Not sure if this was mentioned yet, but when conversing, will it be possible for us to have more than two choices? For me personally, being able to disagree is cool, but having only two choices feels a wee bit formulaic.
To go with the example shown by Larian, when we encounted a man who fell to his death because something told him to, our two protagonists initiate a dialogue. During the course of the dialogue we can either choose a skepticism path or a faith path. Here's my problems with this so far:
1). The dialog is initiated after we open and read a book on the corpse. Sometimes I open a book, but then close it without reading it because I'm distracted. Then three minutes later I open it up again and read it. Since the dialog is based on a book, a feature that I think would be really neat would be to be able to open/look at objects corresponding to the dialog in the middle of it (short term memory anyone?). Say, I forget what the book said, but I would be able to open it in the middle of the dialogue and check.
tltd: An interface improvement.
2). Be able to say things like "I don't know," or "I'm not sure yet," or "depends," or "I really need to think about this." And in the latter case your companion would ask you about that sometime later. It is often that something happens in the real world, and other people form an opinion, but I say that "we kind of need more information to go off".
Say in this context, we could check how high it was where he jumped, or how trustworthy was the thing that told him to jump. Maybe we could then get a little optional quest with little or no reward, but all roleplaying to investigate the details of the case before forming an opinion. And in this case my companion would get Faith/Scepticism, but I wouldn't get anything, at least until I investigate/abandon the investigation.
And maybe my companion could choose to say "Stop this, we've wasted enough time looking at flowers," or "You're over-complicating this case, in these situations you just have to trust fate." And maybe you wouldn't be able to get Faith if you choose to investigate.
tldr: Be able to not form, or postpone an opinion. Be able to investigate things like that.
3). My personal pet peeve. This guy jumped and died. He probably had a family. He is probably marked as missing. Be able to optionally inform sheriff/wife/relatives about the problem. Bonus points if informing different parties plays out differently. Also, could we bury him? (Please?) I could play the biggest atheist in the world who would still not pass a body without giving it a proper burial. And maybe local clerics could appreciate it, and executioners who hang people could put a price on my head for disrupting justice #expensiveideas.
tldr: Inform the town about dead people I find. Maybe bury him? (Yay!)
4). Have more than two choices to respond in general. In the example shown, it wasn't quite the pet dog/shoot dog situation, but it was still a bit extreme. Maybe have less extreme responses. Like if I am in general a pretty faithful person, but I have a fear of heights, it would be cool to have this reflected. Or for a more relevant example, if I am Chris Avelone and I hate elves, it would be really cool to have it reflected that I am not just a moderately good person who is probably liked by the townsfolk, but I am a really good person who never helps elves. So the elves could react to me as if I was evil, but other people could react to me as if I was good.
Or what I think may be even more cool, was if my companion could start out by saying the full Faith response, but after a couple dialogue choices, I, being the skeptic that I am, could get him moved down to a slightly less extreme response. Plant the seeds of doubt in his mind, so to say. And since we will be traveling for a long time, eventually I could move him down to full skepticism. Would also work with henchmen/companions.
Just to clarify, I am not really asking for a "Choose your own story with 100000 branching paths." Just instead of two responses, we could have 5 or 7. Not seven different quests, but just a wider variety of responses. Still much harder to do than what we have now, but much less formulaic.
tltd: More flavor in responses, and possibility to not be extreme in them by having more options.
5). There is something I don't like about getting behavior points for dialogue choices. It feels like grinding. If you have a change of heart in the middle of the game, it might be hard to even get to the other side. Luckily, I may have an idea for a solution.
Something I would find really cool: If I play a really Faithful character, and something causes me to have a crisis of faith, I think it should be possible to renounce what I have said. Yeah, I said that I would have jumped. Yeah, I joined the order. Yeah, I donated to the Church, and I convinced three people to come to church on Sundays. (because obviously that's what we're going to be doing in this game. Not fighting orks, no no no no no, that's far too dangerous.) But now I have a crisis of faith, and I initiate a dialogue with my companion/go to the town square and make a declaration, and I say that all my previous decisions were wrong. And doing this would move the slider to zero, or maybe even now count my past responses at half-point skepticism. Obviously, if you do it too many times, you'll become Mitt Romney, but that's another concern. I think it's pretty neat. Anybody agree?
tldr: Renounce past decisions, which would negate the points gotten from them, and maybe even push you a little to the other side.
Aaaand I think that's it. Do the Larian guys actually read the threads?
