[Steve Ince]

Originally Posted by Thesaya

Oh, i totally agree. I wan't to be able to skip dialogue especially if you can read it to, since I read so fast, so i always have to wait for the characters to finish talking and ANNOYING!

In future, I'm not going to bother working hard on dialogue if all people want to do is skip through it.

If you look through the number of things that people complain about in adventures (not just in this thread) you wouldn't have a game that was recognisable as an adventure and would certainly not be any fun.

[Risingson]

Originally Posted by Steve Ince

In future, I'm not going to bother working hard on dialogue if all people want to do is skip through it.

If you look through the number of things that people complain about in adventures (not just in this thread) you wouldn't have a game that was recognisable as an adventure and would certainly not be any fun.

Just remember that you make games for players to enjoy them, not for us to praise and recognize every bit of work, and remember that the criticism is against superfluous dialogue - not elaborate, superfluous - that cannot be skipped.

[Steve Ince]

How do you know that dialogue is superfluous before you read/listen to it?

[stepurhan]

Originally Posted by Risingson

Do you think that we are stupid enough to think that designers make absurd puzzles or other flaws intentionally?

If you read Kurufinwe's post again I think you'll find he doesn't think that at all. As he goes on to elaborate, if people want games to change they have to be more precise about the flaws. Is the absurdity that you have to use two items together which you would have no reason to combine? Are you forced to search out a particular item when you already have something that will do the job? Does it require information external to the game that not every player will have?

Some people have touched upon these details. The more of the detail of what bugs us we can pull out, the better developers will understand what to fix.

Originally Posted by Steve Ince

In future, I'm not going to bother working hard on dialogue if all people want to do is skip through it.

There are two potentially good reasons for skipping dialogue

1. Replaying a section, possibly due to a death scene.
   
2. Having text only and a fast reading speed.

Neither of these mean the player is ignoring dialogue. They just want to move the game along once they've taken it in somehow.

[Crapstorm]

I often feel disconnected from the dialogue, because when I play a game, I want to actually play the game. When characters are yakking away, I'm only watching the game. All attempts to make conversations interactive (i.e. by giving the player a short list of sentences to choose from) have failed, in my opinion. I think back to the old Infocom parser where you could do things like "Tell mechanic about laser" or "Ask bookkeeper about dragons". Even though those conversations were completely devoid of linguistic style, the player was actually conveying his own ideas and had control over the flow of information. This is in contrast to the standard dialog trees in modern games where you simply exhaust the options until everything has been said.

I think the reason why adventure games went graphical in the first place (and text adventures died) is because players desired a less verbal experience. I think you will find that adventure gamers are just as annoyed by having to read long-winded journals (*cough* Myst *cough*) as they are by having to dredge through verbose conversations.

[Merricat]

I can't imagine playing a game that is devoid of dialogue. Dialogue should further the plot and define character and of course, it should also be entertaining. I dislike weak banter, but I prefer that to wandering around for hours with no character interaction. Somehow Keepsake managed to have both, and that was a large part of why I disliked that game, in particular. (I played it to the end, though. Too OCD not to, I guess. )

[fruithead]

stepuran is right. it's important to have the option to skip dialogue not just when it's dull or boring but because some of us do read it faster than it's spoken and who likes listening to a conversation they just heard because they died or had to replay a scene for some reason.

in the same vein, i don't want to watch someone walk across the screen. it's a waste of time and i'm impatient. if i click the next scene, i want the character to just go there.

now, i'm going to take the chance this comment might result in me being vilified and banned for life but i don't like humorous games. while i enjoy monkey island and sam and max i don't play them for the humor. i've never found them all that funny. and i love comedy as far as tv and movies go but it's just not something i look for in a game. now, of course, i don't mean the odd humorous or sarcastic comment. but games that try to be overly funny--that'd be one of the things i don't like in games.

also, i hate when games don't a pause option, especially when there are long cutscenes and dialogue you can't skip. for instance, culpa innata, which i'm currently playing. to skip a line of dialogue is to skip the whole conversation. they should have a pause option. also because there are several times when you trigger a series of events where phoenix goes here, talks to someone and is transported to another conversation. sometimes i just can't wait that long to pee. sorry to be so blunt.

[Kurufinwe]

I used to think that I hated conversation-heavy games, but playing eXperience112 has forced me to re-analyse my feelings. One thing I noticed while playing it was how much I loved the story, and the chosen story-telling devices. Yet, over 80% of the (vast) backstory is told through written material, something that has always made me cringe in the Myst series.

But I've come to realise that the two situations are completely different. In eXperience112, you get the story through little bits of writing (notes and email archives, mostly) that you discover as the game progresses and that reveal more of the backstory little by little, in a non-linear way, and with many discoveries every time which are relevant to where you are in the game. In Myst, you have to spend twenty minutes plodding through a journal, which is long, repetitive, and filled with stuff which is either completely irrelevant to the rest of the game, or will only be relevant later on, at which point you'll have to re-read the journal to find those clues again.

And somehow, my attitude toward dialogue in games is exactly the same. Every time I meet a new character in GK1, DotT, The Moment of Silence, Sinking Island, etc., I cringe, because I know I'm going to spend 20 minutes plodding through almost-endless conversation choices, which is going to deliver tons of mostly-irrelevant exposition. But I love the conversations of GK3, Hotel Dusk, Phoenix Wright, etc., where there are more conversations, but shorter ones (therefore more realistic: who spends 30 minutes going over 15 different and often unrelated topics with someone?), which integrate fully with the general storytelling rather than break its flow.

Obviously there's also a question of the quality of the writing. I'd rather sit through 20 minutes of GK dialogue than 5 minutes of Keepsake's girl scout hogwash. But as my different responses to GK1 and GK3 show, it's more complicated than that.

Maybe I just have a short attention span. Maybe I want more entertainment for my time. And why shouldn't I? In 20 minutes, I can, say, read a chapter of a novel or watch a good chunk of a movie or TV episode. So why should I waste that time reading an irrelevant journal or listening to some character telling in so many words that, no, "Cabrit sans cor'" doesn't ring a bell? Having to write concisely is not necessarily a bad constraint – quite the contrary: it keeps a writer on his toes and prevents him from indulging in unnecessary stuff. Christy Marx had a lot of experience at writing for TV, and if you look at the quality and, more importantly, efficiency of the dialogue in Conquests of the Longbow, her experience definitely shows.

But at the end of the day, I really believe that it's indeed a question of story-telling. Dialogue or written material that comes in small chunks and advances the story is something I welcome. Dialogue or written material that interrupts the flow of the storytelling (and gameplay! Games are not supposed to be about listening passively to conversations, after all) by indulging in 20 minutes of ramblings or would-be-funny stuff makes me cringe.

(oh, and thanks for the exegesis, step! )

[Jelena]

Originally Posted by Crapstorm

I think you will find that adventure gamers are just as annoyed by having to read long-winded journals (*cough* Myst *cough*) as they are by having to dredge through verbose conversations.

And then again, some of us don't mind reading those Myst journals at all.

[JKR]

Originally Posted by fruithead

now, i'm going to take the chance this comment might result in me being vilified and banned for life but i don't like humorous games. while i enjoy monkey island and sam and max i don't play them for the humor. i've never found them all that funny. and i love comedy as far as tv and movies go but it's just not something i look for in a game. now, of course, i don't mean the odd humorous or sarcastic comment. but games that try to be overly funny--that'd be one of the things i don't like in games.

I can understand that, but on the flip side that's WHY I play those types of games. Something like Monkey Island 3 I'll just sit and run though every possible conversation just to hear the jokes. Is there ANY reason to talk to Murry? No way! But it's hilarious, and probably my favorite part of the game. It's great to finally rescue Elaine, but frankly I'd rather have a chat with the most Demonic Skull I've ever met.

[Squinky]

Originally Posted by Crapstorm

I think you will find that adventure gamers are just as annoyed by having to read long-winded journals (*cough* Myst *cough*) as they are by having to dredge through verbose conversations.

Guess I'm not an adventure gamer, then. *sigh*

[stepurhan]

Originally Posted by Crapstorm

I think back to the old Infocom parser where you could do things like "Tell mechanic about laser" or "Ask bookkeeper about dragons". Even though those conversations were completely devoid of linguistic style, the player was actually conveying his own ideas and had control over the flow of information.

This is a very good point. In actual fact your conversations in a text parser were still limited to what the programmers had thought of. In this way they were really not a lot different from the dialogue trees of today. However, the fact that you could type whatever you wanted created the illusion of having many more options, especially if they'd programmed variants of "I don't understand" to avoid it being obvious how limited your options were.

Originally Posted by fruithead

also, i hate when games don't a pause option, especially when there are long cutscenes and dialogue you can't skip. for instance, culpa innata, which i'm currently playing. to skip a line of dialogue is to skip the whole conversation. they should have a pause option. also because there are several times when you trigger a series of events where phoenix goes here, talks to someone and is transported to another conversation. sometimes i just can't wait that long to pee. sorry to be so blunt.

I hadn't thought of this one but I agree wholeheartedly (and AGs aren't the only culprits in this respect) It isn't just calls of nature either. Phone calls. Favourite television programs. Someone at the door. There are any number of reasons you might need to step away from the computer and you should be able to do that without having to replay a section because you've missed half a vital cutscene.

[Lycentia]

honestly I hate logic puzzle that just don't seem to belong in the story. Nothing bugs me more than hoping to get into a great story and then you suddenly there is some bizzare logic puzzle on a door to unlock it, and then I sit there for an hour tryign to figure it out and loose all focus on the storyline. I prefer commensense puzzles, like use the hairpin your wearing to unlock that door, it just seems to fit better in a story and seems more realistic, plus it takes some thinking but you don't have to be a puzzle wizard to figure it out.

[tsa]

Originally Posted by fruithead

now, i'm going to take the chance this comment might result in me being vilified and banned for life but i don't like humorous games. ... games that try to be overly funny--that'd be one of the things i don't like in games.

You're not alone in that fruithead. I didn't play Sam & Max, and after the first scene of Ankh I had enough. Emotions in games (and books and movies and what have you) should be realistic IMO.

[LadyLinda]

I'm not a fan of music puzzles, it took me a long time to get past it in Myst. But what I truly hate is the when a game has a poorly designed save system. I want to name my game saves and I want unlimited save slots and most of all I want my load game choices to be presented in descending order and not have to scroll to get to a new/last slot.

It can't be that hard to implement these little things.

[Crapstorm]

And if the developer insists on murdering the player from time to time (understandable), we'd like an auto-save, please.

[JKR]

Originally Posted by Crapstorm

And if the developer insists on murdering the player from time to time (understandable), we'd like an auto-save, please.

I prefer adventure games where you don't get killed at all. They're so much more relaxing...

[stepurhan]

I don't mind having death if it fits in with the story. In fact, if a story presents a situation that should be life or death but you can't die then that messes up my suspension of disbelief.

I concur with the call for an autosave though. At the very least you should have one like Prisoner of Ice which saved whenever you entered a scene in which you could die.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

What's something you hate in an Adventure game?

Redundancy.

[Atlantis]

Originally Posted by maphisto_2000

When an adventure game tries to be something other than an adventure game...

e.g. The fighting and sneaking sections in Dreamfall: TLJ. Uneccesary.

Could not stand those. And uninstalled it because of it.

I hated the voice acting in Tunguska. Her voice just.. grated on me.