Lumpy
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2005
- Messages
- 8,525
Everyone with half a brain will agree that retarded dialogue systems like in BG2 - where you have three choices that all lead to the exact same answer (that only makes sense for one of the choices) - are fucking shit. But in regard to proper games, even when different choices result in different answers, you find that there is no real outcome - just some different words printed on the screen.
Surely, it is unrealistic to expect NPC interaction to be altered by every single choice. But are meaningless options good, then? A simple way to get rid of them is to make all dialogue meaningful - every choice is either a request of information, or an actual gameplay choice. But this necessarily renders the dialogue laconic, and in a high fantasy game, it's unpleasant for bard, priest or mage characters to speak like Clint Eastwood.
On the other hand, in a high fantasy game, you can go crazy with consequences in regard to various forms of alignment. Would it be a good idea for every single dialogue choice to affect some variable in a minor way? It would have the nice consequence that if you actually role-play a character, you don't feel like a douchebag at the end of the day because it actually affected gameplay.
Discuss.
Surely, it is unrealistic to expect NPC interaction to be altered by every single choice. But are meaningless options good, then? A simple way to get rid of them is to make all dialogue meaningful - every choice is either a request of information, or an actual gameplay choice. But this necessarily renders the dialogue laconic, and in a high fantasy game, it's unpleasant for bard, priest or mage characters to speak like Clint Eastwood.
On the other hand, in a high fantasy game, you can go crazy with consequences in regard to various forms of alignment. Would it be a good idea for every single dialogue choice to affect some variable in a minor way? It would have the nice consequence that if you actually role-play a character, you don't feel like a douchebag at the end of the day because it actually affected gameplay.
Discuss.