Dialogue Choices that Matter

[blackmoor]

Request:

Styg: Please make sure dialogue in Underrail has consequences.

Explanation:

Based on the classic RPGs of the past, I strongly believe that dialogue should not simply be an exercise in exhausting every option until the player finally gets the next quest, but also a challenge to win. A dialogue encounter should be a role-playing exercise in which the player has to make the right choices. If you horribly insult an NPC, that NPC should refuse to help you (because you made a bad choice) or there should be an appropriate consequence (such as a smaller reward). This will cause players to take dialogue seriously and attempt to make the correct choice to get the best outcomes. Choices should matter. When the player realizes there are consequences to picking bad dialogue, they will take dialogue more seriously and therefore become more immersed in your game. Plus, it increases replay value.

Summary:

Dialogue should be a challenge that you can win or lose, because choices that don't matter are arbitrary.

Example:

In Planescape: Torment, the player could actually fail dialogue encounters.



The same can be said for Fallout 1, both of which are considered two of the best RPGs ever.

Further Reading:

Planescape: Turnment Review

Choice and Consequence Review

[blackmoor]

I also really liked how in Fallout you could fail miserably at a dialogue encounter.



Oh, what fun that was.

[galatele]

Wow that would be very very cool indeed. As blackmoor said it would be very good if it could be Fallout like.

[Eliasfrost]

What some people seem to miss is that this is not a spritual successor to fallout, I've seen a few people on this board and a dozen of people elsewhere who seem to think that this will somehow be "the new fallout" and are asking about (or suggesting) features that can be either directly translated to fallout or is very similar instead of letting Styg roll with his concept and do his thing. I'm actually very happy with how the game is turning out to be something rather unique instead of a feature grab from lots of other games (aka legends of dawn). Squeezing likeable features from fallout into Underrail will not make it better, you can feel when features are forced rather than a part of a larger concept and I'm glad that Styg is going with his thing (as far as I can see from the dev logs) and I just hope that the vocal would see it that way as well.

And I'm pretty sure the game will feature instances where a slip of tongue will result in a rather undesireable outcome, as long as it simulates the behaviour of the world and not entertaining a feature.

Sorry if this came across as blunt, it's not my intention.

[Styg]

There are already a number of important choices in the game. And yes, you can even insult someone in the game to the point they won't want to talk to you anymore.

There's not as much of this stuff as there is in Fallout and Torment, of course, but not because I don't know how to do this, but because it's a lot of work. And I mean A LOT.

If you are handling dialog as special case as opposed to as mechanic (think Fallout vs Morrowind/Oblivion) you have to do a lot of scripting and dialog tree management. And this is expensive - time-wise and hence money-wise.