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The art of dialogue and its impact on the stories has been a core part of RPGs for many years. Especially with more narratively and story driven games. Are they really that important? Well, let's find out!
The player character (PC) is a sum of his choices. Each time a new character is met, there is a choice how they interact with them. New quests, items, lore, flavour text and much more can be gained from picking the right options or passing some skill checks.
Each interaction allows the player to define who the character is. A well spoken diplomat, an imposing bully, a shifty opportunist, who the PC becomes comes from the choices they make.
There are some choices for the developers as to how the PC responds in the conversation. The most straightforward and common option is to show the player multiple fully verbatim choices, where we see exactly what will be said to the NPCs.
Alternatively, a more modern approach is to give a “vague idea” as to how the PC communicates by giving implied answers so instead of seeing a full response, players will be presented with either partial response or a “stance”, for example “professional”, “sarcastic” etc.
There are good and bad points to both, with implied choice being a newer system than the classic verbatim one.
A staple of CRPGs and various older titles that relied mostly on text in the dialogue. It’s the most well known system and it allows players to know exactly what their character will say, which makes it easier for role-playing PCs in a way they want to. Plus all the options are visible to the player without needing to reload a game to see/hear the lines.
The downside is the wall of text and how it affects the flow of conversation. It can become a slog to gloss over every single option, which can be mitigated by good and engaging writing but it’s not a perfect solution.
Often used in fully voiced games and it allows the players to focus on the conversation more, instead of reading through all the options first. It can make the overall flow of conversation much better, as there’s less time spent reading through all the options.
The downside is that the player won’t know what lines of dialogue would be used for each option until chosen. On top of everything the PC can say something that players absolutely didn’t expect or want, forcing them to reload a save and choose a different option instead.
Verbatim works great in games that don’t have voiced characters as there isn’t much flow of conversation to maintain, since every person reads at their own pace.
The implied option is a good solution to the opposite, as it allows the players to immerse themselves a little bit more into each conversation, limiting the time spent on choice and focusing on the dialogue and conversation itself.
But, it’s mostly about personal choice, as both options have merits and shortcomings.
Dialogue is often the core aspect of the story in RPGs. It’s the easiest way to deliver information, lore and quests to the player. Certain characters have more important roles in than others, basically turning conversations with them into a critical point in the story.
Saying the wrong thing can lead to some yet unseen benefits/consequences down the road, different branches in the storyline and locking/unlocking new locations, items, NPCS endings and much more.
Gamemasters (GM) in TTRPGs were often required to create new storylines depending on how players handle situations. A conversation with a king goes awry? Time to prepare a prison break out storyline.
Video game RPGs unfortunately don’t have the same flexibility but can still give players various outcomes and multiple branches to explore depending on how conversations were handled.
It’s often reserved for the main quest choices but even side quests can affect the story in some way, allowing more variety for each individual playthrough.
While not as present in the older CRPGs, today there’s a lot more interactivity between the PC and companions. Choosing dialogue options that reflect their own views usually brings them closer to the PC and have them open up more and become more aligned with the player and their mission.
Some choices can permanently change or even kill off characters, requiring a certain finesse when chatting with them. Especially if it’s one of the romanceable characters that the player wishes to pursue…
Since conversations with NPCs are important, then by default, the consequences should be reflected in story, gameplay or both. Game endings are often tied very closely to what dialogue choices were made by the players. It’s mostly the major ones but there can be variations depending on how each game individually tracks players choices.
A good game always tries to give an impact on the most important choices made by the PC.
Since the earliest RPGs, the verbatim choice was the most prevalent and used. Modern titles, especially the ones with voice acting, shifted more towards implied systems. Here’s a few titles from that added something interesting to each concept.
Plancescape: Torment is a great early example of how dialogue can impact the gameplay and vice versa. The protagonist “Nameless One”, while having the standard verbatim choice of text responses, doesn’t have all of them unlocked unless his intelligence, wisdom and charisma stats are high enough.
As an amnesiac protagonist, there are many NPCs that can “trigger” a memory, restoring glimpses of his past “selves” (if stats are high enough), which also results in extra experience and other rewards.
It does unfortunately suffer from the problem of too much dialogue, especially for people not well versed in the lore, as it tends to drag the pacing down. While the themes, the story and worldbuilding are great, the fatigue from reading walls of text for each interaction can become tiresome.
Mass effect is a great example of the implied choice dialogue system. The dialogue choice wheel has multiple short options with a general idea as to what Commander Shepard will say but without the exact text shown.
For players used to the verbatim system, it can be a bit frustrating as certain options feel like they don't represent the chosen dialogue option well enough. It also requires either a reload or another playthrough to hear (or see) the other options, unlike the verbatim style.
Additionally there’s a “karma” system that allows special dialogue options, paragon or renegade. Paragon is focused on the lawful “good guy” approach, while renegade is more “bad boy” with violence sprinkled in.
It’s not a bad system once you get used to it, especially since each voiceline delivery is fantastic, which improves the conversation flow by a lot.
An interesting mechanic was introduced in Bioware's Alpha Protocol. While the game didn’t achieve much success, the dialogue system was definitely something unique.
While multiple choice isn’t anything new in RPGs, Alpha Protocol had players pick “stances” as to how the PC interacts with others.
There were choices for how the protagonist would respond to the NPCs to intimidate them, be professional, befriend or even straight up just attack/shoot them during a conversation.
Each choice has a very short time window to choose from, making the conversation flow feel like a real time conversation.
There are of course “better” outcomes than others but it increases the tension for the player and fits the “secret agent gone rogue” vibe, where the decisions must be done quickly and efficiently.
Does dialogue play a big part in RPGs? Absolutely.
Is it necessary? There are games that treat dialogue more as an afterthought, mostly games that focus on combat, levelling up your character and finding awesome loot but if it’s a game that focuses on narrative and storytelling, dialogue is quite necessary.
A well designed dialogue between PC and NPCs can elevate a game's story to a new level, create memorable events for the players to immerse themselves in and have an impact as the decision makers, something that used to be quite a defining aspect of an RPG.
So, while not “strictly necessary” in every RPG ever, dialogue plays a large and important role in most RPGs and hopefully it’ll continue to do so.
Yes, as long as it’s not centered around the amount of dialogue but its quality. Overly wordy RPGs can get tedious if they lack essence.
Yes, they tend to be quite important when deciding what types of ending the PC and companions get at the end of the game. It’s not the only important part though, of course.
Absolutely! Even after completing the game, simply choosing different options in conversations can result in a different playthrough, despite knowing important plot points.
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