How to make better dialogue systems
NARRASCOPE 2019 - JULIUS KUSCHKE - HOW DIALOGUE SYSTEMS MAKE OR BREAK PLAYER ENGAGEMENT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94O2Lu4O2_k
Julius Kuschke, Chief Product officer at RTC creates tools for game writers. RTC makes Artists Draft, a software to create branching stories. In this talk he reviews highlights from the ways that previous games have ensured what Julius sees as the four secrets of a good dialogue:
1) Pacing
2) Authenticity
3) Conflict
4) Agency
Pacing.
Make it sound good, make it sound like music. It needs rhythm.
Previously, in a hub dialogue system, you could choose all the options offered in turn,. And that's very unnatural. It's also very much like an interrogation, because only the player is driving the whole dialogue. This turns NPCs into information wending machines, where the player feels obligated to punch every button, just to get each available tidbit of data.
So, this is why I think waterfall structures are so popular today because they feel so much more natural. Players understand that each option not chosen is gone forever, they don't have a second chance. The conversation will move on.
Just as an example for that, let's take a look at Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
“Tell me mysterious. Did you learn anything worthwhile in your dealings with the world?”
“I'm done talking, I should tell you where you stand.”
“They said you'd be different. And blood is blood, I suppose.”
So, even though it's clearly a waterfall structure, without reoccurring hops, the dialogue often feels slow and artificial. Whenever there's a choice, everything stands still and the game waits for your input.
The most simple solution for this problem is to have time decisions and Telltale Games in particular made that system very popular.
Timers are great to create tension, and they reduce that weird awkward silence in between choices. They can be very difficult for non-native speakers or just slow readers, however. So most games offer a short preview of texts that hopefully can be understood instantly – but that can create more problems again because unclear options making the player character behave in unwanted ways or options leading to the exact same line of dialogue are frustrating, so frustrating even that one of the most downloaded mods for Fallout 4 replaced these short preview texts with a complete line of dialogue.
So, just to keep in mind, if you shorten your choice texts to be able to do something like time decisions, clarity is always more important than reading speed.
Bioware’s Dragon Age use iTunes and symbols to make the options more clear.
Another option we have is just to be very consistent in how we present our choices. e.g. Bioware positions dialogue options consistently. For example, agreeable options are always in the upper right corner. If we disagree with what the NPC said, they're, etc.
In Star Wars, The Old Republic response options were arranged differently. according to the players character class. The smuggler class, for example, always had the most Han Solo option appear at the top of the list. so lazy players could just pick the first option to experience a very classic interpretation of that character. And that's great, I think, because at least I know what to expect when I choose that.
But as with any pattern based system, it can be boring for the player and also feels more artificial. The difficulty is to create a consistent system with enough flexibility to make it feel not to systemic.
Another game that uses consistency to speed up the decision making process is Alpha Protocol. Their stem system placed answers at certain positions based on their attitude, for example, professional or aggressive. But what makes the pacing in Alpha Protocol really special is that the system has no pauses. So you pick your answers while the NPCs are still talking and that feels extremely natural and fluent. And much more recent example for that is Firewatch. And it's really a great example when when we talk about pacing, because they combined a lot of the things I just mentioned. They have very short but precise options. They have a timer, and they have no pauses at all.
Another way of keeping players engaged even though there are pauses in the system is Heavy Rains’ moving thoughts system. By simply displaying options more dynamically, it urges the player to respond quickly, and it keeps up tension. n.b. moving texts can be very hard to read for a lot of people, so if you're doing something like that, be careful, maybe at least offer an option to disable these animations.
If actions do not appear in predictable patterns, players are more inclined to stay alert at all times.
2. AUTHENTICITY
If we don't think that the characters are believable, chances are very low that we are interested in what they're saying.
Oftentimes when we talk about games, it's more about the illusion of choice. It's not about real choice all the time. …It doesn't have to be real agency either as long as it is believable.
I don't think that we need a completely advanced AI. We just need to give NPC the illusion of agency by creating more believable characters.
One way to do that is to give them their own agenda. Basically, to give them a life of their own and great example for that are the NPC conversations in the camp in Red Dead Redemption 2.
“Come on, Jack.”
“I'm hungry Mama.”
“We're all hungry son. Just try reading later.”
“Okay,”
“Gotta get some to eat Arthur.”
“Sure”
So this scene would also happen without the players standing so close. But the last sentence is only triggered if player's are positioned close by and that really impacts.
The feeling that the NPCs are aware of my presence, they know that I'm there. So I as a player make a difference. But what is more important is that I'm not in the center of everything. The NPCs they have their own worries, they have their own thoughts and feelings, and they just talk to each other.
In real life, many things happen at once. You can't be everywhere or experience everything that's just not possible. In The Last Express a game released back in 1997 by Jordan Magna, the creator of Prince of Persia things happen whether you're there or not. The NPCs have their own schedule, they sleep, they get up, they go to the dining carriage, and they have conversations there. And if you don't go there, they still do that. It still happens, the story progresses anyway. And this really elevates NPCs from being marionettes only reacting to the player to believable acting personalities.
A simpler approach to make NPCs feel more alive is to just let them actively seek interaction with a player. And I would call that mixed initiative, with just a simple timer in the background paired with a few variable triggers, it can seem as if the characters have a will of their own because it was not predictable when they will do that.
So if you always ignore them, if you always decide against what they are proposing, they can also just leave you. They can tell you at some point, Okay, I'm done with you. If you don't listen to me, I’ll go my own way.
But to be honest, there was one thing that could lead to really awkward situations and that was because the characters didn't have a really good knowledge about the game world, or what has happened so far. …but a game that does that so much better is again Firewatch because they have a system where the characters know quite a lot about the game world. They know everything that has happened so far. And that really influences how they behave and what dialogue choices they have. In Firewatch dialogue lines are selected by a system that tries to find the line with the most matching requirements, so they don't have a traditional dialogue tree, they have a completely different system. And how that works is, I think best explained with an example. On day two of the game, the NPC Delilah would start a conversation with a player. But it makes a huge difference how much the player already told her about his wife Julia. If Delilah knows nothing about Julia, you get a pretty generic statement about relationships. But if the player had spoken about Julia and also told them that Delilah wasn’t feeling well they heard a more fitting response. “What does she have?” And the magic about the system is that players probably won't even notice its complexity. It's very invisible in a way. But still, it really makes me feel that all the choices I make matter, and they have consequences. And the NPC respond to me in a very natural way.
3. CONFLICT
Without conflict, there is no drama.
But how could we create a dialogue system that really enhances that feeling of conflict? There are very few examples I found that I think are interesting. One is the Council, which has some kind of resource management system built into the dialogue system. and it certainly makes you think, do I want to spend my five points now to get that piece of information? Or do I want to save to maybe convince someone later on. So it creates a conflict for the player.
And in Blindfolds we try to do something kind of similar, so every line of dialogue basically costs time, and there's nothing I can do about it. Everything I say, will move time forward. So I have to be really careful to choose which character I want to talk to and when I want to switch a topic.
Interrogation are game-like. You can actually win or lose a conversation. And players probably think twice before choosing one of the options. And they are much more focused on what is being said because in the end, they have to judge between truth and lie.
If we look at game mechanics to integrate into our dialogues, another great example is just having puzzles inside of the dialogues.
The deeper and more emotional the relationship between two characters, the more we care about the conflicts arising between them. Probably one of the best examples for a game that uses relationships to create conflict is The Sims, and that's kind of sad, because the in character interactions in that game cannot be really called a dialogue. The romance systems in Bioware games are more concrete. And they usually have some kind of value to track a relationship between an NPC and player character. And just to have the player aware of that value, really strengthens the feeling that my choices in a conversation matter because saying the wrong thing might damage a relationship I care about. But this can also feel artificial and shallow e.g. the approval system in Dragon Age Origins. Here, the conflict is undermined by giving players the option to simply increase the approval rating by making gifts to the NPCs. So I could just install an NPC and never listen to them, but give them a kitchen and hey, we're friends now, right?
In real life relationships, the challenge is to truly listen to people and to remember what someone cares about in order to say something that they appreciate. In Tokyo Mickey Memorial for example, neglected infrequently dated characters would eventually become angry and gossip to their friends. severely reducing love meters across the board. In the middle of the game, when the number of known love interests was high, these bombs became the primary concern, forcing careful planning and strategic round robin dating. I would like to see more jealousy systems in games, because it creates conflict…but forcing the player as a solution to undertake this round robin dating strategy is a bit silly, but if that system can offer meaningful choices that could be really, really interesting.
Of course, there are several other ways to integrate game mechanics into dialogue systems and even simple things such as a skill check in an RPG can enhance player engagement because it makes that choice somehow stick out, it makes it feel more valuable, more rewarding. BUT the greater the sense that a player can win a conversation, the more we engage the analytical calculating parts of the brain, which presents a barrier to empathy. If we want to tell a good story, we have to be careful what we're doing there. If it's too systemic, if it's too artificial, then players will not really care about what's going on anymore.
So we have to find a good middle ground. Adding elements of conflict to a dialogue system can work, but only if it really fits the setting, like the interrogation example in a crime story,
4. AGENCY
Agency is the level of control the player has over the game world. It's the feeling that my choices matter. Usually NPCs have no agency. They respond in pre-programmed ways, and this makes them feel like marionettes, which destroys the illusion of interacting with another character.
So I think the most prominent example to challenge this is probably hinting at consequences as done by Telltale. “Clementine will remember”, this phrase almost became iconic for story driven games.
Hinting at consequences also shows that you need to deliver on the agency you're promising. And I think that was kind of the problem, at least for me in the later Telltale Games. And a lot of people in the press, as I think saw that equally. For example, Game Informer said at one time, I can't help but feel a bit deceived. The Walking Dead had me believing that I could save characters from death. After multiple playthroughs I realized characters fates are etched in stone.
Allowing the player to choose the topics they're interested in can enhance the players feeling of agency and that's why we try to combine dialogue systems. If you initiate a conversation with a character, first of all, you get a very traditional app based UI where you can just choose the topic you would like to talk about. And as soon as you choose that, it switches completely to a very natural waterfall system.
Agency is also about being in control. Again, Firewatch is a good example. You can always move and look around even hear dialogue. It even allows you to interrupt an ongoing conversation by switching between topic, … So you wander around, you're talking to Delilah. And you come across that tree. And you could just say, Oh, I found some claw marks. And that really changes the topic of the dialogue. Whenever a conversation turns to a new topic, a bookmark is set. If the dialogue is interrupted, now the system will try to resume the dialogue at a later point. And there is a specific entry point for each bookmark. This entry point comes with a special line of dialogue used to pick up a topic in a more natural way
Truly engaging dialogue systems are still the exception. But as these examples show the design of a dialogue system has a significant impact on pacing, authenticity, conflict and agency and probably a whole lot of other good things as well.
Kuschke, Julius. 2019. Narrascope 2019 - Julius Kuschke - How Dialogue Systems Make or Break Player Engagement. U.S.: Narrascope 2019