Talking puzzles

[Babar]

How can we make talking puzzles more difficult?
For example, I'll take the puzzle at the beginning of Indiana Jones & FoA.

Spoiler

To get rid of the stage manager you had to steer the conversation towards his other interests, until he talked about his hobby of reading, and then you gave him a newspaper. You couldn't be too vague about his hobbies, but you couldn't mention him leaving either.

[close]

This was a great puzzle, but it was still very easy. Even if you got all the answers wrong, you could still exit the conversation and start again, thus eliminating all options. Even the talking options were very easy to figure out.
Is there anyway to make these puzzles more challenging, but still give a chance if you missed it? I am not talking about just clicking the "Bye" option then click talk and starting all over again. Something more realistic than that. Neither am I saying to make the puzzle so difficult that only an expert conversationalist could solve it.
Should talking puzzles be more difficult than they already are? I always thought that they were the only type of puzzles that were not overused in all games. I mean, there are inventory combination puzzles or give-this-to-get-that type puzzles that tax the brain a great deal more. Why not talking puzzles?
It would be great if you could provide a talking puzzle that shows this stuff. Just as an example to learn from. Any help would be appreciated.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Actually, I quite enjoyed the convesrational puzzle in the AGS Donnie Darko game, by Grundislav, I think. I wasn't easy to figure out, and it made sense.

The one in Full Throttle, where Ben is in danger of being ripped apart by four motorbikes, is also good. Unexpected turns of dialog.

Not to mention the final puzzle in DoTT, which is a pretty good dialog puzzle as well.

[HillBilly]

A way to make talking puzzles harder is alot of options, but just some of them right.

EXAMPLE:

You start with three options, one of them leads to 4-5 dialog options that's wrong, one leads to 4-5 where one of them is right, and one is just "bye".

Now, in the one with 4-5 options where one of them is correct, it can go something like this:

WRONG TOPIC 1 - Leads to 3 new options, where all is wrong.
WRONG TOPIC 2 - Leads to 4 more topics, where all is wrong.
RIGHT TOPIC - Leads to 3 more subjects, where one is the correct one, leading to success.
WRONG TOPC 3- Quits the conversation.

Now, since it would take alot of time for the player to go through all the options, the player would rather use logic to solve this puzzle.


Just my idea of hard talking puzzles.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Here's a nice one - the Indy 3 nazi guard/frontier guard puzzle dialogs. The options were all the same, but they either worked or didn't - depending on the guard. It was up to the player to see what kind of guard they were and choose the correct answer.

[HillBilly]

You know, it was on that puzzle I for the first time found out that you can die in IJ.

[Babar]

Not to mention the final puzzle in DoTT, which is a pretty good dialog puzzle as well.

Here's a nice one - the Indy 3 nazi guard/frontier guard puzzle dialogs. The options were all the same, but they either worked or didn't - depending on the guard. It was up to the player to see what kind of guard they were and choose the correct answer.

But in both these problems, if the wrong option was chosen the conversation exited automatically and you died or had to fight (as was the case with Indiana Jones) or you were zapped minisicule (as was the case with DOTT). Indy didn't give you any second chance (unless you reloaded) and DOTT had the whole thing repeated when you talked to the tentacle again.
Also, HillBilly, no matter how long the conversation tree is, you can always just methodically click through all the options until you got what you wanted. Is there anyway to work around this?

[HillBilly]

I doubt it. You're asking for the impossible, sir.

[Damien]

Well, what if there would be more than one character included in the talking puzzle?

...you can always just methodically click through all the options until you got what you wanted...

The simmilar thing happens with most of the adventure game puzzles, when you're stuck, just use everything with everything else.

[Eggie]

In Titanic: Adventure out of Time there's this big fat guy who invites you into the smoking room, you need to get into the smoking room to play the game,  if you decline his invitation he gets pissed off with you and refuses to talk to you. But then, if you wait a while and then speak to him he's cooled off a bit and asks if you'd like to reconsider. I thought it was a nice little realistic touch.

[Babar]

The simmilar thing happens with most of the adventure game puzzles, when you're stuck, just use everything with everything else.

But going around all the screens and trying everything is a lot more difficult than clicking through a bunch of options and pressing the "text skip" button.

Well, what if there would be more than one character included in the talking puzzle?

That is a brilliant idea. I never thought of it. Why are there no puzzles that involve talking to more than one person simultanaeously?

In Titanic: Adventure out of Time there's this big fat guy who invites you into the smoking room, you need to get into the smoking room to play the game, if you decline his invitation he gets pissed off with you and refuses to talk to you. But then, if you wait a while and then speak to him he's cooled off a bit and asks if you'd like to reconsider. I thought it was a nice little realistic touch.

That is an interesting idea. Instead of just exiting from the conversation and starting it again, if the player makes a mistake there will be a wait before the conversation can start again. That will stop the click all options method of solving talking puzzles

[Snarky]

The insult sword-fighting in TSOMI is essentially a dialogue puzzle. It suggests one possibility: if you fail the puzzle you can start over, but the conversation will be different (the other person will say other things to you, and/or you will have different options available). As well the idea that a puzzle doesn't need to be confined to a single conversation, but could go across many conversations with many different people.

There's also the puzzle where you bargain with Stan for a ship. First you have to identify which ship you should go for, then you have to bargain the price down to something you can afford. You have to say no to every single extra, start bidding low and increase it by the lowest possible increment.

What I would learn from that puzzle is the possibility of doing a multi-condition puzzle, where you have to satisfy several different requirements in order to solve it (i.e. you have to go down one branch of the conversation and select a particular response, then go back to the start, choose a different branch and select a particular response there).

It would also be interesting to see a dialogue puzzle where the solution would change depending on what you've already said (for instance, if you've been caught in one lie you won't be able to get away with another one, but something else will now work). The convention tends to be that incorrect responses are just forgotten the next time you start the conversation.

For some reason I found the very final puzzle in Indy:FoA ("Once I'm a god, I'll send you straight to hell") difficult, though I don't think there was any special trick to it. Just a very big conversation tree to explore. I guess there's an idea there for a "dialogue maze" where you make it so the player gets lost in the conversation tree. (One way to make that happen is if you make different positions in the tree look similar/the same. You give the same set of options in two different places, and make them lead to different places.) I'm not sure I think that's a good trick, though.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Speaking about FoI, what about the puzzle in the Azores, where you have to first talk to the guy with Indy, then Sophia, then Indy? That was pretty imaginative.

I think we're arriving to the conclusion that these puzzles actually exist in many more ways that one would think at first glance, and mostly they're done so well we hardly pay any attention to them and just play along.

[Sinitrena]

An other way to make talking puzzles more challanging is to use text parser dialog options. When the player types in the correct answer the dialog "jumps" to the next options. The player can't just chose between different options 'cause there are too much words and he will start to think logicial. Of course there must be a good hint for the word.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

"Avatar" just brought up Countdown in another thread. I'd just like to add that the whole dialog system in Countdown was very interesting, and a puzzle in itself. For those who don't know, you had options like "bluff, threaten, pleasant" and one or two more. You chose them one at a time, and a comversation was made. If you started off in a "pleasant" way and then "bluffed", the outcome would be VERY different from first bluffing and then being pleasant about it.

[Pelican]

I've actually been thinking how to apply the concept of alternate puzzle solutions that cropped up in a discussion a while ago. I thought a practical way of implementing it could be through dialog puzzles.

Say you're particularly mean to a character, and then find out later you need their help. Because you were mean, you have to do a quest to 'appease' them and get them to help you. Or alternatively if you're nice to a mean character, they think you're a wimp and you have to find something to bribe/intimidate them with. I think it would give the characters more depth, and stop the 'just click everything' approach. However I do like the idea of letting them 'cool off', so its not too hard for beginners.

[Anym]

Not to mention the final puzzle in DoTT, which is a pretty good dialog puzzle as well.

Could someone refresh my memory what that was...?

Before talking about puzzles, something I thought about while posting in http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=18344.0 , what ways to make conversations are there? Fully-scripted (without user choice), multiple-choice with a set of lines, multiple choice with a set of topics/icons, parser, anything else? And is having a choice of lines (like the Monkey Islands) superior to having a choice of topics (like the Broken Swords)...?

Altough not an adventure per se, Torment did some interesting things with multiple chocie dialogs, for example, sometimes you'd have the same line more than once, but prefixed with "(lie")", "(truth)" or "(oath)". In the game, it mainly affects your alignment (for example honestly threatening to kill someone makes you more Evil, while lying/bluffing about the killing makes you more Chaotic), or increased rewards/penalties if your swore to fulfill a quest instead or just accepting it. Something like this might be put to use in adventure games, however, I think it would introduce an element of randomness and/or non-linearity which might not always be desirable, for example if your hard-boiled private investigator honestly threatens to kill the gangster if he doesn't tell you what he knows, you might have a 75% chance of him singing and a 25% of you shooting him automatically if he doesn't comply (which possibly dire consequences, like being chased by the cops yourself), if you only bluff about killing him, your chance to convince him might be lowered to 50%, the consequences of him calling your bluff being not as bad (like you losing street cred as a tough guy), but still not all that desirable. Of course, randomness brings other problems like constant saving/reloading and a certain unpredicatability. And having more than one outcome (he tells you what he knows, he laughs at your petty boasts, you shoot him) results in additional work in order not to let the game become unwinnable.

[Radiant]

The Boss Tentacle keeps zapping you with the Diminuator (tm). You have to convince him

Spoiler

to instead shoot Dr. Fred, since he hates him rather than all of humanity; since Fred wears one of those doctor's mirror thingies over his head, Purple zaps himself.

[close]

An alternate way of conversation is the mood way, mentioned earlier in this topic, from countdown.
I've always preferred LucasArts-styled conversations because you can see what your character says... in all of Quest for Glory, all you can get out of the hero is things like "you explain this" and "you apologize" etc.

[Bombadil]

For some reason I found the very final puzzle in Indy:FoA ("Once I'm a god, I'll send you straight to hell") difficult, though I don't think there was any special trick to it. Just a very big conversation tree to explore. I guess there's an idea there for a "dialogue maze" where you make it so the player gets lost in the conversation tree.

Since I started reading this thread I was thinking about this puzzle. I think it's great.

Not to mention the final puzzle in DoTT, which is a pretty good dialog puzzle as well.

I think it would introduce an element of randomness and/or non-linearity which might not always be desirable, for example if your hard-boiled private investigator honestly threatens to kill the gangster if he doesn't tell you what he knows, you might have a 75% chance of him singing and a 25% of you shooting him automatically if he doesn't comply (which possibly dire consequences, like being chased by the cops yourself), if you only bluff about killing him, your chance to convince him might be lowered to 50%, the consequences of him calling your bluff being not as bad (like you losing street cred as a tough guy), but still not all that desirable. Of course, randomness brings other problems like constant saving/reloading and a certain unpredicatability. And having more than one outcome (he tells you what he knows, he laughs at your petty boasts, you shoot him) results in additional work in order not to let the game become unwinnable.

I don't think changing the chances of certain things is a good way to solve the problem. One of the thniks because I adore Adventure Games is because most of them don't have random things.