Mass Effect 3 - Timed Dialogue?

GameBanshee highlights an interview snip from the VGAs that seems to suggest Mass Effect 3 will have some sort of timed dialogue:

Hip Hop Gamer: There's something I really like about Mass Effect, when you're talking with people you can choose what you want to say and make it more personal. I like that you can do that, but I didn't like that there's no time limit. I can fall asleep and the person will just be standing there with no answer. There's a game, Alpha Protocol, that gives you that pressure, you'll have to answer it real quick. Will we see that in Mass Effect 3, to add more intensity and realism to confrontations?

Muzyka: Yes. I think it adds a sense of visceral excitement to the experience, it's really critical. There's various ways to do that, but that's always real cool.

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They also respond on MP, and the non-answer suggests it will be a feature to me.
More information.

So now were copying Alpha protocol now are you bioware. I don't know if it will fit in Masseffect but as you know every sequel with bioware has to different.

Nooooooo....

It's so you're forced to experience awesomeness quicker!

JDR13 said:

Nooooooo….

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Ditto. I'm not looking for "visceral excitement" when I'm talking to an NPC. lol.

No, it's not "real cool" especially when you click on an answer and it is nothing like what you thought it would say. Now let's make it real cool by throwing in a timer.....WTF???

I don't like timers at all. I'll put up with them, but I hate them and very few games have done them well where it really adds something to the game. Dead Rising 2 is the only one that I can think of that had a timer that made sense. You had to get the medicine to your daughter within a certain period of time. I can handle that. What I couldn't handle was that after passing that dang game twice that I couldn't turn off the timed quests and just enjoy the stupid game without being bothered every 3 seconds with a new timed quest.

if people want different gameplay and games that experiment with new aproaches to dialogue and whathaveyou they should make games themselves.

that would be me kidding.

normally i also don't like timed anything in games but, it actually fit the game (Alpha Protocol) perfectly in my view. same thing with autosaves and checkpoints. normally i want to save whenever the hell i want. Alpha Protocol also did that well as if you could save whenever you wanted to it would have destroyed the gameplay from a choice perspective but would have also made tackling the levels a piece of cake.

Ok it's annoying enough missing the paragon/renegade interupts because I scratch my nose and don't get my hand back to the mouse until a millisecond too late (some of the interupts have really short reaction times because of how they're squeezed between lines of dialog.) Luckily the interupts where you're doing something important like stopping someone from getting killed or pre-emptively shooting someone tend to have longer timers associated with them. Now these interupts (the ones that are more meaningful than just giving someone a hug) having time limits does create a sense of urgency that can go along with the action they trigger. It's kind of cool when I jump to hit the renegade interupt and my character springs into action taking out the speachifying Krogan across the room.

When I find myself putting down a my drink and scrambling to hit an interupt before it vanishes from the screen and my character saunters over to give a sad crewmate a hug or a pat on the back... yeah not an appropriate use of time limited response options.

So there's already time sensitive moments in dialog and they're a mixed bag as it is. It's neat where they're implemented appropriately (sufficient time to hit the option while still requiring you be quick and only used where quick reesponse or action is what you get. Seriously- a paragon interupt here you have less than a second to hit it resulting in a hug - I got one of those on my last playthroughs in one of the lair of the shadowbroker conversations. I mean the correspondingly anticlimactic renegade interupt in that situation would have been having my scramble to hit the other mouse button... only to see my character *yawn*.

I would rather not see time limits added to normal conversation trees. It would be really annoying to have to restart a conversation because you were eating a chip. Sure timed conversation responses can be implemented with more consistency than the interupts were. Most of them were cool and easy to get if you were paying attention but some were up for extremely short times and often resulted in immersion breakingly non-urgent seeming actions on the part of your character. A non DLC example for that would be the one or two instances where the the paragon interupt results in your character non-chalantly waving their omni-tool to heal what had appeared to be a VERY slowly dying NPC.

I hope if they're thinking about the idea of "pressure" on the player during conversation and thinking about their interupt system what they're thinking about is how to keep the urgency of the interupt and the resulting action being consistent. Instead of waving an omni-tool over an NPC which otherwise seemed to be heading into the light with all the speed of a glacier they could have had the NPC spasm violently, clutch their heart (wherever that is for some of the odder looking aliens) or otherwise give some sign of needing immediate assistence besides a wheeze or cough. Instead of just waving your tool at them, your character should drop rush to action by say... dropping quickly to the side of the dying character and administering aid. Anything less anti-climactic than waving his/her arm would be nice really. Also, a hug or an eye roll shouldn't be an interupt unless it's an instance of the game making fun of itself in the process - Bioware games do occasionally make fun of themselves or their previous installments and it's usually pretty funny when they do.

skavenhorde said:

No, it's not "real cool" especially when you click on an answer and it is nothing like what you thought it would say.

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I've heard this a lot, but really can't relate to it. After the first few conversations in ME1 I thought the system was really easy to understand and predict. A few times (maybe around 5-10 times) in both games the alternatives were too similar to get a good sense of what each would say. But I just followed what seemed to be a system in the game at these occasions: top answer=good, middle=neutral, bottom=evil and the left ones were information.

I am, however, no fan of timed dialogues at the moment, due to a life where I might be interrupted at any time while playing. It would be okay if I can reach the menu/pause when in conversation.

SveNitoR said:

I've heard this a lot, but really can't relate to it. After the first few conversations in ME1 I thought the system was really easy to understand and predict.

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If I remember correctly for ME1 it was easy to predict because the good answers were on top, neutral in the middle and jerk on the bottom.

I like being able to read my response. It's not really that big a deal for me, but it slightly bothersome to know that 'good' is on top, neutral in the middle and jerk on the bottom. At least mix it up a little

Timed responses however are very annoying and I do not want them in the game. If I'm going for an adrenaline fix I'll play Zombie Driver or some shooter. I do not want twitch like gaming in my freaking dialogue. Does everything have to revolve around how fast you can do something? Even just simply talking to the NPCs?

It's going to freaking suck when I'm 60 and all the games out there are based around how fast I can move

It would also be really cool if they had combos like tap quickly >>^<B to say "good day sir" instead of "your mother". The game also needs more turrets with infinite ammo.

If I was a gambling man, I'd put up a fair bet ME3 will be hailed for "innovating" something already done in Alpha Protocol. Something AP even got butchered for in various reviews/forums.

A massive NOOOOOOOOOOO for timed dialogues. No need, seriously. But if at all, it should be implemented ONLY for really time-critical scenarios.

I hated the timed dialogue in Alpha Protocol

Uh, of all the things to copy from Alpha Protocol only the hacking mini game would be worse...

Amasius said:

Uh, of all the things to copy from Alpha Protocol only the hacking mini game would be worse…

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Good gods don't ever say that out loud, tempting fate is bad.

I wouldn't have minded the timed dialogue in AP so much if the timer had started AFTER the other person finished speaking. There were quite a few times where I didn't even know what I was responding to until half a second before the timer ran out.

Add in responses that didn't mean what I thought they meant and it was quite frustrating most of the time.

They could make it an option and all the timed dialogue fans would be happy with the "stress" in a video game

Hm, first frame narrative, now timed dialogues..
Those bad AP reviews were paid by Bioware!
Anyway, good to see the most innovative RPG of 2010 already having some legacy .

ME already had QTE in those paragon/renegade interrupts, if they implement timed dialogue only in pressing situations where it´d make sense, I´ll welcome it.

Mana Garmr said:

don't ever say that out loud, tempting fate is bad.

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We say here in Germany : "Don't paint the devil on the wall !"

It's a proverb here, and I never completely understood its meaning, but it goes like this.

T e r r i b l e.

I don't want to be pressed. I want to play at my own pace.

I have enough preassure in real life and I don't need 'realism' when I relax at home for couple of hours with a game.