Larian Studios Forums Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis (English) Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis Dialog systems - discussion

Actually, any system is fine by me as long as they don't ruin it: dialogue options(Reject, accept, deny, attack, hand over item, keep item, etc.) changing positions thus confusing the players, very lengthy dialogue lines(keep it short and sweet, please!), etc.

About typing in with keywords: That doesn't work very well for the newer games 'cos you need a GUI interface for fighting. And you don't want to use a text parser for combat: the newer generation folks might not get it plus games like DD are really large... the older games weren't soo huge.

At that time, you met only a couple of random battles here and there, as opposed to say, a hundred monsters in just a few screens.

Narrator: "You see a goblin. The goblin approaches and hits you in the stomach with its' sword. You lose 10 hitpoints!"

Player: "Fight goblin with dagger."

Computer: "Specified command, "fight goblin with dagger" is invalid."

Player: *starts flipping through manual* All right, "fight goblin at northwest with dagger."

Computer: "Specified command, "fight goblin at northwest with dagger" is invalid."

Player: *getting a little irritated* "fight goblin at nw with dagger"

Computer: "You hit the goblin for 4 hitpoints. The goblin swings its' sword and hits you for 6 hitpoints."

Player: When does the combat stop? Nooo... there're like 200 more monsters in this map! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> And probably 10, 000 more monsters in this game.

Well that's a difficult one, some like more the dialogues of Diablo2, other ones admire the dialogues of Planescape Torment. But it's handy if you have a bit of a choice, but the dialogues were good in DD and BD, lengthy, but you could skip quite a lot till you need to reply. Then you choose your reply, and even if you didn't read it all, you could still just check your quest log to see what exactly needs to be done.

Oh, sure... lots of people like different things which is why being a game designer is challenging. You gotta find ways to make them "accept" or "respect" your choices.

Were they that lengthy? I consider the ones in PST and even some other RPGs much lengthier although I preferred the ones in DD and BD(and QFG): short and sweet narrative and dialogue is always better unless you can write like Robert Frost or some really good writer of your choice.

Yes, the ability to skip dialogues is a good choice which is why I generally dislike games that use plenty of cutscenes to convey dialogues unless the cutscenes are really pivotal to the plot. I pray that DD2 will not go that way: tons of cutscenes which aren't even the least bit exciting/interesting.