Can We Make Talking as Much Fun as Shooting?

i really liked how in fallout 1 you can ONLY talk the master down if you have gathered the necessary information. just rising some arbitrary stat is the wrong way to go. it has to be improved and expanded.

The biggest problem I have with dialogue based games is that they are often just a series of questions with multiple choice. It's literally just taking an exam. The player can't plan ahead, they can only react to the NPC one question at a time. Only Ace Attorney and L.A Noir really engages me in that, I have to pick up information, chooses what questions to ask. It's much more pro-active, giving the player a sense of control. Only then, a player feels like they are playing a game instead of being played by the game.

5:54 “Wouldn’t it be more fun...” (CONTENT WARNING Suicide)

They should be called "talk em ups"

Toolkit selects an action. Toolkit select the Joke option. [Joke 20] Became a silver-tounged diplomat that use words. Not SWORDS. [ Joke attempt failed, not enough pun or sense of humor level ]

The problem is that dialogue almost always ends up as basically a trial-and-error system where you have to pick the exact option that the developers intended you to pick, or fail. You have to navigate the tree to find the one path through all the options to get to the win condition. I think it's more interesting when each of the options are viable for a different reason and lead to a different outcome that you might want to choose, rather than just having right and wrong answers.

"those who have challenges with social skills, like gamers [...]"

I have never been sweating so hard during a game as when I hit that conversation point in Life Is Strange. And I had been paying attention.

"Hol' Up A Minute" making its rounds I hear ;)

Katana:Zero handles the timed choices with a (in my opinion) great innovation : If you choose your sentence fast enough, you'll interrupt your interlocutor, giving you a great way of expressing the anger of your character. If you choose within the time window, you'll talk normally. Oxenfree do something similar if you didn't respond in time : Your character just don't talk. And the characters around reacts as expected when someone don't talk.

5:33 "It's been two years since that kid died, when are you gonna let me off the hook? Yeah, I took his life, he was a threat, and you knew it, so don't come here acting all high and mighty!" Mark Brown: That's super cool

I also love how Life Is Strange pushes this moment by disabling your time turning powers. Its the first real "life or death"-situation and its that much more real, because you only have one attempt, while the first 2 episodes up until this point have been mainly about learning to use this ability.

Another part of this is making sure the game fulfills the fantasy of being a smooth talking charmer, or debate god, or high-stakes lawyer. This does kind of boil down to the animation, writing, and voice acting, but it is a thing to consider; just like shooting wants to make you feel like an action hero, our dialogue choices should make us feel like we have a silver tongue. I actually felt Deus Ex: Human Revolution handled this well at a couple points (minor spoilers ahead). There's a point late in the game where you can confront a character about something, and you have the option to just ignore the sneaking and just walk into the conference he's holding and have a shouting match with him in front of a live audience. The camera constantly pans forward whenever you're doing well, as Jensen actually gets in his face and slowly advances on him, letting you know you're really putting the screws on this guy on live TV. It felt every bit as climactic as a gunfight (in a sort of soap opera drama way).

Ask npc to end his plans for world domination and surrender [skillcheck: speech, minimum 15] [skillcheck: player has speech 12, skill check not succesful] NPC: "no". Kill couple of rats to gain some levels and come back Ask npc to end his plans for world domination and surrender [skillcheck: speech, minimum 15] [skillcheck: player has speech 15, skill check succesful] NPC: "yes "

Disco Elysian is a great example of dialogue being used as a fundamental mechanic instead of shooting and skill checks causing damage to health or morale even without physical damage

i have never seen a comment section with so much words per comment

Additionally, I think it would be cool if instead of using dialogue to skip gameplay or game events, perhaps we could talk our way INTO gameplay, such as convincing a faction leader into letting you participate in an important mission or unlocking some side quest that would be otherwise inaccessible to you.

I remember when I got to a point in vampire the masquerade bloodlines where I had to deal with this gargoyle but I didn't have enough persuade points for the option to pop up but the options I was allowed to chose did let me convince them to back down, I had to figure out what was the best option but I manage to figure it out. Something similar happened with fallout 1. you can get a document that proves the master's plan has a fatal flaw but you can also convince him to find out about the flaw. By the way I'm Autistic and I think these sorts of things could be great for helping us learn about social skills (I managed to pick up some after many years of observing media closely so I have some experience with this.)

Human Revolution's interactions are incredible and one of my favorite parts of the game. I would never have thought that when negotiating a hostage situation, one of the most effective ways to get a terrorist on your side is to just call him an idiot. It actually changed the way I look at dialogue in games. You're not superficially charming him, you're talking in a way he understands. You're empathizing with him. (It was especially notable because I played Mass Effect not long before, and I was continually frustrated that Shepard's dialogue would often be totally different from what the option made it look like he was going to say.)

"Can we make talking as much fun as shooting?" Danganronpa: "Why not both?"