Perhaps totally revamping the dialogue system would be needed to have a true party feel to conversations, but I still wonder if something less than that would work as an approximation.
Well, of course if you are willing to redo the entire dialogue system from zero you can go in a million ways about it, all very expensive and time-consuming.
I personally dislike to fantasize about unrealistic or overdesigned systems that aren't practically viable on a reasonable budget, so I always try to_
1) keep things simple.
2) recycling as much as I can of what's already there.
Especially this late in development.
The system I'm describing here (and I'll paste it again for a comfortable read)...
The basic form of this feature would involve just using the character skill value to make the check/roll.
The "luxurious" one that may be more up to Larian's taste, could go the extra mile and have every companion offering a voiced line with a comment about how they "got this" for us ("Let me handle this" and so on).
Bonus points (and extra budget spent) if the comment is occasionally contextual to the specific situation rather than generic and used all over the game.
...even in its most expensive form would involve very little changes: every time you attempt a skill check of any type (Arcana, Intimidation, Persuasion, Deception, etc) it would "pass" the skill check to the party member who's the best at it.
Let's say there are two of them on even ground, make it either a random pick between the two or use the companion who's the most favorable to you in attitude.
Now...
- In a "money-saving" form this companion would just handle the roll with his bonus (make it that your MC will turn to watch in his direction for bonus involvement) and then pass the dialogue back to you. Pretty much how it goes in Pathfinder. Very basic. More functional than flavorful.
- In the "We spared no expense" form, it would be similar to the occasional "quips" companions can already have during dialogue right now (i.e. when Lae' Zel complains we are being too soft with someone), except they would address "handling the matter for you" or, as I said, even saying something specific about the context you are dealing with, if you want to go the extra mile.
The second scenario, of course, involves recording a whole bunch of extra lines for each character. all related to skill checks in dialogues.
For a lot of studios this could be "too much money", but I have to say that Larian doesn't seem particularly concerned with being parsimonious with these anyway.
P.S. - In the eventuality Origin characters in the final game are going to be fully voiced (which I doubt, but you never know and Larian has been extremely ambiguous about this point in the past) you wouldn't even need to record new dedicated lines tied to these skill checks.
You could just make the companion read the basic line recycling from their voice files. i.e. You select the line, the companion who's good at it (let's say Gale for Arcana, for instance) steps forward to interrupt you and talks in your place, I guess.
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Just to add...
The idea of having to switch manually with a button (as the one we already have, incidentally) between who I want to do the talking, on the other hand, would feel incredibly artificial to me. As if we weren't part of the same dialogue, but just taking turns at it.
