Adventure Gamers - Forums

Talking about talk

For this week the theme I chose is dialogues in adventure games and why is so hard to keep them interesting. Happened in Thimbleweed Park, a game I enjoyed a lot but despite the funny writing, good story and solid voice acting I kept just wanting the dialogues to finish and clicking the line kind of randomly (unless it was a puzzle).

So, some different dialogue options, not counting the ones that don’t have any interaction.

The classic Lucasarts dialogue tree. Probably the one most seen in adventures. You kind of have a sense of controlling the dialogue but most options don’t really matter and end up in the same place. It’s just story exposition wrapped in a false sense of control since the options are limited and the outcome mostly the same.

Phoenix Wright gives the player a couple of options to talk and it’s mostly a straight line to unlock more topics and advance the story. You can replay the dialogue but there isn’t much reason to do it.

Walking Dead style is the one that most grabs the attention of the player to the dialogue. Choices have a direct on what happens and being timed keeps the flow going fast and fluid.

Notebooks are great, being able to choose a topic and ask about an object or person gives more freedom to the player, even if most of the answers are “I don’t know about that”. Text adventures are like that (in my very limited experience)

Now if only there was a game that combined a lot of these systems…

Small note to Oxenfree a game that I only played an hour of so but seems to be doing some neat things to keep the dialogues natural, characters just keep talking and the player can intervene or not

The Tex Murphy system is one I love and I would argue isn’t used enough.

One of my other favorites, Contradiction, adds an element of puzzle solving to dialogues by requiring you to combine statements to access new responses.

Similarly, Her Story asks you to uncover clips using a search database. It’s more difficult than it sounds.

For me LucasArts is my favorite. Once you go through the dialog lines once, It keeps only the dialog lines that are relevent to the quest (like cherry trees in DOTT). In that way, it is hinting to you at the solution. The Walking Dead ones can be frustrating because sometimes your choice has a different outcome than what you intend. And silence is an option, so how can you predict the outcome of your silence?

diego - 22 May 2017 07:14 PM

Broken Sword is still one of the most original and intuitive systems - part of the fun is that you don’t know EXACTLY what George is going to ask, you can only guess it from the topic icon.

This is a great approach, more generally: regardless of whether it’s an icon (BS), mood (e.g. X-Files, UAKM), or just a sketchy description (e.g. Telltale). It is infinitely better than listing the menu of possible responses in their entirety, which is a recipe for repetition-induced boredom: you read your reply, choose it, then hear your protagonist speak the exact same reply word for word… Ugh!

I agree the best are those like in Broken Sword, Gabriel Knight 3, X-Files etc.
The absolute worst for me are games where you only have a short amount of time to ask something like in modern Telltale games. And I find it annoying when topics don’t disappear or get grayed out once you’ve asked/talked about it. It makes me think that there’s more to talk about when there’s not.

Adventure games talk too much. One of the reasons why I love Conquests of the Longbow is that Christy Marx, who used to be a TV writer, knew how to both convey information and define characters with just a few words. I like that infinitely more than the self-indulgent verbal diarrhea that Gilbert, Schafer, Jensen, Cecil, Tornquist et al. seem to love so much.

So, what I guess I’m saying is, I don’t need any kind of dialogue interface, because I want dialogue to be kept short. One exception: If it’s a game in which conversation choices matter, like in Fahrenheit, TWD, etc. Then obviously you need some sort of interface, and those games handled that well.

But if your dialogue is just an information dump, then don’t pretend to make it interactive—and keep it short instead. I don’t want conversation trees (MI), I don’t want lists of topics (GK, TM), I don’t want icons (BS), I don’t want any of it: if my input doesn’t matter, then don’t pretend it does. Just make the conversation fully uninteractive, and maybe that’ll make you realize that you need to cut 90% of it because it’s all so fucking boring.

Also, I hate conversation puzzles. They’re as dumb as those mazes where you just methodically explore all the paths. And they make no sense: why would the person let you restart the conversation 20 times in a row??? The (early) Tex Murphy games were particularly awful in that respect.

wilco - 22 May 2017 05:37 PM

Talking about talk

Notebooks are great, being able to choose a topic and ask about an object or person gives more freedom to the player, even if most of the answers are “I don’t know about that”. Text adventures are like that (in my very limited experience)

I’ve very much enjoyed that approach too & examples from these games sprang to mind from:
Law & Order 3: Justice is Served (representative of most games in the series) an investigative mystery where you receive answers from a researcher in this screenshot for items/info you have submitted to learn more about them.
Carol Reed 3: Time Stand Still (representative of most games in the series) which as far as I can remember you not only ask the questions in text form but also receive the replies similarly?
Clue Chronicles: Fatal Illusion

I’ll have to get back to agreeing with some points made by Kurufinwe in his post that I’ve just seen & had some thoughts about & have already been trying to think about some examples. 

My favourite is the “ask [person] about [topic]” approach of text parsers. Examples of games that use it well:

Quest for Glory I & II
Trilby’s Notes
Conquests of Camelot

After entering a command to ask about a certain topic, an efficient and natural conversation about it would ensue. And if the conversation partner mentioned something new plot-relevant information, the player has to be observant enough to make note of it and manually ask about it. No gimmicks such as going back and forth in dialogue trees.

Adventure games are supposed to be about exploration, gathering information and items, and applying them in correct situations. If you have a ready-made checklist of topics to click through, it reduces the experience and thinking required to a chore.

Kurufinwe - 23 May 2017 04:12 PM

Adventure games talk too much. One of the reasons why I love Conquests of the Longbow is that Christy Marx, who used to be a TV writer, knew how to both convey information and define characters with just a few words. I like that infinitely more than the self-indulgent verbal diarrhea that Gilbert, Schafer, Jensen, Cecil, Tornquist et al. seem to love so much.

So, what I guess I’m saying is, I don’t need any kind of dialogue interface, because I want dialogue to be kept short. One exception: If it’s a game in which conversation choices matter, like in Fahrenheit, TWD, etc. Then obviously you need some sort of interface, and those games handled that well.

But if your dialogue is just an information dump, then don’t pretend to make it interactive—and keep it short instead. I don’t want conversation trees (MI), I don’t want lists of topics (GK, TM), I don’t want icons (BS), I don’t want any of it: if my input doesn’t matter, then don’t pretend it does. Just make the conversation fully uninteractive, and maybe that’ll make you realize that you need to cut 90% of it because it’s all so fucking boring.

Also, I hate conversation puzzles. They’re as dumb as those mazes where you just methodically explore all the paths. And they make no sense: why would the person let you restart the conversation 20 times in a row??? The (early) Tex Murphy games were particularly awful in that respect.

Agreed - The Longest Journey especially has a lot of awkward exposition and half of the lines felt like padding.

Kurufinwe - 23 May 2017 04:12 PM

But if your dialogue is just an information dump, then don’t pretend to make it interactive—and keep it short instead. I don’t want conversation trees (MI), I don’t want lists of topics (GK, TM), I don’t want icons (BS), I don’t want any of it: if my input doesn’t matter, then don’t pretend it does. Just make the conversation fully uninteractive, and maybe that’ll make you realize that you need to cut 90% of it because it’s all so fucking boring.

Also, I hate conversation puzzles. They’re as dumb as those mazes where you just methodically explore all the paths. And they make no sense: why would the person let you restart the conversation 20 times in a row??? The (early) Tex Murphy games were particularly awful in that respect.

This is not something I’d thought about but you are hitting it on the head, as usual. I do want to see more games experiment with not just less talking but with no talking whatsoever. Think Journey of a Roach, Goblins or Machinarium.

But I also want to see more games focusing on realistic dialog interactions like Façade or a few text adventures out there tried. Maybe something like Her Story but with direct interaction.

Kurufinwe - 23 May 2017 04:12 PM

Adventure games talk too much.

The first true AG I came across (& I’d played/experienced quite a few other games beforehand) was Broken Sword & ditched it after about 15 mins as it was all talking & there didn’t seem to be much to do! Thankfully I tried again & today it’s still one of my favourite games!   

Kurufinwe - 23 May 2017 04:12 PM

Also, I hate conversation puzzles. They’re as dumb as those mazes where you just methodically explore all the paths. And they make no sense: why would the person let you restart the conversation 20 times in a row???

I’ve come across quite a few of those & find them infuriating! What’s more infuriating is that I can’t think of any of the games except for Dark Secrets that they feature in & I know there are more prominent/popular games in which I’ve had to battle with that kind of puzzle! 

Intense Degree - 25 May 2017 03:41 AM

I agree that too much dialogue is often a problem, sometimes a massive problem - I’m looking at you TLJ!

Funnily enough, I actually like the amount of dialogue from TLJ. I thought that it was immersive and helped build the world.