The Dangers of Dialogue

[Darth_Payn]

I usually don't mind it, of course I haven't played the Bureau so maybe it's gotten worse than I remember they are.

Though, I liked the comment on the "Bioware face" thing, reminds me a hell of a lot of The Elder Scrolls too.

I think they also do that in the Fallout games. Person you talk to stands still and just stares at you while you're selecting your next question or answer from the menu.

Speaking of Bioware, they mix it up in KOTOR. For some NPC's, you can go through the Q's & A's in any order you wish, but in some quests, you can only pick one that will determine how a quest is completed. For The Old Republic, they'll only let you pick one question to ask, but depending on what you pick, you'll either gain or lose affection points with whatever companion you took with you at the time, and gain light or dark side points, which again, determines how you complete missions.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Didn't Heavy rain do this? Have different button prompts to talk about different subjects during a conversation ? Sometimes you could talk or ask abour multiple things other times you could just ask one question?

Heavy Rain and Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy both did this, the conversation was more like a flow chart where selecting one option often moved the conversation forward and presented new options. This made the conversation have a strong sense of forward motion and a certain degree of unpredictability, as you often weren't sure which option was "the best" and even asking for exposition could drive the dialogue forward, making you decide which question or statement you felt was the most important or relevant.

I personally thought it worked pretty well as it kept the suspense up and felt fairly organic. I know others hated it though.

 

[Kargathia]

One thing I find funny.

The same people who complain about 'dull eyes', 'BioWare faces', 'rigidness' etc, are the same people who complain about AAA games as being too expensive and overmade.

You know that you can't really have naturally-looking people having a conversation without insane animation budget?

That'd be the uncanny valley popping up to say hi. Having a ridiculous budget is one way to go about making characters real - the other way being them suggesting human traits, rather than imperfectly trying to model them.
In much the same way E.Y.E. Divinity got around not having the budget for decent voice actors by just having them speak some made-up language to avoid it sounding awkward.
Magicka pretty much accomplished the same effect by making up lots of silly swedish-sounding words.

 

[kwagamon]

I think the most organic-feeling system of dialogue I've seen (which I'm actually kind of surprised didn't come up here) is one where you're listening to the conversation, and you have to choose your dialogue (or non-dialogue action like "punch the guy you're talking to in the face" sometimes) before the person is done talking or else you'll default to keeping silent. Telltale's Walking Dead game did this, as did Alpha Protocol. In fact, Alpha Protocol did it ingeniously, except for the part where unless I'm not remembering correctly you couldn't interrupt people upon selecting your dialogue stance. Just imagine being able to hear the crazy power-mad military officer/government official ranting about how they're the best leader ever and deserve all the power or whatever and being able to stop them mid-sentence with a good ol' "ARE YOU NUTS!?"

This also wouldn't be too heard to voice-act, I think. Have the VA record what happens if the PC keeps silent for the entire thing, then whenever the PC chooses to interrupt, insert a separate soundbite of them stammering (or attempting to shout the same dialogue over the PC), then the conversation veers onto a new track based on what the PC said. Admittedly, this might be much harder than I'm giving credit for (it would probably be difficult to effectively blend the moment the PC starts talking into the default version), but I think it could work.

 

[Quellist]

Games are not books or films or TV shows, dialog serves a far different purpose in games so of course its going to be unnatural and trunchated to some extent. Live with it; if you want realistic conversations then you wont have dialog trees, pretty much end of story.

 

[Abomination]

One thing I find funny.

The same people who complain about 'dull eyes', 'BioWare faces', 'rigidness' etc, are the same people who complain about AAA games as being too expensive and overmade.

You know that you can't really have naturally-looking people having a conversation without insane animation budget?

Ding ding ding!

This one's on the money.

Do you want branching dialogue paths, good animation with great voice acting?

Enjoy requiring a massive budget. Voice actors - especially the great ones - do NOT come cheap.

I'd be happier with the Fallout version of conversations where the "key characters" were voiced and everyone else could have pop-up text. Keeps costs relatively low while still delivering on the more intense moments.

 

[Olas]

One thing I find funny.

The same people who complain about 'dull eyes', 'BioWare faces', 'rigidness' etc, are the same people who complain about AAA games as being too expensive and overmade.

You know that you can't really have naturally-looking people having a conversation without insane animation budget?

Ding ding ding!

This one's on the money.

Do you want branching dialogue paths, good animation with great voice acting?

Enjoy requiring a massive budget. Voice actors - especially the great ones - do NOT come cheap.

I'd be happier with the Fallout version of conversations where the "key characters" were voiced and everyone else could have pop-up text. Keeps costs relatively low while still delivering on the more intense moments.

Or just give everyone text to keep things consistent. I don't get why subtitles are considered so inferior to voice acting. I've never once thought that the Zelda games failed to tell an emotional or engaging story due to a having subtitles. Quite the contrary they draw me in far more than most modern games, even those with enormous budgets.

The english voice acting in Metro Last Light is so bad it's better just to switch it to Russian with English subtitles.

 

[Voltano]

Two games I believed that did a dialog-system right would be "Wizardry 8" and "Shadowrun" on the SNES.

In both games you had a list of words that you can ask to NPCs, who would report a response of some kind to the word. In most cases they would say something like "I don't understand what your saying," but in other cases they would give you the information you need when asked about a word. It's basically a variation on the whole inventory system in Adventure games: Your just rubbing words against NPCs until they give you any sense of progress.

Granted, this does have problems. One is that it still has the issue Yahtzee brought up with "Dark" where you still have the player saying, "Tell me more about X". However with these games is you select a word in a list -- almost like you select a spell in a "Final Fantasy" game -- and the conversation moves on from there. In the dialog tree you have here you have to first greet the NPC, say you have some questions, and then only pick three or five questions. Here you get straight to the questions.

Exposition dumps like these are annoying, but then I also think that the dialog system is broken because what the player will say is unpredictable. I did enjoy the story and dialog system in TellTale's "The Walking Dead", but I think what made that work is that it was two or more NPCs talking together than just a one-on-one conversation like in most RPGs. Because it is 2+ NPCs talking, the conversation is more predictable to the game developers and voice actors so they can adjust the tone and even animations to fit the mood. It's also kind of like the dialog between NPCs in "Half-Life 2" on how organic that felt, as the voice actors knew how to respond because it was all rehearsed and they didn't have to worry about whether the player as Gordon Freeman is going be sticking his gun in Alyx Vance's fathers face. Because chances are they might just do that anyways.

 

[Santa216]

One thing I find funny.

The same people who complain about 'dull eyes', 'BioWare faces', 'rigidness' etc, are the same people who complain about AAA games as being too expensive and overmade.

Ah, but how about that?

In one case, you're blowing your budget just to have overdone awesome graphics, with little gameplay effect.

In the other case, you're blowing your budget so you can solve a design problem and try to develop technologies to actually improve dialogue-related gameplay, which isn't necessarily the same as just making pretty visuals. This is what a game company is supposed to blow their money on, and I would applaud any who chose to do so.

So while I do not necessarily think realistic gestures are the way to go, the two views are not as conflicting as they may seem. I like to think of those complainers as people trying to nudge game companies in the right direction.

 

[Abomination]

Or just give everyone text to keep things consistent. I don't get why subtitles are considered so inferior to voice acting. I've never once thought that the Zelda games failed to tell an emotional or engaging story due to a having subtitles. Quite the contrary they draw me in far more than most modern games, even those with enormous budgets.

The english voice acting in Metro Last Light is so bad it's better just to switch it to Russian with English subtitles.

Sorry to say, but I can't really say Zelda and "engaging story" are well situated in the same camp. It's essentially the same story being told again and again with slight differences. A lot of the dialogue is just mechanics explanation as well.

Imagine Mass Effect without voice acting, or Baldur's Gate without voice acting, or Far Cry III without voice acting, or The Witcher without voice acting, or Bastion without voice acting, or Vampire without voice acting, or The Walking Dead without voice acting, L.A. Noir without voice acting...

Voice acting is an amazing feature to have. Many games are made just so much richer with its inclusion. The thing is not everything needs to be voice acted and some games get far too ambitous with it.

Fallout 3 & New Vegas was great for having the voice acting but I imagine they could have had so much more content without it being used for every single person you encounter.

 

[Olas]

Or just give everyone text to keep things consistent. I don't get why subtitles are considered so inferior to voice acting. I've never once thought that the Zelda games failed to tell an emotional or engaging story due to a having subtitles. Quite the contrary they draw me in far more than most modern games, even those with enormous budgets.

The english voice acting in Metro Last Light is so bad it's better just to switch it to Russian with English subtitles.

Sorry to say, but I can't really say Zelda and "engaging story" are well situated in the same camp. It's essentially the same story being told again and again with slight differences. A lot of the dialogue is just mechanics explanation as well.

What? Like seriously? I guess most of the games do follow a somewhat similar basic story arc, though so do most adventure games and adventure stories in general, so essentially you're criticizing the mono-myth.

And I wasn't really talking about the overall plot being great or original so much as that the plot is TOLD well through the games' dialogue. Some of my favorite videogame characters come from that series.

However
Imagine Mass Effect without voice acting, or Baldur's Gate without voice acting, or Far Cry III without voice acting, or The Witcher without voice acting, or Bastion without voice acting, or Vampire without voice acting, or The Walking Dead without voice acting, L.A. Noir without voice acting...

The only game I've played on that list is Mass Effect, and I think it would be fine without voice-acting, not necessarily improved but not significantly hurt either. And again those are games that had generally good voice acting to begin with. I'm not saying that subtitles are always better, just that they're better than terrible voice acting.

Fallout 3 & New Vegas was great for having the voice acting but I imagine they could have had so much more content without it being used for every single person you encounter.

Ya, sorry, but outside of 3Dog and maybe Liam Neeson, the voice acting in Fallout 3 was pretty terrible. In fact I think it dragged down an otherwise decent game considerably. This isn't helped by the fact that they reused voices constantly for many different characters. I'd say Fallout 3 is a prime example of when voice acting should have been left out.

 

[Spacehouse]

if you want a crash course in dialgue and facial expressions done right, play Vampire: the Masquerades.

 

[nitrium oxide]

"During each dialogue section in between the branch points the speaker might mention a tangental topic, with some kind of icon and button prompt appearing to indicate it, and if the player selects it, then at the next logical switch point, their character says something that diverts the conversation onto that topic."

Mass Effect (2 and 3) kinda did this in a half-arsed way with the Paragon/Renegade options flashing during conversations - i.e. you could interrupt conversations and lead them down a different "switch point" when prompted. Only implemented in a limited way of course, but it's the same concept you're alluding to here I think.

 

[Abomination]

if you want a crash course in dialgue and facial expressions done right, play Vampire: the Masquerades.

For its time the animations were good... very dated now.

The voice acting and dialogue trees were brilliant though.

 

[EightGaugeHippo]

Seems like an interesting way to make dialog more engaging, but there is the problem that the track/topic minigame, might get distracting, ending up with you missing something.

For example, a character is saying something important, but you have the choice to change topic. You would have to read what the topic change is, decide if its worth changing, all while trying to listen to what the NPC is saying.

It's a nice system, but I'm not 100% sure it would work in practice. Unless there was a nice delay between the end of a topic and the actual track change decision. Besides I'm comfortable with the current systems like your Mass Effects and your Skyrims, I don't like the feeling I'm being rushed when I'm just wandering around chatting with people.

A dialog tree is still a dialog tree, even if it's called a track. If I want a conversation, I'll have a conversation.
If I'm playing a game, I want the NPCs to be walking lore, info and random shit dispensaries.

 

[Vigormortis]

"Bioware Face" would easily by my 'phrase of the month' were it not already in my vocabulary. It's one of the many reasons I give people when they ask* me why I don't like Bioware games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

*[sub] And by ask, I mean insult me for not liking the games they like. Even though I add that they're still GOOD games regardless.[/sub]

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I like the idea of a branching, train-track-like dialog tree that has a fluid, procedural progression. Changing the topic during the conversation would require an astute ear and a quick finger. In essence, requiring the player to actually listen to the conversation.

Though, I feel as though crafting such dialog progressions would require far greater writing skills than many game writers have.

However, besides the issues Mr. Croshaw brought up, there's also the potential for such a dialog system to turn into a poorly implemented quick-time-event.

But, I suppose any good or brilliant design scheme can be used improperly.

 

[duchaked]

I think by Mass Effect 2 and 3 I was enjoying the conversation dialogues a lot more. Sometimes folk would still go, but then I'd just skip ahead. I think it helped at the very least that by that point I actually cared about the main characters of the bunch. Obviously dialogue with some secondary characters I'd just be like okay sure keep going hurry up. Unless of course they were really mean, and that got my attention in a different way. "Sabotage the genophage cure? Ma'am, you're off the rails here."

Still, kinda wish there had been more with the 'Interrupt' options. They started throwing them into 'casual' conversations here and there, but it was still limited.

 

[Strazdas]

Isnt the railroad method the same as it is used currently in those games? its just that at the end of the line instead of going to a stop you return in circle to the switch point and can go again to the next patch.
The spontaneus "i choose myself sometimes" based on your stats such as reputation ect would be a hefty idea. i like that and hope to see a game with this.
Though the whole umms and amms dont amuse me, emotion is good and well when its not overused. humans overall overuse it.