Saying that NPCs must have exaggerated backgrounds to have unique perspective on topics is just stupid, the question is whether it would be interesting enough.
IMO, the single biggest problem with dialogue, in all media but most especially in video games, is when it isn't going anywhere. In video games, the worst of all is dialogue that isn't going anywhere
and isn't actually a form of gameplay. When that's your dialogue, it needs to be really beautiful (and ideally well voiced), or it's just noise and tedium.
There are many genius design choices in AOD, but one of its foremost is that the dialogues were always going somewhere. There were not dialogues for the sake of dialogue ("More words than the the Biblical begats!"). Partly that was Vince making a virtue of necessity. But partly it's just his disposition. His writing drives to a point. The will through the word, and all that. Anyway, it worked extremely well.
Many post-PS:T RPGs (and even some pre-PS:T RPGs) have extensive dialogue trees with branches yielding boughs and boughs yielding twigs. Typically these dialogues go nowhere, and there is no gameplay. The more items on the list you click, the more words and rewards you receive. When the tree is fully pruned, you go on the next one. Because the only form of interaction these dialogues offer is the pick-order of topics, the dialogues are
necessarily directionless, and thus inert. Basically, those dialogues are why I stopped playing RPGs. As noted, for that kind of dialogue to bring me any pleasure, the level of craft required of individual sentences is very high. When that enduring pedestrian writing in that quantity means being trampled.
People yearning for more dialogue without stakes and conflict are like people yearning for trash combat. I can live with trash combat if it's fast and beautiful; I can live with trash dialogue if it's fast and beautiful. But otherwise, stakes and conflict are important. To just say, "Faythe and the PC should talk about the Machine" when there is no reason for them to -- the narrative doesn't call for it, their personalities aren't going to be defined by it, etc. -- doesn't make any sense to me. "Real people would talk about it for sure." Yep. And they'd also take a piss break, sleep for 30% of the time, etc. Storytelling is a distillation of reality, not a duplicate of it.
Basically, RPGs can solve this problem in various ways:
- Less dialogue.
- Characters who are conceived as conflict engines occupying extremes on the valances the games measures (e.g., in AD&D, chaos vs. law; good vs. evil; in a game like AOD, the various political/factional divisions). But the key is
extremes. They have to either be pulling the PC farther down the spectrum, or repulsing him up the spectrum. It doesn't work to have dialogues that are just like, "I'm at a 51% Good, but this fool here is at 51% Evil. PC, which shall we choose?" Because
that "conflict" is inevitably going to require too much elaboration -- too many of the branch/bough/twig type dialogues.
- Dialogues where the choices have some mechanical result (a factional change, a relationship change, a quest path opens/closes).
AOD used extreme versions of 1 and 3, but even AOD had a fair amount of 2.
With all this in mind, I don't see any appeal to a dialogue that goes: "[PlayerName], let me share some thoughts about Hydroponics." "Yes, [Follower], tell me your thoughts about Hydroponics." "Here is some milquetoast view about Hydroponics." "Tell me more." "A smattering of lore and a small character anecdote about myself." "I modestly contradict that sentiment." "My loyalty has marginally declined." The reason this dialogue goes nowhere is because Hydroponics entails no stakes between the PC and the NPC; no NPC is defined vis-a-vis Hydroponics, nor is the PC. No matter how extreme the position you ask the PC to articulate ("So we played god!") if the interlocutor is milquetoast or there are no stakes, the dialogue will go nowhere. It doesn't implicate any of the spectrums the game identifies at the outset; it doesn't have any thematic heft; it has no real consequences; it's just treading water.
Honestly, a long dialogue like that would accomplish no more (and probably less) than simply having Jed say, "Never did like fucking frogs." Or Faythe saying, "Be careful. My father and I came here once, and what we saw... wasn't pleasant." You don't need branches/boughs/twigs for that. If a quip here and there isn't enough to express the range of the character, probably the character is not a good one for vidya. Faythe's payoff isn't "Wow, what a psychologically rich portrait" it's when her basic two or three traits get expressed in a way that advances the game's themes, connects with the game's factions, forces choices that have stakes, etc.
Anyway, no sense arguing further.
