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[Erika T]

Apologies if this has already been discussed but I cannot find a thread. 

I read dialogue in DA2 will be similar to mass effect?  I am not sure how I feel about this - I liked reading the lines and doing real roleplay choosing the one I wanted.. I dont want my character saying thingsn I dont want to say - does this make sense?  can someone please tell me how it will work?  the main reason I love DAO is the dialogues and the stories.. please tell me it wotn change (much?)

[John Epler]

The system is similar to the Mass Effect system, in that there are paraphrases expressing the 'intent' of what you say and then, upon selecting a line, your character speaks the actual line associated with that paraphrase. One of the significant differences, however, is the addition of an 'intent' icon - this tells you what sort of category/delivery you can expect for the line.



Personally, I got to do my first playthrough of the game over the past week and a half, and I haven't really been surprised by anything my character said. The intent icons generally help you avoid situations where you take a far more 'extreme' stance than you expected, and the more 'action' moments are marked clearly enough that I've yet to accidentally stab someone, for example



Of course, your mileage may vary in the finished product, but I feel that the surprise is more in the exact wording this time around, rather than the 'concept' of what you're going to say/do. If that makes sense.

[John Epler]

SammyJB17 wrote...

Thank you Mr.Epler, very nice description. On average, how many options are given? Mass Effect Standard of at least 2 and at most 6?

It's difficult to quantify, actually, because the way conversations are divided is different than in DA:O. Where in DA:O you often had 'information mining' dialogue choices in the main menu (that would lead to other questions, etc.), those are now divided into Investigate hubs, much like ME/ME2.

So I guess this is my way of saying 'not really sure', though I'd say that the amount of dialogue/dialogue choices per conversation feels about the same as an average DA:O conversation. Though again, this is based off my spotty memory of the conversations I played through

[John Epler]

Big Blue Car wrote...

Often when I replayed through A:O conversations, choosing different responses often had no effect at all how the NPC replied, and very rarely changed the course of the conversation at all. Does the DA2 system make the conversations more reactive, or is it still 'choose how you reply' instead of 'choose what you reply with'?

There's always a bit of a tradeoff - the more you let the player respond, the more you have to use the 'how you reply', for no other reason than it can be prohibitvely expensive to add separate content for each player response. In general, though, I think there are more choices in the DA2 dialogues that fall in the second category.

[John Epler]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

JohnEpler wrote...

Of course, your mileage may vary in the finished product, but I feel that the surprise is more in the exact wording this time around, rather than the 'concept' of what you're going to say/do. If that makes sense.

Since it's the "exact wording" that expresses the "concept", no, that doesn't really make sense.

I understand what you're trying to say (since other developers have said much the same thing), but it seems absurd on its face.

Sylvius, I respect your opinion and certainly understand where you're coming from, but this is a debate I have no interest in engaging in. Sorry. I think we just have fundamentally different views of how these sorts of systems can and should work. Which isn't to say you're wrong, but simply that I don't think we're going to agree on any fundamental points.

[David Gaider]

KawaiiKatie wrote...
Ooof, I hope the DA2 wheel a bit more thought-out than that.... I really didn't like how, in ME2, I didn't even have to look at the dialogue choices. All I had to do was click the last option, because it always "evil" and let me rack up those Renegade points. Completely took the sport out of it....

Then again, DA2 isn't supposed to have Player Character "morality".... so maybe I won't have to worry about it?

There are no "morality points" to rack up, no.

The hub you're looking at in the picture is what we call a "personality hub". You get your three basic options, typically, which the game tracks to determine the sort of personality you use most often-- then, in cases when we have the "decision hub" and the options are presented absent tone it (sometimes) presents the line in your dominant tone (so each option like that will have three possible lines in terms of what you actually say, though the intent is still the same in all three). Other options, and investigate lines, are always in a neutral tone only.

The dominant personality will also change your soundset lines in battle, and sometimes will bring up "bonus" options on the wheel.

It should be noted that there aren't always simply three options on the wheel. You can have an investigate hub (accessible on the left hand of the wheel, as in ME), and on the decision hubs you can have up to five options in addition to the investigate (which itself leads to up to five questions).

Ultimately this is the same as in DAO-- where we had six possible options in the list, with investigates taking up those slots along with your other choices. If you look at the DAO options you'll generally find we did it exactly the same way: three basic varieties of dialogue options when "how you say it" was the goal and a variety of "how you do it" when an actual action was being contemplated.

In this case the icons (such as the three personality choices, as well as icons for "combat", "lie", "flirt", etc) are there to help indicate intent-- meaning we can limit the paraphrase to indicate meaning more than tone (making it less blatant than would otherwise be necessary). As John mentioned, one's personal mileage on this is going to vary, as there are trade-offs no matter which style you choose.

[David Gaider]

Upsettingshorts wrote...
I don't think you'll be able to "break" it in that way.

If you pick sarcastic 5 times, and diplomatic 3 times, and angry twice. You're still going to be flagged as generally sarcastic.  I'm guessing, though.

This is correct. It is possible to "switch" your dominant tone, but you'd need to be reasonably consistent in your tone selection. Also, the more times you switch the greater the "buffer"... as in the greater the amount that you'd need to come over the total of your former personality in order to switch it. That's to prevent the "accidental schizophrenic" situation if you happen to be straddling the border between two or more personalities.

My suggestion would be to pick the responses that make more sense for your character and let the game take care of the rest. There's no reason to reverse-engineer a particular tone, after all, as the effect is purely aesthetic as opposed to gameplay-oriented... but I suppose some people can't help metagaming. Not much we can do about that, I'm afraid.

Filament wrote...
I have to wonder how I diplomatically tell someone I'm going to cut them to pieces.

I just hope it's not like that "innocent idealist" in NWN, "I didn't want to do this, but--!" *squeakiest voice imaginable*

In battle, a diplomatic character is more concerned about being careful, keeping fellow party members intact and otherwise getting through the battle as efficiently as possible.

Modifié par David Gaider, 02 février 2011 - 03:41 .

[David Gaider]

silentassassin264 wrote...
Well how in the world are you sarcastic in battle?  "Pay no attention to my dagger between your ribs."?

The tone is not "sarcastic" -- that's a word that gets tossed around here, but it's not one we use. We use Humorous or Charming, and in battle it would result in funny quips.

[David Gaider]

Bryy_Miller wrote...
You are not forced into a personality. Just like IRL, you can alter your personality for different events. You don't get pigeonholed into one set of dialogue just because you pick 'funny' for one conversation. It's gradual, not instant.

Right. There are many instances throughout the game where you get to select the tone of your response-- it's as common as in DAO, if not more so. The only time a tone would be provided for you is when you select an action response... and even then, it's only if we think it will have impact.

It does alter your combat shouts, of course-- or, I should say, it provides new ones in addition to your "regular" shouts. The idea is that your tone is responding to the choices you're making in the regular game. The alternative, of course, would simply to have a single and unchanging soundset and to provide all action responses in dialogue in the neutral tone. That's what we did in DAO, after all, and it's really the only other option-- the idea that someone could dynamically pick their tone for every situation as well as combat would be pretty unworkable.

[David Gaider]

mr_luga wrote...
Well I woudnt want my agressive tone to be carried over in an action response if I talk to people I want to sound kind to, like a woman, or an important person, I would groan if I had a snarky tone talking to like, a king. That we made to have that I just dont like.

Having an aggressive tone doesn't necessarily mean you would tell off the king, however.

In regular conversation with him, you'd have the personality hub as I described. You could speak to him however you wish. If an action hub came up, and one of the actions you selected have tone variants, that wouldn't default to telling him off unless that's what the intent of the paraphrase indicated-- aggressive tone doesn't mean "tell someone off no matter what the paraphrase indicates", it might result in simply being very blunt and direct. It wouldn't turn an "I agree" option into "you might have a point, you royal ****'.

I guess, in that, you'll have to trust that what we write is going to make sense. Or not, I suppose.

[David Gaider]

Wulfram wrote...
Or not have a combat soundset at all.

Sorry, but I've never heard one which isn't annoying after about two combats

Not having a soundset at all would mean you only grunt during combat. I'm not sure that's an improvement.

Xewaka wrote...
Besides, it is the difference between gamer intent and game result is what I'm trying to illustrate. The wheel does not resolve the alleged "surprise Zevran romance" (Which baffles me, as the text to stop Zevran shameless flirting is there and crystal clear) by any measure. It arguably makes the problem worse.

It's not the dialogue wheel which resolves it, it's the icon.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, we did have a "'sup" option on the wheel or its equivalent. If, when it was highlighted, the romance icon also appeared in the center of the dialogue wheel could you claim to be surprised by the resulting line?

Let's also assume, for the sake of this argument, that not every romance needs to be written like Jacob's.

Modifié par David Gaider, 02 février 2011 - 03:20 .

[David Gaider]

nightcobra8928 wrote...
like you said that an "agressive" character might be blunt and to the point in certain dialogue choices, are the 3 different personality tones reflected in animations/mannerisms as well apart from voice acting? 

We set facial expressions on the player lines, if that's what you mean. There's a limited amount we can do in combination with the systemic lip-synching that occurs (trying to use emotions to change the shape of a mouth that is already working to emulate the sounds being spoken ends up with some very strange combinations), but things like eyes widening/narrowing, movement of the eyebrows, things of that sort can let the PC occasionally look like something other than a Tranquil.

[David Gaider]

Erinpedz wrote...
Although with his line about combat shouts.. my one burning urgent question is.. please tell me the get off my back line has gone byebyes???

We're not re-using soundsets, so yes-- you won't hear that line again.

And there's no acknowledgement shout at all for when you click on a party member anyhow. We got rid of those as well as the acknowledgement of assigned commands.

[David Gaider]

nightcobra8928 wrote...
thanks and that's good to know but i was more talking about body movement in general as i think that it can help to enhance the tone/personality of the character.

Yes, we can and do add animations to the player as with any other character. It depends on what the player is supposed to be doing, but they have the same "twitches" during regular conversation as anyone else.

[David Gaider]

Dr. wonderful wrote...
 Liking Drinking, eating or sitting down?

Because I can't remember for the life of me, If my warden ever sat down in DA: O

How much the player does during a conversation really depends on how important the conversation is (and thus how much love the cinematic designers have given it). For an important conversation, yes, you'll see the PC sitting down, moving around, interacting with whomever they're talking to, etc. I was playing through a conversation today, in fact, where both the player and Fenris were talking while seated.