I want dialogue

[CarcusRex]

Why not make an RPG in which good, intricate dialogue options comprise a large part of the gameplay? Don't get me wrong, combat is good and should never be neglected. But the point I'm trying to make is that it seems the notion of good dialogue has morphed into simply good writing and interesting story.

Unlike Fallout, most games today usually supply x number of options, usually all of which will be selected by the player in turn, just to gain the pertinent information about the story. The only "choice" for the player is basically in which order he'll ask the questions... or if he should choose to be "good or evil"... how old is THAT getting? Most often the motivation for these dialogues is just to progress the story, to prepare the next cut scene and to provide a means for initiating quests. Of course this has to be done to some extent, but I would like to see dialogues offered as part of the gameplay.

The developers of the new rpgs are always touting how great the story is... how deep and compelling it is and how well the story is written. They boast hollywood style cut scenes that will blow us away and provide the ultimate immersion. But, as far as I'm concerned, I'm really not interested in a great "story" as much as I am in dialogue as a mechanic of gameplay. I'm not talking about good "writing" either - although, that doesn't hurt. I'm talking about Fallout style dialogue which is intricate, branching and forces the player to make smart choices which branch off in different directions depending on how the player decides to steer the dialogue and how much intellegence and charisma the player has invested in his character. I'd like to see dialogues as puzzles for the player to "play"... where the player uses his mind (and his stats) to further develope, complicate, continue and or complete quests. Dialogues where when one option is selected, you won't always go back to the base node but instead continue on a different tangent... nested tangents which can offer success and exp, an escape route or, if you do poorly, can lead you into a tangled mess requiring a re-load... lol. Dialogues with consequences... for better or worse! Dialogues for adults who don't whine and complain that the game is too hard.

Admittedly, this is probably not easy to do, and requires depth of thought and many long hours of work. But the Fallout guys did it! And considering how well received Fallout was and what a classic it continues to be, why won't the developers stay with a good thing??? I guess I probably just answered my question with the first sentence in this paragraph... how sad.

Won't somebody make a game like Fallout... please.

[Corwin]

They did a few years ago, it's called Planescape-Torment!! Unfortunately, sales were not outstanding and a sequel was never made. Many RPG lovers consider it the best RPG ever made!!

[Danicek]

Yep, I would enjoy such RPG and I would most certainly buy it.

[JDR13]

Mmm....Fallout didn't have THAT much dialog. Torment definitely had a lot, almost too much for my taste. KOTOR also had a lot, if you chose to.

[ShadowMoses]

I don't think we'll ever see a game like PS:T again :(

Age of Decadence (http://www.irontowerstudio.com/) is meant to focus alot on dialogue though:

Extensive dialogues trees, written with role-playing in mind. You can use many skills in dialogues, take actions like stealing or sneak-attacking, and play your character with personality as you see fit.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

I'd love a game with immersive and deep dialogues,

but I fear that the Publishers won't agree. They rather want adrenaline-giving games with little or no thought at all. No philosophy, please !

My theory is that most publishers also want pieces from the big cake that are the sakles of action-RPGs. They all know too well that Blizzard did it, and Ascaron with Sacred, too ... So there must be money in it. The sales were good, at least.

So, they are following that path - I think - that games with high adrenaline, high addiction and little or no though sell most.

And since the publishers are after our money ...

That's why I don't think we'll EVER see deep C-RPGs like PS:T.

[CarcusRex]

Yeah, Planescape was also a great game I enjoyed... but not quite as much as I did Fallout. I didn't know it didn't sell well... probably too macarbre for the general public.

JDR, I wasn't talking about the quantity of dialogue, but rather how dialogue is implemented. There's no denying that Fallout (and PT) were of a different breed all together!

I agree, Alrik. That's why I have high hopes for Age of Decadence. Lets hope Vault Dweller and crew can kick the butts of the big developers and show 'em how its done.

[VDweller]

I agree, Alrik. That's why I have high hopes for Age of Decadence. Lets hope Vault Dweller and crew can kick the butts of the big developers and show 'em how its done.
I too have high hopes for Ages of Decadence.

If you like dialogues, don't miss an upcoming AoD article at RPG Vault. It comes with a lot of screens showing what we can do with dialogues and text in general.

[CarcusRex]

Awesome, VDweller. Thanks for stopping by and for the heads up! I'll be sure to keep an eye out.

Btw, a few days back, I took a quick peek at a thread on the codex which concerned improving your writing style. I didn't spend a whole lot of time checking the thread, but I did notice a really good improvement with a few examples provided in the thread. Keep up the good work! And, please, man, don't let anybody rush you... take your time and do it right... we'll wait.

[roqua]

I think having preset responses has hurt the genre in general. I want ambigous, flat answers that I can change to fir in with an actual response a character i play would actually say. I would actually really just like a picture with a symbol indicating what the npcs reaction to the response would be, or wait your goal with the reply would be, such as taunt, bluff, anger, sooth, manipulate, or whatever.

Ambiguous is the key to being able to roleplay a character in a crpg in my opnion.

[Corwin]

How about the ability to type in our own responses and questions, as in the 'old' days!! :)

[Fenris]

oh yea... with the great respones like "I don't understand you" or "unknown command" or "you can not do that" or "I don't know what you are talking about"...

[SleepingDog]

I think that one of the things I like about the (NWN) mod community is that dialogue intensive games exist which don't have to follow the "logic" of the market place. They also have some wicked action RPGs as well.

[HiddenX]

Dialogues are dumbed down, because they are a major expense factor nowadays.
Common gamers expect every dialogue be overlayed with voices.

Best dialogue games:

Planescape
KOTOR 1
Fallout 1+2
Vampire Bloodlines

I like big dialogue trees and the option to solve quests by giving sharp-witted answers. It is fun to get extra quests or secrets via talking, too. I like options to threaten, bribe, persuade, flatter, bootlick, cajole ... , too.
The Wizardry technique to type in a term to learn more about it can be fun, too.

[roqua]

How about the ability to type in our own responses and questions, as in the 'old' days!! :)


As someone else said, I can see why it would be a little immersion breaking to type in a response that makes sense, and get a "I don't understand" even if the person just talked and had a lot to say on that subject.

With dialgue trees you can avoid that by not giving the player the option to talk about anything that isn't preprogrammed.

And as Hidden X said, wiz was good at what Sierra started. But I think a better system would be to take what sierra and sir-tech did and take it a step forward.

You click on the symbol, and you are allowed to type in your own response. AN example would be you click on the "brown nose" symbol. You can taype in anything you think your character would say to brown nose up to this person, in a way your character would do it. What you type isn't important, as your ability to brown nose is tied to a skill. Its just a way to advocate and enhance roleplaying.

Of course the system could be abused. You could click on the anger symbol (meaning to say a response that will anger the npc, maybe a better name would be provoke?) and type in "This is silly, lets just be friends." Or "I love you 4-eva." Or you could click on symbols and never type in anything, since you are not interested in typing in an actual response that your character would say.


ANother alternative would be to keep things how they are now. Lets use kotor as an example. Everything is the same, but there is abutton next to the dialogue that you click on to replace what the devs tell you your character will say with more fitting response from your character that would achieve the same goal.

Maybe bloodlines is a better option. Sudection dialogue comes up pink right? It doesn't matter whats said, just that htting that line checks your seduction skill, why not allow the player to type in something more appropriate for their character?

[JemyM]

Planescape Torment stood out from the crowd, but it was also not sucessful in sales because it requires an above-average IQ to understand.

I have not found interesting Dialogue beyond Bioware/BlackIsle/Troika/Obsidian (who basicly come from the same group of people). The major problem is that Roleplaying games are complex products and it's difficult to support an endless variety of different character types / players with unique and personalized dialogue.

When it comes to the D&D/d20 games they have at least tried to support:
a) Evil vs Good
c) Chaotic vs Lawful
c) Support for the 6 attributes
d) Support for unique skills
e) Support for unique classes
f) Support for unique races
g) Male vs Female

NWN2 did it all and I was impressed by the amount of work put into so many different charactertypes, but since you will only see a few options per character you make you will probably miss out most of it.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Just wanted to note that translating long and complex dialogues also consumes money.

[Corwin]

So does voice acting in several languages!! Typing in your own stuff, costs nothing!! :biggrin:

[roqua]

So does voice acting in several languages!! Typing in your own stuff, costs nothing!! :biggrin:

remember the type games? Trying to figure out what to say? I remember trying to hit on the centuar lady in QfG 1. "Ask for Kiss", "Ask for Date." (or maybe it was "ask about"?)

Or trying to get the right info by asking the right question. I thought the dialogue was pretty good, especially with the Wizard guy and his mouse thats in all of them.

[Cormac]

Do all of you really think that a text parser is preferable to dialog choices, in the sense that it gives a more authentic roleplaying experience (in SP, not in MMOs) ? I'm not being sarcastic or anything, I am really wondering if CRPGs lost something with the disappearing of text parsers. I've never played those old, old games save for a very brief attempt with Ultima IV earlier this year. I have to say that I was hopelessly lost, besides 'Name' and I think 'Job', I didnt know what to ask !

[Corwin]

If they improved the response recognition mechanics, it could be a lot of fun!!

[roqua]

Let me put it this way, would mmorpgs be better or worse if you could only click a pre-chosen response when interacting with other players?

[mute]

I think the later "Quest" game that used free form text worked out okey. I could choose to type short and to the point, or i could use longer sentences. Trouble was / is the game to understand what you ment. As has been said. I don't like ambigous answer, since i am not English native i have trouble "reading" nuances of insult, sarcasm, humour or such like. Its really frustrating WANTING to choose the cool fun reply just to be punished because it was hostile.

But it would definitly make the game feel more alive if you could type your answer.

(Altough remembered my first Police Quest game (PQ1 which i didn't bought and was punished for that harshly in the game) when i should do a Field Sobriety Test on a drunken driver. It was impossible for me to now that i should write "Do Field Sobriety Test").

But... i blame my uncle who "gave" me his game... :)

I think i get my fix on Text massive games in Adventure Gameing anyway. I think they are the plot intensive ones you can play if you want to have a dialouge driven experience...

Well, back to POR2... :)

[fatBastard()]

My opinion is that unless there is a human recipient on the other end then any kind of user written input is like trying to score with Eliza (the old C64 psychotherapist AI thingmajib experiment).

While "fleshing out" a resonse according to how your character would say it in a PnP environment makes perfect sense, it fails in an environment without the eye contact and/or the verbal intonation because it becomes almost impossible convey emotions and hidden meanings (e.g. sarcasm, playful, anger, contempt, etc, etc.). I mean, this is the very reason smilies/emoticons were invented in the first place.

Any degree of immersion a self composed response might bring is instantly broken (for me at least) when simple spelling errors and/or atypical vocabulary usage results in misinterpretations or "Huh? What?" kind of feedback from the AI. Let's take the romance incident in NWN2 where whatshername (trying not to spoil anything) declares her feelings for you and asks if you want to spend the night with her and you respond: "Yes din klamme smatso". One of two things could happen. Either the AI ignores what it can't understand and reacts to what it can understand (the "Yes") in which case I would fall over laughing since the last part of my response is danish for "you disgusting b*tch" or it would respond with the typical "I don't understand what you're saying" in which case I'm left with trying to "guess" a suitable response.

My apologies for the crude example but I was trying to get a point across. If my girlfriend (whatever that is ;)) would ask me the same question I might get away with such a response if I did it with a playful tone and a smile on my face but such undertones will never be part of text based response system (at least not without a huge list of symbols like smilies and a vastly superior AI than what we're capable of today).

The mood based response system Bioware is putting into Mass Effect might be what some of you are looking for ... or it might just be another simplification of the elements not pertaining to the action bits. The whole "exclusively for Xbox" deal reeks of simplification all around but since we're talking about Bioware I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

[Cormac]

Let me put it this way, would mmorpgs be better or worse if you could only click a pre-chosen response when interacting with other players?

Why bring up MMOs ? They're a different thing altogether.

[roqua]

FatBastard, good points, I'll address that later

Cormac,

Because in SP rpgs you play the role of character, in a MMORPG you do the same. In one the devs put words in your characters mouth, in the other you put words in your characters mouth.

In order for me to roleplay a character and have him say the things I want him to say, no one can puts words in his mouth for me. Its another roadblock on the path of crpgs delivering what crpgs should deliver, which is an authentic rpg experience.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Which, in the end, means that we need better AIs.

A game with not-so-good graphics could provide more fun, I think, with an excellent AI, than the other way round, I guess. And I'm talking of development time.

But, sadly the publishers usually want a game with good graphics and therefore totally neglect the time needed to build a powerful AI ... :roll: Nowadays a *lot* of development time is put into physics engibnes (like the new one over there at LucasArts), but none at all into *really* good AIs, I fear. And that's a symptome of the gaming industry in general, I dare to say.

[Cormac]

Roqua, are you looking for AI to duplicate human intelligence ? It's never going to happen. Hell, even the holodeck in Star trek had bugs.
Although I'm playing WoW right now I have limited experience in MMOs; I've actually found very little RP in my PVE WoW server: people trade, beg for money, group to kill tough monsters. . . The possibilities are simply limited, just like in SP. Are RP servers different ? The problem in MMOs I think is that everyone is playing the same role, everyone is trying to kill Van Cleef and no one, if he so desired, can instead side with him.
And you're right that's it up to the devs to make a game really stand out when it comes to roleplaying, and sometimes they do succeed. That's why my all time favourite CRPG is Darklands. It's true that it could be repetitive -- like all sandbox games, I suppose -- but the possibilities for RP were many: you come upon an isolated house in the forest, and are offered some choices: peek through the window, bash open the door, leave, etc. You see that a young woman lives there. What's a young woman doing alone in an isolated house in the middle of the Black forest in 1410 AD ? Well she's doubtless a witch; when you go to her you're offered another series of choices, such as killing her, converting her to Christ, bribing her for potions, etc. The thing is, she might not have been a witch after all and you may have murdered an innocent, or she was a witch and you've left a satanist off the hook. And that's just an example. I remember once having my party being arrested inside a city wherein my reputation was disastrous. We resisted arrest, were thrown in jail, escaped, were captured again and brought to the stake. . . In the end only one from the party escaped with his life, and the sequence -- as best as I can recall it -- was so unbelievable that I didnt reload an older saved game but continued playing with my remaining PC (you could create other characters anytime and form a new party). How many MMORPGs offer that ? Few, just like there are too few real CRPGs.

[roqua]

Darklands is a good example of a game that didn't put words into your character's mouth. It gave you options and ambiguity about what was said. I didn't know what my guy said to get the miracle, but I filled that part in with my imagination.

I never played on an rp server in an mmo, I'm more of a pvp guy. In fact, i never roleplay or talk to people much. But agree with your point.

And that ties in with fatbastards points. I agree, the AI will never be good enough for a pure type in response system. Thats why I like my symbol idea. Of course, that leads to another problem fatbastard stated.

I just really enjoy games when there is prechosen script choses for my character to follow that doesn't fit his character.

[Maylander]

Hardcore gamers make up roughly 11% of the total market, and let's face it lads, we are the only ones that want timeconsuming, deep games where dialogue has a high priority. The other 89%, where the money in the gaming business is made, wants instant action.

Hardcore gamers, like us, are important as we often represent the initial sales of a game, and also "talk the loudest" through various medias, such as forums, meaning games successful among us will get a lot of free PR. If we didn't, we'd be completely ignored instead of semi-ignored as we are now, as we represent the smallest market segment.

Publishers want money and push developers into making games that make money, despite most developers probably wanting more heavy dialogues themselves. Remember, money always wins.

[CarcusRex]

This may amount to blasphamy here on this site and to RPGers everywhere, but I'm really not so interested in roleplaying my character... say, as in the replys above, by typing in my own answers and such. I'm not putting that type of dialogue down, it's fine for those who like it. But it seems to me, in the end your still relying on the AI and all it's falts and short commings to carry the experience... and I don't see how that's possible at this time. I simply want good, solid gameplaying, with a balance of ceribral gameplay through dialogue and great combat to satisfy my twitch gaming needs.

It's all about gameplay. I say there's no need to invest millions to develop complicated AI routines and speech comprehention programs. As a consumer and avid game player, I rely on the intelligence and craftiness of the developers to create dialogues which are fun and tricky and intricate, and which involve the player. All this can be done by putting a lot of thought and long hours into the preparation of the dialogues. Bottom line or no, there's no denying that it's going to take signifigant preparation and well thought out options... not to mention a goodly amount of inspiration and talent. It is, after all, what they do for a living, right? I just want to be "wowed" by the programmers depth of vision. It has been done before... and it can certainly be done again. It's just the will that's lacking these days... replaced by the greed of the almighty dollar... and maybe a little bit by the sheer infantile preferances of so many of todays gamers.

[NFLed]

I'm in agreement with the original poster but it's just too costly and people overall don't go for it (in terms of $$$). I'm content with the common style of giving us options but we really are clicking most every option and choosing only good/neutral/evil because that's much better to me than the little-dialogue/story games.

[magerette]

....... That's why my all time favourite CRPG is Darklands. It's true that it could be repetitive -- like all sandbox games, I suppose -- but the possibilities for RP were many: you come upon an isolated house in the forest, and are offered some choices: peek through the window, bash open the door, leave, etc. You see that a young woman lives there. What's a young woman doing alone in an isolated house in the middle of the Black forest in 1410 AD ? Well she's doubtless a witch; when you go to her you're offered another series of choices, such as killing her, converting her to Christ, bribing her for potions, etc. The thing is, she might not have been a witch after all and you may have murdered an innocent, or she was a witch and you've left a satanist off the hook. And that's just an example......


Sometimes I really hate not having a computer before 1998.If this doesn't epitomize what you would ask a crpg to do I have no idea what would.

I think the reason Planescape gets all the accolades it does is because it hit a perfect sweet spot in the player interaction with the NPCs through dialogue--it's the only game I've played where dialogue actually played a real role in the game, in uncovering TNO's bloody and convoluted past, in fleshing out the personalities of NPC's like Mort and Fall from Grace with a complex backstory, and in making you go back to the dialogue options to progress the story. It did it through the normal dialogue tree method and it worked.

Then you have Neverwinter Nights(1), using a very similar format, and getting the totally generic -
1. :)"I'll do it for free"
2. >:( "I'll only do it for money you scabby dwarf" --syndrome.
You know you probably have to do it anyway, and the consquences for either response are minimal.

I think it all falls back on talent and desire. You have to want (and be able) to create something more than just a "property" that improves your bottom line.

I think our major hope for games like that are with people like Vault Dweller and other independent developers who still have something to say and no corporate suits to keep them from saying it.

Just my $.02 :)