NPC Dialogue Western Style versus JRPG Style?

[XIIIthHarbinger]

Hello gentle people of the interwebs, I've come to pick your brain again.

So now that I've largely finished making the small army of NPCs to populate the game world of my current project; I've started to give more thought to the plethora of countless potential interactions between the player & the 90+% of the NPCs who don't serve as quest givers or opponents.

Originally I had intended to create the usual style of dialogue interactions seen in JRPGs like Final Fantasy, Shining Force, etcetera. Where the player's interactions with the NPC usually bringing up the most pertinent bit of dialogue, for example "Hey (insert player name) have you talked to so & so?". & I had intended to create variety in what the NPCs would say based upon a "NPC" variable, combined with story progression triggers.

However, it occurred to me this morning that I ignored the possibility of another system, namely the less streamlined yet more interactive style of dialogues used in Western RPGs like Fallout & Elder Scrolls. Often with topic headings like "Rumors", "Background", "Advice", with the contents of the topic varying according to the individual NPC's respective identity. & additional topics being assigned based on the NPC's identity, location, & events that are occurring in game. Which could be utilized easily enough with a show choices common event.

So my questions for you are as follows. Has anyone tried using a system like those used in Fallout & Elder Scrolls with their own projects? Which do you prefer as a developer the streamlined style of JRPGs, or the more interactive style of Western RPGs? Which do you prefer as a player the streamlined style of JRPGs, or the more interactive style of Western RPGs?

 

[The Stranger]

Western style dialogues all the way. This is mainly because I'm a huge fan of branching dialogues and choice and consequence, as well as social\dialogue skill challenges. My current project uses a Western style dialogue system.

 

[shadefoundry]

I think it depends on the scope of your project. If you've got a bigger world and feel it should be fleshed out, definitely go for western dialog. If you're working on something smaller scale though, you might be able to get away with more jrpg style dialog, which is significantly easier especially if you're only one person. I've worked with both and can easily say that western is far more time consuming to set up but it's more rewarding in the long run if it's well done.

 

[Milennin]

I much prefer the JRPG style of dialogues, because it's simpler and gets everything done that it needs to. Also, when playing a game, I prefer the JRPG style of dialogues, because it takes up less of my time. NPCs say what they need to say and leave it at that.
I don't remember a single NPC from Skyrim, despite having played it for over 200 hours. On the other hand, some JRPGs I played even had total minor NPCs that did or said memorable stuff.

 

[CleanWater]

I don't like the western style. I don't have patience for looking at each option just to discover a needed information.

Sometimes it's interesting mid-game, some JRPGs also use it, but they don't overdo it.

 

[KayZaman]

Both but the interactive dialogue is more interesting coz' somehow the choices of dialogues to be choose affect the story. What's gonna happen, how it's end, it's your choice.

 

[Wavelength]

Eh... really tough choice, which I think intimates what a smart question you've asked. I think I like the streamlined style of JRPG dialogue better, so I voted for that. But there are a lot of JRPGs where the NPCs are absurdly unhelpful. I like the deep, flexible content that a lot of WRPGs offer. The problem is that it's slow and immersion-breaking to immediately start a conversation with "Directions!" or "Rumors!".

I guess my ideal RPG would be something like this:

1. NPCs start off with a JRPG-style dialogue that the game thinks is most appropriate to what you want to do right now. The first time you visit a town, they might give you a little introduction or fact about the town, like "This town hasn't been the same since the new governor took over. Shady fellow, if you ask me" But if during that first trip to the town you're looking for your lost party member, they might say "Brown-haired girl in a white dress? Yeah, I think I saw her running off that way."
2. During that dialogue, the player can also press a hotkey (Shift, Square-button, whatever) to indicate that they want to ask the NPC something different. If the player doesn't do this, the NPC will finish saying what they were saying and the conversation will end without any choices or further actions from the player.
3. If the player does hit this hotkey, the NPC will ask "Something else you wanted to talk about?" or similar, and the player would be given a dynamically-populated menu for other things they can talk about with the NPC (Quests, Directions, Advice, Silly, About That Governor, About You, etc.) after their selected "most appropriate" dialogue completes.

 

[XIIIthHarbinger]

@Wavelength
I've seen JRPGs & Western RPGs that executed each very well, & I've honestly liked games that used both styles. For example the Final Fantasy series usually handles the JRPG style fairly well; & I think Morrowind was probably one of the best examples of the Western style. So I am inclined to say that like a lot of things it isn't a right or wrong answer, but more of a question of how everything comes together. For example, as much as I love Fallout, & as much as I love the snarky comments your character makes when you select "sarcastic", I think I still prefer being able to see what I am actually going to say, rather than just guess based on an icon or word. On the other hand I like the paragon & renegade interrupts just fine, because I know when I see that big red star it's pretty much telling me "press x to shoot this person in the face".

Personally I am leaning more towards the Western Style now with my current project after I thought about it for awhile. Mostly because trying to come up with say five random things for every NPC to say, based on variables & triggers, in order for them to not feel like one line props seems like a stretch. But having basic topics you can ask almost any NPC about, like what services are available in town, what the latest rumors are, etcetera; I can have the NPCs say essentially the same things with only a little variety yet still seem more "alive". & then I only need to have one or two topics related to the NPCs respective background or quests if they are a quest giver to further flesh out who they are. After all if you ask five different people who all in the same village where the Inn is, they are largely all going to tell you the same thing.

As for the initial interaction before the dialogue options I was thinking something organic. Say a greeting the first time, with a self switch to move it to the next page after the end of the first conversation. With the results being more personal to the respective NPC on follow up pages.

 

[Basileus]

I don't especially mind Western-style complex dialogue, but I've very rarely seen it done right. The vast majority of the time all of the "choices" are hollow and kind of pointless. Why should any NPC ever tell me where the inn is? It's the building marked "Inn" like it always is, and it's near the front of town on the main road so as to make it impossible to miss like it always is. I have never needed an NPC to tell me where the weapon store is - there is a finite number of doors I can enter, I can find it without assistance.

I adore Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. It's one of my favorite games of all time. But the dialogue is often times dense and useless. The best feature was that I could go straight to the 1 or 2 topics I actually cared about without having to literally have the same conversation 5 times and pretend that's a thing people do. Yes, the local lore can be nice but it's weird that every NPC says basically the same things so after a couple hours there is very little reason to talk to most NPCs. In Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim there are fewer options and most offer only generic information with little characterization. I've heard some people praise Skyrim's "detailed" NPCs but I just don't get it. Yes, that one Redguard in Whiterun taunts you for being poor. No that does not make him a good character. Every single NPC has a one-dimensional personality and every response they give is exactly the same as every other NPC with that personality type. You can't really talk with any of them and outside of a few choice points you can't change anything by talking to them.

Bioware RPGs are even worse. In something like Knights of the Old Republic the plot happens and periodically asks the player a question with the game giving a list of the exact phrases your character could say. But this often sucked because none of the pre-made answers were anything I wanted to say. Sometimes the only "no" option sounded way sleazier or more sinister than I wanted (the Saint or Satan dilemma enforced by the binary morality system did not help). The Mass Effect series is where they began hiding what you were actually about to say which really made it hard to play the kind of character I wanted...in a game all about playing the kind of character I wanted.

I don't see much reason why an RPG Maker game would need a Mass Effect or Fallout 4 style system for dialogue. Unless you're hiring professional voice actors you're bound by text boxes to actually deliver that dialogue to the player. A system of "pick one of these 4 things" is designed to progress a fully-rendered cutscene as smoothly as possible for cinematic effect - to quickly pick the mood you are going for just as the NPC is wrapping up so your dialogue plays right after without pause. There is just no need for such a system in a game reliant on text boxes where the speed of everything is completely in the player's control. An Elder Scrolls or Fallout 3/New Vegas type of dialogue system might work...but you still need to ask yourself what you are really getting out of it. Skill checks within dialogue are fun, but requires having a skill system and even then can be done with a JRPG dialogue system just fine. Save the skill checks for quest/plot dialogue and have all of the generic lore dialogue be scattered about in typical JRPG fashion. You don't need every single NPC in your fishing village tell your player all about their lore. Have a school teacher lecturing kids on their village's deity and creation myth, some fishermen talking to a rookie about their boats or gear, a crazy old coot that is too busy to talk to the player but mutters to himself about how the merfolk stopped visiting the village after the last full moon. Bam! All of your exposition, but instead of random generic NPCs that can all tell the player all of this info (thus meaning the player only ever needs to talk to one of them) it's all spread out in an immersive way. This gives each NPC an identity - a school teacher, a student, a fisherman, a crazy old coot, etc. Show, Don't Tell. You can even use switches to change their lines after the first time you meet them and with every major plot event so they always have something to say. Key Items can even trigger huge, sprawling conversations for plot and/or quest purposes.

The other important factor is what kind of story you want to tell. Offering a system with "choices and consequences" only has meaning in an open game where the player's character does not actually have their own personality. By making the dialogue system non-linear, you are forcing your game to also be non-linear to accommodate and respect the player's choices. This means your main character will be pretty much a "blank slate", which is barely a step above "Heroic Mime" on the well-rounded character scale. Telling a linear story means having a main character with an actual personality, and JRPGs generally excel in solid narrative arcs where characters have a personality and a quest tailor made to let them grow and mature in some way. Cloud needs to face off with Sephiroth to conclude his arc. There is no need for a "team up with Sephiroth" ending because that would just ruin the point of everything. Squall needs to save Rinoa and can't just date Quistis or Selphie instead because that's not what Squall as a character would do. If you are playing a Harry Potter game you wouldn't expect Harry to be able to start hanging out with the Slytherins and bullying Ron because that would be out of character for him. The Dovahkin is just some dude in armor that does anything because (s)he has absolutely no character. Commander Shepard has multiple personalities and can genocide a species one minute and pick the tree-hugging hippie option the next conversation because nothing actually keeps one of their pre-rendered personalities in place.

The classic JRPG dialogue system can do just about anything you need in a linear, plot-focused game. The Western RPG dialogue trees are good for open world games where players can't be relied on to actually meet each specific NPC or for blank slates that can be molded into something vaguely resembling a personality. Both are tools and the value in tools is in how you use them.

 

[XIIIthHarbinger]

The classic JRPG dialogue system can do just about anything you need in a linear, plot-focused game. The Western RPG dialogue trees are good for open world games where players can't be relied on to actually meet each specific NPC or for blank slates that can be molded into something vaguely resembling a personality. Both are tools and the value in tools is in how you use them.

Personally, I am making an open world sandbox game, with a high degree of character customization with my current project, organized around primary quest, with the world explored through the use of non-mandatory side quests. So I am inclined to think the Western Style is a better fit for my own project.

Though that project is largely intended to serve as a training exercise prior to the creation of secondary project; namely a series of open world sandbox games all set within the same fantasy world, which I can progressively deepen the lore of with each successive entry. Less focused on the kind of "save the world from the prime evil" so often the focus of JRPGs, & more the smaller scale conflicts of various factions, with the player choosing whose play to back. Something more akin to Fallout New Vegas or Fallout 4 if you will.

I think though, that even if you have characters who have a set identity, you can still have flexible dialogue options, because it makes sense that the player can determine how the events impact the player character.

 

[ScientistWD]

If what you say is true, then I think you're right to choose "Western Style".
You've got to pick whatever method works best for your game, specifically. The real key, of course, is to make sure that actually investing time in the random people of your world bears fruit for the player. Especially if you're going to so much trouble to plan it all and they're going to so much trouble to really talk to them.
I, personally, haven't played a lot of western RPGs, so I can't say much to their effectiveness. More interaction is good, but excess interaction may just bog folks down with a lot of nonsense if it isn't worth the time. Lore is one thing, but even games like Hyper Light Drifter can be full of lore without a single line of dialogue. Of course, games like that can also be deserted, as opposed to your "small army".
I think it's one of those things where I'd love to spend time getting to know and talk to NPCs if they had enough intrigue. Otherwise, I'd rather not have to spiderweb through dialogue options multiple times to get what I need. In fact, if they're flat-out boring players might just skip them if they can.
You might even be able to get away with JRPG-style for small characters and WRPG-style for bigger ones. I don't know what your game is like, really, but don't go deep just so you can tell a story when stories can be told in much more subtle ways than oodles of words.
I mean it really just boils down to how important NPCs are to the game as a concept. It seems like they are quite important, in your case, and that's why "Western Style" should work for you.

I guess.

 

[Basileus]

@XIIIthHarbinger

An open world sandbox game is a tall order if you're aiming for depth. As in "been in development for 3+ years and still lacking content in some spots on the map" kind of dev time.

The main problem I see with a Western RPG dialogue system is that most people in the game aren't worth talking to at length. A system involving dialogue trees and 3-4 options every single time an NPC asks the player anything is geared specifically for long conversations with the same NPC. This also means that it becomes necessary for every NPC to have a decent chunk of dialogue and actually creating branching conversations for all of the player's possible choices. For a select few important NPCs this is fine, but doing this for every NPC in the game is a massive task with little to no pay off.

Because the cold truth is that it's pointless to hold conversations with most NPCs.

How much dialogue does the random farmer need? How about the chef in the castle? The weapon store owner? Even a small, linear RPG can have 100+ NPCs scattered about. An open world sandbox will probably need several hundred just to not feel totally empty. So if you are going to use a larger, choice-heavy dialogue system you are going to need to justify that amount of work. If an NPC isn't worth holding a long conversation with, then including them in the dialogue system is a waste of time. Unless you plan to make literally everyone a quest-giver or vendor of some kind you will always have NPCs that just aren't important and shouldn't take up all of your dev time. Even games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age have lots and lots of NPCs that don't really talk to the player and just give off a line or two if the player interacts with them.

You can have an open world sandbox and still use a simple JRPG dialogue system.

The style of your game doesn't really matter. What matters is the level of interaction that the player will need to have with the average NPC. If an NPC only exists to make the town look more alive and dispense some local lore, then you can easily get away with not giving the player dialogue options and just having them spout a few lines when interacted with. You can even set quest switches to give them special dialogue options based on plot events or quests. Special plot-relevant NPCs can still be given extra content to enable more robust conversations every instance they appear without having to extend this conversation system to every peasant in the land. Even for special NPCs you need to decide how much conversation is really even necessary. Being able to press for more info can be a good thing, but having options to make small talk and then having multiple options for every topic can easily become excessive and tedious, especially if it doesn't actually make a real difference in how the conversation progresses.

Offering options when asked an important question that has a moral impact is great. Offering multiple options just to slightly change one line of dialogue before continuing the conversation as normal is bad. Your player character probably does not need to be able to ask every single person in the kingdom about the weather, and they definitely do not need branching dialogue trees for every inane question.

JRPG dialogue systems still have choices and still have context-sensitive changes in NPC dialogue. If your player character has no personality of their own (like in Elder Scrolls games) and making everything into a multiple choice personality test is part of your intended core gameplay, then a Western dialogue system is actually necessary. If your player character has a base personality (like in the Witcher games), then you can use a JRPG dialogue system most of the time with player saying some in-character lines automatically without branching options and use a more choice-heavy system for important things where the choices actually matter.

 

[kirbwarrior]

Unless you plan to make literally everyone a quest-giver or vendor of some kind

You should go play Elder Scrolls II sometime (whichever came before Morrowind). So many NPCs are quest givers, there are so many of them, and the map is even bigger than Skyrim, the game will drive you nuts as a completionist until you realize much of it is unnecessary. Scratch that, don't go play it

JRPG dialogue can be fantastic. I still remember the well in Final Fantasy 1 because it was so over-the-top. And the girl who comments on your appearance. And that game was bare bones.

Personally, I like the 'random' dialogue some rpgs have; Each npc has between 1 to 4 sets of things they talk about, the most pertinent to the player showing up first. I also like the concept of Final Fantasy 2's word system, but it falls flat in play. I'm sure there's potential, though.

Extreme depth of things to talk about in WRPGs makes sense if it's required. Skyrim does this well since you can ignore most of what unnecessary npcs say and focus on the ones that matter or that you care about. The 'relationship' variable that many npcs carry matters for dialogue options, especially since Charisma and related skills exist. But that's a very tall order that even Bethesda has yet to do without hilarious fault.

 

[XIIIthHarbinger]

An open world sandbox game is a tall order if you're aiming for depth. As in "been in development for 3+ years and still lacking content in some spots on the map" kind of dev time.

The main problem I see with a Western RPG dialogue system is that most people in the game aren't worth talking to at length. A system involving dialogue trees and 3-4 options every single time an NPC asks the player anything is geared specifically for long conversations with the same NPC. This also means that it becomes necessary for every NPC to have a decent chunk of dialogue and actually creating branching conversations for all of the player's possible choices. For a select few important NPCs this is fine, but doing this for every NPC in the game is a massive task with little to no pay off.

Because the cold truth is that it's pointless to hold conversations with most NPCs.

I am already on the second year of my current project, & I'll be passing the 2500 hours mark in program this week. That's of course not counting time invested when not working in MV, but rather working on art assets, brainstorming, research, lore crafting, etcetera. & I don't expect the game to be ready to deploy, until early next year.

Personally, I don't intend for the player to be required to interact with every NPC, but rather make every NPC feel as "alive" as possible, that the player can interact with if they so chose. Random bits of game world lore, various side quests, various services, even odd bits of humor serving to add variety to the NPCs.

As for barren areas, of course there will be many that are simply "field maps" that have neither dungeons, quest locations, or anything else of note. They will simply be maps with some collection of monsters that lay next to other field maps. The total expanse of the Island that the story is set on is reachable.

How much dialogue does the random farmer need? How about the chef in the castle? The weapon store owner? Even a small, linear RPG can have 100+ NPCs scattered about. An open world sandbox will probably need several hundred just to not feel totally empty. So if you are going to use a larger, choice-heavy dialogue system you are going to need to justify that amount of work. If an NPC isn't worth holding a long conversation with, then including them in the dialogue system is a waste of time. Unless you plan to make literally everyone a quest-giver or vendor of some kind you will always have NPCs that just aren't important and shouldn't take up all of your dev time. Even games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age have lots and lots of NPCs that don't really talk to the player and just give off a line or two if the player interacts with them.

Depends upon the farmer, chef, or weapon store owner. Personally I don't see NPCs as being "unimportant" simply because they aren't providing quests. Everything about them tells the player about the world they are interacting with.

Frankly I've already created nearly a thousand NPCs to go along with the RTP assets just to provide visual variety to the the various villages & castles. & I find Mass Effect's & Dragon Age's use of "trees with human faces" to be something of a mark against the series.

As for "needing to justify it", I see no need to justify it. I make the best game that I capable of making, I need no other justification. Because what I learn from creating my current project, more proof of concept & training exercise than assumption of creating anything truly unique, serves to make future projects even better.

The style of your game doesn't really matter. What matters is the level of interaction that the player will need to have with the average NPC. If an NPC only exists to make the town look more alive and dispense some local lore, then you can easily get away with not giving the player dialogue options and just having them spout a few lines when interacted with. You can even set quest switches to give them special dialogue options based on plot events or quests. Special plot-relevant NPCs can still be given extra content to enable more robust conversations every instance they appear without having to extend this conversation system to every peasant in the land. Even for special NPCs you need to decide how much conversation is really even necessary. Being able to press for more info can be a good thing, but having options to make small talk and then having multiple options for every topic can easily become excessive and tedious, especially if it doesn't actually make a real difference in how the conversation progresses.

I disagree, the intended style or tone if you prefer of the game dictates the nature of those interactions.

Furthermore, just because something isn't "necessary" for the game, doesn't mean that the game isn't enriched by doing so. A weather system or day & night cycle isn't necessary for my game, anymore than a game like Skyrim; yet I include it for the sake of enriching my game, likely for similar reasons that it is included in a game like Skyrim. The same is true with the work I put into developing in game world lore, or NPC dialogues.

Offering options when asked an important question that has a moral impact is great. Offering multiple options just to slightly change one line of dialogue before continuing the conversation as normal is bad. Your player character probably does not need to be able to ask every single person in the kingdom about the weather, and they definitely do not need branching dialogue trees for every inane question.

JRPG dialogue systems still have choices and still have context-sensitive changes in NPC dialogue. If your player character has no personality of their own (like in Elder Scrolls games) and making everything into a multiple choice personality test is part of your intended core gameplay, then a Western dialogue system is actually necessary. If your player character has a base personality (like in the Witcher games), then you can use a JRPG dialogue system most of the time with player saying some in-character lines automatically without branching options and use a more choice-heavy system for important things where the choices actually matter.

I would agree with that to some extent, hence my dislike of slightly different attitudes summed up with single words like those within Fallout 4, despite the amusement value I find in the snark of the sarcastic options.

As for my own project's player character, literally within the first five minutes I have the player chose their characters sex, archetype, & name. While not a full character creation suite by any means, the player character is very much tabula rasa to very great extent. Though I haven't made a final decision about how much the player's choices will influence the final outcome, i.e. multiple endings.

 

[kirbwarrior]

Furthermore, just because something isn't "necessary" for the game, doesn't mean that the game isn't enriched by doing so.

This is absolutely true. Yes, it's a workload for an extremely open world like Skyrim, but the end result can be worth it. It will be exponentially more work for the 'same' result in a linear game, though, mostly because of the plethora of character choices.
This is one reason I thoroughly enjoy the talk outside of conversations in Skyrim. Guards will comment on your skills. People will say hi, swear at what they are working on, whisper to their companions, etc. It does all the fluff work without needing to actually initiate the npc. In rpgmaker, yanfly has a Gab plugin that can simulate this (mind, part of the genius is voice acting so it doesn't clog your hud). I remember a project I made in rm2k that tried to do this. I had to resort to pictures to simulate this, which get replaced every time a new one came up, and ended having a nice feel of making it hard to pay attention to background chatter like it would be in a busy city (the messages were rarely long).

 

[Basileus]

Personally, I don't intend for the player to be required to interact with every NPC, but rather make every NPC feel as "alive" as possible, that the player can interact with if they so chose. Random bits of game world lore, various side quests, various services, even odd bits of humor serving to add variety to the NPCs.

Depends upon the farmer, chef, or weapon store owner. Personally I don't see NPCs as being "unimportant" simply because they aren't providing quests. Everything about them tells the player about the world they are interacting with.

I find Mass Effect's & Dragon Age's use of "trees with human faces" to be something of a mark against the series.

As for "needing to justify it", I see no need to justify it. I make the best game that I capable of making, I need no other justification.

Furthermore, just because something isn't "necessary" for the game, doesn't mean that the game isn't enriched by doing so. A weather system or day & night cycle isn't necessary for my game, anymore than a game like Skyrim; yet I include it for the sake of enriching my game, likely for similar reasons that it is included in a game like Skyrim. The same is true with the work I put into developing in game world lore, or NPC dialogues.

I'll try to keep my responses in order here:

The way I see it, your goal is to make the world feel "alive". Immersion is fantastic and world-building really helps a fantasy world feel more "real" so the player gets more invested. It's just that there are other ways to accomplish this goal just fine. World lore is great but the delivery of said lore is extremely important. It doesn't matter how deep your setting is; if every fact is said directly to the player by a walking information kiosk it will fall flat for many players. A system where all dialogue involves the player going up to someone and selecting topic after topic to talk about until they get bored won't hook players because there is no real meaning or context to the information they are receiving and thus the player loses immersion. You know what's really realistic? Having some people just not interested in talking to you. It's actually just plain weird that every single person in a game is willing to just drop everything they are doing to immediately answer all of the player's inane questions like a brain-trauma victim. In many ways, NPCs that say 1 line and refuse to initiate a longer conversation or NPCs that are talking to each other and not about to stop their conversation just for the player is far more immersive. It's not just that deep interactions with every NPC is unnecessary, it's also that it's really NON-immersive for every person to drop what they are doing to tell you idle local lore. Every single peasant in your game should not also be moonlighting for their village's tourism association.


There are sooo many other ways to get all of this information to the player. You can show the farmer and his wife are in a strained relationship by putting notes all through their house that show those notes are the only way they communicate anymore. A note by the bed written by a man desperately asking his wife why she won't talk to him anymore says more than an entire conversation could. Suddenly the farmer's line saying he's so happy the player dropped by to look over his produce takes on all kinds of new meaning.

If you're looking for a game absolutely dripping with atmosphere, look at Bioshock. The player character is a mute FPS protagonist yet the game is renowned for incredible world-building and touching little stories scattered throughout Rapture. These stories are mostly told in the form of audio logs that the player can picked up and listen to, but other games achieve this effect through notes and diaries. Some of the best parts of games like Skyrim and Oblivion are all of the little things lying around for the player to find. Like the NPC in Oblivion that gets out of the bed he shares with his wife and leaves his house in the dead of night 2 nights a week to go to another woman's house and gets into her bed. It's not part of a quest or anything and no line of dialogue ever reveals it; it can only be found by players that see him walking around at night and choosing to follow him to see what he's doing...or players that are robbing his mistress and are surprised to find him there. Nothing in any dialogue tree will ever compete with that level of immersion.


"Trees with human faces" makes me think of NPCs that are nothing but a dialogue tree attached to a human-shaped NPC. I assume you are referring to the mostly non-interactive NPCs that you can't talk to or that only say 1 line.

Well calling it a "mark against the series" is massively unfair. Games made by professional studios have deadlines and budgets to work with. That's where decisions of "is this really necessary" start to come into play. A dev working in their spare time can take as long as they want to get every single aspect of the game exactly as they like it...a professional dev with a boss forcing a Christmas release on them does not have that luxury. Ultimately you HAVE to put your effort where it actually matters most or you will never finish.


I can see a very good reason that you, or anyone really, would "need to justify it". Work takes time. Time spent adding more and more dialogue to NPCs that don't actually matter is time not spent on bug testing, balance testing, adding actual gameplay content, or making all of the art assets. If your goal is just to see if you can make a game where every single NPC has a Tolstoy novel's worth of personalized dialogue, then by all means go for it. If your goal is to create a game that players enjoy playing, then you really do need to consider if the player will actually enjoy spending such a huge amount of time just talking to NPCs that aren't even plot/quest important.

Writing for a game is like writing a book. There are only so many characters a player can become invested in, so be sure that your best development goes to the characters that are actually relevant and then round-out the side characters. Every story has extras and the trap that a lot of writers fall into is that most people would assume that a character with a lot of focus is going to be important. If a character talks a bit more than other NPCs it is a hint that they will be used for a quest at some point or may have a role in the plot later on; you can also rely on players remembering these characters so they will have an idea where to look around when a quest tells them to find X and ask about Y. Being able to interact with everyone at roughly the same level will make it hard to "bookmark" important characters. In short: The girl selling flowers that only has 2 alternating lines is not important. The girl selling flowers that goes up to the spikey-haired protagonist and has more lines is your next party member.


It isn't about avoiding "unnecessary" things, it's about having a firm grasp of what is necessary and making sure that extra things don't get in the way. A day/night cycle can actually be necessary for gameplay purposes because it enables "day" events and behaviors and "night" events and behaviors so the player has different tasks to do at different times of day. A weather system is probably not necessary and should only be bothered with if time and resources allow it. Again, creating world lore and giving all of your NPCs stories is fine - but is telling all of those stories through dialogue trees really the way you want to present that information to the player?

 

[kirbwarrior]

There are only so many characters a player can become invested in

I agree with a lot of what you have said, but I just wanted to point out this line in particular, especially based on what you said. NPCs with only some dialogue, an npc that doesn't pay attention to you, an npc that just says hello in an odd manner, these stick with certain players. There's a fellow in Chrono Trigger that talks about the hillside near the top of a mountain. You keep talking to him and he'll slightly change what he says. Eventually he gets tired of your pestering and gives you an item. In a game sense, he was a glorified treasure chest. But in the world? He was a guy willing to climb a mountain, appreciate it's view, and got annoyed at these kids pestering him, so he tried to come up with a way to get them to go away. And he was memorable. My friends laugh everytime we remember him. And yet he's entirely unimportant. And (like you pointed out) not much work was required to make him, someone just spent that little extra time to make him stick out without getting in the way of functionally being a background element.

Npcs can be fantastic and bring the players into the world with even one sentence. I fondly remember one npc that just tells you the town she's in. Why? "I finally learned how to read the welcome sign!"