What games made talking fun?

[Amgeo]

This is partially for a game idea I'm working on, but it's mostly out of personal interest.

Non-combat gaming, specifically talking. What games have given the act of conversation an interesting and engaging gameplay mechanic? Haggling, debating, persuading, or just good old chit-chat. What's the most fun you've had while just talking to NPCs?
I'm sure a bunch of people are going to bring up Phoenix Wright, and that's a fine example. Just don't be afraid to point to anything else you've enjoyed. It doesn't even need to be a major part of the gameplay; something as minor as a well-designed interface for a branching dialogue tree.

If you can't think of a specific experience, why not ponder the possibility? Given the chance, how would you make a conversation-based game?

Bonus points for providing videos to illustrate your point, or linking to a game available on the web.

 

[Strain42]

The Ace Attorney series. This is a game where even the "combat" is based on communicating. Most of the game is observing conversation, pointing out flaws in their arguments and finding out when people are lying.

You even have a health bar that goes down when you fail to control the conversation to get what you want.

I personally find looking through my evidence and showing the thing that exposes a lie more fun a million bullets into a million aliens/zombies/whatever

 

[Wayneguard]

I can't decide if the talking portions in Alpha Protocol were good in absolute terms of if they were just good relative to the colossal shitheap that was the rest of the game.

 

[DoPo]

What games have given the act of conversation an interesting and engaging gameplay mechanic?

Oblivion and the persuasion wheel! ...I'm sorry, I am a terrible person.

I liked the haggling in Morrowind (I forget how Oblivion handled it, it might have been the same). It was pretty simple but it did haggling justice:

shopkeeper: X price for these items.
PC: How about Y price?
shopkeeper: OK, deal.
or
shopkeeper: Nah, no deal.

Also, I liked the dialogue in Morrowind and Daggerfall - since it was text based, NPCs can say so much more. You could go and talk to somebody and jump from topic to topic and they just keep telling you stuff.

But for actual cool mechanics when talking, I can't think of any game that has them.

 

[Kahunaburger]

I really liked the dialog bosses in Human Revolution. It felt like real negotiations and you had to put real thought into the consequences of your choices. I actually liked that better than the actual gunplay.

+1

And on a related note, conversation is often its own reward in well-written games regardless of the system.

Alabaster [http://emshort.wordpress.com/my-work/] I remember being interesting partly because of its conversation system and because of the way it approaches conversations. Which is important, because the whole game is basically a conversation. It's got a little of that grimmdark thing that happens whenever anyone tries to do a modern retelling of a fairytale, but the writing is good.

 

[Jarek Mace]

Mass Effect 1 and 2, I loved Samara's loyalty mission, just talking away and being awesome in a club.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Pretty much the game Curse of Monkey Island. There are some much humour to their conversation.

 

[AyreonMaiden]

Persona 3 and 4, and Xenoblade Chronicles come to mind.

I'm a sucker for a game that makes something out of conversing with NPCs and do more than just give assorted responses. For P3 and 4, talking to others and getting to know people gave you bonuses for battle and endeared you to everyone, while in Xenoblade they simply give character development and a context to the sidequests that fleshes out the denizens of the world by showing how many of them are connected.

 

[The Madman]

I like how Alpha Protocol did dialogue, despite not really being a fan of the whole 'dialogue wheel' mechanic that seems to have become so popular these days. That making your decision was timed led to more fluid conversations I felt and also encouraged the player to stick to a particular 'persona' so to speak, since each of the dialogue options would usually correspond to a certain type of responce.

James Bond style suave, James Bourne style sneaky, or Jack Bauer aggressive. Neat concept really that led to some interesting dialogue. And again the time limit meant that the conversations were fluid rather than that stilted NPC-waiting-awkwardly we're so used to. It's a feature I'd love to see in more games if they absolutely must include a dialogue wheel.

 

[kyogen]

Dragon Age: Origins
The mechanics are nothing special, but I greatly prefer DA:O's style to the dialog wheel Bioware uses in other games. The conversations themselves have some real variety, and some of the romance trees are downright hilarious.

The Witcher
Every few NPCs, Geralt finds one who wants to 1) gamble with him, 2) get drunk with him, 3) do both, or 4) throw sex into the mix as well. The encounters are decidedly not restricted to exposition or straightforward narrative development.