There's not much wrong with the dialogue in the SCRIPT of the Characters? How does what characters (particularly companions, major supporting characters, and major antagonists) SAY as based on the script stack up to what you regard as the best "scripts" in RPGs?
I know there's a lot of love for (older) Bioware on this forum. How does what its characters say differ from what we're seeing?
Well, in my view the quality of the written language (as opposed to the character concepts, plotting and structure) in BG3 is variable but on the whole decent, sometimes being very good, such as most of Ethel’s lines, but at other times clunky and unnatural-feeling. The protagonist’s lines in particular often don’t ring true as something someone would actually want to say. Personally, I don’t think the overall quality of this element is significantly different from BG2 for example, which similarly had high points alongside less successful writing. Though I do think weakness in writing shows up far more when the dialogue is voiced, so BG3 has a greater challenge.
Planescape: Torment is better written in my view amongst the oldies, and Disco Elysium is shaping up to be the best written RPG I’ve played though I’m still in the middle of it.
One of the things that has been done well for Ethel (and Volo for that matter) has been the implementation of a distinct pattern of speech and mannerisms. I've been working my way through Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age 2 at the same time, and I've noticed that the characters tend to have their own speech patterns and speech mannerisms. Morrigan speaks in a VERY different way from Zevran, and both speak VERY differently compared to Shale, and all three differ from Wynne. In DA2, I've noticed the same phenomenon. This took what was already in the writing in BG2 and added voice acting (and better dialogue IMO).
Thinking back to DOS2, while all the characters had different personalities in WHAT they would say, I'm not sure there were dramatic differences in HOW they would say it. A lot of the speech patterns tend to blur together in my memory. Maybe Red Prince was a little different?
In BG3, I think Lae'zel has the most distinct personality and manner of speech. She often switches between her native tongue and common. The other characters, while having VERY different "tone" and "inflection," and VERY different personalities, don't seem to have dramatically different speech patterns when it comes down to mannerisms and the actual syntactic structure of their statements. The structure of dialogue across companions seems to be rather uniform, except for the odd line here and there. Shadowheart, Lae'zel, and Astarion tend to speak continuously without stuttering, stopping, interjecting, or getting flustered, while Gale and Wyll can get choppy in their speech sometimes.
Also a lot of the characters are perpetually horny in banter?
The main reason for my Dragon Age comparisons here is because that series was sort of conceived as Bioware's own "BG3," just without the DND.
Examples in banter (Compare the STRUCTURE of what's being said vs. the tone and word choice):
Last edited by Zerubbabel; 14/02/2312:33 AM.
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