The Dangers of Dialogue

[trlkly]

I can think of more problems with it. Maybe the problem of dull exposition checklists is an insurmountable one.
Read more at http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/extra-punctuation/10584-The-Dangers-of-Dialogue.2#7yrvw1sulXAkXjPO.99

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Your ideas at least improve the situation.

Another idea that seems to have been well-received was what was done in The Walking Dead--only giving you a short amount of time to respond. The urgency keeps you engaged--but, then again, so does the rather linear dialog. I don't know how well it would translate to games where you can initiate conversations yourself.

 

[trlkly]

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?

Except Yahtzee is naming a specific company. That heavily implies that every other company is doing a good enough job. Hence it is not all that hard to pull off.

What we're talking about is something that would basically have to be designed once, given variations, and then pasted into everything. It's not all that complicated.

Oh, and current game prices have very little to do with production costs. This is not only true for games, but pretty much anything that doesn't have something driving the price down to the lowest possible amount. Even piracy has a bigger impact.

Also, here's another tip: don't have people stare directly into the camera. It never looks right, even with real people. Fixing that alone will work wonders. I know I've never had a problem in any third person game.

 

[bluestarultor]

Just throwing this out there, but Return to Zork had a fairly unique facial expression system instead of dialog of any sort from the player character. http://youtu.be/EB-UEJjf7oA?t=5m46s

And what it really does is change the conversation flow in real time. You can still ask people about certain items, but your facial "mods" for lack of a better term can make people clam up or ease them into telling you more than their standard spiel if you'd done nothing. I don't recall how repeatable things are, but it's a pretty complex and innovative system that's purely focused on the flow of the conversation.