic about this I'd probably wind up being bored to tears.

What's more if I'm playing a game involved enough story and plot wise for the conversation to be a major factor... like say an RPG, chances are I do not want a twitchy, reflect based minigame to intrude on what I'm doing. Trying to replay a conversation 40 bloody times to proceed because my aim was a bit off sounds like it would be absolutly horrible. One of the reasons why I play RPGs and such is because I admit it, my twitch reflexs leave a lot to be desired. This is one of the reasons why I am resistant to this and every other attempt to insert some kind of reflex/twitch based activity into what should be stat or turn based generes.

I mean hey, my reflexs have not exactly gotten better as I've gotten older to begin with, and I'm a disabled person who takes a cocktail of medications to cause a calming effect which slow me down even further nowadays. "Too much information" incarnate there probably, but the point is that while I do play action games, my mainstay for escapism is RPGs for a reason. Well that and making a reviled, venting, rambling, arse out of myself with TLR posts on Internet based fansites.

 

[somerandomguy76]

1) The amount of dialogue that would be required for every person would be tremendous. Imagine that system in Oblivion, or Fallout or WoW, the amount of players to talk to is alot, now imagine a unique conversation for each person. Yikes.

2)With the time it'd take to make that system, then all of the talking, alot of time would have been detracted from...say the actual GAMEPLAY design, or the story telling (don't you dare quote me and say "But the talking is part of the plot Hurr Durr, no I mean as in the PLOT) not worth the time it'd take to put into it.

Honestly, I like this idea. However I can only see it becoming feasible as a core element of gameplay. I just can't see developers devoting that much time, effort and resources to something that most games, as Yahtzee mentioned, use only as an info dump. Maybe once true virtual reality becomes more viable and widespread, systems like that of Façade (an experimental, exclusively dialogue based game) could replace the current system but that will take a lot of work.

For the near future, I would simply like to see Mass Effect's scheme become the standard.

 

[carpathic]

Totally agree with the "bullocks oblivion persuasion system" comment. USELESS and FRUSTRATING.

 

[Video Gone]

Play Starship Titanic: The Game for a good conversation system. It has to do with the Hitchhiker's guide. [/thread]

 

[Video Gone]

Realism in in-game dialog would fuck up ANY game beyond repair. It would mean having to stay glued to the screen trying to remember really hard whether Grey Wardens are supposed to pray for Andraste or Thor in the five seconds it takes for the NPC to ask you who you worship. Thor? Quick Load. Odin? Quick load. It would mean you'd have to remember all those 9 novels worth of content off the top of your head and know it so well you'd be able to come up with answers in real time, or your F9 (quick load, for you non DA players) key would need to be exchanged after every couple hours of gameplay.
What does piss me off is that they can't get their heads out of their asses on the Generic Character Means You Identify With Protagonist principle. We know you guys can get decent actors to perform the dialog, why the fuck can't I get a british guy saying the dialog option I just chose? I would be ten times more likely to choose the often available "How about I kill you instead?" option.

It's really not that hard to retain information about the plot. Are you really going to tell me that you can't remember that the Chantry worships the Maker, Dwarves worship the Ancestors and the Paragons and the Dalish worship the "Gods"? If someone asks you who you worship, it's going to either be The Maker, noone, or a racial choice, and none of them would penalise you.

I know that you were just using an example, but I can't think of any dialogue option I had to think about for more than five seconds. Enforcing it would add to immersion, especially if there was another line of dialogue from you saying nothing at all, even if it's just them getting more and more pissed off that you aren't saying anything.

Also, noone would be voiced by "a British guy". Everyone in Feralden has an American accent, which I'm surprisingly happy at - I'd ratherwe get American accents than awful British ones.

Do you mean awful British impressions? Because if you mean British accents are awful compared to American ones in general, then the irony is amazing.

 

[dubious_wolf]

I love the sex mini game idea! bow chicka bow wow!
in all seriousness I enjoy the idea of the mini game, but I have a problem with giving the player to much movement free whilst talking... the only reason being is that I don't know what it would do for loading screens. for example let's so I'm gabbing on about a quest to... slay some wolves or spiders or whatever, once I get the quest and I flee desperately what would the NPC do? would he be left talking like a tard? the wooden puppet routine (I would think, but i'm not a game designer so this is total speculation on my part) works as a que to bring up the pre-recorded cut scenes. The concept seems pretty cool otherwise. and I liked the Oblivion persuasion minigame...

Wait wait another interesting idea... Ok so it's said that first impressions are most important? remember the prostitution mini game in saints row? you had to hit the "sweet spot" with the thumb sticks, well take that mechanic and apply it dialogue... before each dialogue you have a quick couple of seconds where you have to make an impression by hitting the dialogue "sweet spot" this will set the mood for the dialogue by altering the NPCs hidden impression stat. Then the NPCs impression stat will be altered by your health level, the quality of clothes, how recently you've been in battle (thus being coated in blood) in addition the immediate effect of theses other things may not influence an NPC in a constant way... for example. if you walk up to a gladiator dragging an ogre head behind you covered in its blood his impression stat will go through the roof, however if you tryu the same thing with a frail, old and sqeemish store owner he'll either be terrified of you or perhaps kick you out of his store by calling the city watch... it's an idea anyway. It would be a little less complicated, but still a bit more immersive than the current model

 

[YoUnG205]

i like the idea and i wish that a game designer would do that with a game lol

 

[Chipperz]

Also, noone would be voiced by "a British guy". Everyone in Feralden has an American accent, which I'm surprisingly happy at - I'd ratherwe get American accents than awful British ones.

Do you mean awful British impressions? Because if you mean British accents are awful compared to American ones in general, then the irony is amazing.

Yes. Yes I do mean impressions. My bad, reading that back that wasn't immensly clear. I am British, and I like my accent.

Godawful British impressions, trying to speak broken Ye Olde English, are a blight on the RPG world.

 

[genericuser]

I'm sure people have already said this a dozen times, but still; the dualstick conversation system is a bad idea. Ignoring the fact that you have to script for a highly unreliable outcome (imagine writing the speech for the winner of the 2020 elections), and the fact that it's hard to code properly(how would you turn a conversation into an equation?), you're still basically shoving a minigame into the storytelling.

Better idea; screw conversation and find *new* ways to present the plot. Preferably ones that don't involve large blocks of text.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Isn't Alpha Protocol doing something like this?

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Dialog trees are limited mainly due to modern game writing and voice acting/audio space, another thing is creating a dialog structure that flows a bit more naturally but is not hampered by being bound by the limitations of voice acting/audio space.

Say we get past this hurdle by making a speech system that can mimic an actors voice even tot eh point it can sound like a different person now apply a dialog tree to it but one that flows with more possibilities and options as so each main conversation is not so awkward but at the same time feels more random and more like real conversations.

Having a morrowind syle I am the fck annoyed with you/ I kinda like you gauge would help push the conversation in one direction or another mess up to much and it ends and they simply wont talk to you anymore, this can be made less annoying by doing it on all non main quest conversations and adding a ok I screwed up start over button before the convo has ended.

Frankly main dialog,intros and scenes should be voiced while dialog trees should remain silent and better written..... unless a game is not dialog heavy like mass effect, KOTOR and other short actionish RPGs

 

[Witty-Name]

I like the idea of a button to inspect the NPC's DVD collection. Presumably at any stage during the conversation you can just go for "ooh, you have [insert name of title]!!!", then depending on whether or not it's their absolute favourite DVD ever that they've watched a million times, or that random present from an equally random colleague who doesn't quite get their taste, it'll either make them love you forever or completely kill any flow in the conversation.

The conversation could eventually lead to "So... are you on Facebook", at which point you needn't speak to the NPC again because everything you ever wanted to know about them and quite a few things you never would want to know is all there online for you to read.

 

[TitsMcGee1804]

Conversation should flow like a river, not like a big clunky lever...

The conversation flows like a lever? That similie doesn't work, Yahtzee!

....errr....yes it does

the conversation should FLOW like a RIVER, not like a clunky LEVER

read it again

"Flow" has both "river" and "lever" as objects. Levers can't flow. They're not liquid.

EXACTLY!

lol, stop being so simple...he is saying the conversation DOESNT flow, therefore it is like a clunky lever...i.e. levers DONT flow!

lmao, sort it out mate

 

[Brancanuss]

Yahtzee, you're a genius.

 

[Dmatix]

Sounds like a good idea, but as you said, difficult to program. It might also hinder players with slow reflexes (which are pretty common in RPG player). Still, with proper execution, it could work.

 

[GeneralGrant]

The one area I agree with is that developers need to remove the option of saying "Oh hey there's something else I'd like to talk about" when there actually are no choices available after that. Most of Bioware's games have this problem, they succeed in making some compelling conversations but fail in having broken dialogue trees at times.

As for Yahtzee's idea, it has potential. I can see how it would be screwed up very easily though.

 

[technotica]

I guess what Im trying to get across here is "Why the fuck do you need a "conversation system" in the first place?"

but if you DO feel the need to stop gameplay every 15 minutes to break into a jacked off interlude of "talking" Yahtzee's idea is pretty sound.

I guess it comes down to this... I like Dragon Age alot, I really do... but words simply cant describe the wonderful, cock in face, giggly, feeling i get everytime I "jack in" Matrix style to Demons Souls.

 

[ckam]

Very interesting idea.

 

[Crafty Screenwriting]

Late to this thread, but I blogged about wanting a form of "conversational combat" here: http://complicationsensue.blogspot.com/2010/04/conversational-combat.html.

People keeps saying, "But I want to get on with the GAMEPLAY." The point of a conversational combat system is that conversation BECOMES gameplay. Right now it's exposition, or ambience, or zzzzzzz. To the point where games just put all the conversations in cut scenes because you may as well.

If players had to figure out what would get the truth out of an NPC ("You want the truth? You can't handle the truth") then it would be a fun and tense mini-mission rather than something that stops the gameplay dead.