Please make sure the dialogue options and actual dialogue match.

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As we saw in the demo, the speech options we see on screen what actually gets said don't match. And that's a bad thing.
So far everything looks to at least be similar in terms of intent. So picking an affirmative option has the character say something that agrees with what's being asked. But we've seen far too many games royally screw the player with non-matching speech options (Fallout 4 is a standout example).

A lot of games try to be witty with the selections, and while that might work in some cases, the safest thing to do is show the player EXACTLY what their character will say, so that they know EXACTLY what option they want to actually pick.
 

Rudal

Forum veteran
I do get the reasoning behind the situational dialogue and how it changes depending on where or at what person the character looks but I would feel better if we had something similar to Witcher where we can actually see what will the response be.
 
Agreed, only in special cases where the character says a whole paragraph would that be acceptable for me.
Yeah, it's fine to get a line explaining what the overall speech will be, as we don't need to have huge walls of text all the time. But every speech option should clearly show what our actual conversation will be. Not vague ideas.

Fallout 4 for example had a mission I remember, where one of your options was "I'm not sure." Which also had a "Yes I'll do it" and "No way" option present. So I figured the "I'm not sure" choice would be the one to let me question the person, learn more about the mission, etc. Instead my character basically turns around and tell the quest giver to go screw themselves.

Um... what? No, that's NOT what the dialogue wheel was showing. It didn't say "No, screw you", it said "I'm not sure". These are two completely different responses. Even the basic "no way" option was simply a polite refusal to do the job, so why is the response that sounds questioning an aggressive one?

It's that sort of nonsense that has no place in games. It's also why there's a mod for the dialogue in Fallout 4 to replace the default lines shown with what your character will actually say if you pick an option. Which is how it should have been from the start.
 
As we saw in the demo, the speech options we see on screen what actually gets said don't match. And that's a bad thing.
So far everything looks to at least be similar in terms of intent. So picking an affirmative option has the character say something that agrees with what's being asked. But we've seen far too many games royally screw the player with non-matching speech options (Fallout 4 is a standout example).

A lot of games try to be witty with the selections, and while that might work in some cases, the safest thing to do is show the player EXACTLY what their character will say, so that they know EXACTLY what option they want to actually pick.

Agreed. I don’t really understand why they do this in the first place.
 
This was a thing in Witcher 3 as well, as far as I remember. Written text option not really corresponding to what the character actually says in the end. Or am I remembering this incorrectly?
 
alot of games do that , where the dialogues choices say something and where they end up saying doesn't match .

But I agree on one point , that the dialogue does need more work .
 
Hell yeah, that was pretty bothersome. Really wouldn't want the whole exact line the character says to pop up but something that gives the general tone of the reply...a somewhat mocking "Sure thing, sweetheart" shouldn't show up as "Yes sir"
 
Voiced protag and 'live' conversations do this. I know I don't want to read a whole response in my head and then hear exactly the same thing being said by a voiced protag. It's redundant. And 'live' conversations do this so that you're not reading through tons of text while a live person in the conversation is saying "well what are you waiting for" or something like that. The fully written responses work in Fallout 3/NV for this very reason. The conversation is frozen and we also don't have to sit and listen to a voiced protag speak what we just read
 
I'm completely with you on this one, this game is different than the Witcher. It worked in that game because we followed the story of Geralt.

Here you create a character, you want to be the character. You need to know exactly the reaction. The dialogue system of dragon age origins is a perfect example. Maybe they should at least put the first sentence.
 
I am ok with the dialogue options being different from what the character says, actually I even prefer it this way. The responses are short and simple and it happens in real time so I guess if you take too long reading on these it will provoke npcs to act unpredictably (just my assumption based on what I saw in the gameplay) perhaps even lock your dialogue options and the game will take scripted route for that situation if you don't respond in time?
 
I am ok with the dialogue options being different from what the character says, actually I even prefer it this way. The responses are short and simple and it happens in real time so I guess if you take too long reading on these it will provoke npcs to act unpredictably (just my assumption based on what I saw in the gameplay) perhaps even lock your dialogue options and the game will take scripted route for that situation if you don't respond in time?

This was my thought as well. If conversations are in any way timed for response, sitting and reading a full reply could cause issues. These are live conversations. We could see the characters reacting to us not responding (as they should)
 
I am ok with the dialogue options being different from what the character says, actually I even prefer it this way. The responses are short and simple and it happens in real time so I guess if you take too long reading on these it will provoke npcs to act unpredictably (just my assumption based on what I saw in the gameplay) perhaps even lock your dialogue options and the game will take scripted route for that situation if you don't respond in time?

I mean you want it to be a telltale game? Can't we think about what we're gonna say?
 
Yeah, that would be super useful. Honestly, it happens in all games, even the most dialogue and story driven ones. I love BioWare games, but seriously, DA2, DA:I and ME series had that problem from the start. Very often I pick something and the reaction, the tone of the voice, the way this was spoken is entirely different to what I imagined. Being able to see the whole sentence before choosing it is almost essential. Yeah, it's less exciting, because if you have a character with an actual voice, then you will be basically reading/hearing the response twice - once in your head when browsing them and then again actually spoken by the voice actor after choosing it. But still, it's better this way, because we get to pick exactly what we want.

If you're worried about not having enough space, then there are other ways to fit it into the interface. You can still have short version as they are, but when you actually hover one of the responses, a little preview could show up above the dialogue interface (with smaller font). Something like the attached file? This could have a toggle in the options so people who don't want it can hide it.

dialogue.jpg
 
I agree that it's very important in RPGs where each choice is key, and we're trying to define our characters, that the speech option should accurately represent what your character is about to say.

If the voiced response is short, then it should be fully represented in the text option - if the answer is going to be very long, I'm not sure I want to read a paragraph and then listen to the character parrot it back. Additionally as @IAMOrwell stated, there are timed scenarios that require brevity, like in the demo where the Corpo has a gun to our heads.

The goal should be that options very accurately represent the intent and tone of what is about to be said.

If there are the options "Here's my plan" and "You can get fu****", I feel like the intention is clear enough for me to make a choice. Especially as Here's my plan could be a long ass paragraph, and we'd be dead by the time we read and thought about the plan (which is a good immersive feature, putting you under pressure).

EDIT: If there are options to pursue some alternate plan, the quest designers need to have hinted/spelled out how that might go. In the demo this was done by being given the Corp contact and DeShawn suggesting that was a route to take.
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Something like the attached file?
View attachment 10975442

That's a nice idea, although you'd hope that the sentence wouldn't flip round to something different after the ellipses
 
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How about this.

By default you get the little 2-5 word blurbs, but in game options you could turn on a full response pop-up when you mouse over the little blurb?
 
How about this.

By default you get the little 2-5 word blurbs, but in game options you could turn on a full response pop-up when you mouse over the little blurb?

Sure, I can't imagine it'll be hard to implement, they have the scripts and the time to add the option. For those who want that security of understanding/communication it'd be cool. I'm not personally very bothered, but it's no skin off my nose end of the day haha as long as it gives the most people the best experience.
 
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