9 réponses à ce sujet

[jillabender]

I've just been reading a debate in the DA3 forums about the tone and paraphrase system in DA2, and whether the tone icons make the outcomes of interactions too predictable, taking away an element of challenge and risk, and I thought I'd continue the discussion here.

I agree with Fast Jimmy that DA2's dialogue system didn't, in general, offer conversations where the player, in order to obtain a particular outcome from a conversation, needs to think carefully to deduce which option is most likely to lead to the player or player character's desired result.

Of course, whether one sees that as a problem depends on how much one enjoys approaching conversations in a story-based game as a puzzle for the player to solve. Personally, I enjoy conversations in games that challenge me to think carefully about what a given character wants or fears in order to deduce which option will lead to a particular outcome. I love the way Deus X:HR does this, for example.

However, with complete respect to those who want to see conversations in Dragon Age feature a stronger element of unpredictability and challenge, I agree with those who've said it's not entirely fair to characterize DA2's tone and paraphrase system as dramatically less challenging and more given to easy predictability than DA:O's.

I admit that I prefer DA:O's dialogue system to DA2's, for a variety of reasons, and I still play DA:O frequently, but I have to agree with In Exile that DA:O very rarely offered conversations that were truly puzzles and that made it challenging to discern which dialogue choice would lead to a particular result.

Personally, I'm okay with that, because I don't think that risk and unpredictability, in the sense of not knowing as the player which dialogue option will get my character what he or she wants, are necessarily the most important things when it comes to making dialogue a rewarding experience in an RPG. For me personally, most of the reward when choosing dialogue in a BioWare RPG comes from being able to make choices that say something interesting about my character.

All that being said, one of my favourite moments in DA:O is the Landsmeet, and a large part of the tension of that scene when I played it for the first time came from the fact that it wasn't immediately obvious which dialogue choices would convince the nobles to turn against Loghain.

Recognizing the most effective arguments to sway the Landsmeet requires giving some thought to what's most important to the audience of nobles, and which claims the player character has evidence for. And that makes it a rewarding challenge, as well as a meaningful opportunity to portray a character who's astute enough to recognize which arguments will best help his or her case, or one who's unable to do that because he or she is too naïve or hot-headed.

In short, I don't think that offering conversations that are challenging puzzles for the player to solve has ever necessarily been something that BioWare have focused on, but I do agree that it can add a lot of dramatic tension in certain situations when both the player and the character need to think carefully to deduce which choice will lead to "X."

Modifié par jillabender, 04 avril 2013 - 03:47 .

[Fortlowe]

I am all for a deeper, more challenging, more nuanced, and finely branching dialogue system. I still support the addition of *raises flame shield* a timer for some of the more dramatic and intense dialogue scenes. I'd welcome some kind of *raises secondary flame shield* interrupt or action input during conversations to break up the talking heads grope we often get in dialogue driven games.

My point concerning a timer is two fold: First it forces the player to be in the moment. If my warning isn't fast enough or my plea isn't urgent enough, my character has to deal with the consequences of hesitating. Also there is the option of just letting the timer run out. What if you don't want to warn them, or you don't want to plea your case. Silence will speak volumes, and it plays out just so.

So far as the interrupts, well I don't know if they should be set on some polarized scale like in ME, but having and interactive conversation where the participants are doing more than just standing around in gore having a chat couldn't be the worse thing in the world could it? Imagine finishing up a fight and the rather sketchy looking newcomer that happened to be on your side in this fight is kneeling down looting a corpse while the two of you work out whether or not s/he is to be trusted. All of a sudden one of the guys you thought was dead gets up and has throwing knife. You can interrupt here and save the new guy. Or not, and the new guy catches a dagger in the shoulder. The interrupt doesn't necessarily have to happen, but if it does the new guy will remember it. Whether that is for good or ill could come back to reward or curse the PC later down the line.

[jillabender]

Fortlowe wrote...

I am all for a deeper, more challenging, more nuanced, and finely branching dialogue system. I still support the addition of *raises flame shield* a timer for some of the more dramatic and intense dialogue scenes. I'd welcome some kind of *raises secondary flame shield* interrupt or action input during conversations to break up the talking heads grope we often get in dialogue driven games.

My point concerning a timer is two fold: First it forces the player to be in the moment. If my warning isn't fast enough or my plea isn't urgent enough, my character has to deal with the consequences of hesitating. Also there is the option of just letting the timer run out. What if you don't want to warn them, or you don't want to plea your case. Silence will speak volumes, and it plays out just so.

So far as the interrupts, well I don't know if they should be set on some polarized scale like in ME, but having and interactive conversation where the participants are doing more than just standing around in gore having a chat couldn't be the worse thing in the world could it? Imagine finishing up a fight and the rather sketchy looking newcomer that happened to be on your side in this fight is kneeling down looting a corpse while the two of you work out whether or not s/he is to be trusted. All of a sudden one of the guys you thought was dead gets up and has throwing knife. You can interrupt here and save the new guy. Or not, and the new guy catches a dagger in the shoulder. The interrupt doesn't necessarily have to happen, but if it does the new guy will remember it. Whether that is for good or ill could come back to reward or curse the PC later down the line.

The addition of a timer and interrupts does sound like it could do a lot to make dialogue a more active and dynamic experience. I think it's an exciting idea, because it could make for a more seamless integration of story and gameplay. It would be quite a departure for Dragon Age, but it would be cool to see - whether in Dragon Age or in other games. (I should try Alpha Protocol some time! It sounds like a game with a really cool dialogue system that makes good use of a timer.)

Modifié par jillabender, 04 avril 2013 - 05:57 .

[dunstan1993]

I'm going to try and post something that adds to this discussion, formulating sentences to illustrate my opinion is not my speciality however haha.
I'll use the Landsmeet (Hypothetically in DA2) as an example. I think the same in-depth, variation of dialogue choices could still be accomplished with the dialogue wheel.
By using some of these bad boys:

And to accompany them maybe a button you can hold or toggle while hovering over one to get a more in depth discription of what you're going to say/do. Pretty much just use the dialouge options that aren't based on an emotional response to the situation for making the actual decisions and convincing the Nobles (Diplomacy, lolz and intimidation would be welcome for sticking it to Loghain, however).

This isn't an my own idea, I remember taking part in a discussion like this about a year ago and a similar idea was brought up which seemed quite popular.
Oh yeah, timed decisions and interupts would be a big gamble, but I'm game. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

Timed decisions and interrupts are, I think, the devil. They can't help but force the player to break character, particularly if the character's mode of thought is substantially different from the player's mode of thought.

In DAO, I routinely took a minute or more to consider which dialogue option to select in order to ensure that I knew exactly what my character meant by it. Because his intent colour his interpretation of any response, and the response happens right away as soon as I select something, so I needed to be ready for it.

A timed event, like the ME2 interrupts, prevents me from doing that. Times events can only work if the player is essentially playing with a self-insert, where the character thinks like the player does, and has broadly similar opinions and goals. An in-the-moment reaction, which is what timed dialogue seems to be trying to generate, can only cause the player the respond rather than having his character do it.

An interrupt system without a timer, however, would be welcome. Allowing us to pause the scene to consider whether we would like to interrupt it would grant us all the nuance and interactivity of an interrupt system, without the character-breaking timer.

Ideally, I'd like any interrupt system to allow me to pause the scene, and then examine the details of that specific interrupt action. Then, if I decide that interrupt action isn't appropriate for my character, I can just back out of it as if I hadn't triggered the interrupt at all.

But never should the player be forced to make a complicated decision in real time. The decision to pause or not to pause is the maximum acceptable real-time complexity.

[Fortlowe]

You say 'never should', but that's really just an opinion, not a fact. I've seen a timer work. Millions of people saw a timer be used well in TWD game. The timer doesn't break your character. It tests your understanding of that character. It makes you sympathize with your characters motivations more completely.

[Sylvius the Mad]

What if I don't sympathise with my character? What if my character is vastly and weirdly different from me?

What the timer does is prevent me from designing a character who is so different from me that it is difficult to understand how he thinks. Instead, the timer promotes self-inserts.

[Fortlowe]

Perhaps sympathy is the wrong word. Empathy then. Even if you have in mind a character that is very different from yourself, you still have an idea of the character's mindset. It's your character afterall. The timer can't break them. But you could. The timer just makes you commit to the character's mindset. Which I think enriches the experience, not detracts from it.

Personally, I enjoy self inserts. It's fantasy afterall.

[Sylvius the Mad]

By no means am I suggesting the game shouldn't allow self-inserts. In fact, that's a good measure of a game in many respects. Since players can differ wildly from each other, a game that allows self-inserts is a game that allows a wide variety of protagonist personalities.

But, a timer, to some degree, forces self-inserts, and that's no better than forbidding them. Either way, you're forcing all players to play the game the same way. As such, if there are any dialogue timers, they should be optional (like plot helpers).

For example, I think about everything very logically. I use deduction almost exclusively as a mode of reasoning. My standard of evidence for drawing conclusions is extremely high. This is how I think about things.

But if my character is different, what then? My natural mode of thought is to draw conclusions only when logically required. But if my character draws conclusions under other circumstances, that will be unnatural for me. As such, I cannot do that on a clock without risking an error - I might make a decision that breaks my character, even without intending to do so.

And even this ignores the possibility of my accidentally clicking the wrong option in haste. My character should not say something out of character simply because I couldn't work my mouse fast enough.  That wouldn't make any sense in the game world at all.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 05 avril 2013 - 01:30 .

[Fast Jimmy]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

And even this ignores the possibility of my accidentally clicking the wrong option in haste. My character should not say something out of character simply because I couldn't work my mouse fast enough.  That wouldn't make any sense in the game world at all.

And this is a key point. If speed is a factor, then choosing the wrong action/dialogue becomes just as easy as if the system is unclear of what you are choosing in the first place. You wind up expressing the wrong intent/expression because of the way the system is designed, not because it is what your character would say.

I believe there are ways to incorporate more interactivity and a sense of engagement without using timers that can create their own headaches and role-playing challenges.