In regards to your above comments WF, unfortunately that was due to the whole Death-Knight not being able to talk decision (not mine). This meant that in order for the DK to comment on situations, which really needed to be part of the game, he had to see through the player’s eyes (not the ideal but without one you’d just lose all the DKs comments). Having the party also splitting up was a bit of a nightmare too because you had to have situations where the NPC was initiating conversation with the DK on his own, the player on their own or the player and the DK together. The NPCs could only direct questions at the hero, or have a one liner dismissing the DK. This created a whole load of narrative headaches, especially because it was decided after Act 1 was edited, so it had to be re-edited to fit. I think I would have much preferred the straight-down-the-line, both characters can talk to everyone approach.

The problem is, according to Larian, that lots of people don’t read narrative and just skip through, so therefore they were taking the logical step of reducing it and therefore having less localisation costs. The hero originally had one word responses, until Bron, the testers and I, rebelled against it – hence the hero was allowed short, to-the-point lines -again not what I would have hoped for but better than one worders. The future of interactive dialogue is an interesting one, and one that I think will be redefined not so much by its underlying structure but by general character development, depth and emotion. Thoughts anyone?

Rhi