Dialogue systems

[Legend]

Are there any particularly interesting dialogue systems?  



A thought I had about dialogue systems:

Spoiler for Hidden:

Dialogue is pretty much in almost every game, but there are different ways to implement dialogue.  

Many games simply have scripted dialogue where there are no choices whatsoever.  
Some games give the player choice of script.  
The other end is no script and using NLP/AI to figure it all out for itself.  Although I don't think any games exist that do this.  

For the developer, there's an obvious increase in complexity.  No script is obviously easiest.  Giving the player choices is harder.  And for now, AI is even harder.  

For the player though there is a strange difficulty gap.  Adding choices makes it more difficult for the player to manage. Or at the very least more time consuming, less fun.  

But then you reach the end of the spectrum and complexity drops.  Achieving even some semblance of NLP causes an arguable reduction in complexity. All the complicated trees get replaced by just talking. It's something you'd do in your head.  

Life is Strange is a must play imo. It allows you to try out nearly every dialogue choice and unlike most games, this shows just how powerful the writing is.


Almost all games cheat with ambiguous dialogue and outcomes. e.g.

"Player, what do you think about Mr. X?"

"Mr. X is an evil man." or "Mr. X is misunderstood."

"Yeah player, I'm glad I'm not him."


Mass Effect is infamous for this and it's one of the main reasons why dialogue choices often misalign with player intent. Witcher 3 uses the same trick but handles it better.


Horizon Zero Dawn had pretty minimal dialogue systems but they did a great job feeding world events into the dialogue. Every side conversation would be a little different depending on which quests you had achieved.

If you are looking for a different take on dialogue systems, check out Baba is You if you haven't already.