Adventure Gamers - Forums

MoriartyL - 13 December 2012 12:23 PM

Jawa - 13 December 2012 12:20 PM

Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade was the first to use dialogue trees.

Thanks! Wow, I wouldn’t have expected it would be as late as 1989.

Well, that really depends on what you call a dialogue tree. If you mean that the game gives you a list of possible replies to pick from, then it makes sense that it would only have appeared with parser-less games, so 1989 seems OK.

If however you just mean that the game keeps track of where you are in the conversation and what you say is interpreted relative to the state of the conversation, then that’s probably a considerably older feature—but much less obvious to detect and therefore requiring a better knowledge of IF than I have.

How did conversations work before dialogue trees?

There is also the dialogue tree without parser that doesn’t use extensive sentences. In Starflight (1986) for example you talk to an alien and select “question”, “statement” and other simple words. Technically it’s a tree because the alien can then ask you something and you can respond “yes” or “no”.

Starflight was more strategy than pure adventure, but there might be pure adventures that also used this type of dialogue.

Fien - 13 December 2012 12:10 PM

There were lots of text adventures before 1984 with a named protagonist. Infocom of course, but I doubt they were the first, unless having a sidekick with a name counts.

The Hobbit (1982) probably wasn’t the first, but it’s the earliest I can think of at the moment so if adaptations count, let’s work backwards from there. As for story, I agree with those that say it’s much harder to pin down. Infocom’s Deadline (1982) definitely had a story, so again that may be a good point to work backwards from.