Weekly Poll 9/10/18 - Exact Dialogue or Rephrased Dialogue?

[Sardukhar]

Well, post-Gamescom, let's resume our Weekly Poll.

This week is pretty simple. Would you prefer exact dialogue interaction from V or the rephrased "theme" style dialogue you saw in the demo?

Example:

Boosterganger asks, "Whatcha got in the bag, little lady?"

Exact Dialogue - what you see in dialogue options is what you say.

1. "Nothing you'll ever see, frakhead. Drift or die."
2. "Some stims, couple chips. Check it out, my friend."
3. "Here, have this cybereye I scored yesterday, we'll chill on over here. Fair?"

Rephrased Dialogue:

You choose number 1. above but what you hear V say is, "Get lost, chiphead, or I'll feed it to you, barrel-first."
You choose number 2. above but V says, "Hey, no trouble, metal-bro. Take a look."
You choose number 3. above and V says, "Give you this cyber and you let us coast."

List of Polls to date: https://forums.cdprojektred.com/index.php?threads/collected-weekly-polls-thread.10984601/

 

[Secretz]

Exact...one of my favorite mods for Fallout 4 was one to show exactly what you were going to say because nothing drove me battier than thinking I was going to say something with one inflection in mind and see what I wound up saying being something entirely different.

 

[GW84]

Shortened, Mass Effect style, not Fallout 4 style.

With Mass Effect it was always clear which kind of response Sheperd would give, but there was still plenty of opportunity to surprise the player with a joke, bondlike oneliner or well written dialogue. Simply chewing out all the sentences beforehand takes away any such surprise.

 

[Draconifors]

I prefer rephrased dialogue.
Sure, it can lead to situations like "Push Dijkstra aside. Forcefully.", but I like the surprise factor that comes with not knowing exactly what is going to be said.

 

[Ambergeddon]

Rephrased is fine as long as the tone is obvious.

 

[jervi]

(I hit the wrong box; that should be a 4).

Personally, I'm pretty open so long as the menu option and the end result match. I am not so much of a control freak that I insist that the menu comes with a pronunciation guide to guarantee the emphasis is on the correct syllables. In fact, if the menu options are not terribly creative, I prefer a mismatch. However, I also know that there are a lot of folks who want to control every single action of their character to beyond the level that is even remotely possible in a computer game, so keeping it optional would be the best option overall.

 

[Wenceslaus]

Exact. I want to be surprised by the story twist, not by control of the character I'm supposed to be.
If they were obvious that is OK with me but I'm not sure if there is such thing as rephrasing dialogs that are always clear to anyone.

 

[jervi]

If they were obvious that is OK with me but I'm not sure if there is such thing as rephrasing dialogs that are always clear to anyone.

Every game I've seen where they rephrase, the intent is always the same even when the exact words are not. That may not be the case if one is playing a game written in a language that they is not fluent in, but that is more a matter of localization than of game design.

 

[Metropolice]

From reactions of others (people cursing in let's plays going "Agh! I thought something different was meant by that! I didn't want to say that!") and my own experience, at times it can be confusing.

But I still kind of prefer rephrased options because that adds a bit of "surprise" to what is said next and as long as it stays somewhat spot it should not be a huge problem. I personally never got mods in games where it would change such phrasing to the exact words somehow because I'm perhaps not used to it but also feel like it's a spoiler if the exact words are already standing there. Perhaps I just like to gamble at times.

Now, assuming the game will have good modding support and a stable modding community and assuming they will stick to rephrased summaries, you will see people mod that aspect anyway.

Not sure if it is a giant amount of work but if CDPR has the time, I was wondering if it was perhaps possible to offer this preference through the options at release. E.g. you could enable or disable it in the options and either see the exact words or just a rephrased or general summary.

 

[AlexiaRevan]

I'm used to Mass effect , dragon age and such . Usually the top reply is Goody , middle is neutral..and bottom is jerk answer .

So I'm fine with Say something and it come out differently . Homewhever , I do think the dialogue need work .

Maybe it's a nitpick , but cyberpunk is using weird colors for everything . For exemple , the dialogue color is Yellow . Hopefully they though about it under Blinding Sun..and Yellow . Points of interest are RED..that was a bit weird . Usually in games RED mean Hostiles , dangerous , Higher Level stuff . (Usually its blue , green or white not red) .

But yeah , the dialogue need work . The one that stood to me was the reply 'FUCK YOU'' . Thats so vague.....

 

[Harthwain]

Rephrased doesn't make sense. Either say exactly what you want to say or replace plain text with symbols/intent instead, if you aren't willing to be accurate word-by-word.

 

[hallfing2080]

"Whichever, no preference" is my preference for RPGs. Something close enough always works for me. Exact ones are good, too. TW3 dialogue options were very good and I used to think nothing would ever beat Dragon Age: Origins or Mass Effect 1.

 

[evilhippo]

I am agnostic on this but if rephrased, it really REALLY needs to make it clear what the general essence is that your toon is saying, with zero ambiguity, or this could cause players to head butt their monitors in frustration when discussions go sideways due to a player misunderstanding.

if not displaying the exact spoken text, it might be better to have a contextual icon based system.

= "Awesome!"
= "Ok, I guess I can live with that."
= "How about a whole bunch of 'no', does that work for you?"
= "Seriously? Let's start again from the beginning, chombatta!"
= "Screw you, jackass!"

 

[KakitaTatsumaru]

I hate it when my character says something that sometimes totally go against what I though, so exact dialogues for me.

 

[vyvexthorne]

As long as the text conveys the right message then rephrased works... but so often, for whatever reason, it does not. It's sometimes easy to get confused at rephrased sentiment. Something that looks like it should be said in a normal tone can all of a sudden be stated sarcastically or vice versa. I'm a bigger fan of exact dialogue just because there's less confusion.

 

[kolosmenus]

I'd prefer rephrased dialogue, but it has to properly indicate what are you about to do/say. Like the option "grab a gun" during Maelstorm quest doesn't start a shootout immidiately.

Exact dialogue just wouldn't work with the interface CDPR made for CP77, it would take way too much space.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

I do prefer exact lines, but I don't really mind imprecise dialog just as long as I can be certain of what I'm going to say.

And, I would pair it with optable key-words about certain topics for expressive flavor dialog (which the NPC in question either has something to say or not).

Asking about cats from Dexter... Making a remark about religion to Jackie... Asking about the cigarette brand from Meredith...

Little things like that that might give a flavor line back, but might also lead to something bigger in certain cases.

Topics for flavor lines could be chosen in character creation during the lifepath part. There are the nine big choices, and then there could be a slew of minor ones to choose a couple from.

 

[4RM3D]

2. Rephrased Dialogue - See one, say another. Flavour!

If you want this for the surprise factor, it's nonsensical. You are in control of your character and dictate your own choices. It would be weird not knowing what you are going to say. It's not like there is a cyberware upgrade that transliterates everything your want to say. It's funny, though, if there was.

I can only image the devs shortening the selection for people that do not like to read (or have an attention span of a gold fish).

1. Exact Dialogue - what you see is what you say. Accurate!

Yes, please.

 

[evilhippo]

I hate it when my character says something that sometimes totally go against what I though, so exact dialogues for me.

Indeed, which is why it either needs to be exact, or use a system that conveys INTENT in a way that is unambiguous.

 

[volsung]

Rephrased dialogue choices are at best funny and at worst an annoying, game crippling disaster. How can we possibly play a role-playing computer game properly if we don't have control over the phrasing and tone of our dialogue? Whether the NPC's like it or not is a different matter, but the human player should be given as much control as possible to deliver the lines that best represent our intentions. This also means having more than 2 or 3 choices, and ideally also having non-generic dialogue choices directly derived from the character's current state (abilities, knowledge, reputations, alliances, etc.).

The White March, Pillars of Eternity's expansion pack did it surprisingly well, and obviously also Planescape: Torment.

The 2 or 3 middle-of-the-road, generic dialogue choices seem to reflect a tendency to streamline games and make them more "cinematic", not necessarily a bad thing but in my opinion it does take away from the experience of playing an RPG.