Response Triggering. The player employs some kind of trigger action towards another character. The trigger could be an object, a topic selected from a list, or just the choice to talk to the character at all. Each trigger leads to a specific canned response from the character. Employing the same trigger multiple times will usually get the same response. The order in which triggers are deployed is not significant.
Branching Paths. This is a variation on basic response triggering in which each response opens up a new set of triggers. This allows for conversations with a temporal progression and usually involves choices about the direction the dialogue takes.
These two mechanics are related, but they reflect two different models of how conversation works, so I think it makes sense to distinguish them. In Mass Effect, for example, both mechanics are used and are explicitly separated in the conversation interface. Choices on the left side of the selection wheel are response triggers of the "topic selection" variety. You can pick them in any order or ignore them all if you prefer. They generally give you nonessential information Choices on the right side are branching paths. If you choose one of them, you both get a response and are taken to a new state in the conversation.
Basic response triggering takes a functional view of conversation. I want to know about a specific thing, or maybe I just want to know what the character has to say. It's a simple transaction: perform the right action, get information in return.
You see this mechanic in its simplest form in Japanese RPGs with a silent protagonist, where conversation is usually just a matter of walking up to someone and mashing A. This character has one thing to say and says it immediately. Response triggering is also seen in classic adventure games (where the trigger is something like "talk to X" or "talk to X about Y"). Some games, like the Harvest Moon series, employ a variation where objects act as triggers. You can get different responses out of characters by giving them different gifts. This can be pushed further by treating conversation topics as inventory objects, as in the mystery game Rorschach. In these cases, finding the right trigger can be part of the challenge of playing a conversation scene.
Response triggering is a dead simple representation of conversation, but it does encourage a good deal of gameplay variety by allowing for different types of triggers. Branching paths introduces more narrative complexity, but seemingly at the expense of gameplay variety. I have not been able to think of any case where a branching paths mechanic is controlled in any way other than selection from a visible list of phrases. Nonetheless, it's a common mechanic, found in Bioware games, Bethesda RPGs (which are actually heavier on response triggering, but include some branching as well), occasional appearances in adventure games and JRPGs, and story-driven art games like Air Pressure.
Branching paths imply a model of conversation as moving towards something. They are frequently used when the goal is persuasion, relationship-building, or the demonstration of character (yours or your dialogue partner's), rather than information.
So that's it: almost all conversation mechanics in games fall under these two broad categories. Mainstream, indie, and experimental games alike. I've thought of a few exceptions, but they're rare. Isn't this weird? Look at the dizzying, massive variety of combat mechanics in games! Surely conversation deserves such treatment as well. Instead it gets two pretty similar methods with a host of minor variations. But where's the real-time strategic conversation? The team-based conversation? Conversation puzzles? Twitch conversation?
If you've come across this post and can think of examples of these or other significant variations, do let me know in comments. I'll have more to say later about why I think this is a difficult area for novel mechanics, and about what can be learned from the exceptions that do exist.
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Frankly, Façade is the only exception that comes to mind, and that wasn't exactly a game were you could have fluid conversations. Or conversations that went anywhere 50% of the time for that matter.
ReplyDeleteIf you look at the issue as a data structure problem, then one could come up with a graph structure for a conversation, considering stats such as charm and the like to make options available or not... but then again, something like that is a gargantuan task when considering only text-based conversations. I can't even fathom how expensive a voice-acted conversation system like this would be.
At the end of the day, you're only going to spend that much amount of money and effort into something that is fundamental to the game... so you'd need a game based around conversations for that to happen. And last time I checked, there are only a handful games that do that, and most of them are Interactive Fiction.
Well, now, if we try to simplify the problem, or rather, to tackle it in a whole different way, you could do something like this:
1 - The player character can do only 4 or 5 possible phrases/gestures through the whole game. Those are the only things he can say.
2 - "Conversations" are basically an exchange of gestures between two or more characters.
3 - The "conversation" interface is not separated from the rest of the game. If the player wants to say something, even if there's nobody there, he will be able to do so.
And that's it. Sure, you can have than 4 or 5 gestures, but that then turns into an interfase issue: You can't assign a gesture to one button, you now have to have a menu of gestures.
But anyway, that's something that I've always wanted to do: abstracting the process of conversation and then making it the core mechanic of a game. However, this system is only feasible in a somewhat short game.... bah, I guess it depends on the polish, with the right gestures and characters, then maybe one could get away with it without boring the player by the half-way point.
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