A fairly serious question about dialogue options in SoD
xzar_monty
Member Posts: 631
I started to replay Siege of Dragonspear. And then I hit a wall, kind of. This is something that I noticed on my first and currently only playthrough, but I didn't let it stop me, because I wanted to see the whole thing through.
But seriously: who on earth wrote these dialogues? It appears that no matter who you're talking to and what you're talking about, the game always gives you an option of being extremely long-winded, nonsensical and adolescently "witty". There is always that option. For instance, if someone asks you, "What is that?", one of your options would be something along the lines of "Well, dear sir, since you ask, after giving the matter some serious thought I would be forced to conclude that 'that' is a word."
This is unbelievably stupid and reflects very badly on the developers. Who did this?
Incidentally, I tossed my replay. Not worth it.
But seriously: who on earth wrote these dialogues? It appears that no matter who you're talking to and what you're talking about, the game always gives you an option of being extremely long-winded, nonsensical and adolescently "witty". There is always that option. For instance, if someone asks you, "What is that?", one of your options would be something along the lines of "Well, dear sir, since you ask, after giving the matter some serious thought I would be forced to conclude that 'that' is a word."
This is unbelievably stupid and reflects very badly on the developers. Who did this?
Incidentally, I tossed my replay. Not worth it.
0
Comments
1. Attempting to live up the humour of BG1
Quick. Think of a memorable non voiced line of dialog from Baldur's Gate. Now quickly think of another one. Chances are both of those were humour pieces such as "You know what I always say, kill the mouthy one first."
When writing the dialog they attempted to bring their own memorable lines, however, they went overboard and saturated the game with them instead of sprinkling them into the game like BG did. This makes them less memorable (the only one I can truly remember is the Shifty Door one, but that is due to a leaked screen shot), tedious, and in some cases, inside jokes that many players may not get.
2. Restricting the writers ability
As it was brought up during the controversy, the writers were limited to a maximum of three nodes deep per conversation, and it wouldn't surprise me if they were also limited height wise. This left the writing team with the new standard of "good" "funny" "jerk/evil" choices that plague many recent RPGs.
3. An unfocused project
It has been stated by team members who developed SoD that the project changed in scope through out tis development going from a small expansion, to a bigger expansion, to a full blown stand alone game and then back again. With the scope of the project continuously changing the writers were writing more scenarios than needed instead of rewriting and critiquing parts that were already written. If the game got itself a couple more rewrites instead of attempting to expand what they had, it would have came out a little more polished than it did.
As I said before, hopefully this was a learning experience to all those that were involved and some of these issues would be addressed in any new written projects they release.
Overall, I've been really impressed with the quality of the writing and to me it seems to be a really good fit with the Baldur's Gate style. Minsc and Edwin have had some great stuff to say and Skie has turned into one of the best characters in the series.
Incidentally, some of this is also a bit annoying in the dialogues you get with the new BG2:EE NPCs.
Apart from Schael Corwin I haven't used any of the new NPCs because I don't really find any of them very appealing. But I think Corwin's dialogues are very good - possibly because she doesn't try to be funny. However, even she managed to make me laugh when she announced "Sometimes I dream I'm a chaotic good elf" (which for some reason amused me even before I realised it was a reference to Kivan). And the one time I managed to get her killed and she called out her daughter's name as her dying words actually made me feel sad and guilty for not taking better care of her.
Incidentally, I don't think BioWare is particularly good at it either. It's just that their humor has less of a tumblr-reddit-meme feel than SoD (until Dragon Age that is).
http://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gate-siege-of-dragonspear-review/
@deltago is correct. According to Andrew Foley, the why was simply down to time, money, and resources.
"SoD's scope fluctuated wildly from beginning to end, starting with the original intent (a small, 5 or fewer hour adventure) to the 40+ hour version that would have seen Charname journeying through the Sword Coast, from Baldur's Gate to Warlock's Crypt to Daggerford to the High Moor to Serpent Hills to the Troll Claws to Soubar to Boareskyr Bridge to Dragonspear (not necessarily in that order, and with the ability to return to different locations when they wanted), recruiting their own army along the way.
If we included a decent complement of companions, which was always the plan, the 5-hour version didn't seem feasible to me.
The 40-hour version wasn't feasible to people in the company who wanted to have the game done in our lifetimes without going bankrupt."
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/861948#Comment_861948
Andrew then goes into details about a cap on the number of locations in SoD, but the same could be said about the number of dialogue options in the game, for the same reasons.
Also, I'd say that when it comes to humour, it's difficult to find that the same joke is fun to all people who read/hear it.
With so many of the NPCs already using humour (Neera, Glint, Minsc, Bael, Edwin, Vogh), the jokey responses seem overkill as a lot of those NPC jokes are going to be misses for players (espcially since every mage is a character that uses humour or is attached to one). A couple per chapter would have sufficed to limit these misses.
Like @deltago says, this is precisely the reason why you shouldn't even try to put too much humor into a game. When it fails, it fails much more dramatically than the serious stuff. That's just the way it is - and proper writers should be aware of this.
On a more positive note: I wish to stress that there was also some excellent writing in SoD. M'Khiin was really quite touching, and I thoroughly enjoyed her. I was also genuinely moved by some aspects of her story. And "You are already a ghost!" was a brilliantly voiced line.
I just had one trigger last night between Glint and Neera talking excitedly about swirly things with Corwin annoyingly asking "does anyone know what they are talking about?" with M'Kiin deadpanning "Gardening, I think." The voice acting from all 4 sold it, matched their personalities perfectly and gave me a chuckle.