Writing dialogue for isometric RPGs.

[Clive Howlitzer]

*Disclaimer, I suck at putting my thoughts together in a forum thread.
Also, I am mostly referring to western RPGs in this case. Games like Final Fantasy Tactics are exempt for having awesome sprite animations.

This is something that has always kind of irked me and with the recent resurgence of the isometric RPG, I thought I'd bring it up again for perhaps a bit of discussion. Most isometric RPGs are played decently zoomed out from your character and even when you can zoom in, even when the models are quite detailed, the animation is not really going to be doing much for you. It won't be in sync with dialogue you are reading as text and you won't see anything about their face.
This makes it really hard to bring any life to the character, in my opinion. I always wondered why more games that rely on a lot of heavy text don't write their narrative more in the vein of Planescape: Torment. That was a game that savored every dialogue window and it made all the characters that much more interesting. You had so much more of a feel for who was in front of you that you ever could from just looking at their model on the screen, flailing away with some canned "Talking to you" animation.
For those unfamiliar with Torment, it wrote things out much like how you'd expect to see while reading a book. It gave you descriptions of characters, their actions as they spoke with you, a lot of subtle things. It really helped to flesh them out. I always wondered why this approach was not used more often.
I guess it boils down to wondering why they don't write it more like an actual book narrative. I understand that video games are a visual medium but when you choose a style that clearly isn't getting across the kind of information required to create a believable character, why not fill in the blanks where you can?
Here are a few random Torment screens just for reference.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Am I alone in thinking this? Even some isometric games that many praised for being amazing just spewed dialogue at you in long blocks with nothing else. Baldurs Gate comes to mind.

 

[Steppin Razor]

I think it boils down to that most writers for video games are talentless hacks compared to real authors and they couldn't actually write something like you'd see in a book to save their lives. The incredibly average writing in most games attests to this.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

I think a book narrative style would be even more detached from the animation and graphics than mere dialogue. Yes it's worked for the D & D games because that's how an actual GM has to do it, but most games would prefer to provide a bit more visual detail than that.

The first thing I thought when I saw 'isometric-RPGs' (you don't need the hyphens BTW) was Final Fantasy Tactics and its ilk. Every dialogue box is paired with the face of the character saying it, and more recently they've been using facial expressions to convey the character's mood while speaking, so you can see their face in fine detail (see also: Disgaea). I also find it easier to follow when it's not in a huge wall of text like the Elderly Hive Dweller above.

That said, more animations are helpful. Something as simple as a pointing and surprised animation can help convey the tone.

 

[BrotherRool]

I love the way Planescape Torment worked, it was embracing the limitations of it's medium by using that to do things that other games couldn't do. You can't get away with descriptive text in something as visual as Uncharted, but that also means you can't describe the smell of a place or do actions too intricate or complicated to see on screen.

In Planescape you could carve out your own guts, or transform little objects or alter the way another person thought. That can't happen in non-iso games because the animation budget would be too high.

One of the nice surprises about ME1 was when they chose to do things like this. On the sidequests sometimes you'd get little text boxes that describe a much richer story than you were expecting the game to deliver. Suddenly you could be put in the shoes of a young species getting uplifted by the Protheans as you investigated this weird orb. It was disappointing, although understandable, that they didn't deliver this on further games.

From the sound of it, Pillars of Eternity is going to take that a step further and show you static paintings/images with text describing some of the events happening in the game.

As an iso-RPG you're already going to be distant from the characters, you might as well embrace that distance and use it to tell unique game stories.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I've thoroughly enjoyed most all isometric games I've played over the years and for more than one, the writing IMO has been very good. If anything it *adds* something to the game, to immersion that Mass Effect style cinematics do not. Namely, imagination. Yahtzee mentioned the same concept in his Thief (reboot) review (or it might have been in his follow up column) about before, the City was always an abstract concept, mysterious and a perfect landscape for our imaginations to fill in the blanks. By explicitly showing it to us, it took something away.

Planescape: Torment was great, no argument there. So was the writing in Shadowrun Returns (which also had book-style narration and asides) and BioWare's Infinity Engine games.

But with isometric RPGs on a computer, there's a lot that *doesn't* need to be said because we can already see (or hear) what we need to. We don't need to be told we're in a dank, dark cave with dripping water in the distance, or that wind is howling, or a door is left ajar. We see and hear all these things which saves the need to write it. That's one major difference between books and games (both of which I love BTW).

I think it boils down to that most writers for video games are talentless hacks compared to real authors and they couldn't actually write something like you'd see in a book to save their lives. The incredibly average writing in most games attests to this.

That is a cynical and unjustified point of view. Writers write a lot of things, "real authors" being one facet of the profession. There are poets, songwriters, playwrights, screenwriters, journalists, bloggers, essayists and more. The games industry is one of many that writers can enjoy careers in and they are entirely responsible for taking a creative director's vision and turning it into a script and story for our enjoyment.

You also have many examples of Drew Karpshyns and David Gaiders writing games and novels both, as well as "real authors" who write games like Orson Scott Card, Brian Fargo and Clive Barker. It may not be a book, but writing a game is as valid a profession as any other in writing and has its own set of challenges and rewards besides.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I think a book narrative style would be even more detached from the animation and graphics than mere dialogue. Yes it's worked for the D & D games because that's how an actual GM has to do it, but most games would prefer to provide a bit more visual detail than that.

The first thing I thought when I saw 'isometric-RPGs' (you don't need the hyphens BTW) was Final Fantasy Tactics and its ilk. Every dialogue box is paired with the face of the character saying it, and more recently they've been using facial expressions to convey the character's mood while speaking, so you can see their face in fine detail (see also: Disgaea). I also find it easier to follow when it's not in a huge wall of text like the Elderly Hive Dweller above.

That said, more animations are helpful. Something as simple as a pointing and surprised animation can help convey the tone.

I don't know where you got the hyphen from because I didn't put a hyphen in my title. I went to edit it after you brought it up and noticed there was no hyphen. Therefore, it is a mystery.
Anyway, I was mostly referring to western RPGs. I don't consider an anime face to be fine detail but I do give Final Fantasy Tactics an exemption for having excellent sprites and wonderful animation. It is one of my favorite RPGs. However, in this case I am mostly referring to western style RPGs that generally have lots of dialogue choices and you already spend a lot of time looking at a text window so why not make it more interesting.

You also have many examples of Drew Karpshyns and David Gaiders writing games and novels both, as well as "real authors" who write games like Orson Scott Card, Brian Fargo and Clive Barker. It may not be a book, but writing a game is as valid a profession as any other in writing and has its own set of challenges and rewards besides.

David Gaider's novels are so terrible though. I've read a few books by former or current video game writers and in general, they do tend to be pretty sub par. That isn't to say I am writing them all off as terrible though but I can see why someone would get such a cynical view.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

This makes it really hard to bring any life to the character, in my opinion. I always wondered why more games that rely on a lot of heavy text don't write their narrative more in the vein of Planescape: Torment. That was a game that savored every dialogue window and it made all the characters that much more interesting. You had so much more of a feel for who was in front of you that you ever could from just looking at their model on the screen, flailing away with some canned "Talking to you" animation.

I'm going to dissent. I think when it comes to actual dialogue, PS:T has some of the best I've ever seen, but the descriptive stuff falls flat for me. I personally have never liked large sections of explicative text in RPGs, for many reasons. I prefer mimesis over diegesis in almost all narrative forms, but in a visual interactive medium I think it's paramount because you suffer a massive disconnect when the game tells you a character is putting on the most incredible facial expression but you just see a bland model standing in front of you.

Sometimes, the descriptive text in PS:T is just downright pointless. When you go up to Ignus it says "You see a man covered in flame." No shit game, no way would I have ever figured that out from being in a) the burning corpse bar or b) seeing a man covered in flame right in front of me. On the other hand, go over to the waitress beside him and you can have one of the funniest conversations from any game ever. That's what it does right.

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

Have you played Expeditions: Conquistador? I liked the way it did it with important characters having painted portraits appear on the screen next to the dialogue window (the writing was also fantastic in that game).

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

I think it boils down to that most writers for video games are talentless hacks compared to real authors and they couldn't actually write something like you'd see in a book to save their lives. The incredibly average writing in most games attests to this.

Or you know, limitations in animation and processing power meaning that they were unable to animate your character say removing its guts or something along those lines?

Or at least that's the excuse that older games have, which coincidentally is also the most common offender of this type of dialogue.

 

[Tragedy's Rebellion]

Steppin Razor is absolutely correct, unfortunately. There are very few writers who can actually write something that isn't trivial or non-consequential - the guys at Obsidian, for example, Chris Avellone, George Ziets, Tim Cain and Telltale Games and... that's about it (shout out to whoever wrote Beyond Good and Evil). But the true masters are the Obsidian guys. They've written most of the games that truly amount to something narratively and aren't trite and average. We are talking Fallout 1 and 2, Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, Planescape Torment, Arcanum of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Knights of the Old Republic 2, NWN2 Mask of the Betrayer etc. They are truly profound games and masterpieces of narrative.

The elephant in the room is, of course, Bioware. The thing with Bioware is that they make interesting worlds, but then fail to populate them with something meaningful, relying on cliched tropes and stereotypes. That goes as far back as Baldur's Gate. Their writing is just... there. It isn't offensive, but it's shallow, predictable and bland and it will never cause an epiphany.

You ask why other games don't use Planescape Torment's writing? Because their writers can't write like that. That writing requires elegance and a master's touch.

 

[The Madman]

That sort of thing is somewhat common in a lot of indie rpg, stuff like Banner Saga to name a recent example or even in mods for Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2. You don't see it often in big budget rpg because most big-budget rpg don't tend to be quite so dialogue focused.

On a related note I actually really like how Pillars of Eternity is going to handle that sort of thing, with specific 'event screen' that pop up with relevant art and the accompanying paragraphs of text. Much better than having to squint and read everything from a tiny box at the bottom of the screen while the rest of the interface remains unused.

Example:

Clever idea on Obsidian's part and one that I'm hoping other smaller rpg will take a cue from should the idie rpg's like Pillars and Torment, Wastland 2, and the like prove successful.