Favourite Dialogue Systems

[Poetic Nova]

I think I like Fallout: New Vegas the best.

Not only it provides many opportunities for using your "Speech" skill, it also allows for usage of your expertise in different fields (such as explosives or medicine) to achieve desired outcome.

Also, if you make a dumb character, you get dumb dialogue options.

Second this. NV's dialog system is rather bloody deep.
There are even perks (not sure if they are in 3) that give even more dialog options (terryfying Prescence, Cherez La Femme, etc).

 

[Redryhno]

Deus Ex: Human Revolution if you want to go "cinematic", but without having to guess what your character is going to say.

Fallout: New Vegas/Shadowrun: Dragonfall if you think the way you lead your character through the game shall matter in the dialogues.

Yeah, that's a pretty decent answer. Both have their places, I just personally prefer my RPGs to be as fully interactive an experience as possible(Why else get into a game with depth and story if you're going to play it while you're tired?). Which is why I'll second Human Revolution and Witcher in general being good examples of games that straddle old and new.

 

[FPLOON]

The one in Katawa Shoujo... Hands down... (HA!)

Other than that, I guess the one in Undetale... Is that stretching that a bit?

 

[Zhukov]

With the old list-O-questions style you never know which options will progress the conversation to a new screen or which ones will just return you to the current list after being resolved or which options are mutually exclusive. So it turns into an annoying mini-game in which I try and guess which is which so I'm not missing dialogue. (Kinda like when level designers give you side paths, then lock the door behind you when you choose the path that progresses the game, causing you to miss whatever was down the optional path.)

That's sorta only with a handful of characters though in the majority of games that you're told to go to progress the game before you talk to them though...Most others either let you talk to them again or let you go back through the dialogue trees...

Yes, actually, that is true. Which just reminds me of another problem with old timey dialogue systems that I forgot to mention. Repeating or cycling through them just makes the dialogue weird and robotic and not remotely like a conversation at all.

"Hey, remember that conversation we had 20 seconds ago? Let's have it all again, except this time I'm going to ask you a different question towards the end because last time I asked you I didn't realise it would bring an end to the conversation before I had a chance to ask you those other questions."

 

[Redryhno]

With the old list-O-questions style you never know which options will progress the conversation to a new screen or which ones will just return you to the current list after being resolved or which options are mutually exclusive. So it turns into an annoying mini-game in which I try and guess which is which so I'm not missing dialogue. (Kinda like when level designers give you side paths, then lock the door behind you when you choose the path that progresses the game, causing you to miss whatever was down the optional path.)

That's sorta only with a handful of characters though in the majority of games that you're told to go to progress the game before you talk to them though...Most others either let you talk to them again or let you go back through the dialogue trees...

Yes, actually, that is true. Which just reminds me of another problem with old timey dialogue systems that I forgot to mention. Repeating or cycling through them just makes the dialogue weird and robotic and not remotely like a conversation at all.

"Hey, remember that conversation we had 20 seconds ago? Let's have it all again, except this time I'm going to ask you a different question towards the end because last time I asked you I didn't realise it would bring an end to the conversation before I had a chance to ask you those other questions."

Personally just always imagined it in-universe as you continuing where you left off instead of going through it again.

 

[broadbandmink]

Something I want to see played with would be a dialog system with no dialog. The system would describe what is happening, what people want and the way they are going about it, but it wouldn't explain word for word what they were saying. I think it would open up more ability to include gameplay systems like randomness and repeating.

Perhaps Machinarium would interest you.

 

[Bobular]

I'm waiting for the day voice recognition makes its way to games, kinda like what Half Life 3 was supposed to have in the works. Basically, you the player could say whatever you wanted and the in-game npc's would respond accordingly. Like taking Siri to the next level of AI cognition.

Until then, I thought The Wolf Among Us was decent enough. I don't really care about preselected dialog choices though, since they usually don't add much other than window dressing.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Mass Effect style dialogue system is best dialogue system.

Come at me.

I shall elaborate in the meantime.

With the old list-O-questions style you never know which options will progress the conversation to a new screen or which ones will just return you to the current list after being resolved or which options are mutually exclusive. So it turns into an annoying mini-game in which I try and guess which is which so I'm not missing dialogue. (Kinda like when level designers give you side paths, then lock the door behind you when you choose the path that progresses the game, causing you to miss whatever was down the optional path.)

Mass Effect's system shows me at a glance where each option will lead. Those three on the right are mutually exclusive and progress the conversation, those two on the left are optional and will return me to the current choices once finished, those coloured ones are stat-based persuasion options and so on.

Yeah, Mass Effect had the problem where sometimes what your character said wasn't what you thought it would be, but that's a matter of execution, not a poor system. They just need to make sure the choices accurately reflect the actual dialogue (DE:HR did a good job of this, if nothing else).

That system doesn't automatically mean fewer options either. A developer could just make the wheel bigger. Hell, it doesn't even need to be a wheel. A grid or something would work too.

Oh, and voiced protagonists all the way. I'm fucking done with playing as a walking fence post with no presence in the world beyond being able to stab things. If you're making a gameplay-focused game with no story, or a token story, like the new Doom for example, then fine, silent protagonist it up because nobody gives a shit. But if your game has a story then give me a protagonist who can actually express themselves.

agree with this, however I do think it depends a bit more on what the game wants to do with the character (pre-defined character like geralt, or more of an open slate like dragon age origins) so I'm a bit more open to not having a voice actor for that reason, but otherwise it drives me insane having a truly silent protagonist in a game that is clearly character/story driven.