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48 Hour Exclusive - Can We Make Talking as Fun as Shooting? | Game Maker's Toolkit (Patreon)

Published:
2019-07-15 13:58:59
Edited:
2019-07-16 11:53:51
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Hey! 

One of the games I liked the look of at E3 was The Outer Worlds, by Obsidian. And one preview in particular that grabbed my eye was this one, which claims you can talk your way out of anything. 

Which inspired me to make a video about games where you can talk your way out of combat - from Mass Effect to Fallout New Vegas to Deus Ex and beyond. I've got examples, ideas, and more. 

Please take a look!

Mark

Files

Can We Make Talking as Much Fun as Shooting? | Game Maker's Toolkit

Certain RPGs make the tantalising promise that you can skip combat altogether, by talking your way past the bad guys. But how can we turn this into genuinely interesting gameplay? Warning - This video contains story spoilers for Mass Effect (1) and Life is Strange (Episode 2), and also features content related to suicide. Support Game Maker's Toolkit on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/GameMakersToolkit Have Mark talk at your studio, university, or event - https://gamemakerstoolkit.tumblr.com Games shown in this episode (in order of appearance) Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (Eidos Montreal, 2016) Planescape: Torment (Black Isle Studios, 1999) Fallout: New Vegas (Obsidian Entertainment, 2010) Baldur’s Gate (Bioware, 1998) Mass Effect (Bioware, 2007) Alpha Protocol (Obsidian Entertainment, 2010) Undertale (Toby Fox, 2015) Ladykiller in a Bind (Christine Love, 2016) Portal (Valve Corporation, 2007) Rayman Legends (Ubisoft Montpellier, 2013) Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Eidos Montreal, 2011) Life is Strange (Dontnod Entertainment, 2015) LA Noire (Team Bondi, 2011) Heaven’s Vault (Inkle, 2019) Resident Evil 2 (Capcom, 2019) The Walking Dead: Season One (Telltale Games, 2012) DOOM (id Software, 2016) Florence (Mountains, 2018) Griftlands (Klei Entertainment, In Early Access) Detroit: Become Human (Quantic Dream, 2018) Civilization V (Firaxis Games, 2010) Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice for All (Capcom, 2002) Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter (Frogwares, 2016) Persona 5 (Atlus, 2017) Call of Duty: WWII (Sledgehammer Games, 2017) Watch Dogs 2 (Ubisoft Montreal, 2016) Middle-earth: Shadow of War (Monolith Productions, 2017) Far Cry New Dawn (Ubisoft Montreal, 2019) The Outer Worlds (Obsidian, Unreleased) Music used in this episode Here’s Where Things Get Interesting - Lee Rosevere (https://leerosevere.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-podcasts-6) Wonder Cycle - Chris Zabriskie (https://chriszabriskie.bandcamp.com/album/divider) Deus Ex: Human Revolution soundtrack - Michael McCann Life is Strange soundtrack - Jonathan Morali LA Noire soundtrack - Andrew Hale Candlepower - Chris Zabriskie (https://chriszabriskie.bandcamp.com/album/divider) Oxygen Garden - Chris Zabriskie (https://chriszabriskie.bandcamp.com/album/divider)

Comments

Si Davies

Perfect timing - I'm currently researching how to design a narrative that allows more than just a combat-style playthrough. Thanks!

Rich Stoehr

The Kate Marsh moment in Life is Strange is one of my favorite-ever examples of well-done dialogue. Context was important, based on what you saw earlier in the game, and even if you "knew" the right answers, getting to the best resolution was a genuine challenge - I felt real accomplishment when I did it. Also, something you didn't mention but may be something to consider: there were actual game-changing consequences to it. Whichever way the conversation ended, the rest of the game reflected the ending you got - a constant reminder of what you did (or did not do) in that critical moment. Great video, Mark! I'd also love to see more moments like this in games.

Daniel F. Hanson

Here's some food for thought: Combat gameplay tends to be heavily systems-driven. Lots of interconnecting mechanics, gameplay atoms, continuous moment-to-moment player choice, and the like. Tends toward rich gameplay spaces. Conversation gameplay tends to be heavily content-driven. Pre-written dialogue, specifically scripted decision points, and ultimately a glorified Choose Your Own Adventure book. Tends toward shallow gameplay spaces. What would it look like if we wanted conversation gameplay to be more systems-driven than content-driven?

Mikhail Aristov

I've asked the same question (in a different wording) during the last Q&A, and now you give us a full-length video about it -- I am satisfied. ^__^

Mikhail Aristov

I think it would first require us to replace natural-language text with a simpler set of symbols that are easier to manipulate procedurally (than procedurally generated prose). Then we will need an AI that can robustly intuit the player's meaning from their arrangement of symbols within reasonable time. Finally, we would probably need a new paradigm of gameplay space that is social, rather than spatial in nature and where your success metric is tied to the number, strength, and category of your current relationships to NPCs. In effect, we need gameplay that satisfies a social power fantasy, rather than a physical or an intellectual one.

Matt Kimmich

I have to admit that I have an issue with the way the New Vegas dialogue is dismissed as *not gameplay*. At the very least I'd expect a definition of gameplay that makes sense of this. To my mind, there is micro- and macro-gameplay at, well, play here. On the micro-level, the player gets to choose how to engage with the character, and the choice has various consequences: whether the character lives or dies, whether you get his items, whether you come away from a fight with diminished resources or get out of the situation with your resources intact. On the macro-level, you know that the character might come back if you leave him alive, you know that your choice may have an impact on other characters (which is something New Vegas does elsewhere). It's not the most interesting, engaging conversation, and elsewhere you have more different options where the outcomes are more meaningful, but I would definitely say there is gameplay, in that the game offers you various interactions, each of which has consequences. How is that not gameplay?

Zeragamba

Have you seen Klei's newest game Griftlands on the epic store? It has a few of the things mentioned in this episode.

Daniel F. Hanson

The Sims is a great example of a coarse implementation of this.

Game Maker's Toolkit (GMTK)

Thanks, that game completely passed me by! I'm going to talk about it in the final version of this episode

Mark M

Love this, I've always enjoyed conversation based gameplay, and you've picked out some great examples. Generally conversation is a secondary mechanic, or largely cinematic, which are both methods I enjoy, but it'd be awesome to play games where conversation is more influential to how the game goes. The Witcher 3 comes to mind as a game where different decisions can really affect the narrative. A game that really focused on that type of thing, not just between the player and an NPC, but also between how NPCs interact with each other based on the players choices, what you learn in the world both from interactions and from gameplay (e.g. the investigations of LA Noire or 'snooping' of Life is Strange).

Marty Crenlon

Okay, take two. This time I know that Enter key does not = line breaks on Patreon, which will at least make this comment less terse. Whoops! I completely agree that making Kate's moment an actual, substantive branch in the narrative is hugely props-worthy, but I personally found it to be one of the less effective encounter designs in the game. Like, just in terms of context, it's very reminiscient of the Deus Ex: HR example in the video, in that everything about the framing screams "SPECIAL SPEECH MINIGAME" in a way that I found really distracting. That Max's powers work *dramatically* different in that opening of the scene than they do in the entire rest of the game is, if nothing else, *weird and noticeable*. But the conversation is also really... flat? Meaning, yes, it's tense, but there's no arc or layers to it. Kate is at her wits end and Max is concerned about her, and tonally, those emotions just kind of ram into each other until the scene ends one way or the other. And that, combined with the video-game-ness, also leads to some oddities in the acting. Kate gives a notably calm, happy response when you answer each challenge correctly, and a snappy distressed one when you answer incorrectly. That gave me some whiplash in my playthrough, since it felt like her character wasn't being consistent from one question to the next. (Even by the scale of her situation.) Even all that I was mostly fine with since, hey, video game about time travel. But what had me flabbergasted was that the final question that determines her fate is... bible trivia? Sure, Kate's extremely religious, and that matters to the setup. But at the same time, that felt pretty underwhelming after the bit about her family that Mark highlights in the video. And IIRC, they don't even show you the quotes themselves to help recall which one was scratched out, it just says Proverbs X and Matthew Y. A *lot* works better if they make that the opening test rather than the closing one, IMO, not just because of the scale but because of how it clues you in to where she's at, emotionally. But to reiterate, I totally agree that there's a ton about the scene that's done wonderfully, so at the end of the day, this feels like a case study in just how hard it is to do dialog-based systems well. Would it be nice to have half a dozen versions of each line and animation as her Emotional HP or whatever get knocked down? Yes, but that's *way* more expensive and complicated than having basic right/wrong responses and demands a more elaborate structure to the conversation itself. And even if you do that, there's still a chance that one small structural bit or one misinterpreted clue can torpedo the whole experience for a player. Sorry for rambling, hope this wasn't too thread-crappy!

Zeragamba

Wow, I wasn't expecting an extra 5 minutes of content for Griftlands. Guess that was pretty good timing from Klei eh?

s_p_l_o_d_e

This is was one of the reasons why I dislike that the first question that pops into my mind when I hear about a new RPG is "what is the combat like?", since playing a role should be much more than is it turned based combat or real time combat. I was initially bummed about Cyberpunk 2077 because even though it boasted a big open world, you're limited to just killing people (the game makers have stated that you're a mercenary from the get go, no other options). They later announced that you can be a non-lethal mercenary, but your experience in the game is still predicated on violence.

Mikhail Aristov

I feel like Cyberpunk is not the best example here, because violence has always been the thematic core of that genre as a whole. Now, if we had an RPG where we played a conman or a politician (or a conman politician) instead, then the focus would quite naturally be on dialogue and persuasion...

Wander

Great video, Mark! :)

Wojciech Bielecki

Hi Mark, this is a great video about a subject that I wish came up more often. I feel the need to say, though, that I think showing the actual scene when Kate jumps off the ledge is not necessary. You are making a very good point regarding Life is Strange and I don't think that a cut before she falls would diminish it.

Wark

Appreciate that you brought up Autism as a potential wrinkle to the in-depth social awareness challenges presented here. At the same time, as an autistic person who really enjoys conversation mechanics, I’ve found games to be a helpful way to learn some of the social skills I haven’t picked up naturally in everyday life. Great video - it’s given me a lot of special interest material!

Wark

Now I’m also imagining a conversation-based game where an autistic person is a “boss” with unique traits - emotional appeals are more impactful, sarcastic/joking responses have little effect, and referencing a special interest buffs your following move

Albey Amakiir

I agree. I found it bizarre that the footage kept going and had to turn away at that point.

Qwerty

Perhaps it's not so much that it's "not gameplay" as that it's *less* gameplay. Deciding to fight results in an event where you're continually doing things for... I don't know, haven't played New Vegas so I don't know how fast its fights go, but probably at least a couple of minutes? Deciding to convince him not to fight... you do one thing, which is the deciding, and then you're done. Whether or not you can succeed was determined long beforehand by whether you put enough effort into raising the relevant stat, in actions with no direct connection to the current scenario. You decide "I don't want to fight this guy", and then... there's nothing to do to replace the fighting. If there's consequences afterwards for not-fighting, there'd be the same consequences (inverted) for fighting, but one option has the consequences plus something-to-do, and the other skips the something-to-do.

Qwerty

Glad of point one there; too many people see "autistic" as "emotionless" instead of "trouble reading people, and flatter affect".

Wark

Yeah, it's kind of ironic - in my experience, autistic people experience almost too much emotion!

Mikhail Aristov

What David said. Mark's statement has irked me, too, but I think that what he really meant by it was not so much "no gameplay" as "less decision-making and interaction". Picking a dialogue option from a menu is definitely gameplay (you decide on an action, execute it, and get feedback), but the quantity of it is incomparable with a combat encounter, given how most of you, as player, do on the non-violent path is passively consuming content (dialogue and animations), as opposed to actively interacting with the space and combat mechanics of the game. As Mark says himself, the diplomatic approach is great in terms of *role*-play, because role-play happens primarily in your head, but in terms of *game*-play, the decisions and interactions involved in it are spread too thin over a too large stretch of content, even when taking the macro-level decision-making into account. And maybe Mark has a certain subjective threshold of interaction-to-content ratio that serves as a cut-off for when he no longer considers certain interactions part of the gameplay.

Matt Kimmich

I think you're both right, but I also think that even with the explanation this is something of a flaw. IMO Mark is best when he's talking about system-heavy (or at least system-focused) games, and the kind of CRPG gameplay that Obsidian often goes for doesn't really fit with that. At the very least I think Mark would have to provide something of a definition of what he means when he says gameplay (and when he says that something is "not gameplay"), so that the audience doesn't have to fill in the blanks. More than that, though, and especially in the absence of a clear definition, the statement and your interpretations of it (which I think are valid interpretations of what Mark said) move too much towards the kind of discussions where the quality of a game is defined by the quantity of systemic interaction (especially judging how New Vegas' combat was mediocre at best, I don't think that more of it equals better), regardless of context, or where something is called "not a game". I don't think that Mark necessarily dismisses how New Vegas does conversations as a whole, though, judging from his earlier video on the side quest "Beyond the Beef". But on the whole I do think his analyses are strongest when he's talking about games which are mainly about systems and their interactions.

Roberto Pascual González

There are two short games where the main, and only gameplay mechanic, is conversation. They're "Subsurface Circular" and "Quarantine Circular". You have to chose different answers, solve some puzzles (like riddles, word games, etc), and use conversation topics like objets in an adventure game. They're far to be perfect or deep though, but I think the fit perfectly with this (again) great video.

Roberto Pascual González

And now I remember the "persuasion" minigame in "TES IV Oblivion". You have like a wheel with different options like joke, admire or similar, and the objective was to increase the NPC's disposition to you. I guess there are more minigames like this in other RPGs.

Rogier Postma

Hey Mark, Great work! I’m really curious to see what Disco Elysium is going to do in this regard. A game that’s probably already on your radar. It all sounds very ambitious, let's hope they’ll pull it off.