How cringy was the dialogue in your old/first RPGs?

[TheoAllen]

Y'all may cringe at your own work, but I think the examples here are actually funny.

I recorded the entire intro scene of my game for u (Granted, the story wasn't the main point of this game.)
And I made these intro hastily. I had no prior knowledge of those characters as I just wanted some quick intro and I didn't care about the content. Too late for me to regret this though, people already aware. With some LP videos out there as well.

 

[Canini]

Not at all. In fact I was commended for my story and character development from the very beginning. And several people have described my second game as having one of the best stories out there. But writing is probably my strongest skill.

I have the same experience. My games are unfortunately still somewhat weak mechanically but writing is what I do so I never have anyone complain about the writing. My first game was pretty funny (a satire of swedish politics) to the very few people that ended up playing it. The only cringey part was that it used RTP for all graphics except for the battlers. Unfortunately it is now lost so I can´t show any screenshots (I doubt the jokes would make sense to a non-swede anyway).

 

[cthulhusquid]

I recorded the entire intro scene of my game for u (Granted, the story wasn't the main point of this game.)
And I made these intro hastily. I had no prior knowledge of those characters as I just wanted some quick intro and I didn't care about the content. Too late for me to regret this though, people already aware. With some LP videos out there as well.

That was really cringy but funny, almost like a parody.

 

[kirbwarrior]

By the time I hit ZeldaClassic (a year before rpg maker), I was already at the point of editing everything I did and making sure flow and grammar were done well. Even before that, the first book I wrote (never published, but it was a novel in length) I only dislike the dialogue because I clearly had no idea how paragraphs worked. If anything, my older games just had boring dialogue, not bad dialogue.

Then again, I unironically love Wolverine: Origins, so I'm not entirely certain what "cringy" is.

 

[cthulhusquid]

By the time I hit ZeldaClassic (a year before rpg maker), I was already at the point of editing everything I did and making sure flow and grammar were done well. Even before that, the first book I wrote (never published, but it was a novel in length) I only dislike the dialogue because I clearly had no idea how paragraphs worked. If anything, my older games just had boring dialogue, not bad dialogue.

Then again, I unironically love Wolverine: Origins, so I'm not entirely certain what "cringy" is.

I probably can't post it here, but look up "I Just Called To Say I Like You - Peep Show" on Youtube. That scene is one of the epitomes of cringe.

 

[Touchfuzzy]

The first game I ever made I was like, 9-10, it was written in QuickBasic and was completely text based (anyone who has ever played old BBS text rpgs will know the type).

I'm kind of glad I don't remember it well enough to tell you if it was cringe or not.

 

[kirbwarrior]

I probably can't post it here, but look up "I Just Called To Say I Like You - Peep Show" on Youtube. That scene is one of the epitomes of cringe.

Oh wow, that was fantastic. *favorited*

Just remembered a silly line from an old game, two slimes talking to each other and one responds "Do I look like a scientist to you?". Probably the corniest line I've put into a game and I love it.

 

[Keighn]

As a fiction writer, dialogue is one of my strengths, primarily because I write as people talk. I will literally talk dialog out to make sure it sounds natural. Whether I bring that over to RPGMAKER remains to be seen. With that said, if I could dig up my first novel out of the dustbin, you would cringe at how awful it was.


I think you're being hard on yourself. Few of those are particularly awful, just failed attempts at humor.

[/QUOTE]
That’s a pretty sound way to work dialogue imho. I recall I had to write an ad in highschool for an economics class. Well, I decided to do some simple voice acting on a crummy tape player as well. They actually couldn’t believe I had those voices. I find it a tad more difficult to put that to page. For this I’d have to read several different styles of books and maybe watch media to get an decent printed impression. Obviously a good dictionary and thesaurus is a must and if need be some remedial English books. Lucky me my bro took some college English and just gave me the books.

My favorite writing is descriptor item and objects on a map. I find it easier than dialogue. I have to keep notes on each “game actor” in the game to be sure I’m not just copy/paste similar sounding and inflection. In fact, I want to be sure they don’t just sound like me on a day to day basis.

 

[Nekohime1989]

Heck back in my day we took what we could get. Cringy dialog is find as long as the game is still fun. (and usually it is.) A lot of older games have terrible dialog. Especially Japanese exports during the golden famicom age that felt victim to machine translations or just bad translation companies in general. I would insert the meme here. But it's not necessary as we all know what I'm talking about. Right?

 

[cthulhusquid]

Here's a couple more screenshots I managed to dig up from another project.

 

[Diarist]

Oh gosh, I'm to embarrassed to even boot it up and take screenshots haha

I tried REALLY hard to make stuff sound deep and cool and epic. It didn't work well, at all. Lmao. It's REALLY bad.

 

[Ninjakillzu]

Oh gosh, I'm to embarrassed to even boot it up and take screenshots haha

I tried REALLY hard to make stuff sound deep and cool and epic. It didn't work well, at all. Lmao. It's REALLY bad.

That makes me want to see it even more! Please?

 

[Aesica]

Oh gosh, I'm to embarrassed to even boot it up and take screenshots haha

This is the perfect thread, because the cringier and more horrible the dialog, the more likes you'll probably get.

 

[Diarist]

That makes me want to see it even more! Please?

This is the perfect thread, because the cringier and more horrible the dialog, the more likes you'll probably get.

*Snrrrk*
I'll try and take some screenshots of really god awful lines later today then. Luckily each 'part' is only like an hour/2 hours long.

N-no promises though

Huff--

 

[bgillisp]

@Rachnera : That is true. Of course when I was younger we got stuff like this as well (not an RPG but the idea is the same):

Spoiler

 

[FighterBlade]

The dialogue in my first games were really generic, The game was made in RMXP, and here's one line I really remember:

King: WHAT!? The Demon King is coming back!?
Oracle: Yes Sire.

The game was a Isekai story, I was really weeby back then so it kind of started like some anime that I don't remember the name of, Where the main charcter went to school, stumbled into some weird classroom found a book, and then got "Isekaied", I never finished the game, Cause 9 year old me was too confident with my scripting abilities, and replaced a billion important scripts, and hard locked the entire game, because I thought you were supposed to replace the original scripts, I didn't know that Insert was an option in the scripting menu, I just recently got Ace, before that, I tried 2k3 and then VX, never got past the database, so no cringy dialogue there.

 

[KenKrath]

For those of you who posted screenshots, I don't see anything THAT cringeworthy. It's a bit on par for some RPG Games that have been published.

The remake of some of these DragonQuest dialogues with these ridiculous accents are quite worse than what you all have posted.

 

[Basileus]

I started working with RPG Maker 2000 before I knew anything about creative writing. I'm pretty sure it was mostly bland since I don't think I tried to add humor back then, but I'm not exactly proud of those projects as anything other than practice/experience.

 

[cthulhusquid]

For those of you who posted screenshots, I don't see anything THAT cringeworthy. It's a bit on par for some RPG Games that have been published.

The remake of some of these DragonQuest dialogues with these ridiculous accents are quite worse than what you all have posted.

Wait, really? Any examples?

 

[BlackRoseMii]

I don't quite remember any specific dialogue from my first game, but I know that the entire game was cringy. The story was boring and clicheed, the characters one-dimensional and kept talking about only one or two things all the time. The main character could only talk about paradise, the love interest was just that, a love interest. Another one was edgy as hell and so on. But I'm still looking back fondly, since it was the first game I ever finished alone.