Branching Dialogues in RPGs - An Evolutionary Dead End?

more-t-t said:
How do you think about the state of dialogue system in RPGs? Some says it doesn't evolved much in the past decades as it needs to be and the developers should not be content in branching dialogue system. Some says branching dialogue is an evolutionary dead-end and should take a different approach. What's your take on it? Have you and Obsidian considered different approaches? Do you think it is better to further refine the current form for the time being? (Well, before the super AI :P)

[@breg638]

Looks like Sawyer is evolving into this "Bearded Developer" phase. It's a rocky time, I wish him the best (or it could just be a weekend)

[@svendays]

The size of his beard may be proportional to the size of money that is pledged to their new game. Shall we pledge more?

[@City-Hunter]

The rumour says each of his facial hair, is an RPG idea that was never made...

[@qazyman]

That's a long weekend.

[@kaptenteo]

I heckin' love branching dialog. Obsidian's designers and writers are masters of this craft, and it explains a lot when you learn they have a proprietary tool to help them create their conversation trees.

[@ErikMalkavian]

I LOVE Branching Dialogue and its one of the hearts of Great RPG's and really apprecitate the AMAZING dialogue that has been in games you developed Joshua

[@TucoBenedicto]

While I like well done branching dialogues, at times I'm incline to think a lot of people (both developers and players) tend to overstate the importance of having multiple options. They surely don't hurt, especially when they go beyond the "flavor text" leading to the same result, but I personally I rate "reactivity" (NPCs commenting/reacting to what you are, what you did previously, what you said to others, etc) far above having a large number of lines to pick. There are few things as jarring as, for instance, having a character still talking to you about the "bad guy in town" after you already killed him. Or, to use another example, a NPC that scolds you for using a loud skill in his home feels more "alive" and part of the game than one that just gives you the option to talk to him in a friendly or rude tone.

[@Blitzkrieg1012]

we've been expecting you

[@ColonelRPG]

I really can't understand why anybody that likes role-playing would have a problem with branching dialog. I feel Tyranny has the best dialog system I've ever seen but at the same time I also feel that are a lot of things that can be done, one way or another, to make one RPG *feel* different from another RPG, just from a usability standpoint (you know, interface and stuff).

[@justineady4251]

Maybe someone has a different definition for a rpg.

[@robsquare2622]

Listening to this now is so retro

[@TimmacTR]

Two answers to this question that developers brought recently: -Disco Elysium -Heaven's Vault

[@TimmacTR]

And upcoming: Pendragon

[@rykehuss3435]

Disco Elysium is an interactive novel, not really a video game.

[@TimmacTR]

@@rykehuss3435 By any reasonable definition of "video game" you are wrong

[@rykehuss3435]

@@TimmacTR I played it, I mean read it. Its not a game. Its a text adventure with some visual elements. There's no gameplay.

[@TimmacTR]

@@rykehuss3435 Define what a game is then, because your feelings don't matter, objective definitions define what a video game is

[@JanPospisilArt]

What I'd like to see more in branching dialog systems is a better utilized use of lists and other modular parts. It makes less important characters talking to the player seem less pointless and contentless. (or it helps add variation when you talk to NPCs repeatedly, so you avoid immersion-breaking repetition of the same exact phrases) In part, this can somewhat fake the reactivity Josh talks about - characters recognizing your race, sex, traits, reputation etc. and talking to you accordingly. For instance, you have large lists of responses, or their parts tagged with these reaction-worthy traits and also by traits of the NPC itself. You can then set up an NPC reaction to create itself out of these lists based on a formula. For example: NPC = {a set of variables setting up the NPCs character and disposition towards all kinds of people types} Response =++ Obviously by changing the granularity of these modular pieces, you can get various levels of ridiculous combinations, which is always a danger. We've used a fairly simple version of this in the past and I think the benefits do outweigh the occasional awkwardness. (which you can also avoid by having an actual writer write the bits and pieces. And by testing properly.)

[@AAllen-br8it]

4 years late, but this is great.

[@ThunderCuntOne]

an actual nice surprise in the sub box

[@apcreed]

Bloody hell! You're back!

[@locustthespawn286]

Thank you this has helped with what ive been wondering ALOT, i have been a fan of the fallout franchise and thank you for your time!

[@eyegrinder94]

Holy shit an actual video. Didn't think I'd live to see the time.

[@PretendCoding]

Talking about AI 6 years ago and now today they made ai agents in a game run by gpt-4

[@sergeigmyria7828]

Old video but I'd love an update to this in the era of ChatGPT

[@vpagliarini]

hope you make more videos!

[@mattd8725]

As time goes on, I really appreciate it when RPGs just dump a wall of text at you all at once and expect you to read it at your own pace. It is like what Zizek says about Plato, where the best dialogues are the later ones where Socrates just talks for ages and someone else interjects to say, "by Zeus! Socrates, you are correct about everything!"

[@BrandanLee]

In games I play it feels a lot like branching dialogue has got to the point where RPGs are thinking of conditional flags as a chore, and they are trying to avoid them by merging branches into 1 linear stream with multiple flavour texts alone. Obsidian does a great job of following the opposite and having more legitimate branches, but Mass Effect and Fallout 4 really put it through a siv and made them all merge into 1 pipeline. And then your choices "matter(TM)" ...but not really. Making the split between the player having "a" voice, "their" own voice, and "my" voice is very hard as a game writer. I have a unique way of talking, and I talk to my characters as they talk back when I write. When I write branching dialogue, I more or less write Happy Thaiauxn (Charisma,) Angry Thaiauxn (Strength) Brave Thaiauxn (Endurance) And douche-bag (Bad Karma, player shoots the character and leaves.) And neutral text is for exposition. Ultimately others who don't like conditions are writing 1 coherent character, and players play as that named character. You loose the agency of your character's persona in effect before that hard coded fate is revealed in the plot. It goes beyond losing reactivity, and into, your character can't emotionally react in a way that seems to matter in context of their story, and do what you've come to expect of them. Their story is only the official story, not the emergent story. But it cuts down on costs as script density increases literally exponentially. So as far as that goes I can't blame them.

[@anonimoalfin]

I like how Obsidian has proven humble in *accepting past mistakes and learning from them*, in listening to their fanbase, taking note of the community feedback. So far Obsidian seem to have remained faithfull to their beautiful, lovingly crafted product, and success hasn't gone too much to their heads (the exact opposite of Sven and Larian Studios... I can't stand how Sven has become more and more an arrogant bastard, putting HIS own stupid ideas before of what the community wants, to the terrible detriment of the product, which is not that strong anyways... Larian almost reminds me of what happened with Dragon Age). Anyways, to say that Pillars of Eternity 2 looks beautiful so far would be such an understatement; and the new features also look like they're all kinds of fun! (can't wait to see how Relationships and Romance Options really work!). I've been following closely (literally daily, watching every single Twitch, stream, youtube vid, article and forum discussion) what's been happening with *Pillars of Eternity 2*, *PathFinder Kingmaker*, *and Divinity Original Sin 2* (though just for the Game Master Mode)... And I'm still with PoE2. P.S. Josh, you look SO HOT with that gray beard. Love this look, never change it. But Don't get too cocky though.

[@Billyfillyfoo]

Ahhhh that bike in the background is so sick! That's a Schwinn to win, right?

[@fancytyme]

Thanks! It's a 1970 Raleigh International.

[@Fuchsia_tude]

• (Lie) Yes. • (Tell truth) Yes. • (Lie) No. • (Tell truth) No. • Actually, I want to ask you something else...

[@rykehuss3435]

Those would actually work if picking the lie option leads to further options related to that. For example betrayal. A lot of issues in game design arent about the design itself, but whats being done with it. A lot of "bad design" can be made into "good design" if its properly supported. In role-playing games this many times comes down to actual roleplaying, or lack thereof.

[@vasilealinadnan9985]

woot new vid.

[@100grizzlybears]

Thanks for capitalizing your titles now, Josh.

[@eyegrinder94]

So I've been pondering at this every now and again lately; What do you think of a dialogue system that is in and of itself a game? A sort of turn-based text-combat system, if you will? I've been trying to think of a way to do something like this, a system which the player can 'game' and manoeuvre, and apply some tact to, instead of memorizing a branching path which leads to desired state, without however also gutting anything that resembles a well-written dialogue exchange. Currently I'm not finding any way to implement such a thing without also doing away with any meaningful dialogue. Perhaps you can offer some insight?

[@jvemPiRe14]

Sunny Afternoon undertale does this in a simplistic way. The idea ofc can still be expanded upon

[@zagortenay3186]

Well Hi! to you too Josh. :P

[@ClickToPreview]

Sounds like both interwoven together would be the next step. 1) Branching dialogue for story, and 2) "PC state" reactions from NPCs based on rules that at least "look" like varied AI responses. That might be doable budget wise when it's just text, but I imagine the budget would quickly get out of control if every possible reaction to every possible PC state must be voiced by real people for every NPC in the game.

[@CommieApe]

Disco Elysium handles this conundrum very well I think. The CRPG DNA allowed the gameplay to lean more on narrative and interactive dialogue instead of complex animations and effects I've never played a game that's more reactive to so many different play styles.

[@Kraumoose]

Age of Decadence, Colony Ship are awesome in this regard

[@StevenSeagull123]

Nice bike

[@AlexGorskov]

Nice cat!

[@redknight4805]

Hey Josh, can you please do me a tiny, tiny favor? Can you make a case at Obsidian to give the players a walk option in your games? I love your games, but lately I have noticed I am forced to run even in places where it makes no sense to run. From a roleplaying perspective, this is a rather important feature that is easy to implement, but is missing from ALL your newer games.

[@Hot_Soupp]

"Some day -- assuming we live that long -- we'll get to a point where AI can do a lot of this stuff" A short 6 years later, we're nearly there, and improvements have been exponential so it probably won't be much longer; I'm sure certain devs are starting the first iterations of it as we speak. I'm still not sure how to feel about it all, as it *feels* like it will seem soulless if I know an AI created the dialogue and it wasn't hand-crafted by a writer. But regardless I'm still quite cautiously excited to see where gaming in particular will go with these new technologies. Wherever it is that it goes, it's going to get there fast.

[@TheCivildecay]

Oxenfree had a good take on the dialogue system.

[@AlexGorskov]

What was it? Can't recall anything cool..

[@TheCivildecay]

@@AlexGorskov it felt really organic because of the response time.not like the stop and go conversations of other games. I also liked the aesthetic and sounddesign

[@AlexGorskov]

@@TheCivildecay thanks for your answer, I might revisit it. Not a huge fan of teenage characters though.

[@dapulnihger2899]

What are you up to these days? Any new CRPGs?

[@stormp00perx15]

they teased POE2 with some pics a few days ago.

[@awesomo845]

When you said that Besthesda uses branching dialogue I nearly spat coffee all over my monitor lol. Bethesda has almost no dialogue whatsoever and what little they do have goes no deeper than the bark on a tree, let alone extending as far as it's branches! There is very little depth & creativity in Bethesda's dialogue in their games compared to Obsidian for example. Which is why I love you guys so much! You really care and have a talent for quality writing!

[@andreaso8886]

I second that with all my heart!!!!

[@JiF28]

1:37 what did you do, josh

[@bigtiddygardevoirgf2037]

Holy shit thats Josh Sawyer

[@ShizukaAoki]

I felt he was talking about westworld when he was talking about AI

[@Ma1q444]

Yaya

[@Maybenexttime]

Hello

[@Kissamiess]

Look. Name? Job? Join? Bye!

[@paytonholmes6019]

I found this on Reddit.

[@TheRevanchists]

hopefully people wise up and realize how self destructive it is to give AI so much freedom and basically all of our jobs so humans end up doing nothing, having no jobs and never learning anything different or have to innovate anything besides more AI. god I hope I'm dead by then, a world where AI does everything sounds horrible.

[@jogeran4955]

+Wicked Voxel You are kinda assuming that an AI complex enough to create art is complex enough to demand citizenship. Is that necessarily the case? Surely you can program something to be a brilliant writer, yet have no sense of individual goals or desires.

[@Watcher-hh4mu]

TheRevanchist, hopefully people wise up and realize that it isn't the end of the world when AI take over the jobs people have grown to take for granted. It just means you have a lack of imagination. As old opportunities close for people, the rise of AI opens up new possibilities that people just can't see yet. People's hearts and wants and desires are infinite. Before the internet and rise of social media, who could've foreseen that you could make money off of being a youtuber? Who could've thought that Patreons and kickstarters would've become a thing, monetizing stuff previously thought to be mere hobbies? The A.I. is not the end of the world. The future of jobs will only evolve, and it will raise our quality of living and people will get comfier lives doing what they really love doing. Would you really have wanted to stay in a more primitive and harsher agricultural society simply because industrialization destroyed previous jobs that used to employ farmers and smiths and knitters?

[@karimsonsafehold9233]

creative design is now an evolutionary dead end, ironic use of terms. This dialog in pillars about choosing crit park's being wife or sister, was not immersive. that is branching dialog but static plot would make more sense. tyranny made better use of plot devices to form static plot from branching choices.

[@you-5-iver804]

NEW VEGAS IS A TRULY EPIC FALLOUT GAME, BETHESDA KNOWS AND THEY LOWERED THE SCORE SINCE THEY WERE JEALOUS OF NEW VEGAS BEING A MORE SUCCESFUL GAME, SO THANK YOU SOOO MUCH FOR THIS GAME!!!! 😃😃😁😁😁

[@stuartdavid8493]

AI is not the future. AI is not getting there. Anyone who can write in machine code understands that AI can only ever be a marketing term and a dead end hype. Grow up!

[@vpricot6362]

You’re replying to a ~13 minute video from 7 years ago long before the current zeitgeist. You’re only really replying to something he said in the first minute or so. I’m not sure I understand what this comment is for? /gen