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1eyedking Long-winded dialogues suck

Wizfall

Cipher
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
816
...It sucked in Wasteland 2....
I'm playing W2 at the moment and the writing/dialogues are really good until now, very enjoyable to read all of it.
Fallout 1/2 has quite a lot of dialogues as-well all very good too.
So i quite disagree with you or rather your definition of long winded dialogues (which of course suck by definition).

It's hard to make long dialogues interesting though so F 1/2 and W2 are more an exception.
PoE for exemple has too much boring dialogues yea...
 
Joined
Jan 11, 2015
Messages
627
Location
Seattle, WA
I suppose because most dialogue trees do not come to meaningful choices, I hate reading text on a computer screen, and the pause it lends to action.
 

rado907

Savant
Joined
Apr 23, 2015
Messages
249
If I want to read I'll grab a book and lie on the sofa. Games are for playing not for reading. But really the biggest problem is that game writing sucks balls. It's heroically bad.

So all I want from a game is a decent-enough B-movie plot backed up by good dialogue, likeable/memorable characters, and solid one-liners. GTA nailed this formula and has been reaping the profits for more than a decade. Bioware in their better titles also get the job done. A game like Bulletstorm succeeded commendably in delivering absolutely retarded but quite funny dialogue.

And dialogue isn't as fun when it's not voice.

So hopefully game writers can stick to "show-don't-tell." If a game does have to have longer dialogues, make them brief and to the point.

Stat tables are a different things. Those can be fun.
 

RuySan

Augur
Joined
Jul 11, 2005
Messages
777
Location
Portugal
Wasteland 2 dialogues are perfectly acceptable, and actually kind of good. They never felt like info dumps to me.

Pillars of eternity on the other hand is the absolute worst. I don't want to read anything about souls for the next twenty years.
 

Doktor Best

Arcane
Joined
Feb 2, 2015
Messages
2,849
Talk about low standards.

Whats your problem with it? It certainly hits the tone of the setting and it doesnt bore with loredump. Yes information is repeated several times by each npc but that is because of the nonlinear story approach. I dont know if anything got improved with the DC but when i started playing it, i was wondering what everyone was bitching about. Its definitely the best written of the big kickstarter releases.


Where are all these superior written crpgs that you guys seem to be playing all day long that you keep turning up your nose on the writing of games like wasteland2 or poe(which had some weak parts but definitely was better than most codexians make it)?
 

Owlish

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck Douchebag! Village Idiot Repressed Homosexual Possibly Retarded Edgy Shitposter
Joined
Sep 14, 2013
Messages
2,817
Wasteland 2 dialogues are just information kiosks. You just click buttons and exhaust all the options. Most of the time all the NPCs in an area share basically 95% of the same dialogue, that's how they got their big word count.
 

naossano

Cipher
Joined
Aug 26, 2014
Messages
1,232
Location
Marseilles, France
Pillars of eternity on the other hand is the absolute worst. I don't want to read anything about souls for the next twenty years.

I didn't made into the third on that game, but what what strikes me a bit is that after talking so much to them, or reading what it seems to be backers texts, you actually forget that there is a game to play, and wonder about how much disconnected those long description are from what you are seeing/doing/exploring et...

By talking so much about long dead characters, old religions, politics in countries you don't visit, you tend to forget where you are and what you are supposed to do now. I think they could have used those information more in context, throught books, mausoleum epitaph, ghosts, loremaster characters whom job is to know all those thing, not all the average joes that you meet at the inn.
 

Monkeyfinger

Cipher
Joined
Aug 5, 2004
Messages
778
Wasteland 2 dialogues are just information kiosks. You just click buttons and exhaust all the options. Most of the time all the NPCs in an area share basically 95% of the same dialogue, that's how they got their big word count.

This is much much much much much better than NPCs who hide 15 words with of important information within 100 words of shit nobody cares about.
 
Joined
Jan 11, 2015
Messages
627
Location
Seattle, WA
tumblr_np79d4I5RZ1tjzng1o1_500.jpg
 

MrBuzzKill

Arcane
Joined
Aug 31, 2013
Messages
651
I'm not really qualified to post in this thread, nor do I wish to necro post (I found this because of Darth Roxor's latest article). But I am too lazy to find another thread about writing, and really wanted to share one tidbit of writing in the latest RPGs that really stuck out to me, and indeed one of the only lines of dialogue I explicitly remember from any of them.

It's in Underrail where you talk to some guy who goes on about his wife or some shit. It's not neccessarily boring but I absolutely LOVED the way they phrased the usual option to leave the dialogue.
Now usually it's something like "I must take my leave" or "I should go" but in this case it was "Leave in the middle of his sentence".
I GOT A HUGE KICK OUT OF IT. I think I actually laughed out loud. I don't know why, maybe because I was surprised (since most often the green option to leave the dialogue is bland, like I said before). Maybe because it was such a short but powerful option. It was funny as fuck and on point, an absolute gem, at least to me. Oh, and that game's awesome by the way.
 

Lhynn

Arcane
Joined
Aug 28, 2013
Messages
9,825
A lot of dialogue in underrail has personality, you usually find it in side quests and with minor characters from factions, the ones you are not expected to interact with.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
Agreed, the little side characters in Underrail have personality - most of the major characters seem to have zero, oddly.
 

Severian Silk

Guest
Your game does not have to, and, indeed, should not have to compete with War and Peace when it comes to word count because you are not fucking Tolstoy. You are a nerd writing about people smacking each other with swords in a fantasyland of varying genericness, so please keep to the point and realise that you are not creating literature.
Tolstoy was a nerd too. :obviously: And instead of smacking each other with swords, they pointed long pointy sticks at each other.
 

Storyfag

Perfidious Pole
Patron
Joined
Feb 17, 2011
Messages
15,899
Location
Stealth Orbital Nuke Control Centre
Your game does not have to, and, indeed, should not have to compete with War and Peace when it comes to word count because you are not fucking Tolstoy. You are a nerd writing about people smacking each other with swords in a fantasyland of varying genericness, so please keep to the point and realise that you are not creating literature.
Tolstoy was a nerd too. :obviously: And instead of smacking each other with swords, they pointed long pointy sticks at each other.

War and Peace depicts the Napoleonic Wars, you pleb. No pikes or spears, just good old 19th century rifles.
 

Severian Silk

Guest
Your game does not have to, and, indeed, should not have to compete with War and Peace when it comes to word count because you are not fucking Tolstoy. You are a nerd writing about people smacking each other with swords in a fantasyland of varying genericness, so please keep to the point and realise that you are not creating literature.
Tolstoy was a nerd too. :obviously: And instead of smacking each other with swords, they pointed long pointy sticks at each other.

War and Peace depicts the Napoleonic Wars, you pleb. No pikes or spears, just good old 19th century rifles.
Yes I know that. Long pointy sticks.
 

Zed

Codex Staff
Patron
Staff Member
Joined
Oct 21, 2002
Messages
17,068
Codex USB, 2014
nice bump. the 2nd post in this thread is like my most positively React!-ed post on this forum. I made it 5 years ago on my birthday turning 28.
feels like last year.

time to die.
 

Not.AI

Learned
Joined
Dec 21, 2019
Messages
305
The problems with long-winded dialogues fall into several categories.

And the issue is not always just the length.

Sometimes there are several other issues, too, that are enabled by the length.

It's an enabler...

"You want an apple?"

A. "No."

B. "Yes I do apples are nutritious. They were introduced into the land by King Bartholemew II, during the Purple Age when the city of Moundsville was twice the size it is now. By the way, there is a giant rat behind you. First, however, give me the apple, so that I may partake of it. Apples contain vitiman C and vitamin Z and water and iron and applestuff, and they are very good to feed your horse. (TIP 206. If you feed your horse TWO apples a day it will run faster!) But of course I do not have a horse. I see there is also a horse behind you. Next to the rat. I would like to buy it, after I have eaten the apple which I believe you shall give me. Actually I changed my mind. I do not want the apple anymore."

C. "I am an apple. I do not eat apples."
 

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