Allan Schumacher wrote...
Except, if we accept that your logical assumptions of how frequently people are addressed by name are true, it'd be just as unnatural for the PC to speak character names, and therefore the PC should also not speak NPC names.
I didn't claim that people never speak names - just that they do it far less frequently than we see in these games.
But in those circumstances where camera tricks are not sufficient to signal whom to speaker is addressing (or to whom he is referring), we have a recourse. When NPCs address the PC, we can use body language. When the PC addresses NPCs, we can voice the name. When NPCs address each other, we can use whichever best suits the scene.
But since this won't be a radical and frequent departure between PC and NPC behaviour, it shouldn't be as jarring as people find it now when the names are routinely voiced, but the PC name isn't because the writers didn't know it.
As such, a (presumably) more natural way of directing this should be done. You gave an example of physically touching the individual, which would work. And we could do this for the PC as well.
I'm not a fan of having the PC act without explicit player input.
In other words, the ideal natural solution is to not voice people (something irrelevant to whether or not names are used - I have a sneaking suspicion that you have little issue if names are used when it's a name of your choosing however, and you have fabricated a position in the hopes of getting something that you want), and to not use their names.
My two positions here are complementary, but I do come by both honestly. I would like to be able to choose my character's name, and I think names are used too often in dialogue.
NWN shows us this quite well. The text dialogue we written in the traditional way, with extensive use of character names. But since some of NWN's lines are voiced, those lines needed to be rewritten to avoid using character names. As a result, we got to see, side-by-side, dialogue with character names and dialogue without character names. And dialogue without names worked better (I think).
Let's assume for the moment that BioWare has a receptionist (maybe they do - I have no idea). Let's further assume that you walk past this receptionist when you arrive at work each morning. When you greet him, do you say, "Good morning," or do you say, "Good morning, Steve." Where these no one else in the room, and no one else to whom you could be speaking, do you use people's names to address them?
Though you've already conceded that name use is perfectly valid when addressing NPCs.
It's valid, in moderation. The moderation is important, because it minimises the differences between PC and NPC behaviour.
If the game had no voice, do you still have reservations with the player name you chose being addressed on a consistent basis?
Unvoiced games tend not to have access to the cinematic tools I've suggested be used in place of character names.
But assuming they did, I still think the names would be unnecessary, but given how I read they likely wouldn't bother me as much.
As an anecdote, I typically use the person's name when I am saying hello to them, unless they are in a group to which I use a plural term like "guys."
This answers my previous question. It also strikes me as odd behaviour, but if other people think it's not unusual then perhaps I'm simply atypical in how I use names (or want them used).
I ask this because I am having a hard time convincing myself that you didn't fabricate a position simply because you could then use it as an argument against a position you'd be against.
My objective here is clearly to get you guys to let us name our own character. I think I'm being pretty open about that.
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