Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta The dualogue system is not growing on me

Ok, yes yes.. you can bash me for posting this ^^ Just need to post it.. for hecks you can even delete it after I wrote it.. just need to write it really.

This isn't specifically a single thing that's wrong with it, rather the entire idea.. hehe

So... I messed around with the game alpha for a while now and after brooding over the year change... I find that I absolutely do not like this dual-monologue system. I am calling it that because it is not a DIALOG, and I wanted to be witty with the thread title. Following text assumes it is now a "dialog", but technically it is a monologue system (because by definition, you can not have a dialog with yourself, if you DO please search aid)

Basically, I am not (yet) schizophrenic and as such the dialog system between 2 characters I CONTROL is extremely grating. It instantly destroys all the immersion I have in the game. Meaning it feels like I am playing some weird network hack that makes a second me join my game. Like you did in Diablo 2 to trade items with yourself. Except here I have to actively assume 2 different stances while talking to myself. Why would anyone at Larian think that is a good idea in an RPG I don't know...

Now, I have no idea how this idea even got to be, I am sure for COOP it's fantastic, but let's assume for a second that I want to play this game solo / offline / with mods (yes, such absurdness will now be assumed).

Is this system to stay in Singleplayer? Or are there improvements coming for this? Like optional AI templates for dialog that basically remove my "choice" in dialog for 1 of the characters?

I can't possibly be the only one who finds this current implementation "less than optimal" , right?

Since I don't want to be non-constructive... my solution I really already mentioned. Please have optional, per character (even for both characters) templates we can choose that define their dialog choices and behavior *ONLY in dialog*. And of course, 1 such template that is 100% random. (ie, random dialog choice chosen by 1 or both characters)

Now it may be possible I am missing the idea behind it. In the full game will be have the OPTION to only play 1 character? Will the dialog work in all cases for this? Because if yes then most of my complaint/rant would be pretty misguided... but I haven't seen any Info on this and nobody seems to talk about it.

Either way,
Wall of text and stuff... good day good peeps and thanks for reading.

Ps.: This is no way saying I don't like the game, when it releases I will play with the Editor for sure, but having this dual monologue system in destroys my enjoyment of the "vanilla" campaign fundamentally, yes I am odd like that

There will be an option to have your partner always agree, always disagree, or answer randomly. It just isn't implemented yet. Hope that makes you feel better.

Yes, there will eventually be AI personalities that you can put in charge of one of your partner's dialogue in those cases. It just isn't implemented yet.

Personally I would love to try the dialog UI shown in the KS preview. Finding it hard to follow who's saying what atm. Maybe add char portrait under name to make it more identifiable who's saying what to whom.

It really does have that multiple voices in my head feel atm, even if it did have AI dialog active.

Thank you very much for your replies, yes that does make me feel better. I don't know how I have missed this Information but if that's just not yet in then all is good

Ps.: So even full personalities are planned? I would just have been happy with Random but full personalities is of course even better!

You guys (and gals) have no idea how happy that makes me

I'd like to add, that it's not easy to follow the dialogues, especially with 2 characters to deal with.
I think you should use color fonts as in almost all adventure games in order for the player to identify who's talking immediatly. (blue for the player 1, green for player two, and white for others for instance).

Yes on that I agree, the current text display of dialog is confusing to say the least and this in part is why I got a bit worried about the 2 character dialog system. It is REALLY hard to see who is talking to whom. Some of that is because of ALPHA but more of that is because the layout is confusing and sometimes not particularly standardized.

And you can't tell who is currently talking to whom. Which I find far more problematic. (The dialog window says who it is, but they aren't marked in the actual gameworld) So you can sometimes be talked to by someone and have no idea who of the 4 guards on screen is doing the talking. In BG2, the one talking was marked with a flashing circle under their feet and if multiple people talked the camera sometimes nudged over to center on them. Or they used white-text above the heads to denote things not said in dialog to you specifically.

When I think about it, in BG2 I was never confused as to who talked to me at any point. Even though BG2 has a lot of dialog and often 5+ people involved in dialog to boot.

I think Larian would be well advised to revise the dialog text window to be more like Baldurs Gate 2, not because I have nostalgia (which I have, but for that I have Pillars of Eternity) but because the BG2 dialog system functioned extremely well.

I aggree, there should be a face or something next to the text. And generally i think the whole conversation system as shown is extremly old school. The portraits are super small.

Personally I love that there's finally a game where you can RP 2 character's interactions and have their interactions, different personalities and relationships develop meaningfully (writers, for example have to do this a lot and I have personally always found characterization difficult)
At the moment you have to check the name on the left to know who's reply option has come up, which breaks immersion, so colours in addition would be better.

One can argue for the counter point that having well written personalities for characters is what makes or breaks the immersion though. It's true interactions between 2 player-controlled characters is an interesting idea in theory, one that hasn't been tried in games yet as far as I know, but you shouldn't forget that the point of an RPG is to roleplay and that requires you to be put into a specific role. Either by having all characters defined and written with only situational choices (Torment, Mass Effect, or Dragon Age: Origins style) or by giving the player an defacto Avatar (Baldurs Gate, NWN) who has infinite choices, but a central fate that needs roleplaying "around".

To me, one of the driving forces behind playing RPG's is to explore the characters and personalities someone else has written. I don't know how to put it exactly... but it is to me very jarring to go into a dialog where I am both parties when those 2 parties are essentially both identical blank slates. As you say.. hardest thing in writing is make a character that's not your own personal meme.

I think maybe I should say what my point is.. it is that I think (And this is purely my personal opinion) that a good RPG immerses you into the world by making you care for not the world or story, but for specific characters. And as I said, the option to play 2 characters at once is not the problem, after all I "played" 6 in Baldurs Gate 2. The problem is neither player character in Original Sin has a defined character or personality from which we can start shaping ours.

This is why so many RPG's implemented "history/personality" of their characters as a choice, in order to shape the role in your head, most players *need* a defined character. There can be choices of course, but the choice "no history/personality" should never be given to a player.

Either way, this game will be moddable and that means I can do what I want with the OC once it's out.. so in my mind I am pretty set on changing the 2nd character to something else. I think a huge chance was given away here to give players OPTIONAL asymmetry between controllable characters. Ie, 2nd character could have been some magical wolf or whatever else you might envision with unique parts in dialog etc. And thus a dialog between the 2 might really be roleplayable without the same problems that are caused when you are roleplaying essentially 2 identical dudes/gals. (that's at least for me, the problem with 2 playable "player" characters)

Mhh, I wrote again so much..

I don't know what Original Sin offers when it's complete, so don't take this the wrong way. I am talking about theory at best, not to complain ;p

I agree about the BG dialogue text system - I was never confused as to who was talking in that game, even when several characters were interjecting. All that Larian devs gotta do is to colour the names of the characters differently, colour npc's and pc's lines differently and show a portrait of the current speaker in a dialogue. BG also had a small mouth icon on the party members' portraits to show who's involved in a dialogue. Here's how it is: