It's not implied at all. She's describing exactly what she's doing.
All she says is 'Oh, catch me, for I might faint!' It's undertermined to a high degree or contains a lot of 'gaps', as Vometia called it. No words on her mimics, on her gestures, no words on what this scene shows about her character. So most of this situation must be 'completed' by imagination or interpretation, based on the information the game offers and the recipients personal knowledge etc. And that can be a joy or boring.
There is actually a great point to make here. Pick up your favourite book and read it again. Pay attention to how much time is spent describing things and people doing things. When it comes to imagination -- they're telling you exactly what to imagine.
Depends on the book you read and the author's effort to describe and add 'realistic details' (but 'describing' doesn't mean 'telling', at least they are distincted in most definitions and should be distincted; you can't 'show' an action in literature - outside of dialog - without a more or less detailed description; in general, I'm not so happy about this narratological distinction, especially when it comes to different media). Some genres would describe everything that isn't described of Esmeralda and Donovan, just 'implied' as I said: the mimics, the gestures, probably what one or both figures think, what they feel, what they intend, what their characteristics are. Most things about both figures are already 'shown' in D:OS, not 'told', just with other means (less 'cinematic' ones, in a certain sense): PoE uses a lot of text to tell you what happens. D:OS uses interactions between characters (dialog and animated actions), items, book text and environment to 'show' characteristics, intentions, feelings, actions. Showing must not be identified with (or too much reduced to) cinematic techniques of visualization. Otherwise books could never 'show' (and that's not what is meant by 'showing', related to this medium). So I think we are more speaking of different means and meanings of 'showing' than of 'showing' vs. 'telling'. I'm not for telling things that can be shown or, at least, a dominating mode of telling.
So somewhere in between for me, really. Which I guess D:OS did with its hand-drawn cut-scenes.
I would like that, too. I refered more to examples from Witcher 3 and XCOM 2. They would not fit a game like D:OS, in my opinion. What Witcher 3 does is amazing. But the price (from another perspective) is that it restricts the individual act of imagination very much and is quite much like a film (by intention); it's a very different experience.
In the case of video games, I'd still rather stick with options as there's scope to do that, within development budgets and timescales of course: all things being equal, if there's the ability to let the player choose, why not go with that?
Yes.
