Can We Make Talking as Much Fun as Shooting?

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.

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, 2021)
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, 2019)

Music used in this episode

Deus Ex: Human Revolution soundtrack - Michael McCann
Life is Strange soundtrack - Jonathan Morali
LA Noire soundtrack - Andrew Hale

[Senumunu]

i really liked how in fallout 1 you can ONLY talk the master down if you have gathered the necessary information.
just rising some arbitrary stat is the wrong way to go. it has to be improved and expanded.

[tuck]

5:54 “Wouldn’t it be more fun...” (CONTENT WARNING Suicide)

[AccentedCinema]

The biggest problem I have with dialogue based games is that they are often just a series of questions with multiple choice. It's literally just taking an exam.
The player can't plan ahead, they can only react to the NPC one question at a time.
Only Ace Attorney and L.A Noir really engages me in that, I have to pick up information, chooses what questions to ask. It's much more pro-active, giving the player a sense of control. Only then, a player feels like they are playing a game instead of being played by the game.

[Fawriel]

"those who have challenges with social skills, like gamers [...]"

[Mttatat]

Katana:Zero handles the timed choices with a (in my opinion) great innovation : If you choose your sentence fast enough, you'll interrupt your interlocutor, giving you a great way of expressing the anger of your character. If you choose within the time window, you'll talk normally.
Oxenfree do something similar if you didn't respond in time : Your character just don't talk. And the characters around reacts as expected when someone don't talk.

[mickeyhage]

They should be called "talk em ups"

[NamelessVoice]

The problem is that dialogue almost always ends up as basically a trial-and-error system where you have to pick the exact option that the developers intended you to pick, or fail. You have to navigate the tree to find the one path through all the options to get to the win condition.
I think it's more interesting when each of the options are viable for a different reason and lead to a different outcome that you might want to choose, rather than just having right and wrong answers.

[TripleTSingt]

I also love how Life Is Strange pushes this moment by disabling your time turning powers. Its the first real "life or death"-situation and its that much more real, because you only have one attempt, while the first 2 episodes up until this point have been mainly about learning to use this ability.

[mariapazgonzalezlesme]

Toolkit selects an action.
Toolkit select the *Joke* option.
*[Joke 20]* Became a silver-tounged diplomat that use words. Not SWORDS.
*[ Joke attempt failed, not enough pun or sense of humor level ]*

[concon]

Disco Elysian is a great example of dialogue being used as a fundamental mechanic instead of shooting and skill checks causing damage to health or morale even without physical damage

[erwinlommer]

Ask npc to end his plans for world domination and surrender
[skillcheck: speech, minimum 15]
[skillcheck: player has speech 12, skill check not succesful]
NPC: "no".


Kill couple of rats to gain some levels and come back
Ask npc to end his plans for world domination and surrender
[skillcheck: speech, minimum 15]
[skillcheck: player has speech 15, skill check succesful]
NPC: "yes "

[GeFlixes]

11:10 I feel that social interactions in games are a safe space to learn those interactions, as actions have no real-life consequences. You can learn real life skills from video games, and especially multiplayer games with high communication content were immensely helpful for me to learn social and language skills (as the stressful non-verbal part is removed in that context and the communication is outcome/task focused, which helps immensely). I've learned as much about social interactions from games as from etiquette and communication books, or on learning about social behaviour from movies or series. This is always a double-edged sword, though, as it's difficult to ascertain if the interactions especially of single player games are realistic and thus helpful in real life.


(High-functioning Aspergers, here. Basically just socially inept, very introverted/focused on a core group and seen as eccentric by most, but nothing debilitating. YMMV on a person per person basis, though).

[LashknifeTalon]

Another part of this is making sure the game fulfills the fantasy of being a smooth talking charmer, or debate god, or high-stakes lawyer. This does kind of boil down to the animation, writing, and voice acting, but it is a thing to consider; just like shooting wants to make you feel like an action hero, our dialogue choices should make us feel like we have a silver tongue.

I actually felt Deus Ex: Human Revolution handled this well at a couple points (minor spoilers ahead). There's a point late in the game where you can confront a character about something, and you have the option to just ignore the sneaking and just walk into the conference he's holding and have a shouting match with him in front of a live audience. The camera constantly pans forward whenever you're doing well, as Jensen actually gets in his face and slowly advances on him, letting you know you're really putting the screws on this guy on live TV. It felt every bit as climactic as a gunfight (in a sort of soap opera drama way).

[giascle]

Human Revolution's interactions are incredible and one of my favorite parts of the game. I would never have thought that when negotiating a hostage situation, one of the most effective ways to get a terrorist on your side is to just call him an idiot. It actually changed the way I look at dialogue in games. You're not superficially charming him, you're talking in a way he understands. You're empathizing with him.

(It was especially notable because I played Mass Effect not long before, and I was continually frustrated that Shepard's dialogue would often be totally different from what the option made it look like he was going to say.)

[KristofDE]

"Hol' Up A Minute" making its rounds I hear ;)

[regpett]

I had an interesting but awesome expierience replaying deus ex: human revolution that I thought I'd share.

For starters, it's important to know that I have played and beaten deus ex once before as a nonlethal/kind type of character. I don't like pushing NPC's buttons as it's not in my nature or personality to wanna see them react negatively.

My second time around I went for a more roleplaying approach as tried out a lethal or nonlethal depending on the situation asshole of a detective type character. When I got to the police station I was convinced that the only way to TALK your way through the guard was to reassure him of what he did and he in return would let you through. Despite believing that I went ahead and went full boar aggressive against him. He of course responded very negatively, very angry at first. But some more pushing and he broke, he felt worse than he may have had before and simply let me through because of feeling defeated.

This comepletely blew me away but it felt incredible to see how the world (more specifically a certain NPC) reacted to the way I chose to play my character. Still one of my all time favorite role playing video game expieriences. Thanks for reading.

[jamesmason]

I remember when I got to a point in vampire the masquerade bloodlines where I had to deal with this gargoyle but I didn't have enough persuade points for the option to pop up but the options I was allowed to chose did let me convince them to back down, I had to figure out what was the best option but I manage to figure it out.

Something similar happened with fallout 1. you can get a document that proves the master's plan has a fatal flaw but you can also convince him to find out about the flaw.

By the way I'm Autistic and I think these sorts of things could be great for helping us learn about social skills (I managed to pick up some after many years of observing media closely so I have some experience with this.)

[ColeTrainStudio]

It's a shame that this came out before Disco Elysium did.

[rohitaug]

To anyone who is curious, the social boss battles in Human Revolution are PERFECTION without that augment. I would try so hard to get a read on people, think about their what they've said or done previously, and when you are successful in the end, it feels so satisfying. I highly recommend playing the game without that augment.

[jgperes]

5:33


"It's been two years since that kid died, when are you gonna let me off the hook? Yeah, I took his life, he was a threat, and you knew it, so don't come here acting all high and mighty!"

Mark Brown: *That's super cool*