Company News Bioware redefines dialogue system

[Mendoza]

You'll no longer read the lines and select which one you want to say; now you use a dialogue wheel to choose the approach you want to take (bully, bribe, or be nice, for example), and your character takes it from there.

One of the things that drives me !^&^%!@ insane is when I feel a response choice is entirely good, and yet the developers intended it to be completely evil. For example, when you start KotOR 2, some creepy old lady (Kreia) who is faking her own death pops up in a morgue and starts trying to convince you to take her off the ship. I evaluated it: I don't know her but she's real eager to be chummy with me, and she's being deceitful in faking her death, and it just so happens that she's the only living person in a ship full of bodies. OK, she's a nasty piece of work. I'll take the dialogue option for "Get away from me!"

And then the game awarded me dark side points. WTF?

The developers clearly felt that blind trust in a stranger standing on a pile of corpses was the "good" reaction to the situation. That doesn't strike me as a "good" dialogue choice so much as an incredibly stupid choice. But there it is.

All of this is to say that if new games clearly flag the developer's intended goal for each bit of dialogue (bully, bribe, and so on), then I will be much much less frustrated. So I have cautious optimism for this new feature.

(As an aside, I'm finding KotOR2 is annoyingly linear -- at a couple of places, I'd get a single dialogue choice that completely ran against my character. The worst was a spot where the only option was to lie. And the level design -- single paths that funnel you to the only destination option... ugh.)

-Tony

This was basically my reaction (at least after reading Volourn's quote of how the system worked) - I'd be very interested in seeing how a conversation worked where you chose the approach you want to take rather than the exact words. As well as being a bit clearer, it should make it easier to allow stuff like 'I want to help this old lady, and make it look like I'm doing it for good reasons, even though I'm not good' rather than the current practice of the game thinking you've picked the 'good' option before you're good.

Since you see/hear the exact words you say after choosing anyway, I don't see that you'd lose anything (unless you decided that you don't like the exact words chosen for you).

As for having it using a wheel (or whatever) rather than a list of options, it's just a graphical rearrangement so who cares?

 

[TheGreatGodPan]

I like how in Varicella you had a tone setting that determined how your statements came out. That was a good game except for being impossibly hard for anyone to beat without dying zillions of times and starting over.

 

[LlamaGod]

honourblade

 

[obediah]

As for having it using a wheel (or whatever) rather than a list of options, it's just a graphical rearrangement so who cares?

Well if there are 8 options, and they use the analog pad on the 360, just about everyone will care. Hopefully there will be a comfirmation button or something - my luck it will be like this

             Friendly
     Insult         Threaten
Seduce                  Joke
     Ignore          No
                Yes

[/code]

 

[Rat Keeng]

Maybe for the sequel they could revolutionize it even further and just use smiley faces, instead of all those difficult words.

"Greetings!"

"That's very nice of you, I..."
:evil:
"What? How dare you, why I ought to do someth..."

"Aaah, just a joke, I get it, hahaha!"
:
"I'm Rommel Larnskarb, nice to meet you. Say, my farm happens to be overrun with goblins, help plz?"

 

[Section8]

Well, in it's favour, Sam and Max Hit the Road used dialogue system where you had icons to represent your options, and that worked exceedingly well, because of the brilliant writing and humour.

But then again, that's an adevnture game with fixed characters, not a RPGish game where you're supposed to develop a personality of your own.

 

[Limorkil]

Sounds like even more dumbing down to me

This just sounds like roleplaying for ADD dummies to me. If I want to play a rude/evil character then all I have to do is click on the button marked "rude" or "evil". No need to read the dialogue and decide what best fits my character.

The only benefit to this system appears to be for the game developers. They no longer have to come up with different lines of dialogue to display on the screen. They can use the same line more than once, just said with a slightly different tone or with one or two words moved around.

Lets say you are talking to a barman trying to get information from him. With a Kotor like game you would have to come up with several different lines of text. Each would have to be constructed to convey the mood of the player and they would have to be very different because it would look odd to display four lines that were almost the same. With the new system, where you don't see the lines, you can just do this:

(friendly) Please [tell me where I can find Victoria Winters]
(angry) [Tell me where I can find Victoria Winters] you bastard
(indignant) I insist that you [tell me where I can find Victoria Winters]
(bribe) $10 if you [tell me where I can find Victoria Winters]

You could even have [Tell me where I can find Victoria Winters] for all four, just said in a different tone or, in the case of the bribe, with tone and loss of gold.

Bio always complained that writing the dialogue was the hardest part of the development. This is just something that helps them passed off as something that benefits the player.

 

[ElastiZombie]

*Chooses Witty Response*

 

[One Wolf]

*Whips It Out*

 

[Maia]

Each would have to be constructed to convey the mood of the player and they would have to be very different because it would look odd to display four lines that were almost the same. With the new system, where you don't see the lines.

As far as I understand (and I may be wrong) you don't see the lines when you chose them, but you do hear them aftewards, delivered by your fully-voiced PC. Not that I like that approach, because it would make good dialogue-based quests impossible. But it is not like TES either - PC's dialogue does get written. Still a pity, IMHO

 

[Rat Keeng]

Yes, the player's dialogue does get written and spoken after you've chosen the response, but the point was that the lines could be virtually identical, with only a few minor differences, to make the chosen bit of dialogue sound tough or wimpy or evil or smug or whatever. This means in any given playthrough, you'd only see one of the maybe four different responses, and so you wouldn't know the other lines were almost identical to the one you got.

To be honest though, that's likely not the case, and it's overly pessimistic to think they'd cop out like that with the dialogue, but it's a novel idea for saving on writing time

 

[Zomg]

People don't like reading anything but translated Japanese pidgin English (or pidgin Polish, German, or Russian) off of a television.

 

[RGE]

Re: Sounds like even more dumbing down to me

The only benefit to this system appears to be for the game developers. They no longer have to come up with different lines of dialogue to display on the screen. They can use the same line more than once, just said with a slightly different tone or with one or two words moved around.

And BioWare can hide all their "several options lead to same answer" dialogue options behind an interface which always display a set number of options. :D

I don't really have a problem with this approach to dialogue though (it reminds me of the dialogue in Starflight). I prefer moron indicators to having to second guess both the dialogue writer and the NPC, and I always felt that RPG dialogues lacked gameplay. Most of the cool dialogues I can think of are jokes, and apart from that I'm more interested in the different options they offer. And choosing options on a wheel would be a hell of a lot quicker and smoother than having to read through 3-6 lines of dialogue and see how they differ.

One major drawback would be that I wouldn't be able to see funny jokes before my character tells them, so if I'd normally prefer to not joke but might choose a line that I personally find incredibly funny, I wouldn't be able to do that unless I'd already played the dialogue and knew where they hid the funny jokes.

 

[Claw]

Re: Sounds like even more dumbing down to me

I prefer moron indicators to having to second guess both the dialogue writer and the NPC, and I always felt that RPG dialogues lacked gameplay.

I got a revolutionary idea: Instead of listing options for what to say or how to say it, the game should list the results!

 

[Rat Keeng]

I'm not entirely sure what's stopping Bioware from showing you the full dialogue line, when you hover over the one-word option you're about to pick. Unless you're trying to hide some embarrasingly identical dialogue lines, why wouldn't you show them beforehand? Hey, why not make it an option, like "Show full dialogue line: on/off"?

 

[Limorkil]

I'm not entirely sure what's stopping Bioware from showing you the full dialogue line, when you hover over the one-word option you're about to pick. Unless you're trying to hide some embarrasingly identical dialogue lines, why wouldn't you show them beforehand? Hey, why not make it an option, like "Show full dialogue line: on/off"?

I think it is because of the reason I gave earlier: all the responses are essentially the same, but they have different results.

At first I thought the argument would be that the stats of the character influences what is actually said, which is sort of cool. However, that makes no sense because they could easily do all the rolls and figure out what would be said for each option when displaying the option.

Then I thought that maybe the reason is that the response is a combination of actual words and TONE, so just showing you the actual words does not convey the tone. This seems like it would be the likely excuse/argument for not showing the text beforehand. It makes no sense though because (a) the button tells you the tone, so you get tone and text even if you do not hear them combined and (b) they could allow you to HEAR what will be said before you say it, as an option.

But I just came up with what I think might be the reason, although I do not recall the game design plans well enough to know whether this could be true or not: Maybe it is because your character never actually says anything, all you do is choose the response and all you hear is what the NPC says back to you. This sort of makes sense based on the history of games like KOTOR, where you see what your response will be but never actually hear it said out loud. Maybe the idea now is that they do not even need to write the response, you just choose your tone and hear how the NPC reacts to it.

That would be cheap and ugly, which makes me think it is likely.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Well, in it's favour, Sam and Max Hit the Road used dialogue system where you had icons to represent your options, and that worked exceedingly well, because of the brilliant writing and humour.

But then again, that's an adevnture game with fixed characters, not a RPGish game where you're supposed to develop a personality of your own.

Something where you could present the dialogue choice in addition to a demeanor would be pretty interesting. However, that's probably far, far beyond the scope that any developer is actually willing to do since most of the ones left don't seem to like the complexity of dialogue that's seen in games like Fallout and Arcanum. Having eight demeanors in addition to two to four lines of dialogue, most of which requiring a unique response, would be a pretty large pill to swallow.

 

[Rat Keeng]

True, but a first step could be picking a mood and then having that mood effect the NPC's reaction towards you, based on how his/her personality responds to your demeanor. That would fit well in a system where social skills would allow you to read the NPC's personality, through a series of neutral questions or small talk, if not by a simple skill check.


And if Mass Effect is as funny Sam and Max, I'll eat my words and the horse they rode in on.

 

[WouldBeCreator]

But I just came up with what I think might be the reason, although I do not recall the game design plans well enough to know whether this could be true or not: Maybe it is because your character never actually says anything, all you do is choose the response and all you hear is what the NPC says back to you. This sort of makes sense based on the history of games like KOTOR, where you see what your response will be but never actually hear it said out loud. Maybe the idea now is that they do not even need to write the response, you just choose your tone and hear how the NPC reacts to it.

That would be cheap and ugly, which makes me think it is likely.

At least one of the previews said that this was the first Bioware game where you heard your character speak, so your worries are misplaced.

 

[Volourn]

"At least one of the previews said that this was the first Bioware game where you heard your character speak, so your worries are misplaced."

Which preview was that, and did they play JE?

 

[Old Scratch]

That shit is whack yo!