Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Dialogue?

I played a point and click adventure game that used keywords, which worked fine. There was not a lot of emotion in the dialog though; it was pretty much just a murder mystery type investigation. The main problem with keywords is when the tone of what you say doesn't match your expectations of the selection. I tried the demo for one game with keywords and wanted to say something encouraging to someone who's parents had just been killed, or something, and the actual sentence was a complete jerk response.

It's up to the devolopers team of Larian to do the keywords in a very good way ! And thinking of this aspact I believe the best idea ever mentioned is coming from Stabbey:
including many different portraits of the two main characters (and all or some NPC's too?) that shows the "feeling/mood/ whatever... " by each keyword !

I know, that's of course much work to implement it and means more coests and time to develop, but I believe it's worth the effort, not ?
But if Kickstarter become a success, why not make such nice looking and/or funny small pictures with moods like mad, angry, happy, in love, sad, crying, fearless/brave, hungry/thirsty, mysterious, dreaming, smiling, thinking, unpatient waiting, irritated, tired, unsure, feeling sick, drunken, dizzy, ... and so on and so forth ... you become dizzy of this ?
Joram do understand .

See? This is what I meant with "good reasons" for keywords/paraphrasing. I understand you, and I think is perfectly reasonable.

But even in this case, I believe compromises are achievable. For example, by using keywords and the full lines -something like Deus Ex HR, with hovering full lines when you were to select the keyword-. I guess you could say the "wall of text" is there, but you have a reliable keyword to ignore it, with the natural pace of dialogue following.

Edit: To Joram: The icons-mood idea is great in paper, but the result... It certainly adds flavour to the keyword and its ultimate meaning, but it does not solve the problem -the player still does not know what is going to be the final sentence, and selecting answers becomes a mechanical endeavor (you select moods, rather than sentences with meaning).

I say this because Dragon Age 2 use this system and I found it extremely irritating.

Again, I think there are better compromises.

In the 2004 Bard's Tale game, you could choose between two dialogue options every time: Snarky or Nice. Not knowing what would happen after you chose actually worked because it was usually hilarious and often unexpected. Snark at a female innkeeper who pulled a trick on you and she'd sleep with you, if you were meek and chose Nice, the outcome was not so good.

It worked in that game... but I don't think it would work in this one.

I think a mood icon-keyword system for talking to your partner after an event would be terrible. It would distance me from the character, plus I would have no idea what they're actually saying. I would prefer the current way of identical portraits and distinct lines to mood icon-keywords.

*****

Oh, that's an interesting idea, Zerael - Keywords and tooltips. That might not work well, but what about expandable/collapsible dialogues:


Strangely-dressed man: Hello there, fine adventurers. I've got a little dilemma. I was planning on going fishing, but seems that the fish that used to reside in my pond have gotten up and walked away.

• You
• Fishing
• Dilemma

• You
• [hide] >>> I'm pleased to meet you, sir. What's your name?
• [___] >>> Ha ha, why are you in a dress?
• Fishing
• Dilemma

Roderick: I'm pleased to meet you, sir. What's your name?

Strangely-dressed man: (+5 Disposition) I am Flabbimus Geomaxus. I used to be a wandering wizard, but have retired to enjoy the quiet life.

• You
• Fishing
• Dilemma

Flabbimus Geomaxus: It's quite a relaxing hobby. Just peace, and quiet, and your own thoughts.

• You (Greyed out to indicate you chose this already)
• Fishing
• Dilemma
• [hide] >>> Been at the old drudanae, have you?
• [___] >>> What madhouse have you escaped from?
• [___] >>> Okayyyy... I'll just quietly back away now.
• [___] >>> Fish that got up and walked away? I'm intrigued, tell me more.

Roderick Okayyyy... I'll just quietly back away now.

Flabbimus Geomaxus: (No Disposition change) Wait, wait! They're no ordinary fish, you see. When I retired, I buried my old magical things in the yard and the magic seems to have leaked into the fish pond. It changed the fish into something which I think might be just a little bit... dangerous.

• You
• Fishing
• Dangerous Fish
• [hide] >>> Yes, I see where this is going. Maybe I'll take a miss on magical massive man-eating fish.
• [___] >>> I might be inclined to assist you, if you make it worth my time.
• [___] >>> I will certainly help. I don't want to see anyone get hurt.

When it shows up on-screen, the conversation would look like this (except for portraits instead of names):

Strangely-dressed man: Hello there, fine adventurers. I've got a little dilemma. I was planning on going fishing, but seems that the fish that used to reside in my pond have gotten up and walked away.
Roderick: I'm pleased to meet you, sir. What's your name?
Strangely-dressed man: I am Flabbimus Geomaxus. I used to be a wandering wizard, but have retired to enjoy the quiet life.
Roderick: Fishing
Flabbimus Geomaxus: It's quite a relaxing hobby. Just peace, and quiet, and your own thoughts.
Roderick: Okayyyy... I'll just quietly back away now.
Flabbimus Geomaxus: Wait, wait! They're no ordinary fish, you see. When I retired, I buried my old magical things in the yard and the magic seems to have leaked into the fish pond. It changed the fish into something which I think might be just a little bit... dangerous.
Roderick: I might be inclined to assist you, if you make it worth my time.



Not the best medium for depicting this, but I hope you get the concept. It keeps the list of keywords in place so that if there really isn't any point in choosing a different line, clicking the keyword will go right to the result, and this should reduce the walls of text a bit, maybe.

I apologize, I have no issue at all with keywords. I just saw a thread about dialog, watched one of the recent Kickstarter videos about dialogs minutes prior, and just wanted to share I prefer typed out dialog vs all at once dialog.

Keywords weren't part of my suggestion, they are fine with me. Sorry for the mild hijack.

Of course, that's another example of a good compromise between the two ideas -I mentioned the hovering full lines, but the expand/collapse idea is exactly the same "spirit" I had in mind. Walls of text are gone, and people who want to know the full line can read it before actually saying it.

It's like making hovering texts optional, but ingame. I like it ^_^

I very much like the mousing over method, revealing more options that are full lines.

But I dream for the day in which we can type our own custom responses and the NPCs will react accordingly, kinda like advanced cleverbot.

I cringe just thinking about that, lol.

Edit:

Gratz on getting over 9000 posts! Vegeta would be disappointed!

Good ideas mentioned here ! Mouse over or the system stabbey wrote I like both, especially the Mouse over (hover) like you can find on websites !

Too much text in one time isn't good in my opinion, but on the other hand it can start to be (a little bit) annoying when you've to clic clic clic so much times to read all of the dialogs !

So please, don't make the dialogs like a clic-fest !!!
Thanks !

+1 I'm actually digging the mouse over idea as well ..

My objection to the mouse-over idea is that many times I have experienced the joy of trying to open programs from the start menu. I click, hover over folder, then onto another folder, then move my mouse wrong and oops, the folder I wanted went away and I have to try again. That's irritating enough when I'm only trying to open a program once every 10 minutes or so, never mind having 6 or 7 chances to screw up the mouse-over per minute.

Not to mention there is no reason to use keywords if pop-up window over the one already displays full answer. Easier then put it in dialogue window so you can use arrow keys as well to navigate?

I have one dialogue question regarding the Editor: Can we use any font/script we want? For example, if I want to make some rpgs based on some serbian folklore, can I use serbian cyrillic script for it, even if there is no serbian language localization for the main game?

But there is a reason: some people argue that they have issues with walls of text. The hovering text with the full line could please players who want to know the exact line, and the keyword to the ones that do not want to read and prefer a reliable keyword/paraphrasing.

EDIT: By the way, it's a shame that the game is not going to have spanish traduction. Not for me, I dodn't have a problem with that, but certainly it will seriously diminish any impact the game could have here. Press and players are very touchy when it comes to this topic T_T

You can't cater to everyone's needs, sadly. I'm pretty sure Larian has said before that they only translate if the particular country is selling the retail version of the game. Which makes sense.

Yes, it's true, and I understand it. But, unfortunatelly, this will lead D:OS to be one of the many games ignored by the spanish gamer community.

I tend to prefer games with good spanish translations, but also, I don't have any problems if english is present. I would never deny me the chance of playing a great game for such a trivial matter. The sad thing is that here, in Spain, there is a very extended and internalized conviction of the necessity in fiction's tranlations.

In videogames, as in movies, the absence of translations/dubbings is wildly criticized, to the point that the vast majority of games that come here without it are sistematically ignored. And seeing the effort of Larian in D:OS and the promising look of it, it makes me feel sad because I already know what the reaction is going to be by press and players.

But yes, I perfectly understand the reasons for its absence, at least in the game's launch. Even more, I would say that with the brutal rate of piracy and the crisis destroying the economy of my country, it's a miracle that there are still companies willing to sell games here

This reminds me of a time when a guy on the 'Mount and Blade' forums went absolutely insane because there weren't Italian (not Spanish, okay..But still! :P) translations available for a certain mod. *shrugs*

If a Russian translation CAN, why not a Spanish ? I know Spanish is a difficult language for me and many people they say this to me it's indeed difficult to learn, but like many languages it's beautiful to listen to Just me

Larian already explained that the only translation will be available in the countries where they have contact with publisher(s). it is not a matter of "what language is more complex and hard to work with"

Publisher(s) ?
I though Larian Studios is now self .. forget the word, sorry ...

Swen mentioned in some thread here about translations, try to check his last posts within a month.