406 réponses à ce sujet

[Firky]

D'Oh. I always miss DG due to living on the other side of the world and, you know, sleeping. (Allan, on the other hand, doesn't seem to sleep at all. )

 

Good clarification, though.

 

My question would be to do with process. (It's OK, I don't expect an answer. It's probably irrelevant to pretty much everyone anyway.)

 

I'm just interested in whether, assuming the conversation editor is similar to DA:O, there is a set "template" for each of the three kinds of conversation input or whether writers just keep the three models in mind. I think the difference would imply some assumptions about the player I'd be interested in.

[In Exile]

My English major is showing. (It hides behind the History one at times.)

 

Yes, it's important to understand that the clarity of the written word (as found in books) is often shown with action, with description of body language, with adverbs (but only sparingly), and italics/bolding. Without those crucial means of conveying meaning, words will inevitably be inadequate to portray intent in every given situation.

 

Absolutely. The dialogue system has to - as a fundamental design aim - give information to the player about how the line will be delivered by the protagonist. Misunderstandings, of course, are always possible - but then we need actual unique reactions to that as well. Not everyone blythely stands by as their meaning is twisted and the conversation goes entirely off rails. 

 

 

I know what pragmatics are. However, as I also know linguistics, we should be clear that tonal indicators are only clarifying paralinguistic features, not prosodic ones.

 

IOW, the tonal marker might suggest whether we are about to say something in a laughing or starkly serious manner (but we won't know exactly what that is, only have the "gist" in the paraphrase) but certainly we have no clue what words will be stressed or emphasized, as we're not seeing them.

 

My point is, yes, as I keep noting, it's true one system abandons one kind of ambiguity, but may create others.

 

I've said this several times, and will say it again, I'm not against a voiced protagonist, I'm not against the wheel, I am FOR seeing the words we will say (as to me this is more important for reduction of ambiguity than knowing tone) as well as the tone they will be conveyed in, and I'd love any system that does it, even if it uses a wheel UI interface and results in the protagonist speaking (in fact, I do enjoy a non-silent protagonist as much as anyone else.)

 

When you say "tonal indicators", I'm going to assume you mean that the DA2 wheel UI. I agree with you there. Like I said at the opening of my post: I'm not trying to wade into a debate about which UI is better, or whether there should be VO. Just about what the limits in writing is going to be. 

 

I will say, however, that the VO itself serves the role of prosodic indicators, in the sense that the actual cadence and style of the VO is something you can pick up on, so you can know how the PC will deliver a line that is (for example) diplomatic vs. combative. 

 

I agree with you that seeing the full, literal content of the line is better from the POV of knowing what will be said. I'm not against having information. My objection to silent PCs is the lack of information. 

 

 

True, we do know the actual spoken words. Knowing the actual spoken words is not enough to convey what line the NPCs will hear, though. Neither system can convey that with 100% accuracy for all players.

 

Though what the NPCs hear is not relevant to all players. 

Totally. But IMO, misunderstands are totally fine as long as we can react to them. If I accidentally offend someone, I'm going to apologize. But in DA:O/DA:I, that's impossible. 

[In Exile]

 

How would a job interview go if the only thing you could convey to the interviewer is that you are happy, sad, or angry? Probably not very well.

 

I don't like roleplaying a mime, if my character is not, in fact, a mime.

 

I've recently learned that some people actually think up a complete (or near complete) thought before they say something. As bizarre as this notion is for me, I've accepted that this is something that people do. 

 

Well, in this case, the tone and gist is all that I have in my head before I open my mouth. I know how I want to say something, and I have an idea of how I want to say it, and then I just... do it. It's automatic. It's like catching a ball. 

So there being a disconnect between the "idea" of speech in my head and the actual words that come out seems pretty natural to me. In fact, I think it's weird to say exactly what you mean and think in complete and discrete sentences. But YMMV obviously. 

[tmp7704]

games like Alpha Protocol (which was even more condensed than anything BioWare has done, but is probably my personal favourite conversation system in any game)

Ugh, for me Alpha Protocol was probably the game which somehow managed to create the worst and possibly most confusing conversation system ever ;/

But on the other hand, Telltale's The Wolf Among Us i'm playing currently took that system, and miraculously got it right, to the point where I am enjoying it greatly.

[CybAnt1]

 

For people such as myself, when the wheel first came in in Mass Effect (before I started working at BioWare), is that I was already picking dialogue options based on their tone even when it was full text.

 

If the situation was cordial and I appreciated the person talking, I picked the lines that came across as friendly.  If I was mad, I picked the lines that came across as angry/hostile.  The words used were actually not relevant beyond helping me determine the nature of my response.  I was always bound by the restriction of saying what the game designers allowed me to say, and bound by any inferred sarcasm that they implicitly put into the line. (1)

 

Speaking personally, what I like about the dialogue wheel is that I actually watch my character speak and say and do stuff.  Obviously this doesn't work as well if a player wishes much stronger control over the specifics of the response, but that I can actually enjoy seeing the responses play out.  With a full line of dialogue, I find I get stuff like this less often, and I do enjoy that sort of stuff.  I like watching the scene play out, which is also something that I do less of with full written responses. 

 

In fact, for games like Alpha Protocol (which was even more condensed than anything BioWare has done, but is probably my personal favourite conversation system in any game) and Mass Effect, I often don't even play with subtitles on because I prefer to watch the scene play out.

 

I feel the main reason I prefer this is because I go into a PC game with the understanding that the conversations will innately not be able to precisely represent my character.  I think it may also be because many of the earlier RPGs I played, like the Ultima games, were based exclusively on key words so I had already had no reservations having no control over the precise words I used, but I could from time to time pick keywords that displayed a particular intent. (2)

 

Having said that, I do understand your perspective.  I imagine the amount of control we're willing to give up differs quite a bit, just as I feel the amount of control we feel we're ever actually provided probably doesn't line up.  I'm not sure if the positions are reconcilable, however.  Sometimes the lines the player character can speak get very, very long (an advantage our current system provides).  They also sometimes, structurally, get spread out over several lines which provides some additional challenges to simply showing the full line than simply clicking a button that says "show full line."

 

In general I see pros and cons to either, and in both cases neither is really a significant enough yay or nay over the other.  If you were to force me to choose, however, I do like the dialogue wheel system more than full lines of dialogue.  I base this more on games I played not as a developer, so I'm omitting DA2 and DAI from this consideration, but included Alpha Protocol and the Mass Effect games, as well as Human Revolution and so forth. (3)

 

(1) Well, yes, Allan, I definitely agree -- you can read for tone. In fact, I think it's a good skill for dealing with any piece of literature. And I surely agree it is possible to determine the tone of sentences without tone indicators.

 

"Alistair, you are a sad pathetic, excuse of a man, always afraid to face your life's responsibilities!" 

"Alistair, you need to stop being so hard on yourself, and realize it's OK to accept your fears." 

 

I don't think I need a Diplomatic tone marker to figure out the diplomatic sentence from the angry one -- do I? 

 

But, as you just said, you READ to figure out which sentence was friendly, and then picked the friendly sentence, because it was friendly. Or the angry sentence, to decide if it was angry. What that of course makes players do is have to read dialogue and think about their choices, even if it is only to figure out which sentence will be perceived as angry and which one will be perceived as friendly. 

 

The point is, once you signal to the player "this is the friendly response" then I agree they have to do almost no thinking at all. (Well, at least if their approach to giving dialogue responses is similar to yours.) In fact, if you do as some people want and make sure that the friendly response is always in the same position on the wheel, they don't even have to think that much. All they have to think is "pick upper right". "Pick upper right". 

 

Which means, they have to do hardly any thinking at all. And as you may have noted, I really prefer to do more thinking in games, not less. 

 

(2) I may disagree with Sylvius on this, but no I was not a fan of the keyword system of the Ultimas. In fact, I really only felt a satisfying dialogue system when I first started playing certain CRPG games in the 90s, including many made by Bioware. 

 

I was a big fan of the dialogue system in BG2 (made by Bioware), NWN1 (made by Bioware), KOTOR1 (made by Bioware), and DA:O (made by Bioware), though I also have to give props to the system in Planescape Torment and Fallout, though those were not made by Bioware. (Plus NWN2, and KOTOR2, of course, but likewise.)

 

Now, please note, I'm not saying Bioware shouldn't innovate, nor that all innovations in the dialogue area have not been good, but I do have to confess I got the taste for dialogue selection I did in many cases from Bioware games, and I also have to confess I never got the idea why, exactly, it was necessary to reinvent the wheel. So to speak. Now I recognize all the games I'm talking about had an unvoiced protagonist. That said, it's not clear that a voiced protagonist had to wind us up where we are now, although we are here. 

 

(3) I recognize there are technical and other limits on displaying full text. If the PC is about to say a monologue that's 12 sentences long, no the player doesn't have to read it all as text beforehand before the character starts speaking. That said, you cited Deus Ex: Human Revolution as a game you liked, and while I haven't played it, Ieldra has pointed to DX:HR as a model for the DA dialogue system, since after all, DX:HR will show a portion (say, the first line, or around 10-25%) of what the character is about to say, if you hover over the paraphrase line, though not always the whole thing. 

 

So -- you liked it. Why not then, doesn't Bioware do things this way? Not the whole text, but a small portion of the text -- but more than just a 5-word paraphrase. At least an opening 1 or 2 sentences. And you don't have to see it in DX:HR, but if you turn on the option, it can appear as an optional tooltip. 

 

 

 

That's what the Deus Ex: Human Revolution system offers. You say you like what Human Revolution does as a model. So why not do it? 

[CybAnt1]

So there being a disconnect between the "idea" of speech in my head and the actual words that come out seems pretty natural to me. In fact, I think it's weird to say exactly what you mean and think in complete and discrete sentences. But YMMV obviously. 

 

I know you like to operate more on instinct. I don't. Hence, why our taste toward game aspects/elements/features differ, particularly when it comes to the two main areas of debate, dialogue and combat. You want combat that's more visceral and instinctual, I don't. You want dialogue that is more quick and instinctual, I want my character to say what I formulate in my mind is the best possible response to dialogue, based, of course, on what the writers are willing to offer me (that goes without saying), and that I'm trying to model in my mind how another character I am inhabiting would make decisions, not how I would. (*)

 

There isn't much else to say. 

 

(*) That said, I find I often am not good at avoiding self-insert into my characters, particularly when it seems they would behave less morally than I would, in the same situation. 

[CybAnt1]

I repeat: DX:HR utilizes a dialogue wheel, has a voiced protagonist.

 

 

Why not copy this approach? Personally, like Ieldra, I would like it a lot.

 

I haven't yet played this game (though I have others in the series), so for the benefit of others like myself, I'll show it in action. Obviously, a video will show this better than a still image. Note that this also shows off how a cybernetic conversation augmentation system available to the protag augments existing dialogue (and I'm not asking for anything like that). Most of this is auto-dialogue, but you can see how the system comes into play at around 2:19, 3:13, 4:16, and 5:17. 

 

 

... it has a wheel, it has a voiced protagonist, AND it shows substantial amounts of text (more than a 3-5 word paraphrase) to the player. 

 

Is this not what can be called the win/win? You like it - I like it. So do it ...

[Darth Krytie]

I repeat: DX:HR utilizes a dialogue wheel, has a voiced protagonist.

 

 

Why not copy this approach? Personally, like Ieldra, I would like it a lot.

 

I haven't yet played this game (though I have others in the series), so for the benefit of others like myself, I'll show it in action. Obviously, a video will show this better than a still image. Note that this also shows off how a cybernetic conversation augmentation system available to the protag augments existing dialogue (and I'm not asking for anything like that). 

 

 

I wouldn't necessarily oppose it, as long as the font was readable. I had the hardest time with the 'hint' font on Dragon Age 2. Not the dialogue wheel, but the stuff they threw on the top of the loading screens. Couldn't read it for the life of me. My eye sight's not that great, and the contrast between the font and the background wasn't sufficient and the lettering was too small.

[AlanC9]

I'd personally find that a bit annoying compared to the current system. Obviously this is a nonissue if there's a toggle, though.

[CybAnt1]

And I'd find it an excellent augmentation to the current system. Ahh, the joys of being different people. 

 

But yes, it should be toggle-able for the people it annoyed, like you, or Bio game testers. 

 

Oddly, it doesn't seem to be annoying DX:HR players. (Well, at least not in anyway that I can find detectable as a "hue and cry" over it on the internet.) That said, I think in DX:HR, it is an option. 

 

I realize it could lead to puppy death. I'm willing to take the risk. 

[AlanC9]

I wouldn't bother posting about it on a DX:HR board myself. It's a low-grade annoyance, nothing more.

 

Edit: assuming we're typical of people within our respective camps, this means that it's probably efficient to do it your way if there's anything like parity in the respective numbers.

[Allan Schumacher]

(1) Well, yes, Allan, I definitely agree -- you can read for tone. In fact, I think it's a good skill for dealing with any piece of literature. And I surely agree it is possible to determine the tone of sentences without tone indicators.

 

"Alistair, you are a sad pathetic, excuse of a man, always afraid to face your life's responsibilities!" 

"Alistair, you need to stop being so hard on yourself, and realize it's OK to accept your fears." 

 

I don't think I need a Diplomatic tone marker to figure out the diplomatic sentence from the angry one -- do I? 

 

But, as you just said, you READ to figure out which sentence was friendly, and then picked the friendly sentence, because it was friendly. Or the angry sentence, to decide if it was angry. What that of course makes players do is have to read dialogue and think about their choices, even if it is only to figure out which sentence will be perceived as angry and which one will be perceived as friendly. 

 

The point is, once you signal to the player "this is the friendly response" then I agree they have to do almost no thinking at all. (Well, at least if their approach to giving dialogue responses is similar to yours.) In fact, if you do as some people want and make sure that the friendly response is always in the same position on the wheel, they don't even have to think that much. All they have to think is "pick upper right". "Pick upper right". 

 

Which means, they have to do hardly any thinking at all. And as you may have noted, I really prefer to do more thinking in games, not less.

 

I'm not sure it required much "thinking" about my choice.  At least not in any meaningfully interesting way.  I think I could argue that it prevents a barrier since if I am trying to decipher which response is appropriate for how to respond, I'm not sure if that's the type of thinking that is necessarily considered positive.  For instance, Mass Effect 3's Rannoch scene provided two choices that I spent a lot of time thinking about, but I was thinking about which choice to make, as opposed to thinking "what exactly do each of these choices represent?"  Perhaps ironically, I think that that's the type of stuff that I fight with, akin to how you fight with the idea of "I didn't want my player to say specifically that."

 

That's not that I don't like thinking in my games at all.  During conversations, especially when the stakes are high, I'd qualify my engagement as pretty high and I'm constantly thinking and evaluating what the best course of action would be.  Sometimes tone is a game in and of itself, as some characters can respond to lines in a particular way.

 

 

As for the tone marker, to be honest it'd still come in handy even with full lines.  I've picked lines that I read sarcastically, but the dialogue plays out as though it was done differently.

 

 

 

(2) I may disagree with Sylvius on this, but no I was not a fan of the keyword system of the Ultimas. In fact, I really only felt a satisfying dialogue system when I first started playing certain CRPG games in the 90s, including many made by Bioware. 

 

I was a big fan of the dialogue system in BG2 (made by Bioware), NWN1 (made by Bioware), KOTOR1 (made by Bioware), and DA:O (made by Bioware), though I also have to give props to the system in Planescape Torment and Fallout, though those were not made by Bioware. (Plus NWN2, and KOTOR2, of course, but likewise.)

 

Now, please note, I'm not saying Bioware shouldn't innovate, nor that all innovations in the dialogue area have not been good, but I do have to confess I got the taste for dialogue selection I did in many cases from Bioware games, and I also have to confess I never got the idea why, exactly, it was necessary to reinvent the wheel. So to speak. Now I recognize all the games I'm talking about had an unvoiced protagonist. That said, it's not clear that a voiced protagonist had to wind us up where we are now, although we are here.

 

I saw it as the continued extension of the push to a more cinematic flair.  I remember thinking "It'd be cool if all the lines were voiced" in BG2.  Then I remember thinking "it'd be cool if the player was also voiced" with KOTOR.  There are issues that I know I have once the protagonist is voiced, often relating to subvocalization.

 

One of the reasons I don't play with subtitles on is because I will read the subtitles before the line is delivered.  Mentally, I am now waiting for the line to delivered, when I've already heard and experienced the line as I read it.  This actually is a negative for me, because now I'm waiting... but perhaps cannot skip because the actions of the PC may be relevant to what is going on.  So I turn the subtitles off (I actually have gotten better at reading along with subtitles when they're on, but then I am reading the subtitles, not the activity as it's going on).  Presenting me with a full line of dialogue prior to speaking it places a stronger cognitive strain on me as I watch the dialogue play out while already knowing what is going to be said.

 

I mentioned Deus Ex Human Revolution, but not for the reasons that you like it.  When I say I like what DEHR does, I'm not referring to the inclusion of the full lines of dialogue.  It could not exist and I'd be okay with it.  So I think it's disingenuous to point out that because I like DEHR (and cite it as an example), to twist it into evidently being support for a system that would display both.  Almost frustratingly so, though perhaps also because you're not the first person to do so.  (Aside: I mentioned the game - I don't think it comes across as positively as you may intend for it to by explaining to me a system and feature I'm already aware of....  If it worked for people then I am happy for them.  It's not a huge deal for myself)

 

It also lacks context (I recommend playing the game, both because it's quality and because it might help), because while Deus Ex's conversations (the "conversation challenges in particular") are very interesting, but they're also not nearly as reactive as we try to make ours.

 

So while we may have 3 or 4 line entries that all belong to the same speaker in our dialogue, by breaking the lines up we provide various entry/exit points for those lines.  Imagine the conversation editor has something like this (all lines spoken by the player character... the bulleted lines represent lines that are determined based upon the player character's race.

 

"You dare to question my background...."

• Growing up in Orzammar was not without challenges
• You try growing up in a cutoff alienage where people think you're a freak
• Imagine living in a place where those that claim to protect you can cut you off from your very nature
• I'm a Cousland! You best pay me the respect my family deserves!

 

There's no situation like this in Deus Ex.  The conversation lines that are given to you at any particular point of the conversation are always the same, and don't really react to choices the player makes barring some situations where an extra option plays out because Jensen has some extra information/context (which is still a nice thing in the game).

 

In order to replicate the "full dialogue line" in Deus Ex's style, we'd either have to have the system read ahead of the current dialogue lines (this isn't without risk*) and pieces together the lines into a single entry for the player to now see.  Since our conversations can branch during these, the system is more complicated than simply taking the line as it is, or taking a fixed/predictable subset of the line as Human Revolution does.  Is it worth the effort?  I'm sure you think so.  But keep in mind that people that worked on the old BG games that did what you prefer are still key stakeholders in our current games.

 

Mark Darrah was the programming lead for Baldur's Gate 2, Mike Laidlaw was a writer for Jade Empire, and Gaider has been around since BG2 as well, while Casey Hudson was the guy behind KOTOR that then made Mass Effect.  I think if you piece together BioWare's history of games, the emphasis has always been on the game's narrative and that the presentation of that narrative has gotten increasingly cinematic as technology allowed for it.  So it's not like these decisions aren't made without any acknowledgements of how the old way of doing it once was.

 

 

 

* The DAI conversation system does do some amount of preloading for performance reasons, but only for NPC lines since those lines are predictable, and only if there are no conditions on the line.  But it still has risks because, for example, the first implementation of this had the read ahead inadvertently treat the lines as being reach in game... so conversation lines were firing the scripts attached to them before they should.  This is also why the system doesn't preload past conditioned lines, because it's possible the condition may be influenced by the preceding line.  Even then, DAI's system is a preload that only refers to caching lines for performance reason.  The game doesn't actually "know" what lines are about to be said in any meaningful way... only that "DataString ##### is now at memory address 0x########"

[CybAnt1]

Mark Darrah was the programming lead for Baldur's Gate 2, Mike Laidlaw was a writer for Jade Empire, and Gaider has been around since BG2 as well, while Casey Hudson was the guy behind KOTOR that then made Mass Effect.  I think if you piece together BioWare's history of games, the emphasis has always been on the game's narrative and that the presentation of that narrative has gotten increasingly cinematic as technology allowed for it.  So it's not like these decisions aren't made without any acknowledgements of how the old way of doing it once was.

 

Well, Allan, to clarify one point, I know you have played DHXR - and I haven't (in fact, the only reason I've been drawn to discussing it is Ieldra, who has played it, and points to its example). So I know you knew about the text-appearance feature, but even though I was addressing you, I was pointing out to others who haven't played it what it was, and how it works. Not you, since you already know. And I wouldn't be a very good debater if I don't take things other people say, and point out how they support my own argument. 

 

I understand the technical problems and limitations. I also understood your previous response that we will probably have to wait for DA4, if there is to be one, to see another chance at an effort at tackling them. It is undoubtedly harder to do with dialogue that is more branching, contextual, and reactive than DeXHR's, but you admit it's not impossible - just difficult. (That said, of course, that still means evaluating the cost/benefit of making the effort. And I'm not saying I can't accept that it's the correct decision that the zot-costs outweigh the player-segment-happiness benefits. That said, you know things as to making that judgement that I don't, or maybe even couldn't.) 

 

I really appreciate the movement toward making the game more cinematic. I have never felt there is anything wrong with hearing my protag speak; of course I want to. I also agree with others that I don't mind him doing a lot of physical interaction while speaking, like putting a hand on a companion's shoulder. Obviously, I get why people say how odd it looks when the Warden says something moving and important (well, in text, anyway), but stands there expressionless and practically lifeless in the scene while it's happening. 

 

On the other hand, I felt disconnected from Hawke in a different way. The Warden felt like a shell I was inhabiting. I really got a sense of his inner life, at least in the sense that his thoughts lived in his words. Hawke was impermeable to me. It really was more like watching an actor I was directing in a movie, than being that actor, inhabiting his consciousness, sensing his inner life, controlling his choices and destiny. Thus in that sense, it created that disconnection which for me, anyway, felt just as disconcerting as the earlier kind of disconnection people felt with the Warden since he was always expressionless and silent and rarely moving/doing while reciting his lines. 

 

Now, I take to heart what Lord Gaider said about not judging what you're doing until we're seeing it in action, and I have to say other than the paraphrase issue, most of it I like. I think you're trying to deal with both problems - the "disconnect" of DAO and the "disconnect" of DA2 in DA:I, and so far, I seem encouraged by the solutions you're seeking. 

 

I'm very happy that the Inquisitor will have a greater emotional range, that he will have an expressional flexibility to me that seems much stronger than Hawke's, and that at least when it comes to actions, I will have a good idea of what he's about to DO before he does it (even if less so than with what he says), and BTW, as I've said before I consider all those positive.

[DooomCookie]

Allan pretty much summed it up I think.  Dialogue wheel boosts the power and impact of a scene since it's voiced, but you lose some finesse.  It's a trade off.  I'm an obsessive roleplayer, so I prefer control, but I remember having a lot of fun in DA2 still.

[Allan Schumacher]

So I know you knew about the text-appearance feature, but even though I was addressing you, I was pointing out to others who haven't played it what it was, and how it works. Not you, since you already know. And I wouldn't be a very good debater if I don't take things other people say, and point out how they support my own argument

Fair enough, and I apologize since it's a valid thing you did.  I read the post as being directly towards me which it isn't.

[TataJojo]

Anything that can help me know what my character is going to say next is welcome IMO

I love imagining a personnality for my character and seing it come into play as I progress into the story, and I just go " :-/ " when I misunderstand a paraphrase and my character says something I didn't realy want to say.

As long as the paraphrase are not misleading and icons or text to tell me "this is going to be sarcastic", "this is going to be agressive"

 

I remember in Mass Effect, when talking to Barla Von, you could ask him for information and I picked the paraphrase "I'm listening" which I figured was going to have Shepard just say this instead of "Give me the information ! NOW !" ( Might not be the exact things but this was a French playthrough I haven't picked this option in a English playthrough ) in an agressive tone which didn't fit what I had in mind. I was a little bit disapointed but I just imagined he was being impatient or something...

 

But according to what I read here, DAI seems to be going the right way and I'm very excited to see those dialogue wheels in action !

[Innsmouth Dweller]

ppl form opinions on each other. on this very forum some users could be flagged as mage sympathizers or pro-chantry or trolls... 

 

how complex this dialogue system really is (beside the wheels)? 

do NPCs remember our dialogue choices to some extent? 

are there any dialogue-specific flags assigned to certain NPCs (followers)? 

could those change when PC changes his/her mind after a quest/arc/whatever?

 

in DA2 i remember only one situation - Aveline banter after leaving the chantry (Saemus), she replies to sarcastic Hawke/viscount dialogue (tbh i'm unable to choose any other option!).

[Bond]

I repeat: DX:HR utilizes a dialogue wheel, has a voiced protagonist.

 

 

Why not copy this approach? Personally, like Ieldra, I would like it a lot.

 

I haven't yet played this game (though I have others in the series), so for the benefit of others like myself, I'll show it in action. Obviously, a video will show this better than a still image. Note that this also shows off how a cybernetic conversation augmentation system available to the protag augments existing dialogue (and I'm not asking for anything like that). Most of this is auto-dialogue, but you can see how the system comes into play at around 2:19, 3:13, 4:16, and 5:17. 

 

 

... it has a wheel, it has a voiced protagonist, AND it shows substantial amounts of text (more than a 3-5 word paraphrase) to the player. 

 

Is this not what can be called the win/win? You like it - I like it. So do it ...

To answer your question - because it is mature. The games which have the best fan/journalist reaction for their dialogue systems are Deus Ex HR, Alpha Protocol and Telltale stuff. All of them have very similar approach too. It is a shame developers these days do not learn from the best, but instead are aspired by fable games.

[kipac]

I repeat: DX:HR utilizes a dialogue wheel, has a voiced protagonist.

I haven't yet played this game (though I have others in the series), so for the benefit of others like myself, I'll show it in action. Obviously, a video will show this better than a still image. Note that this also shows off how a cybernetic conversation augmentation system available to the protag augments existing dialogue (and I'm not asking for anything like that). Most of this is auto-dialogue, but you can see how the system comes into play at around 2:19, 3:13, 4:16, and 5:

... it has a wheel, it has a voiced protagonist, AND it shows substantial amounts of text (more than a 3-5 word paraphrase) to the player.

I don't like the dialogue system in Deus Ex: HR. The text displayed for each choice is too long, and the guy simply just repeat the same line, which can makes you pay less attention to the scene itself. It'd have been great if the text and voice dialogues were more different.
The speech perk that allows you to analyze other's personality type was implemented poorly too. It often forced me to focus my whole attention on that alpha/beta/omega signs while ignoring their dialogues, movements, gestures, etc that you are normally supposed to be looking at while conversing.

Square Enix's decision of showing detailed and long texts for choices in Deus Ex is understandable 'cause most of Jensen's dialogues are about analyzing, persuading, and interrogating, but DA is not that type of game.

[CybAnt1]

Square Enix's decision of showing detailed and long texts for choices in Deus Ex is understandable 'cause most of Jensen's dialogues are about analyzing, persuading, and interrogating, but DA is not that type of game.

 

No? 

 

I thought we were going to be playing an Inquisitor. 

 

Seems to me getting to the bottom of something requires some analysis, and interrogation. 

 

Also, by the way, I'm pretty sure I've read we need to build our influence by winning people to our cause. That requires some persuasion. 

 

And, to go back to the earlier games in this series, well, in the first one, we even had Persuasion as a skill/dialogue option. 

 

http://dragonage.wik...m/wiki/Coercion

 

BTW, as I said, I wasn't really trying to discuss the CASIE system in DX:HR, because I don't think they have cybernetic implants in Thedas, and in any case, that part of the system I was not really arguing for, either. Just the showing of text. 

[In Exile]

I repeat: DX:HR utilizes a dialogue wheel, has a voiced protagonist.

 

Why not copy this approach? Personally, like Ieldra, I would like it a lot.

 

I haven't yet played this game (though I have others in the series), so for the benefit of others like myself, I'll show it in action. Obviously, a video will show this better than a still image. Note that this also shows off how a cybernetic conversation augmentation system available to the protag augments existing dialogue (and I'm not asking for anything like that). Most of this is auto-dialogue, but you can see how the system comes into play at around 2:19, 3:13, 4:16, and 5:17. 

 

... it has a wheel, it has a voiced protagonist, AND it shows substantial amounts of text (more than a 3-5 word paraphrase) to the player. 

 

 

Part of the problem may be that the actual method is patented (or rather, I would guess that some version of it might be). DX:HR isn't an ideal solution, because you actually only get part of the line, not all of the line. DX:HR also has the protagonist speak far longer than Bioware would, and I'm not sure people would be happy with that. Again, though, I totally don't object to more information. I'm just not sure this would be an ideal for you (even if it is an improvement). 

[CybAnt1]

Part of the problem may be that the actual method is patented (or rather, I would guess that some version of it might be). DX:HR isn't an ideal solution, because you actually only get part of the line, not all of the line. DX:HR also has the protagonist speak far longer than Bioware would, and I'm not sure people would be happy with that. Again, though, I totally don't object to more information. I'm just not sure this would be an ideal for you (even if it is an improvement). 

 

Though I may seem unreasonable, I definitely prefer something over nothing. Although perhaps the case here may be, something over a lesser something. (i.e. a line or two, instead of a 3-5 word paraphrase.) 

 

In fact, tbh, I thought we were going to be getting a portion of the line in DAI (which is all me and my grognard "faction" were hoping for), until it was recently clarified that that would only be true for the action wheel, and not for spoken dialogue.

 

I don't think you can patent the display of text. They're not doing anything special. But, yes, I completely understand what Allan is saying. It's less of a technical hurdle for Square Enix, as they don't have to dynamically and contextually generate dialogue on the fly. Adam Jensen is always Adam Jensen, and the game doesn't vary dialogue on whether he's a dwarf, a warrior, male, or a noble, or alter it based on previous actions/events/situations. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[In Exile]

 

I don't think you can patent the display of text. They're not doing anything special. But, yes, I completely understand what Allan is saying. It's less of a technical hurdle for Square Enix, as they don't have to dynamically and contextually generate dialogue on the fly. Adam Jensen is always Adam Jensen, and the game doesn't vary dialogue on whether he's a dwarf, a warrior, male, or a noble, or alter it based on previous actions/events/situations. 

 

You'd be very surprised as to the sort of things you can try and patent. See, for example, the UI methods Amazon has patented. 

 

There is a fair bit of variability in what Adam Jensen does/says/believes, and honestly a game like DA:O didn't have more variability in persona than DA2 did. Bioware's difficulty is more dealing with how a certain set of fans sees the lack of VO as greatly broaden the scope of possible characters. 

[John Epler]

Oftentimes, patenting a game element is less about 'we don't want anyone else to use this' as it is 'if someone else patents this and then sues us, that would suck'. There are enough patent trolls out there that it's an unfortunate necessity to cover yourself.

[AlanC9]

To answer your question - because it is mature. The games which have the best fan/journalist reaction for their dialogue systems are Deus Ex HR, Alpha Protocol and Telltale stuff. All of them have very similar approach too. It is a shame developers these days do not learn from the best, but instead are aspired by fable games.

The system you like is "mature"? Weren't you warned about this sort of thing upthread?