New challenges writing meaningful game dialogue

Yakoob on 28/2/2014 at 10:15

Some of you already saw my musings on the topic on Facebook, as I've been spending this past week writing dialogue for my second game. However, I've been slowly realizing that, with a more involved narrative and gameplay variables affecting it, my old approach from Postmortem isn't exactly going to cut it; at least not if I want something more intricate than "walking signposts" from typical RPGs.

I've just (http://koobazaur.com/new-challenges-writing-meaningful-game-dialogue/) posted a breakdown of my new challenges, problems and potential solutions so I'd be curious to hear your guys' thoughts, if you have any. As always, I really appreciate your opinions, your feedback has always been useful in the past :)

(I could've posted in "what you making" thread but didn't want to derail that further!)

Thirith on 28/2/2014 at 11:03

Interesting stuff, definitely, but for me the thing I disliked about Postmortem's dialogues wasn't systemic but much more fundamental: I found the writing clumsy and lacking in confidence, both in itself and in the reader. It often made up for that, to some extent at least, by the game coming across as a labour of love, but by the time I'd finished the game I'd come to find the writing style tiresome. The concepts are good - if these weren't characters talking but essays it'd be different - but the writing needs to be refined.

Whatever system you end up using, I think your games' writing mainly will need to be rewritten and rewritten, stripping away what is too much while keeping what you consider essential. It's possible that the systems you use will amplify or lessen that problem, but to me as someone heavily into reading and writing that's the main thing: better, more fitting writing.

nicked on 28/2/2014 at 13:09

Quote:

Currently a conversation is affected by:

How drunk an NPC is

Sold!

DDL on 28/2/2014 at 13:55

What you've so lovingly termed the 'Dick dilemma' (that's "pissing off a vital NPC to the point where he no longer helps you, thus halting the game", for all you perverts out there) can usually be circumvented by providing an alternate, usually punitive route.

Like "you have annoyed lord Sebastian so much he will no longer let you travel on his private steamship. You must now disguise yourself as a navvy and travel by working in the engine room for the whole journey, instead."

I think it's generally better to "allow people to screw themselves up but provide escape clauses" than it is make it actually impossible for them to screw up. Not least because if you've got a person it's somehow impossible to offend, a lot of players will really, really try... :D

Yakoob on 28/2/2014 at 19:41

Quote Posted by Thirith

the thing I disliked about Postmortem's dialogues wasn't systemic but much more fundamental: I found the writing clumsy and lacking in confidence, both in itself and in the reader. It often made up for that, to some extent at least, by the game coming across as a labour of love, but by the time I'd finished the game I'd come to find the writing style tiresome. The concepts are good - if these weren't characters talking but essays it'd be different - but the writing needs to be refined.

I think I recall you mentioning something similar before. But i am not sure I fully understand what you mean - I get that it's the writing style (not the system) that bugged you, but what exactly made it tiresome? You mean it came off too "academic" rather than colloquial? Or am I missing the boat?

Quote Posted by DDL

Omg... I cant believe I missed that. wow, a serious cause of the brainfart there :p I guess I got too boxed into how I wanted my narrative to work.

Though, the character is a bit more crucial than than merely "need to talk to X to get item Y." Think more like... what if you could piss off Manderley in the first mission in Deus Ex and he fired you. Kinda destroys the whole logical flow of the game (to the point before you actually go rogue)

I guess all these problems were really solved by looking at the games I mentioned (Witcher, Dragon Age, Mass Effect etc.) by having few predefined "main story archs/end states" you can get into and putting everything else into non-critical side-plots. I guess I was just trying to think of a different and more flexible approach but... perhaps unnecessarily, and to my own detriment?

Pyrian on 1/3/2014 at 00:19

I would consider separating your long and short dialog options. Allow the player to converse and/or debate at as much length and as philosophically deep as you feel like, but at the same time, always have an "escape" clause to get to the point (and make it clear which is which). A player could then go through long conversations if they so chose (and it might even make a difference, in some cases), or they could skip to the "point" or "Key Node Beat" as you called it, at any step in the "filler" dialog.

Consider the famous "essay" dialogs from DX: the NSF leader at the top of the statue, the Chinese barkeep, Morpheus - they're all mostly optional, and you can opt out any time you're allowed a dialog choice.

Quote Posted by Yakoob

Though, the character is a bit more crucial than than merely "need to talk to X to get item Y." Think more like... what if you could piss off Manderley in the first mission in Deus Ex and he fired you. Kinda destroys the whole logical flow of the game (to the point before you actually go rogue)

Pretty sure you can shoot him in the face at that point and he'll just calm down after a few minutes. :D I actually really liked Half Life's (the first one!) solution to this problem. Game just ends with a black screen and something about misuse of human resources. You have failed.

Quote Posted by Yakoob

I guess all these problems were really solved by looking at the games I mentioned (Witcher, Dragon Age, Mass Effect etc.) by having few predefined "main story archs/end states" you can get into and putting everything else into non-critical side-plots. I guess I was just trying to think of a different and more flexible approach but... perhaps unnecessarily, and to my own detriment?

Well, yes. Given finite resources, there are only a finite number of individual distinct situations you can devote those resources to.

Thirith on 1/3/2014 at 10:37

Quote Posted by Yakoob

Not sure whether academic vs. colloquial quite hits it, although it points in the direction of what I mean. In short, my first reaction to the writing was: "No one talks like that!" For one thing it's too long, too verbiose - you could convey the same information using fewer words. For another, it's too explicit - the subtext of many of the lines (character A likes group X but dislikes group B) was too apparent. It makes it easier for the player, but it also makes for iffy writing IMO. The conversations prioritised information over characterisation (which I prefer to be more subtle), situation (would people in such a situation talk like these do?) and the elegance/style of the writing. To some extent, I'd even say the conversations came across as foregrounding the mechanics of the game. It's not that they were painfully badly written, I just felt they weren't written to fit the characters and situation so much as the information and ideas you wanted to convey. In comparison, it's like the difference between the Dragon Age conversations and the encyclopaedic entries - each fits fairly well within its context, but if the characters talked in encyclopaedic language it would stand out. (Not saying that Dragon Age has the best conversations in a game, mind you, but I'm trying to clarify what I mean.)

Dunno - does that make my position clearer? Basically I'd say that the best of systems underlying the conversations won't make up for writing that is lacking, and the worst system becomes much less of a problem if the writing itself is good. While the system can very much improve the game aspect of conversations, I would always put more of an emphasis on the quality of the writing. In my opinion, Postmortem would have benefitted from a rewrite or two - what was there in the game was intriguing and intelligent, but it wasn't particularly elegant or situationally apt. Having someone else - a good editor, basically, with some writing skills - go over such conversations and strip them down would have improved the writing IMO.

P.S.: I'm trying to be as clear as I can be - I hope it doesn't primarily come across as me belabouring the point and/or being patronising about your work.

Sulphur on 1/3/2014 at 17:01

I think broader dialogue options, not deeper, is really the best thing to do. Deeply nested branches get confusing and boring fast, which is what we saw with various pieces of interactive fiction in the 90s that didn't quite take that into account and ended up ineffective in conveying what they wanted to. These days, you see the result of years of refinement in your current-day RPG: a broad amount of topics, maybe a few levels deep. This works because it engages on an immediate level, instead of having the player feel they're going to have to burrow into their chair and hibernate for a bit while chewing on a never-ending dialogue tree.

Secondly, the point of a game is interaction, so wodges of text really are only the beginning of making a character work. Characters need some level of autonomy and response to player actions to seem realistic, so if you, for example, shoot a hole in the wall next to a friendly NPC's head, they should ideally react to that. If you make a choice to help someone out at the expense of someone else, have that NPC come over to the player and chew them out, if it fits within their character. Have a shady-looking NPC interact with other characters on the sly.

Having said that, what Thirith says is right: good writing overshadows shallow systems. The Walking Dead had great characters, but not very many systems for them to be influenced by. There were key nodes where the player could choose something, and that was stored in a contextual decision tree that called in specific bits of dialogue at later points, but that's the extent of how complicated it got. Most of the actual work done was in making the characters sound like real people, and that's what your game's players are going to remember.

Yakoob on 1/3/2014 at 20:57

Quote Posted by Pyrian

I actually really liked Half Life's (the first one!) solution to this problem. Game just ends with a black screen and something about misuse of human resources. You have failed.

While effective, I personally hate that approach, just feels a bit... lazy, or jarring. Like in Walking Dead when you get the occasional GAME OVER screen. It always felt like it came out of nowhere and just didn't fit with the rest of the game.

It's like reading a book, turning the page, and seeing "Game Over" because you didn't read fast enough; go back to the start of the chapter and try again.

(ok a terrible analogy but you get my point :p)

Quote Posted by Thirith

In short, my first reaction to the writing was: "No one talks like that!" For one thing it's too long, too verbiose - you could convey the same information using fewer words.

Hmmm... I think you're right. I definitely focused prioritized conveying key ideas and think I did a decent job at that. Even though each character had a pretty well outlined psyche, I might have not reflected that in their dialogue enough. It might also be subconscious reflection of my academic knowledge of the topics.

Ironically, one of my goals was to make the dialogue feel more... normal. Like a conversation, rather than a walking-signpost you see in RPGs. Hence the long branches with many options and bouncing from topic to topic, sometimes missing out on a chance to ask something cause that's how conversations flow.

This was really my first attempt at game writing, so a lot I still need to learn. So it's great feedback as I write new ones now - I will keep this in mind and try to put myself in my characters shoes more (which I did try first time around, but perhaps not enough).

Quote:

it's too explicit - the subtext of many of the lines (character A likes group X but dislikes group B) was too apparent. It makes it easier for the player, but it also makes for iffy writing IMO.

Honestly, that was deliberate and actually came only after rewriting some conversations multiple times. The initial postmortem was much more subtle and... as testing revealed most players missed those nuances. Hence I learned I needed to make them clearer.

I know I'm potentially opening a can of worms (YOU SELLOUT LOL CONSOLITIS) but Postmortem made me understand why so many studios "dumb" things down. I don't want to go entirely that path - I want my games to require some intellectual investment, but I also want to be able to convey the complex ideas to the less retrospective or intellectual gamers. And that is much harder to do, as I learned.

Quote:

P.S.: I'm trying to be as clear as I can be - I hope it doesn't primarily come across as me belabouring the point and/or being patronising about your work.

Oh please, be as blunt as you can - the less sugar-coating the more immediately useful the feedback. My ego can handle some bruising if it means making better games in the end :)

But everything you said is actually very polite, insightful, and helpful to hear. So thank you!

Quote Posted by Sulphur

Characters need some level of autonomy and response to player actions to seem realistic, so if you, for example, shoot a hole in the wall next to a friendly NPC's head, they should ideally react to that.

I was actually thinking the same and already started implementing a system where the NPCs can actually randomly initiate the conversation (even if fluff like "how are you" or "have you tried the mac & cheese, it's divine!") and even better, confront the player when they spot them trespassing or something :)

Im not sure how intricate this will end up, it's hard to make all this meaningful/consequential without getting too bogged down or things crumbling on themselves due to over-complexity. But even if purely cosmetic "smoke and mirrors", I think it would bring a lot more "life" into the game.

Pyrian on 2/3/2014 at 04:23

Quote Posted by Yakoob

And yet, nobody blinks when the exact same thing happens from being shot in the head.

Keep in mind that it's almost impossible to REACH those sudden-ends in Half-Life without deliberately trolling the game. The only one I ever hit was actually in Opposing Force when I decided to try jumping into the portal to Xen right after Freeman.

I mean, how many ways around this are there?

You can make it impossible to fail, which is frequently annoying and unnatural in its own way, doubly so when people are deliberately screwing around. ("Manderley quickly forgives you for shooting him in the head...Again.") Invisible War is IMO the poster child for this approach; any character they don't want you to kill is wrapped in unbreakable walls or kept in weapon-lock bars where even if you manage to break in, your weapons still lock. Nothing before the final mission will alienate any faction beyond working with you, even if you slaughter every member you encounter.

You can make it always possible to get around each failure, which is good, but a lot of work, especially if you don't want to make brokenly-easy alternate solutions. Plus, in many cases, you'll find you put in a lot of work for something that almost nobody will ever see.

Or, you can make people REALLY hate you by letting you get into an unwinnable situation without knowing that's what's happened (I still hate you Infocom).

Quote Posted by Yakoob

Haha, so true. I've always felt that ideally there would be two utter hand-holding paths (one of which is really bad), and two paths that you would have to figure out yourself.