Why won't roguelikes implement dialogue trees?

[Higher Game]

Roguelikes have all the complexity of great RPGs, but they lack great stories (kill the foozle sucks) and there is very little room for role-playing. I understand that replay value is important. Some people don't want to do the same quest or variant of it over and over again. However, one would think a single roguelike, maybe a single Angband variant would have a great story. No such luck. :evil:

Why? What is it about roguelike games that prevents dialogue trees and involved stories? Mainstream games like Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment had complex dialogue trees. Why do kvlt roguelike games that appeal to g33kz lack these? Are roguelike geeks too scared of reading? Are they more comfortable with numbers and stats? Maybe they think literature is gay or something. Homophobes. That's what it is.

:evil:

 

[LlamaGod]

gearhead

 

[Atrokkus]

Exactly my question that I have already brought to attention some time back, but nobody had anything to recommend me back then. Well, I wonder how are things now...

It really is weird that this particular sub-genre is not evolving into advanced story-heavy text RPGs. It just plain wrong, unnatural. It's such a great and powerful medium, but writers seem to ignore it altogether.

And again, we're talking about roleplaying, not just story incrustment. Story-based roguelikes -- is not a real imporvement, not progress in the genre. It's just an additional bell and whistle, even if not graphical.

gearhead

Yeah, I think that could be the one we're looking for... I'll give it a whirl once i get some free time. However, it still doesn't change the trend...

 

[Zomg]

Roguelike conventions are so abstract that it's hard to generate the kind of virtual mental world that roleplaying and interactive narrative require. I never, never think of my Roguelike avatars as characters, just as equipment hatstands plus a few parameters. It's like trying to roleplay the long piece in Tetris.

I can imagine a game that uses a few bits and pieces of the Roguelike tradition, leavened with heavy setting, narrative, and dialog text. I haven't played Gearhead, though.

 

[BlaatSchaap]

Roguelike conventions...

It seems that most roguelikes are made to fit the niche. I haven't found a roguelike that doesn't have permadeath except Diablo (and Mordor/Demise). Most games that want to tell a story don't have permadeath (Torment) or have save/load (nearly every game). You can't get attached to a character when you have to treat characters like lemmings.

Are there any other roguelikes without permadeath by the way? I couldn't really get into roguelikes because of that, except Mordor.

 

[Elwro]

ADOM has a tremendous amount of text in the monster descriptions. (They are mostly fan-made iirc, but are written quite well if I'm to be a judge.) I love dialogue trees in RPGs, but I'm not so sure if ADOM would benefit from more dialogue. The game seems to be almost perfect as it is.
But I think it'd at least be worth a try, if only Biskup had more time...

 

[Vival]

In true roguelikes you're probably starting over regulary, so complex dialogue trees would become annoying and repetitive due to the lack of randomness.

 

[Deathy]

Well, it has at least been implied above, but the reason rougelikes generally don't have dialouge trees / in depth narratives is because one of the main idealogies of rougelike design is random world generation.

It becomes exceedingly difficult to create in depth and meaningful character interactions and plots by generating them randomly and still having the player feel as if he hasn't seen it all before.

As stated previously, the fact that the player will often be starting the game over, means that any static elements (such as npc conversations) should be as light as possible, to avoid the player becoming annoyed by the tedious repetition of stuff that they have already done. This is basically the reason why locations are generated randomly.

Basically, rougelikes are more about detail and replayability than they are about depth.

 

[LlamaGod]

roguelikes is a pretty broad genre, so finding one that itches your particular scratch is part of the dealio.

It sounds like alot of you dialog and attached-character types would like Gearhead.

Me I just like a unique character system and alot of dungeon rooms to crawl, so theres a good deal more roguelike games that appeal to me. But theres also some that dont (the more bland kind).

Also interesting gimmicks and world detail matter to me too. IVAN wouldnt nearly be as fun without dismemberment.

 

[crufty]

Deathy summed it up. Roguelikes are usually a solo dev affair. Something someone does after school/job, etc. What kills a solo game is content creation--any time making content is time not spent on game systems. Dialog is the king of content creation next to 3d modelling. Thats why you usually don't see it. When it comes to spending a month crafting a floating skull that heckles you, that you'll probably kill anyway vs a few days adding succubi that seduce you and take off your armor...well...the succubi usually win.

But...also, by having only the briefest of story, most roguelikes provide enough immersion where you can create your own story in ways commericial games can't. For example, try role playing evil kitten killing necromancer -- or better, a vegan in Nethack.

It's harder then it looks.

I don't disagree overall, there could be more story lines then there are, its just real tough to do when there's so much else to be done...

 

[Azarkon]

Come on guys, don't try to sugarcoat it - the paradigmatic roguelike is an action RPG. Actually, more specifically, roguelikes are the ancestors of action RPGs. They had randomly generated dungeons with hordes of monsters and sacks of phat lewts long before Diablo came along - the only difference being that they never had the budget or namesake Blizzard possessed. Hanging around roguelike newsgroups, you get the impression that Diablo was, in fact, a roguelike clone.

The focus of roguelikes has always been on the combat, the exploration, and the dungeon crawling. As of late, there certainly have been plenty of roguelikes that departed from the norm in adding non-action RPG elements, but on a fundamental level you can't divest the action RPG elements from roguelikes and still call them roguelikes. The names even reflect this: Nethack? Crawl? Hack 'n Slash? Slash'Em? Heh.

 

[Elwro]

Diablo was a roguelike clone, only nowhere near the complexity of a good game from the genre.

 

[crufty]

Don't forget tough...rouglikes are hard. The action is more chess like. I've left games running for days trying to figure a way out from bad situations.

And yes, they are most certainlythe ancestor of Diablo.

 

[kingcomrade]

Diablo was originally going to BE a roguelike before Blizzard acquired the "Blizzard North" team.