Are there any adventure games with dialouge choices?

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MACGRUBER7693
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Are there any adventure games with dialouge choices?

Post by MACGRUBER7693 »

Are there any adventure games with dialouge choices similar to mass effect or dragon age? If there are give me some specific titles.
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eriktorbjorn
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Re: Are there any adventure games with dialouge choices?

Post by eriktorbjorn »

MACGRUBER7693 wrote:Are there any adventure games with dialouge choices similar to mass effect or dragon age?
How did those games handle it? I've never played them myself.
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Re: Are there any adventure games with dialouge choices?

Post by KuroShiro »

MACGRUBER7693 wrote:Are there any adventure games with dialouge choices similar to mass effect or dragon age? If there are give me some specific titles.
You'll have to be more specific. Mass Effect and DA have vastly different dialogue systems. Most of the Lucasarts adventure games have branching dialogue in a similar vein...
MACGRUBER7693
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Post by MACGRUBER7693 »

Sorry i guess i wasnt specific enough. I'm talking about if you can choose what you say beyond asking about a specific topic or by saying yes or no. Im talking about where you could choose in one dialouge tree to be snarky, nice, mean or you could make choices that have major ramifications on the plot like choosing to kill some one or not. Heres a general example of what I'm looking for:
An injured soldier asks "How do I look?"
Responce choices
A."like shit"
B."Ok"
C."Like you need a doctor, let me help you."
D.(Ignore)
Something akin to that where you get to choose the tone of which your character responds. Seriously has no one hear played a bio ware game?
MapleSyrup
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Post by MapleSyrup »

MACGRUBER7693 wrote:Something akin to that where you get to choose the tone of which your character responds. Seriously has no one hear played a bio ware game?
The 1999 adventure The Longest Journey had these type of dialog choices.
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Post by KuroShiro »

I can't think of any adventure games where you can make choices that can seriously affect the outcome of the game. I might just be blanking though.

As I said, as far as branching dialogue choices go, the Lucasarts games (Monkey Island, Indiana Jones, etc.) are as close as you will get.
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Mataku
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Post by Mataku »

Return to zork had a demeanor buttons while someone is talking to you. angry, interested,friendly, etc'. It affected some things, but mostly it would cause you to lose the game if you do it wrong.
Last edited by Mataku on Mon Jun 07, 2010 12:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Svipur
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Post by Svipur »

I'd believe 'I have no mouth and I must scream' does exhibit dialogue choice-dependent outcomes (I remember being frustrated to bits at failing to finish the game at all seemingly because of that).

The concept is vastly exploited in AGS community. Things like 'A tale of two kingdoms' or... some other game, which involved getting a cop to trust you to work out some conspiracy... I'll be damned if I can recall the title... oh, wait, it's 'Reactor 09'. Damn. )
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Post by ezekiel000 »

Perfect Assassin
Bluddy
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Post by Bluddy »

It's not seen as a good feature in adventure games. In RPGs, a bad outcome from a wrong dialog choice simply means that you have less stats/loot/have to fight another monster. Most dialogs are optional anyway since dialogs are usually just the means to getting more stuff. In adventure games, it usually means getting stuck. Making the choice have implications other than getting stuck means taking the story at that point and branching out in a completely different direction, or finding a novel way to reward the player for a good choice.

I can think of 4 types of historical approaches to this issue:
a) Adventures that used meaningful choices and had small, meaningless aesthetic changes that corresponded to your choice e.g. Blade Runner.
b) Adventures that tracked a general variable for some reason. Choosing the wrong thing will cause a decrease in this variable while the right thing will increase it. Game is over if you do too many wrong things. e.g. Willy Beamish.
c) Games that functioned like RPGs in the sense that the wrong choice led to fighting e.g. Indy and the Last Crusade.
d) The majority of games implemented it by having the right choice lead to progress, and the wrong choice lead to death. e.g. Under A Killing Moon, Heart of China.
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Post by Tim20 »

Mataku wrote:Return to zork had a demeanor buttons while someone is talking to you. angry, interested,friendly, etc'. It affected some things, but mostly it would cause you to lose the game if you do it wrong.
The three FMV Tex Murphy games are like this.
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eriktorbjorn
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Post by eriktorbjorn »

Bluddy wrote: a) Adventures that used meaningful choices and had small, meaningless aesthetic changes that corresponded to your choice e.g. Blade Runner.
I remember thinking that Blade Runner was an unusual game. I played through it twice, and got two very different endings but the game seemed to consider them both equally valid. Usually when there's more than one ending, there's one ideal ending and one or more less ideal ones. On the other hand, I never got the impression that it was my actions that shaped the story. The second time I played the game, I did everything I could to save every replicant I encountered, and they still seemed to hate me for it and the game ended in a big shoot-out.

But I'm not surprised. It's hard enough to come up with a good story, without giving the player the freedom to muck it up. Particularly these days, when it's unfashionable to punish the player for his mistakes or at least dish out the punishment immediately, not much later into the story. Mind you, I can't say I miss the bad old days where you could play through most of the game only to realize that you had missed some minor detail at the very beginning, or used up some vital object prematurely.
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MusicallyInspired
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Post by MusicallyInspired »

Kyrandia 3 has a nice, neutral, and naughty gauge which you can set at any time during the game and whatever you do is affected by it whether you're talking or whatever. I think that's how it works, anyway.
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Post by Seldon »

I think your best bet would be, as Tim20 wrote, Under a Killing Moon, Pandora Directive and Overseer. It's fun because you don't have to read/hear the same thing twice. You select dialog branch by some key phrase or a metaphore and then you hear what Tex has to say. I think it's great idea, because this way the character you guide during the game is somehow independent from you, and isn't a soulless robot.
I hope I expressed myself clearly, because I felt my language abilities are restricting me.
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Post by Bluddy »

I remember thinking that Blade Runner was an unusual game. I played through it twice, and got two very different endings but the game seemed to consider them both equally valid. Usually when there's more than one ending, there's one ideal ending and one or more less ideal ones. On the other hand, I never got the impression that it was my actions that shaped the story. The second time I played the game, I did everything I could to save every replicant I encountered, and they still seemed to hate me for it and the game ended in a big shoot-out.
Many people love this game, but it was a big disappointment for me. The atmosphere is there, yes. But
a) There's minimal interactivity and no descriptions of the environment or of what the blocky characters are doing because that's the way Westwood does adventures, making much of what's happening in the game unintelligible (see Kyrandia 1, another game I found disappointing).
b) Though it was advertised as such, the game's not real-time (unlike the wonderful Last Express)
c) There's nothing to do with any objects you find. Just click around the screen -- it'll barely change anything anyway. It's barely a game.
d) The in-game variations are minor, depending mostly on randomness and the amount of evidence you find.
e) All of the endings are really determined about 1 minute from the end. I hate when games pull this trick. Literally, you can save 1 minute from the end, and then depending on what you do, you'll get to see every ending. It makes the notion of multiple endings meaningless -- it's just a feature to slap on a game to make it look better.
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