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Tags: Paradox Interactive; The Chinese Room; Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2
https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/...ines-2/news/dev-diary-dialogue-choice-systems
https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/...ines-2/news/dev-diary-dialogue-choice-systems
The summer break is over, and we’re back with a juicy Dev Diary for you. Today, Sarah Longthorne, TCR's Senior Narrative Designer and Writer, will delve into the intricacies of our dialogue systems and the thought processes behind their design for Bloodlines 2. Just a small warning: This journal delves into the inner workings of the branching dialogue code, which potentially contains minor spoilers.
“The presentation of dialogue options is different in Bloodlines 2 – a lot of it stems from TCR’s legacy of celebrating fully-realised characterisation and empowering voice actors to do more heavy lifting and explore more nuance.
To give an example, when selecting a dialogue option, players should know exactly what they’re opting into (we’ve all known the frustration of ‘But that’s not what I thought that meant!’), but the kind of spelling-out this requires precludes the ability to lean into the strengths of actors. This would also have caused problems for UI, since Phyre often has more to say that can be reasonably presented on screen—especially when we’re also catering to console. Ultimately, the needs of the player were integral: players should have all the information they need about their selected option and should feel confident in their choice, while the actor is allowed more playfulness in following that directive.
Now, seeing as you’re reading a Dev Diary, I assume that means you’ve seen some game materials that we have already shared, which means you’ll have noticed an early result of the above dilemma: we initially toyed with representing our dialogue choices in summary, to make the intention of the branch abundantly clear and lean harder into our ‘strategic’ approach to roleplay (more on that shortly).
However, this quickly revealed itself as the wrong direction—and not just because you guys (rightly) said so. Getting into the weeds of our conversations, I found that the choices on offer felt samey when viewed from above, even when the content was entirely different—zoom too far out and you lose fine detail, which is where your flavour lives.
So we settled on a compromise, the tried-and-true next best thing: (carefully) paraphrased speech.
But what about the content of these choices?
Remember what I said about strategies? The best way to approach choice design is to look at your theme. In Bloodlines 1, your options are a mixture of strategy and humanity (with other options thrown in to honour, for example, your clan). The same is true in other titles: in Baldur’s Gate 3, choice options are themed roughly around a simplified version of the morality alignment seen in D&D; in Telltale’s The Walking Dead, they are themed around the central question of ‘Do you have to be cruel to survive?’.
VtM’s World of Darkness is so named for its cynical perspective—its blood-tinted glasses, if you will. Kindred are a natural extension, a metaphor of that worldview. The recurring motif is typically ‘How can I get what I want?’, with little being left off the table, though with room enough for those fading echoes of humanity to cling on—or at least, appear to do so. In this way, Bloodlines 1’s approach of marrying strategy with morality is the ideal direction, and it’s the one we’ve chosen.
But what does that mean for division of choice in more concrete terms? In other words, what courses of action might an Elder vampire such as Phyre consider?
The first, and most obvious, is to lean into their status, age, potency and power to intimidate those around them. In other contexts, this can manifest as being willing to voice the unpopular opinion, and being direct about it—‘not beating around the bush’, so to speak. After all, nobody fucks with an elder, right? Right?
But what if they do? What if, after a century in torpor, your age is all that’s going for you?
Age counts for a lot, true, but being Kindred is about more than what’s supernaturally afforded to you, and a clever vampire will have more up their sleeve than what their abilities allow—other ways of exerting control. After all, Bloodlines without some political scheming and intrigue just wouldn’t be Bloodlines. And that doesn’t even account for Phyre’s unique and, well, unfortunate circumstances. (Picture, if you will, the eyes-looking-to-the-side emoji.)
Throwing your weight around isn’t always the best option, especially in a world overrun with big egos and at least thirteen different species of narcissists. Sometimes, the best way to deal with someone is to let them take the W… for now. Stroke their pride, affirm their delusions, whisper honeyed lies and fall under the radar of capability. Become the listening ear, the comforting shoulder, the trusted disciple. Such a strategy can take you far… assuming your victim buys it.
“The presentation of dialogue options is different in Bloodlines 2 – a lot of it stems from TCR’s legacy of celebrating fully-realised characterisation and empowering voice actors to do more heavy lifting and explore more nuance.
To give an example, when selecting a dialogue option, players should know exactly what they’re opting into (we’ve all known the frustration of ‘But that’s not what I thought that meant!’), but the kind of spelling-out this requires precludes the ability to lean into the strengths of actors. This would also have caused problems for UI, since Phyre often has more to say that can be reasonably presented on screen—especially when we’re also catering to console. Ultimately, the needs of the player were integral: players should have all the information they need about their selected option and should feel confident in their choice, while the actor is allowed more playfulness in following that directive.
Now, seeing as you’re reading a Dev Diary, I assume that means you’ve seen some game materials that we have already shared, which means you’ll have noticed an early result of the above dilemma: we initially toyed with representing our dialogue choices in summary, to make the intention of the branch abundantly clear and lean harder into our ‘strategic’ approach to roleplay (more on that shortly).
However, this quickly revealed itself as the wrong direction—and not just because you guys (rightly) said so. Getting into the weeds of our conversations, I found that the choices on offer felt samey when viewed from above, even when the content was entirely different—zoom too far out and you lose fine detail, which is where your flavour lives.
So we settled on a compromise, the tried-and-true next best thing: (carefully) paraphrased speech.
But what about the content of these choices?
Remember what I said about strategies? The best way to approach choice design is to look at your theme. In Bloodlines 1, your options are a mixture of strategy and humanity (with other options thrown in to honour, for example, your clan). The same is true in other titles: in Baldur’s Gate 3, choice options are themed roughly around a simplified version of the morality alignment seen in D&D; in Telltale’s The Walking Dead, they are themed around the central question of ‘Do you have to be cruel to survive?’.
VtM’s World of Darkness is so named for its cynical perspective—its blood-tinted glasses, if you will. Kindred are a natural extension, a metaphor of that worldview. The recurring motif is typically ‘How can I get what I want?’, with little being left off the table, though with room enough for those fading echoes of humanity to cling on—or at least, appear to do so. In this way, Bloodlines 1’s approach of marrying strategy with morality is the ideal direction, and it’s the one we’ve chosen.
But what does that mean for division of choice in more concrete terms? In other words, what courses of action might an Elder vampire such as Phyre consider?
The first, and most obvious, is to lean into their status, age, potency and power to intimidate those around them. In other contexts, this can manifest as being willing to voice the unpopular opinion, and being direct about it—‘not beating around the bush’, so to speak. After all, nobody fucks with an elder, right? Right?
But what if they do? What if, after a century in torpor, your age is all that’s going for you?
Age counts for a lot, true, but being Kindred is about more than what’s supernaturally afforded to you, and a clever vampire will have more up their sleeve than what their abilities allow—other ways of exerting control. After all, Bloodlines without some political scheming and intrigue just wouldn’t be Bloodlines. And that doesn’t even account for Phyre’s unique and, well, unfortunate circumstances. (Picture, if you will, the eyes-looking-to-the-side emoji.)
Throwing your weight around isn’t always the best option, especially in a world overrun with big egos and at least thirteen different species of narcissists. Sometimes, the best way to deal with someone is to let them take the W… for now. Stroke their pride, affirm their delusions, whisper honeyed lies and fall under the radar of capability. Become the listening ear, the comforting shoulder, the trusted disciple. Such a strategy can take you far… assuming your victim buys it.
