Adventure Gamers - Forums

GlassRose had great mechanics of highlighting certain words which leads to different flow of conversations and once that illusionary pathway is blocked you have to back to first comment of NPC and start to explore other words and open more line of conversations, and since you cannot progress story without breaking and entering secrets of past, it keeps the player guessing and experimenting

I agree with choices that have one line of different response but usually ends up in same scenario, lots of recent RPGs recently have same problem

However Persona5 wins in this department and them choices also are integral to gameplay not just superficial part of experience

I love TLJ’s dialogue. Very well written, spoken and voiced. All of it.
Same with Dreamfall and Chapters.

I like it when the dialog itself isn’t just a replica of the dialog choice—there’s more anticipation—but only if the result isn’t too much of a surprise. I remember some dialogs with Tex where I chose a response for a reason (hoping to diffuse the situation, say,) and then Tex came out with something entirely unexpected that only made things worse.

Okay, it made me laugh but it was frustrating too.

(Thanks to Diego for linking me here, from my own thread: https://adventuregamers.com/forums/viewthread/10176/ (it’s about cool things I’d like to do with dialogue in a game))

I don’t want to get too sucked in to a new forum, but I like this topic, so, here goes:

wilco - 22 May 2017 05:37 PM

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).

I finally played TWP a couple weeks ago (though only in casual mode, I’ll get back to it soon for adventure mode) and definitely enjoyed, but yeah, it felt like the game was swinging and missing a lot.  I think one part of the problem is that the characters say the exact lines you give them, which means you read a line once, and then you click the line, and then you read and hear the line, and only then do you get to new material.  So it feels like wading through molasses going through the entire conversation.

I just had the thought that in Star Control 2 (not a point-and-click but ok) you choose your line and the other character starts responding immediately, skipping over your line. It works in that game since you don’t ever see the captain’s face so his voice isn’t going to be important either, but it wouldn’t work for a more traditional p-a-c adventure game.

wilco - 22 May 2017 05:37 PM

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.

This was a great system for the game, as it highlighted the dramatic situations.  It wouldn’t fit at all in many other games though.

wilco - 22 May 2017 05:37 PM

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)

Puzzle Agent uses topics too, and I think it works well.  I especially like how options are crossed off after being used, and options that lead to a puzzle are marked with a different bullet point.  Though, uh, I haven’t played whatever game it is you’re showing so I’m not sure how the notebook works in there… in PA it just serves as the box your dialogue options are put in.  I think in the above game you can input clues, and you carry the notebook around to ask other people about the same topics?  I can’t remember the game but I’ve seen a little bit of it.

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.

I think Sam and Max Hit The Road was the game that invented that system? At least it’s an earlier example of it than the others mentioned in this thread so far.  This system works particularly well for Sam and Max since the game is all about humor, and you don’t want to read the joke before you hear it.

Ok, just one more response:

Kurufinwe - 23 May 2017 04:12 PM

Adventure games talk too much….

I’ve never thought about it this way but you have some decent points.  Overall, any dialogue should have SOME sort of reason for existing, whether it’s exposition/info, characterization, humor, etc.  But yeah I definitely get bored reading text that doesn’t seem to be adding anything to the experience.  Also, conversation puzzles are hard to do, and while I forgive a lot of this kind of stuff it can take me out of the experience to be able to repeat a conversation like that (recent example: the 80’s lingo puzzle with the kid in Thimbleweed Park). I’ve seen it done decently though, I can think of several examples in the Telltale Sam & Max games.

Oh, also, a lot of people here were mentioning detective games specifically- there’s some good info on detective interrogation/investigation systems in this video: