interactive dialogue in games

[miscwriter]

hi everyone!

Now, I am a big fan of Lucasarts games, and one thing I notice is that whenever the player character says something, you get an option of what to say. I hardly ever see a situation (outside of intros) where a question is asked and it then turns into to and froing dialogue with the player that's not interactive.

I like this a lot, but then it also must add a LOT of extra work to the dialogue writing. I notice in quite a few AGS games the interactivity in dialogue is a lot lower than in Lucasarts games (which is understandable given all the extra writing involved), and while I have no problem with this kind of story telling, and can enjoy playing them, I do prefer the more interactive dialogue as I feel a lot more in control of my character in the story. So I guess my question is this: How important are interactive dialogues with characters in adventure games to the AGS community, in the scheme of things?

Is it something you'd gladly ignore becuase it's a free game and the amount of work required to make a massive branching conversation is not something you'd critisise a game for? or is it purely a fact that you enjoy well crafted non-interactive dialogue for exposition as much as more interactive dialogue?

Also, does the genre have a bearing on this? I guess MI and games like that are comedy games, so choosing smart alec answers are more important than say choosing three ways of saying the same thing in a serious game, where really the exposition is more important and you're more likely to want to hear specific information in conversations.

Any thoughts?

thanks!

miscwriter

[Radiant]

This is a matter of personal preference, but I do strongly prefer meaningful dialogue to both "click talk icon on person until he starts repeating himself", and to "select an ask-about topic from a list of words until you've exhausted the options".

[Stupot]

Actually I was thinking about this the other day.  I've just finished 'The Dig' and one thing about that was that I thought there was too much dialogue (as much as I love Robert Patrick's voice).  It wasn't like most games where there are dozens of NPC's to talk to and each of them has something new to say.  It's just you, and two other crew members (plus an alien) to talk to.  Whenever you start a conversation you get pictures to choose from relating to each topic of dialogue, but most of it gets pretty old pretty quickly and has no real relevance to the advancement of the story or the characters.  The Dig is a great game, but it's not without its flaws, and too much dialogue is one of them.

[Eggie]

I think a good thing to do if there's a dialouge option that makes an NPC give a character a hint is instead of having the player ask the same question to get the hint again, replace it with a direct 'could you remind of...' kind of option so the player can quickly be reminded of the hint they need without giving the impression that the NPC has forgotten that they've already given you the information.
It's fairly econominal (you don't need to type great passages of dialouge for the 'reminding' answer) and it just makes the game that much richer.

EDIT: The dialouge is the only gameplay element I like about The Dig

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I think massive dialog trees are largely a waste unless by making different choices you create different outcomes.  Now there are some exceptions to this, like when you're just asking basic questions of a character or whatever.  Part of what annoys me in most games (and what I try to avoid in mine) are seemingly meaningful variations in choices presented to you that all end up with the same result.  In my latest game, Ace Starkiller in:  Hillbilly Burger Bastards, there are quite a few occasions where you will be presented with options that alter the outcome in different ways (sometimes slightly, sometimes a lot).  I also plan to go back and flesh out the dialog more since I made the game in 20 days and had to cut things I wanted to put into it.

The end result is that much of the dialog in games like monkey island isn't 'really' interactive in that your choices have the same result 99% of the time, but the amount of options tends to give you the illusion of non-linearity.

[Babar]

The expected procedure in most LucasArts games was to start a conversation, and then go through all the topics until there was nothing new left to talk about. An alternative would be to have each thing you say affect the npc in some way. I've seen a few games that do this, and maybe I'm not used to it, but having the player never talk to you again because you chose one option is somewhat unnerving, and even if the game is continuable after that point (you never know), I always find it simpler to just restore the game.

Dialogue for the sake of dialogue....I'm not too sure. Of course, most adventure games have a very unrealistic simulation of a conversation, but all that matters is that it should be relevant. One could theoretically make a game with detailed 'normal' conversations where the player has to pick up the information through indirect implied hints, but that seems unnecessary. The other end of the spectrum is having the npc directly say "I won't give you the cheese until I get an apple", which is pretty disconcerting and fake.

[Radiant]

The expected procedure in most LucasArts games was to start a conversation, and then go through all the topics until there was nothing new left to talk about.

Yes, but there were a few places where that wasn't possible, and you had to actually think about what you were saying. The final scene of FOA comes to mind.

[OneDollar]

There's two ways of doing ‘interactive dialogue', make one set of choices the correct one and use the rest for non-game-changing extras, or make the choice of dialogue actually affect the flow or outcome of the dialogue or the game itself.

The first one can be good â€" you could use it as a way of increasing depth. If you have a bunch of NPCs that you don't have to talk to (i.e. its obviously not a solution to a puzzle) you could build dialogue trees that give you some more of the backstory or are just humorous. I don't really like the “guess the correct response” puzzle though. Basically I'd say whether this works depends on the quality of the writing, and whether or not the ‘correct' dialogue is/becomes obvious, so that the player has the option of asking the extra questions, but never has to.

I do like the idea of being able to choose what I say in order to steer the dialogue, but only if its genuine. For instance if you can give angry/happy/polite/etc answers to something, and the NPC responds accordingly, changing the way the dialogue flows but not the outcome. Or a step further would be to build NPCs with personalities that change depending on what you do, but then we're entering RPG territory. Or change the puzzle depending on the response you give? The game starts to become non-linear and hence has greater replayability but is harder to make.

In short, yes it's a good idea but only if it significantly impacts the game or is optional.