An open dialogue on game dialogue

I'm pretty forgiving on bad dialogue, just focusing on gameplay in such cases.

As far as good dialogue? For me, easily the best, hands down, peerless example is Star Control 2.
Every alien race was so well defined by their dialogue. The prevailing cowardice in every Spathi exchange. The Orz with their *dancing* and unwillingness to talk about the Androsynth. The sensual Syreen, the single-minded Shofixti, those hippy Pkunk, the bellicose Thraddash, and mischievous Umgah. The Arilou, Ilwrath, VUX and even the Zoq-Fot-Pik (who discovered the wheel, fire and religion simultaneously). Every one of those and more were simply a blast to speak with.
The music and even ship design for each race were often equally as brilliant.

Nice catch Spunior. Cogent article that seems topical... perhaps too topical. Regardless...

Ars Technica wrote:

Think of the writer as a filter: (s)he can look at everything from character design to building structure and figure out how it fits with the theme and message of the game. Having a strong character sketch (sic) for each person in the game would also help artists work on things that are more meaningful than what kind of armor they will wear. Having strong dialogue from the jump would allow cut-scenes and cinematics to be more easily directed and to have more impact.

Any good writer knows that sometimes you have to get rid of the piece of the whole, the finest and shiniest bit of cleverness you've wrought that year, in order to move forward and take a story where it needs to go. Not where you thought it needed to go yesterday, but where it needs to go today.

I can't see a studio willing to pay a programmer to lay out all this dialogue, to render all this armor, create all these characters, only to have them dumped on a random Tuesday because the writer got a better idea.

Why can't this all be taken care of ahead of time? Is there someone out there writing a game for me that will be written three years from now and produced three years after that, produced only once fully formed on the page? Why isn't that happening? Words are cheap, as they go, and programmers are 'spensive.

TheWanderer wrote:

I can't see a studio willing to pay a programmer to lay out all this dialogue, to render all this armor, create all these characters, only to have them dumped on a random Tuesday because the writer got a better idea.

Why can't this all be taken care of ahead of time? Is there someone out there writing a game for me that will be written three years from now and produced three years after that, produced only once fully formed on the page? Why isn't that happening? Words are cheap, as they go, and programmers are 'spensive.

That was one of the major points they made right around that snippet. Bring in the writer early. Have them on the initial design team. Get everything laid out, plot/script-wise from the get go. Do that, and your art team, dev team and pretty much everyone else will have that much more clear a direction to work towards. End result? More games like Half Life 2, less games like... I dunno, pick a game with a halfassed, crappy story.

Hmmm, you know, bad writing can sink a good game, and good writing can save a bad game.

For example, everyone gushed about PREY, which while having some neat sequences, failed to grab me. I look at the game as a whole: the mechanics should serve a story, and the set pieces should help move you to the next bit. Prey, right from the beginning, had badly written dialog, and it really sounded like the voice talent were just phoning it in. There are 1000s of other examples, but that is the most recent one on my mind.

Funny, I've been playing System Shock 2, and Deus Ex on my Linux box, and it's really interesting to see how far gaming has not come. True, these are classic titles, worthy of Top (insert whatever ranking system you adhere to) status...but really there has not been much evolution in terms of story telling in games.

Developers have been focusing on game mechanics, rather than storytelling, to surprise us: an interesting firefight takes the place of plot exposition, to the point where many titles just pass a cursory glance at something resembling a plot on the way to the next big firefight (F.E.A.R, for example).

Valve really excels at storytelling: the Half Life series really grabs you, propels you forward. Similarly, Blizzard is pretty good at putting the dramatic hooks into you, other than World of Warcraft.

(ramble: I have been playing WoW for near 2 years, and I still don't know the plot, per se. I don't think there really is one, despite the 100s of books laying around Azeroth. Maybe it makes sense if your mortgage your house again and buy all the crap?)

Other titles that I can recall that had good story lines? Homeworld, Max Payne....Halo? That's about it.

TheWanderer wrote:

Why can't this all be taken care of ahead of time? Is there someone out there writing a game for me that will be written three years from now and produced three years after that, produced only once fully formed on the page? Why isn't that happening? Words are cheap, as they go, and programmers are 'spensive.

This is what David Freeman advocates and this is what he's trying to get started in the industry.

I myself am writing two game ideas at the moment ready to try and 'sell' to a publisher or developer in a year or so. This includes game world history, architecture styles, technology, races and their archetypes then moving onto the game timeline and finally onto the relevant events to dictate the game flow and dialogue... Although to be fair i don't expect them to go anywhere... but then i'm a pessimist.

Writing dialogue for a game is like writing a Choose Your Own Adventure where the reader can make a difference choice every goddamn sentence.

Anyway...

Best writing: Disgaea, La Pucelle Tactics, Planescape Torment, Fallout 1 (not so much 2... may the water you find in the desert not shine at you in the dark)

Worst writing: Metal Knight, Ace Combat 5

Duoae wrote:

I myself am writing two game ideas at the moment ready to try and 'sell' to a publisher or developer in a year or so. This includes game world history, architecture styles, technology, races and their archetypes then moving onto the game timeline and finally onto the relevant events to dictate the game flow and dialogue... Although to be fair i don't expect them to go anywhere... but then i'm a pessimist.

Frankly, I think this is the sort of thing we need. Say what you will about the actual writing style (or lack thereof) in Tolkien, but the man built a very deep world. If you're going to have immersive environments, such attention to detail is probably important.

Let me ask this now, then, if there's going to be discussion on writing overall: Did Krondor not do well? I thought it was fantastic, and was certainly a favorite of all my friends, but I never checked industry numbers for it. The reason I ask is because Ray Feist pretty much wrote the books first, nearly as I can tell, and released those books after the games themselves were out. Betrayal is still in my top 5 of all time.

The dialogue trees certainly weren't the most nuanced, and the RP was on the constricted side, but I think what made me mind less was that the characters themselves weren't quite as shallow and static as you find in most games.

Perhaps I then should ask: Is good writing overall enough to overcome mediocre dialogue depth?

mateo wrote:

Developers have been focusing on game mechanics, rather than storytelling,...

Hallelujah!

Danjo Olivaw wrote:
mateo wrote:

Developers have been focusing on game mechanics, rather than storytelling,...

Hallelujah!

Yeah, I'll believe it when I play it.

Less talk, more action.

The dialogue in Final Fantasy 8 made me want to open a vein. Maybe two. The canned "generi-speak" in Oblivion was grating, but then you'd get individuals like the Gray Fox with their own particular style ("Capital!") that helped balance it out a little bit.

The dialogue in Oblivion was such a let down. They went for a dynamic, changing NPC dialogue with a collection of calls and responses. It ended up sounding like a bad cell connection between divorces. I would have preferred more canned and entirely scripted NPC dialogues that contributed to the quests, or opened new quests. There were perhaps two or three of these in the entire game and all I remember of them is a quest indicator popping up. I never actually heard and understood the conversation that was going on.

Each of their characters should have had two or three things in common or in conflict with each other. Imagine instead of a dialogue tree a motivation tree with multiple coherent branching dilogue options depending on the topic and the motivation. This leads to the possibility for inflection, logic, and (god forbid) interest from the observer.

Perhaps this is too much dialogue to record and store on a disk tho. In that case compress my vocals for me, lock them to a single channel, and I'll point myself in the right diirection to hear them.

TheWanderer wrote:

The dialogue in Oblivion was such a let down. They went for a dynamic, changing NPC dialogue with a collection of calls and responses. It ended up sounding like a bad cell connection between divorces. I would have preferred more canned and entirely scripted NPC dialogues that contributed to the quests, or opened new quests. There were perhaps two or three of these in the entire game and all I remember of them is a quest indicator popping up. I never actually heard and understood the conversation that was going on.

Each of their characters should have had two or three things in common or in conflict with each other. Imagine instead of a dialogue tree a motivation tree with multiple coherent branching dilogue options depending on the topic and the motivation. This leads to the possibility for inflection, logic, and (god forbid) interest from the observer.

Perhaps this is too much dialogue to record and store on a disk tho. In that case compress my vocals for me, lock them to a single channel, and I'll point myself in the right diirection to hear them.

Yeah, I had so much hope when I saw the diplomacy mini-game in there.

Really the writing in most games is medicore. I think that's why the good stuff stands out.

SuperPaperMario had some great writing. Same with NOLF. I still remember the Duke Nukem one liners even though they were cheesy.

Maybe it's the humourous writing that stands out to me. The other stuff is just generic fantasy/sci-fi 101 crap.

HL2 was good though. It was believable and just the right amount of dialog. It never seemed cheesy.

Oblivion was bad. The writing was too long-winded.

I like alot of the writing in Nintendo games. Usually short. To the point. Fairly witty. Kind of the 'ok for kids, but some jokes for adults in there too' type of stuff. I guess I like the writing that isn't 'obtrusive' as someone put it.

I don't like the soap opera-y angst stuff in jrpgs either.

trip1eX wrote:

I don't like the soap opera-y angst stuff in jrpgs either.

...

The line is so bad that it's good: "I speeeeeeell my drink!"

I feel asleep!

You spoony bard!

wordsmythe wrote:

Yeah, I had so much hope when I saw the diplomacy mini-game in there. :(

Haha, that diplomacy mini-game was so useless. I also thought it was going to be super cool, but no... it was just a Rock-paper-scissors thing.

"Who wants some Wang?"

Frankly, I think most fantasy fiction writing and dialogue is sub-par to begin with. When you're used to reading dime-store pulp, you likely don't expect any better from your video games either.