Week 11: Journal

Dialogue

I think the makers of Facade are correct in pointing out that the fairly common system of presenting players with a small set of fairly limited text choices actually detracts from what they describe as “agency” (the idea that the actions of the player are linked with feedback). Personally I find systems such as those quite shallow and predictable attempts at creating an illusion of choice for the player. As a particularly indecisive player, they were often just annoying. While I quite enjoy the possibilities of choice and customisation in games, I’m usually fairly… controlling? I’m not particularly fond of the idea that seemingly random and intermediate conversations might affect my character or story without my knowledge. Often if the story dialogue isn’t particularly well written or interesting, and I’m faced with choice upon tedious choice of dialogue, I skip through them picking random things, hoping that it won’t ruin my game.

What’s more, usually I’ve found that if games attempt to have dialogue that affects the story or characters, especially in a major way (and not with random unrelated conversations having unforseen circumstances down the line), the corresponding choices of dialogue are often fairly basic: with some variation of yes/no/maybe or I’m good/bad/in a morally gray area. Don’t get me wrong, often the actual text can be quite colourful or an attempt at humour, but the subtext and the outcomes of the conversation are thinly veiled.

I think what I’ve just said is that I don’t like it when there are random conversations that have an unexpected outcome on the game, and I also don’t like it when there are obvious “the way you answer this question will affect the game” conversations. Hard to please aren’t I? I will say that what I do remember enjoying is… if I recall correctly, the old Monkey Island games? From what I can remember, when presented with conversations, there were heaps of options you could choose: which is understandable, because I don’t think they had any affect on the game so it wasn’t necessary to provide each one with some sort of discernible affect on the game. What this meant was that I didn’t really have to think about them, and they just provided an interesting little side of the game if I could be bothered to read them all etc. (I could always just skip through them if I wasn’t in the mood). They were also genuinely funny which helped.

What is important about that example though is I think that it was somewhat of a step in the right direction: there were many different choices, which provided more interesting dialogue than a small few (despite the fact that they would actually affect gameplay). What I think this reflects is a more realistic approach to dialogue. When faced with the often tough decision of what to say in real life, our choices are rarely as simple as choosing from 3 different witty one-liners. I think any system that tries to reduce the art of conversation to such a primitive form would struggle to be taken seriously.

Also, one other problem I see is that often the focus is entirely on “dialogue”. You choose from a few lines of text, and that’s it. Anyone knows however that actually having a conversation is something far more complex than just the transcript of what is said. Two main other areas come to mind: body language and perhaps more importantly, the way you speak. Things like the  tone of voice you use, hints of sarcasm, the way you are standing, how loudly you are speaking, how close you are to the person, where your eyes are looking when you speak to them, what you’re doing with your hands, etc etc. Essentially, conversation is complex, and I’d be skeptical of a system reducing it to choosing from a few options.

So I think the key to a better dialogue system is a more complex system of interaction and choices. However there is a delicate balance, because of course having a system too complex and tedious would just start being annoying and distracting again, assuming it wasn’t the whole point of the game. In summary, it’d be a tough thing to do properly, and that’s probably why its one of the least developed systems in games.