I am a real fan of this game and generally love what Larian has done here, but I have to say that the first co-op experience did not meet up very well with my expectations. The only part that feels truly cooperative is combat. If Larian can manage to incorporate better co-op play with the dialogues, it would feel much better. Here are some observations on that front:
1. Some dialogues fail to have any context for one player. For instance, if one person picks up the adventurers journal and reads it, it offers a party conversation where the other player has dialogue lines assuming they know what is going on. If you are going to do something like that, the dialogue should begin with one character explaining to the other what was read rather than assuming the information was already communicated somehow. Either that, or if reading a book is going to open a conversation option, the book UI should pop up for both players.
2. The conversation experience for the non-initiating player is very poor. You feel like you are simply watching from the sidelines rather than being involved, and then suddenly your input is requested. The flyover text is too hard to follow and seems to be missing the player lines (only NPC strings are displayed). I would love to see this become more interactive in co-op mode. Just some brainstorming suggestions here:
- When a player begins a dialogue with an NPC, if you are in co-op mode and the other player is in range, prompt the other player with a box offering to participate in the conversation. This gives them a choice to be involved in the dialogue, or to continue questing independently. If they accept, they get the same dialogue UI as the other player.
- When both players are participating in a conversation, why not allow both to choose dialogue options and have a random roll determine whose choice is selected? If for some reason you only want the initiator to be able to choose the standard selections, have the options greyed out or not present for the other person. But at least this way, the other person can have the UI there and see what questions are available and have a record of the conversation rather than the difficult to see flytext.
- I would like to see a new UI element that contains conversation history. It would be ideal if it could be brought up and collapsed like other inventory, skill, etc. windows. Anytime some flytext or conversation string is displayed to the screen, it would be great to have a record of it in this history window with something like "speaker:<dialogue line>", with player lines also there in a different color.
