Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General More dialog choices

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?

Your complaints are not very reasonable. This is a game, it's not a Hall of Judgement in the afterlife where every decision you make will be judged and determine your destination.


1. If you don't feel like you can give the game your full attention, don't play the game.

2. Basically the same answer. Just pick something. I mean seriously, guy jumps off a cliff and dies means it was OBVIOUSLY high enough to kill him. There's no need to take a tape measure to the top and check.

3. That has nothing to do with the dialogue system at all. How do you know there ISN'T an associated quest? Maybe there will be if the Kickstarter is funded. What do you think the KS is for?

4. It might be nice to have more options, and conversations wih multiple decision points but there could be hundreds of these dual-dialogues in the game. It could be a ton of extra work. I don't know how the endings work, but maybe making a ton of soft, in-the-middle answers isn't going to be that helpful in determining the ending.

5. Too bad. If you've been pumping A for half the game and then decide to pump B, don't be surprised when you end up with A and B at equal levels. That's what you get when you're wishy-washy. It is not a bad design that after making A decisions for half the game, and creating A-based consequences, you can't just wipe out all the A decisions you made. Deal with it.

1). I feel like am I giving the game the full attention, I just can't remember everything I read in a book. In real life, I can always go back and check, don't see why it would be terrible to do it here.

2). "This is a game" is a bit of a cop-out answer, don't you think? I don't really care about the destination, I care about playing the game. And about measuring the cliff height, yeah, might have been a bad example. The point stands. The Witcher games for example, do a lot with investigations.

3). No, but it's still an issue. And if there is such a quest, well, I don't see a problem then.

4). Once again, I don't care about the ending (much). I don't read a story for the last chapter. I care about playing the game. And it could be a ton of work, but that's best determined by the people who are making the game. This thing is not something you have to go all the way or nothing.

5). It's not bad that you can't wipe out the consequences from your decisions. It is questionable whether it is good to lock you in a specific path from the start of the game is good. Being able to have a crisis of faith for example, could potentially add a lot to the story, (Especially if such a mechanic is consciously used by the designers,) including in interactions with other people. Not going to cry if it doesn't happen, but not playing static characters would be interesting.

1. I'd imagine that the trigger for that dialogue happens a few seconds after you open the book. (If it isn't I'm sure Larian could tie that to reading the book.) You can remember for a few seconds.

2. I've seen a bunch of examples, and in them, the dialogues seem to happen after the "investigation phase", so to speak is over. There is one that isn't, the love-potion Orc girl, but in that case, "investigation" is identical to "don't kill her".

3. Not everything that is a quest is marked as a quest. On the other hand, not everything has to be a quest. There may be more you can do for the guy's corpse, there may not.

5. Yes, it is bad if you can wipe out the consequences for your decisions. That's the ENTIRE POINT of having decisions in the game at all!

You are not "locked onto a single path from the start". There are probably hundreds of these little decision points in the game, each advances one or another stat incrementally. If you pick Faith + 1 here, you are not stuck picking all Faith++ decisions. You can change to have a "crisis of faith" at any time by choosing one of the other conversation options. Maybe if you do enough of those, and the Kickstarter goals are met, there could be a trait you get for switching your conviction enough.

I don't think there is any kind of design limit on conversations that there can only be two options. Most of the time that may be sufficient, but previous Divinity games have had multiple conversation options, including 'I'm not sure' or 'there are some things I need to do first' before accepting / continuing a quest.

Larian has already mentioned there will be things that people mention that you can follow up on, or not, but which are not presented as a quest. Maybe we can find the family of the guy that jumped off the cliff, or maybe not; hopefully we can at least notify the nearest town guards.

You do realize that going from about 2 choices to 5-7 triples the amount of dialog, and doubles the number of outcomes (assuming some of the different conversation branches end up in the same place). Adding more choices without meaningful consequences would be worse than limited choices; the extra work would certainly be worth it in some cases, but if your characters see someone drop their coin purse in the game, two options would be good enough, and three plenty.


Welcome to the forum.

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1). And you still haven't explained why it would be bad to add it to the interface, only that I should suck it up.

3. Not everything that is a quest is marked as a quest. On the other hand, not everything has to be a quest. There may be more you can do for the guy's corpse, there may not.

3). Sure, and... that's a tautology. It honestly feels like you're explaining to me what we know so far. That's not what I want. So... I don't disagree with your statement. But understand that your statement is not in disagreement with my original point either. Same goes for #2.

5). I would disagree that something I described would equal to wiping out the consequences of my decisions. Dialog choices, maybe. Decisions, no. But I feel like neither of us have more to say on this.


Raze: I too don't think there's any kind of limit. But what I've seen so far, were exactly two choices. So that's why I'm talking about it. And honestly, if you or anyone disagree with most of what I say, but agree with something even if "All my suggestions are pretty much terrible " then I am still happy.

Maybe, maybe. I was trying to voice my opinion that I think specifically notifying the guards of a dead body would be cool. In most RPG's, when you encounter a dead body, you just loot it and move on.

Yeah, I agree with you here. But since I don't know the actual hours involved, production figures, and so on, I'm just saying 5-7 as a wish item. And yeah, in that case, bring/leave/steal would be enough.

And thanks, probably not going to be staying here. I'm busy in RL, and I've already got a place I hang out on. But thanks anyway.

Kein: What?

Sarcasm, I thought it was quite obvious.

Basically, let me rephrase:


Like I didn't okay Skyrim. Or thousand other games.

1) Why not add it to the interface? Because it's a bad idea. The game cannot read your mind and know "that book I picked up and read, I wasn't actually paying attention when I did that", nor is it obligated to do that.

If you don't want to read a book then and there, why pick it up? If you don't want to read the book in your inventory, why open it? Not to mention that the very prompt for the dialogue outright TELLS YOU what the book said, in case you forgot or were not paying attention! "Preposterous, who jumps off a cliff just because a statue told them to?"

That's exactly what the book said, and if you can't pay attention to a situation from literally 5 seconds earlier, that's your own problem.


3) I suppose I'm not in disagreement with point 3 too much. More quest options are good, sure. But the co-operative dialogue about whether it was foolish to jump from a cliff is not the spot to add in unrelated quest hooks.


5) Your choices are not unrelated to the consequences; they ARE the consequence.

Each and every choice you make has the consequence of increasing one personality stat a little bit. You are the one determining who you are with each choice. What you seem to be asking for is the option to change history, unsay things that you said. Nothing is stopping you from saving often and reloading later if you don't like what happens, but adding an "Undo History" button to the game goes against the entire concept of a game built around Choice and Consequence.

Decision... Consequence...

Besides, how is the game supposed to know that at some random point, it should provide you with a "Rescind all your decisions and roll back your profile?" option?

Nothing is stopping you from having a "crisis of faith" at any time. In fact, the game encourages that because it has many different spots for these dialogues to happen. But just like in reality, you can't just undo everything you've already done, you have to start down your new path from NOW, carrying the weight of all your previous choices with you.

Yes, just reload if you wish another outcome ... but NOT for me ! It's boring and imo then the whole "roleplay element" disappear like a drop of water in the ocean !

I don't like reloading for all but "game over", then I'v no chooice (of 'the' course)!

Better: I love making "wrong" decisions .. a next hero take other decisions, remembering the previous playthrough ... etc etc ... this all increase the replayability enormous and that's Great !! To explain WHY I find this so important ?
Well: I only play RPG's just because of replayability ! In the time I start playing puzzle (adventure) games, but most of them I play 1 time and after that they eating all tons of dust or lying somewhere ...totally forgotten ....

There needs to be dialogue options altogether. So far we only see two for decision making. Where is the "I'm not sure" one? Where are the role-playing dialogues and witty dialogues for your character to say?

Well from what I've been hearing the key-words are temporary.

Concerning the disputes between companions. I think only a third is needed: "I'm not sure" otherwise you'll either agree or disagree. I guess you could add a "I don't care" or "I'm not getting involved" into it too.

Not sure if answering two days late counts as mild necromancy, but here goes:

1). Especially if the book was found on the corpse, the game doesn't have to read my mind to know it's related. But I suppose that concerning the other situations, there could simply be an option to examine my entire inventory, and look at any object and leaflet inside. So there goes that problem.

Now, I can actually answer that particular thing. Sometimes I close these things on accident. And yes, I can be absent-minded. I am the person who if he wants to know the time, double-checks the clock five times just in case he read it wrong. What usually happens in these cases, is that I have to minimize/reload the game and read the book online/before the event. I don't like doing that. That you don't have this problem, doesn't mean it's not a problem for me.

And the game does say it pretty clearly, I'll give you that. But not every case has to be that way. Having to actually read the books to get information is a reasonable thing to expect at some point in the game.

3). Well, they already said that the game won't really have quests as quests. So I suppose I don't care about it not being a quest. Just about it existing.

5). Okay, here's the thing here. The way I see it, is that there is basically two ways you have consequences for your decisions. The first one, is my interactions with the outside world. Whether I kill the guards or not. Whether I steal something. How I finish quests, and so on. Nobody will forget what I did there. It will forever be on my memory.

And then there's the thing about talking with my companion about things. Nobody can overhear us. Nobody knows what I said. It's basically me talking with a friend, and assuming I'm not just lying to him/her to get him/her to be friends with me (which the game doesn't seem to give an option for, which I am totally okay with,) it's basically me doing character development. Now I wonder if in the middle of the game it would be possible to say:
"Now, I did those things earlier, but now I am sorry for them, and I would not do them again." Your companion or other people you're saying it to don't have to believe you. They could call you out on it if you set your foot on the previous path again. But to me, having those points pop up when I do something just feels like useless baggage.

My problem with moving towards certain directions, is that when I decide to change, it feels like I am struggling against the game systems, not my decisions. Here, I'll elaborate a little. Say here's the scale (Don't pick on my example or the scale, please. Pick on the concept.):

Honorable >> Mostly Trustworthy >> Regular >> Practical >> Selfish

Basically, I would go first to honorable in the course of my gameplay. Then I decide that I don't care about anything anymore and decide to be as selfish as possible. One, in a real world, what I said in my kitchen (to my partner) wouldn't have any significance on how the people understood me, so it wouldn't bear an effect at all.
Two, when I would change, the people would notice it immediately. They would talk about the sudden change of heart of Dude McHero. The people I didn't have contact with recently would still treat me as a paladin. People I did interact with, would treat me completely differently.

Now, I get that having an abstract scale is easier than modeling each person's or community interaction independently (Which is why I like the Witcher games, which of course have their own share of problems). But when I meet people, I don't want them to say: "You might have been behaving like a bandit recently, but I still like you because it takes a while to climb down that scale." Now, that example might not happen depending on how the system is implemented, and what these stats actually mean in dialogue. That's something I'd like to hear more about.

But when you interact with people after such a change, they might have fond memories of you from before, and might still treat you well because of it, or have illusions of you coming back to the "good" side. But they will differentiate their responses to a person who's going down the ladder, and their responses to a person who's still going up. So the thing I am talking about, ties in to the problems inherent in having artificial values jump up and down, instead of having human relations. And often the solution to that, is to have some karma dispenser where you could quickly raise you values to a certain point.

And an ability to use the game systems to somehow help your role-playing, instead of fighting against it, is something I would appreciate. Now, once again, it doesn't have to be a "Get out of jail free" card, and maybe erasing the values is not the best way to do it. But to give an example, (which is probably not applicable to this game but still...) if you're "good" and you encounter a potential "evil" companion, that companion would usually say that you're too good for his/her taste. But having an option to say "Well, that's in the past. I won't be doing any more "good" things anytime soon." would be a better option than to reload and kill a village (karma dispenser) before talking to that person again.

Anybody see where I'm going? If the Original Sin wasn't in development already for so long, and the kickstarter raised more money, I could have asked to go away with the "alignment" system entirely. But I don't think that's possible, so anything to make it less artificial is cool. And I don't know what those Faith points decide. But once again, I don't view them as consequences of my decision. I view them as necessary evil, because it's too hard to make the game without them.



And for everyone who's saying that if I don't like the game I shouldn't play it. Are you consciously trying to shut me up, or does it just look like it? Because I feel like I have the right to come here and complain about anything I want without being told that the game is just not for me. I mean, I could complain about the game being turn-based. Or I could complain about it not having guns, and being set in Afghanistan. Now, it would be stupid. And it would probably be useless to reason with a guy who mistakes Original Sin for Call of Duty. But as long as he wasn't trolling, (which he probably would be, but that's something else entirely) I don't think you should just tell somebody to shut up and go away. Now, I don't feel hurt, and I won't be reporting anyone, but the point stands. That doesn't actually apply to Stabbey and anyone who articulated what he said.

How is the game supposed to know that you've changed your mind? How is it supposed to handle you changing your mind?

Should there always be a "wait, I changed my mind about everything I did" option every time you talk to your partner? What if you didn't change your mind about everything, and wanted to keep some choices the same? You seem to be asking for a way to go into your Personality Profile screen and change any of the values to anything you like at will. That's not a good idea.

Think of the personality profile as the impression you're giving to your partner. Impressions are hard to go back and change later. Every time you increase your faith, that's how your partner sees you. It would be hard to believe someone who says "that old me is terrible now, I am changing."

"Action speak louder than words". You can't just say you'd take them all back, you have to show you mean it. If you regret your earlier alignment choices - MAKE DIFFERENT ONES IN THE FUTURE. With a person, the slate cannot be wiped clean, and all your actions forgotten. Why should the game artificially try to make its characters seem more artificial by letting you wipe away the impression you've given?

I think you've seen the parts where Larian is trying to emulate the feel of a tabletop pen-and-paper RPG, but this is a videogame, it's much more structured. It's a bunch of algorithms stuck together to try and simulate human behaviour. It will have trouble handling complex things like "I'm going to roleplay a Paladin who starts out faithful, then acts like a jerk, so GM Bob, you'd better have all the NPC's react to me exactly like that."

If you have to check a clock 5 times because you think you read it wrong, this game may not be the best fit for you because it will not hold your hand through every stage of a quest, it expects players to think and remember, explore and solve things on their own.

The game will have a reputation system and a disposition system for NPC's, those aren't going to keep track of specific things like each character's "Faith" or "Contempt", but how each NPC reacts to the player in a general sense, how much they like them, based on the good/evil actions the player has taken in general, and things the player has done to the NPC specifically (for good or bad). Yes, the NPC's will notice if you change from being nice to them to choosing the "huge jerk" conversation options, and their reaction to you will drop. NPC's you aren't talking to in "huge jerk" mode will still treat you the same. If you continue to act like a jerk, their disposition to you will drop. If you start being nice again, it will rise.

The NPC's won't differentiate between the player characters, even if one is a murdering thief and one is a noble paladin - the players will be grouped together in one faction.

This game is not going to have a dialogue system as deep and nuanced as Planescape: Torment. I don't think you'll be able to just say "I renounce everything, join my party!" Why the heck would he believe you? If you want an evil guy to join your party, but he will only do so if you're evil, it's not realistic to just say "I'm evil" - not if you have an established reputation for good.

You want to get the evil guy who wants you to be evil, then you have to actually do evil things, not just say "No really, I'm evil, trust me despite my never doing anything evil before". That village? Sorry, but you have to actually burn it down. Actions, not just words.

The game don't hold your hand, indeed ... me too can forget things, sure ... but there is a Solution for everything : I just make "Notes" from time to time !
Get it ?

Idea for more dialogue interactivity: non-dialogue dialogue choices.

Basically this requires emotes, like in WoW or NWN. With console commands like /greet, /laugh, /wave or /dance, the player character would greet, laugh, make a little dance or wave at a target. If such emotes were implemented, which they should be of course for even more general interactivity in an already interactive game :p -- they could be made available in conversations.

He: Come here, look!
She: (seeing a beautiful pheasant) Wow!
He: Isn't it pretty?
She: I've never seen one up close. Let's shoot it.
He: <laughs>
She: What. I'm serious. We should shoot it and eat it. It's really tasty.

Could be a bit more natural than only alternating dialogue lines. Also, there's interjections (don't let someone finish a sentence) or silence (not saying or commenting on something).

According to UPDATE #12 the keywords on dialogues between main characters are no more. But ONLY in when it comes to conversation between main 2 characters./\

Yepp. In the gamespot video Larian stated that they use the keyword system in conversations with NPC's to easily and dynamically adding aspects according to the world state.

But I'm quite happy that we know have full dialogue options for the dual-character conversation system.

Great! This kinda the exact way I wanted it so I'm satisfied.