Comments on: Dialogue in Mass Effect

By: Lucas

Lucas — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:37:00 +0000

I think the ambiguity—uncertainty—you’re speaking of comes from the fact that in the wheel, dialogue options are short and suggestive, not verbatim; whether or not the option is on the Renegade, Paragon, or neutral path is more certain, as it’s shown by the position of the option along the wheel.

I also really liked discovering my character’s reactions, even when they weren’t what I had wanted her to say or do (something I was very careful with when talking with Wrex when he found out about the xenophage thing, because it would’ve been tough to fight it out with him.)

By: thesimplicity

thesimplicity — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:38:24 +0000

Actually, I think the ambiguous nature of the options presented by the dialogue wheel was a fantastic part of the game. I loved feeling like I wasn’t in control of my character. I was providing a framework for the decisions, but the character had developed a unique personality… a sort of child-like pattern associate learned though earlier choices I had made in the game.

I tend to play the evil angle in most games, and I loved how my character would take the most innocent options and turn them into insults or violent actions. It was often surprising and kept me playing.

By: Lucas

Lucas — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:42:57 +0000

Ava, you make a good point: it could be that by making the two choices unambiguous in the interface, they’ve made it less likely that the player will consider the Renegade/Paragon options carefully in the role-play.

This has been argued of BioShock‘s harvest/save decision: players will choose the option that rewards them most because it rewards them most, not because they’re considering the decision in terms of the game fiction. They’ll “power game” instead of role-play.

By: Ava Avane Dawn

Ava Avane Dawn — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:21:54 +0000

I believe that Bioware wanted a Heroic Quest to begin with, and therefore left the dichotomy of evil/good and instead made is so that your choices are either renegade/paragon, and that you can be equally much both at the same time. This reflects in the dialogue option (downwards left is always the renegade answer, and upwards left is paragon), which I find frustrating because it makes you stop thinking for yourself about the choices you make. This conclusion is based on the assumption that players will power-game and go for one choice or the other, but the question is; does the mechanics of the dialogue-pie encourage power-gaming or does it not? What kind of player will tend to power-game more because of it, and would this player perhaps just be frustrated without the guidelines for paragon/renegade because ze decided to power-game to begin with?

By: Lucas

Lucas — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 05:03:28 +0000

Thanks for the recommendation, Andrew. I played Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption back in 2001, but not Bloodlines. I can’t remember there being anything notable about the dialogue, but it’s been a long time, and the two games were made by different developers, so what little I remember probably isn’t all that accurate anyway.

Having the Paragon/Renegade split was useful to me when trying to figure out what selecting one dialogue option would cause (will Shepard calm this guy down or start a fight?), but a binary good/bad split like that (represented explicitly in the stats) still seems kinda ham-handed to me. I would like to be able to express my (or my character’s) attitude in a subtler way.

I’m not quite sure what you mean by “mature.” At its best (first visit to the Citadel), Mass Effect is very sober—but it is still a fantastic, militaristic, shoot-those-dudes game. That is, “mature” in the sense used by the ESRB: violent and sexy.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:12:31 +0000

Have you played Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines?

The dialogue in that game was equally well-crafted, and made use of the same good/bad attitude responses that are also influenced by whatever you’ve spent skill points on.

The comparisons are actually pretty startling when I think about it. Like Mass Effect, VTM:B was only an okay RPG; I’m certain that it could have easily carried itself as an adventure game. Too bad it’s not such a lucrative genre anymore.

I’d also say that the video game industry needs more of the maturity exhibited by both games.