Yes, well, it's not like we didn't expect flak for the keywords. It's not even a cost issue, it's really about the amount of topics in the game - there's really a lot and if we put them as a questions, you get very large walls of text. (And you get character put in the way of questioning, because if we'd add several options for that too, then you'd a bible of text for each dialog)
We planned on testing the keywords in alpha and see how they went down - if it turns out everybody hates it, we'll adapt. But in the same breath I have to add - we had keyword haters play the game and come back to admit that actually, it worked quite well for them.
