Mine is when 85% of a horror game's voice lines are the protagonist going SHIT or FUCK slightly under their breath every time something mildly spooky or intimidating happens, or when they discover some new obstacle
Mine is when 85% of a horror game's voice lines are the protagonist going SHIT or FUCK slightly under their breath every time something mildly spooky or intimidating happens, or when they discover some new obstacle
When my character is an idiot for no reason.
I'm fine if it's a choice to say it, or if it's there to let players who don't know or forgot to catch up again. In New Vegas the whole town of Goodsprings is basically a town to ask dumb questions in. But that's fair for first-time players or those who don't know any of the previous Fallout games. And you're not punished for not asking these questions again because New Vegas is well designed.
When it's laid out like:
Then it's annoying as hell. Elder Scrolls Online is awful for this. My Dark Elf character was literally forced to say "Who would want to worship the Daedra?". YOU, DUMBASS. YOUR WHOLE-ASS RACE WORSHIPPED THEM FOR YEARS! Is it really that difficult to write two lines of unvoiced dialogue? You don't even have to change the voiced dialogue, just make it vague enough to pass for any of the potential responses.
I get that RPG writing is hard because of potentially infinite backstories you might give a PC, but could you maybe account for players who have a character that worships Daedra? Something that entire populations within your game world do?
Poorly written player character dialogue will often give you three ways to talk to people and it's always goody-good know it all, naïve confused idiot, and smug angry idiot. All the Mass Effect games do this.
And you can't express a polite refusal. It's just some bridge-burning one-liner when it's just I don't want to start this quest right now.
I wouldn't mind it if it was consistent.
Paragon mostly stays Paragon but Renegade goes Humans First -> The Bad Cop -> Genocidal Space Warlord in the span of the three games.
Paragon was obviously made first then renegade does whatever the writers felt like at the time.
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I honestly don't remember it being too bad in Skyrim. There are moments when you come across as weirdly naive or making a dumb observation, but I seem to remember being able to skip some of the expository stuff.
Maybe I should replay it a bit and jog my memory though. It's been a few years now.
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Witcher 3 is pretty good about this. Geralt is actually smart and doesn't sound like an idiot when talking to people.
Yeah, but that's mostly because he's a pre-established character. The less defined the player character, the more likely you're going to end up writing bad dialogue for them.
They also probably learned a lesson from the first Witcher game, where I remember a lot of the dialogue is "I have amnesia".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye6yNLsdUCE
What I wouldn't give for the Morrowind dialogue interface to just be real life.
Random passersby become encyclopedias full of local knowledge and customs. Have them endlessly repeat something if you forgot about it. Topics they want to talk about are actually highlighted. Wow, what a world.
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