Why don't most RPGs understand that people lie?

[DeepOcean]

In some of the worst examples, if you tell a quest giver you'll do X instead of Y, the game might not even let you do Y afterward. The absolute worst is when a dialog decision in town A makes everyone in town B a hundred miles away know that you chose the opposite of what they wanted. The dialog screen is often treated as the decision, not your actual gameplay actions, which can be restricted because of something you said but didn't mean.

That is what I call the shopping list aproach to C&C, you have a list of choices presented to you and you have to commit 100% with what you clicked on. It is lazy design, I think there was a research that said that the vast majority of people who play RPGs only play them once and chosen being a good guy. I bet developers take that data into account so they dont invest on complex C&C as it would take time that could be used to script and write more sidequests. The more you make the quests complex in terms of C&C like allowing to play with the factions, for example, the less quests you can make and also, alot of this complexity can only be truly explored on replays that the majority of people dont do.

Most devs just option for quantity over quality and cosmetic C&C that is the rational choice to make in terms of production is 90% of your players will only play once, that is the major reason why quests are kept as simple as possible with maybe two options at best (and maybe one of the options is just cosmetic) to make easy to keep a content pipeline.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Could probably have come up with a better example, yeah, but the root problem is "what responses do the writers/programmers have mapped out for dialogue branches?" I've seen a few (sometimes VERY bad) games where a trigger isn't set correctly and certain dialogue branches are dead ends, loops, etc. Lying, just like in real life, is a very complex thing. A lot of liars in real life have trouble keeping track of their own bullshit. There's also the matter of the writers/programmers just reducing (Lie) options to fairly obvious "heel" behavior, perhaps predicated on a notion that if you're going around lying to people you're playing a heel-ish character.

It doesn't need to be that complicated!

Here's the situation: a guy is one the run. You met him and got a quest from him.
Next city, you bump into the polizei officer or some kind of law-enforcement. Officer asks you:
- Have you seen THAT guy?
Your responses:
- Yes [Truth]
- No [Lie] [Speech check]

Former will force you to kill the officer, bribe him or tell him about the fugitive failing the quest. Latter will rid you from this consequences.

The only things you need to script here is the "lie" option and possible consequences for it.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

Could probably have come up with a better example, yeah, but the root problem is "what responses do the writers/programmers have mapped out for dialogue branches?" I've seen a few (sometimes VERY bad) games where a trigger isn't set correctly and certain dialogue branches are dead ends, loops, etc. Lying, just like in real life, is a very complex thing. A lot of liars in real life have trouble keeping track of their own bullshit. There's also the matter of the writers/programmers just reducing (Lie) options to fairly obvious "heel" behavior, perhaps predicated on a notion that if you're going around lying to people you're playing a heel-ish character.

It doesn't need to be that complicated!

Here's the situation: a guy is one the run. You met him and got a quest from him.
Next city, you bump into the polizei officer or some kind of law-enforcement. Officer asks you:
- Have you seen THAT guy?
Your responses:
- Yes [Truth]
- No [Lie] [Speech check]

Former will force you to kill the officer, bribe him or tell him about the fugitive failing the quest. Latter will rid you from this consequences.

The only things you need to script here is the "lie" option and possible consequences for it.

Yes: "Where did you last see him? Did you see where he was headed?" * Further options to misdirect police officer, to give the fugitive's true location, to press for details about the fugitive.*
Successful Speech check: "Please keep an eye out for him. He's dangerous, so do not approach him. If you see him, come find me." *Dialogue ends*
Failed Speech check: The officer narrows his eyes. "You don't sound very convinced of that, yourself. It is a crime to shelter a fugitive from the law, you know that... right?" *Options to give suspect up, to threaten police officer, to double down on the lie (another Speech check, if failed cop becomes hostile and attempts to arrest you)*

Don't show the player the [Lie] or [Speech check]. It should be obvious that they are deceiving the NPC, and intuitive to them that they will be using that skill to convince an NPC of something that isn't true. That's something I've always hated about the Beth Fallouts. Idiot-button dialogue. ("Hey player, did you forget about seeing that one dude? Don't worry, we'll remind you that you had that encounter literally 30 seconds ago or so.") As it is the options I've laid out are fairly rudimentary and I wouldn't let them pass muster in anything I was writing.

 

[Cross]

One of the neat things that Planescape: Torment did is that it would often list the same dialogue response twice, one meant as a lie and the other as the truth.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I don't buy that letting the player lie to NPCs would be this grand monetary venture. The response to say, the Johnny and Steve are hiring you to kill each other quest is, if they buy your lie, no chance in dialog, if they don't, that's one line of dialog. And afterward, if you're some scummy Bethesda-style RPG-maker, you don't need to even to add another line of dialog, just have them attack when they find out you lied. Its not some big scripting problem either, unless its some big quest-giving NPC. But in that case, you've already thought of that, and planned it out, so that isn't a big deal either. That's about 10 minutes of coding and 1 line of dialog. Such a horrible burden for a company to deal with.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

I don't buy that letting the player lie to NPCs would be this grand monetary venture. The response to say, the Johnny and Steve are hiring you to kill each other quest is, if they buy your lie, no chance in dialog, if they don't, that's one line of dialog. And afterward, if you're some scummy Bethesda-style RPG-maker, you don't need to even to add another line of dialog, just have them attack when they find out you lied. Its not some big scripting problem either, unless its some big quest-giving NPC. But in that case, you've already thought of that, and planned it out, so that isn't a big deal either. That's about 10 minutes of coding and 1 line of dialog. Such a horrible burden for a company to deal with.

I doubt it stems from money. Given Beth's habits in particular I'd chalk it up more to a mix of laziness and a game design philosophy that embodies ADHD - "yeah, whatever, talk to this dude for ecks pees and loot or something, oh look there's a mole rat over there, hey you just put some funny looking building on your map wonder what's in there". If you run the words "engaging dialogue" past them they'd probably look at you like you were speaking Esperanto.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Yes: "Where did you last see him? Did you see where he was headed?" * Further options to misdirect police officer, to give the fugitive's true location, to press for details about the fugitive.*
Successful Speech check: "Please keep an eye out for him. He's dangerous, so do not approach him. If you see him, come find me." *Dialogue ends*
Failed Speech check: The officer narrows his eyes. "You don't sound very convinced of that, yourself. It is a crime to shelter a fugitive from the law, you know that... right?" *Options to give suspect up, to threaten police officer, to double down on the lie (another Speech check, if failed cop becomes hostile and attempts to arrest you)*

All of this is entirely optional. It takes a little effort to create a basic dual option, and from there developer can go wild in the manner you described.

Coding dialogues and variables isn't as much resource consuming as the other aspects. Its just that retards don't appreciate it and most devs seem not to bother.

 

[DalekFlay]

That is what I call the shopping list aproach to C&C, you have a list of choices presented to you and you have to commit 100% with what you clicked on. It is lazy design, I think there was a research that said that the vast majority of people who play RPGs only play them once and chosen being a good guy. I bet developers take that data into account so they dont invest on complex C&C as it would take time that could be used to script and write more sidequests. The more you make the quests complex in terms of C&C like allowing to play with the factions, for example, the less quests you can make and also, alot of this complexity can only be truly explored on replays that the majority of people dont do.

Yeah. How successful they were can definitely be debated, but Bethesda put a lot more effort into factions, C&C and moral greys with Fallout 4 than they did Fallout 3, and did it have any positive effect on the mainstream? Not really, as far as I can tell. If anything Fallout 3 is seen as more of a classic, and was written by a 3rd grader. I think having choices and "evil" options and whatnot is mostly so they can market the game as filled with those things and having replay value, even if 90% of customers never actually use it.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

Re: evil options - they all tend to sound like some edgy psychopath version of Dick Dastardly in Bethesda titles. They're (probably unintentionally) hilarious.

 

[Twiglard]

I don't buy that letting the player lie to NPCs would be this grand monetary venture. The response to say, the Johnny and Steve are hiring you to kill each other quest is, if they buy your lie, no chance in dialog, if they don't, that's one line of dialog. And afterward, if you're some scummy Bethesda-style RPG-maker, you don't need to even to add another line of dialog, just have them attack when they find out you lied. Its not some big scripting problem either, unless its some big quest-giving NPC. But in that case, you've already thought of that, and planned it out, so that isn't a big deal either. That's about 10 minutes of coding and 1 line of dialog. Such a horrible burden for a company to deal with.

I doubt it stems from money. Given Beth's habits in particular I'd chalk it up more to a mix of laziness and a game design philosophy that embodies ADHD - "yeah, whatever, talk to this dude for ecks pees and loot or something, oh look there's a mole rat over there, hey you just put some funny looking building on your map wonder what's in there". If you run the words "engaging dialogue" past them they'd probably look at you like you were speaking Esperanto.

Bethpizda has an actual rule for writers such-that trustworthy NPCs don't lie or betray. Been that way since at least Oblivion. There was a Codex discussion many years ago (2011?) when I was lurking.

 

[Nano]

One of the neat things that Planescape: Torment did is that it would often list the same dialogue response twice, one meant as a lie and the other as the truth.

PST used the truth/lie thing to move your alignment to either lawful or chaotic. Which was stupid, they should've just let you choose your alignment at the start of the game like every other RPG.

As the OP says, it would be better for CRPGs to simply not take the dialogue options you select at face value.

 

[RNGsus]

Could probably have come up with a better example, yeah, but the root problem is "what responses do the writers/programmers have mapped out for dialogue branches?" I've seen a few (sometimes VERY bad) games where a trigger isn't set correctly and certain dialogue branches are dead ends, loops, etc. Lying, just like in real life, is a very complex thing. A lot of liars in real life have trouble keeping track of their own bullshit. There's also the matter of the writers/programmers just reducing (Lie) options to fairly obvious "heel" behavior, perhaps predicated on a notion that if you're going around lying to people you're playing a heel-ish character.

It doesn't need to be that complicated!

Here's the situation: a guy is one the run. You met him and got a quest from him.
Next city, you bump into the polizei officer or some kind of law-enforcement. Officer asks you:
- Have you seen THAT guy?
Your responses:
- Yes [Truth]
- No [Lie] [Speech check]

Former will force you to kill the officer, bribe him or tell him about the fugitive failing the quest. Latter will rid you from this consequences.

The only things you need to script here is the "lie" option and possible consequences for it.

Truth should have a speech check too. What is Truth?

Bethpizda has an actual rule for writers such-that trustworthy NPCs don't lie or betray. Been that way since at least Oblivion. There was a Codex discussion many years ago (2011?) when I was lurking.

Bethesda have no writers, and Todd always lies, so this rule is funny.

 

[Tigranes]

New Vegas was "too complicated", it was an extraordinary 'get this shit going' hackjob of a scripting nightmare with many many bugs pulled together by the only company with a track record of complicated faction systems and other C&C scripting.

https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Vizima_Confidential

What about this quest from glitcher 1?

Witcher 1 certainly showed potential, but I think at this point it's pretty clear that they've decided not to really push the envelope in this regard. They do enough of it, and then focus efforts on cinematique wunderbars.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I'd like to see an RPG try early access and allow users to submit dialogue choice suggestions to the developer.
It's obviously impossible to implement every choice, but I'm sure the writers often just don't think of interesting choices and would have liked to implemented them if they thought of them.

 

[kangaxx]

I'd like to see an RPG try early access and allow users to submit dialogue choice suggestions to the developer.
It's obviously impossible to implement every choice, but I'm sure the writers often just don't think of interesting choices and would have liked to implemented them if they thought of them.

I'd like to see this if only for the "comedy" value. They could probably fill a book with the weirder suggestions they receive.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Been jumping around playing various RPGs lately and it reminds me of a pet peeve: in the vast majority of RPGs, every dialogue answer you give is treated as genuine. Some games even have a little "(lie)" thing on certain options, as if you're always telling the truth otherwise. It's very rare a game treats what you say as a non-binding action when it comes to quest outcomes.

In real life, it's extremely common to go along with what someone's saying to make things easier, yet in RPGs if I say "yeah sure I love your faction it's great" it's often treated as 100% genuine. In some of the worst examples, if you tell a quest giver you'll do X instead of Y, the game might not even let you do Y afterward. The absolute worst is when a dialog decision in town A makes everyone in town B a hundred miles away know that you chose the opposite of what they wanted. The dialog screen is often treated as the decision, not your actual gameplay actions, which can be restricted because of something you said but didn't mean.

There are exceptions to this. I remember playing an NCR spy in New Vegas and telling other factions what they wanted to hear while working behind their backs. That was a wonderful experience. I wish more RPGs allowed for that kind of thing, but sadly I feel like the common experience is exactly the opposite.

Aka blabla RPG sucks at dialogs but look, New Vegas, this absolute garbage masterpiece gets it...

First, you have to make the distinction about casual lying and "business" lies.
In real business, lying have consequences, your reputation gets stained, less people trust you, that's why people who want to stay in business don't lie or at least, when they do, they're very crafty about it.

Which takes me to the second point.
Most recent cRPG give you options to lie or to skip the truth part through skill checks, bluff, intimidation and whatnot.

For the most part, it's done right, you're an adventurer taking jobs (quests) in most cRPG, meaning you're in business and trust with your employers would be a major issue so either you're good at lying or you're better off not lying at all.

Otherwise, you're just a punk --> game over...

 

[Caim]

First, you have to make the distinction about casual lying and "business" lies.
In real business, lying have consequences, your reputation gets stained, less people trust you, that's why people who want to stay in business don't lie or at least, when they do, they're very crafty about it.

Which takes me to the second point.
Most recent cRPG give you options to lie or to skip the truth part through skill checks, bluff, intimidation and whatnot.

For the most part, it's done right, you're an adventurer taking jobs (quests) in most cRPG, meaning you're in business and trust with your employers would be a major issue so either you're good at lying or you're better off not lying at all.

Otherwise, you're just a punk --> game over...

So the solution would be some kind of reputation stat that goes up if you do the right thing or you keep true to your word, but if you are caught lying or screw people over your reputation worsens to the point where you get kicked out of wherever you are? If your setting is a space ship of some kind or a location of limited size you can end up getting kicked out/off with lethal consequences.

 

[purupuru]

It's good when games have "(lie)" in the options since it makes it clearer what choice you are making and what kind of character you are roleplaying as, and you get to have two identical replies but one with (lie). Though I agree if there is not enough of those choices then it's better to just leave it to player's own interpretation.

 

[AW8]

It's good when games have "(lie)" in the options since it makes it clearer what choice you are making and what kind of character you are roleplaying as, and you get to have two identical replies but one with (lie). Though I agree if there is not enough of those choices then it's better to just leave it to player's own interpretation.

It seems rather superfluous. If the player says "Yes, I'll get you the McGuffin" but does not get the McGuffin, they lied as proven by their actions. Which is where the decision should be placed, not in the words.

It would also be silly to pick "[Lie] Yes, I'll get you the McGuffin" and then actually go an get them the McGuffin. The only way that makes sense is if you're locked out of actually getting them the McGuffin, which is garbage design.

I think the biggest (only?) benefit of spelling out that a dialogue choice is a lie is informing the player that they can trick the NPC and do the quest another way.

 

[Harthwain]

It seems rather superfluous. If the player says "Yes, I'll get you the McGuffin" but does not get the McGuffin, they lied as proven by their actions. Which is where the decision should be placed, not in the words.

You could say you will look for it, but get distracted and fail. When you lie you know you won't be looking for it. If you lie and then decide to get it for some reason, you cover up your lie, so the NPC doesn't know you're a liar.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

It's only proven if the NPC has some way of knowing you willingly lied or went back on your word, otherwise you could have just failed an honest attempt (monsters protecting the McGuffin are too strong, better grind first). Besides, you'd have to set a point where the NPC would reasonably begin to think you lied, or the player would feel annoyed by the paranoid NPCs. Assuming you ever come back to see them.

The lying option might allow the NPC to have a different reaction, such as being angry instead of sad. Not that they could have known if your lie was convincing and it's not obvious that you did it willingly (giving it away to a rival of the NPC because they pay better), but it's a story anyway.

- Will you rescue my dog?
- Yeah, okay. (lie)
*dog dies*
- You lied to me! Die!

- Will you rescue my dog?
- Yeah, okay (truth)
*dog dies*
- Oh no! Thanks anyway.

It's probably not worth the effort since a skill check or alternate solution to give you the successful quest result before you complete the quest is way simpler than writing mindgames.

 

[DalekFlay]

- Will you rescue my dog?
- Yeah, okay. (lie)
*dog dies*
- You lied to me! Die!

- Will you rescue my dog?
- Yeah, okay (truth)
*dog dies*
- Oh no! Thanks anyway.

I don't see the point of this because the NPC shouldn't know the difference. You could write in a betrayal option that involves selling the dog to someone else, or you could have a plausible reason for the NPC to know you actually killed the dog like a witness or whatever, but why should the NPC know your intentions from a dialogue choice?

 

[AW8]

You could say you will look for it, but get distracted and fail.

To clarify, I'm talking about getting an important McGuffin to a person and not bringing it to their enemies/keep it to yourself.
Not a trivial "please help me find my grandmother's lost Ring of Stamina Regeneration if you have the time", there's no point in lying there unless you accept a down payment.

When you lie you know you won't be looking for it. If you lie and then decide to get it for some reason, you cover up your lie, so the NPC doesn't know you're a liar.

All of this could be achieved with a single "I swear I'll do this" dialogue option though. When picking this dialogue, the player knows the NPC will react favorably (and maybe give the player some equipment to help them with their quest), but whether the player is gonna stand by their word or not is up to them.
If the player didn't intend to do what they promised, but change their mind and end up doing it after all, they've accomplished the same thing as if they'd explicitely picked a [Lie] option when making the promise.

 

[Harthwain]

Perhaps the game needs to keep track if your character is trustworthy or not? It helps build your reputation, because when people start learning you're a liar, then there ought to be consequences for that, even if indirect. What makes you a liar is a contradiction between your words and actions. Technically you could accomplish the same without the specific tag, but then you can't mark a player as a liar, then it's harder to make to is that the others treat you as a liar without doing a ton of extra work.

 

[Konjad]

You forgot the two most important titles - Pathologic 2, and The Void. In the latter, Sister Death, your tutorial, LIES ABOUT GAME MECHANICS.

If you play the original version you are lied to by sisters many more times, or they obfuscate things for you.

Of course the English/German "remastered" edition with only a fraction of dialogues was streamlined so retards don't get confused. Only Slavic people were able to play the prestigious version (but Russian was also later lobotomized to become like English)

 

[Sigourn]

And why should a dev bother; most players claim a game is nonlinear if it gives them 2 option even if they lead to the exact same outcome.

I agree their attitude is "why bother," but considering New Vegas was made in record time I think the "too complicated" excuse can easily be labeled bullshit.

It's also why the game is buggy as hell, though.