Something to think about. Thanks, Juuso! :)

I think a system like this only make sense when there’s some difficulty in reaching the intended goal. Take the castellan for example… you would start the conversation by selecting the intention “obtain locked door key”. Then, select an approach… intimidation? bluff? diplomacy?

The dialog unfolds. Some approach might directly lock up the intended goal, others might open up sidetracks that allows the player to refine the path to the goal (“where is the key” -> “obtain key”) as well as the approach.

I imagine some sort of visible diagram would be tracking the dialog’s progress, marking off stages of the dialog, options available, and how close/far the current situation is relative to the original intent.

If anything, this is going to be even *less* immersive than dialog trees, but I’ve always wanted goal oriented conversations to feel more “tactical” compared to its combat counterparts. Having a goal, spatially laying out the field of conversation topics, and making moves to advance/attack/defend toward goals just feel so much better than making a single speech skill roll.

Alpha Protocol does it best, it seems to me, as the results are reputation based (which changes dialog and game options). I managed to get through a difficult combat portion of the game through a dialog sequence.

Mass Effect 2 greatly improved upon Mass Effect 1′s failings, but made the “choices” seem much more diametrically opposed. A “Renegade” Shepard in ME1 could still be respectful, whereas in ME2, he’s just a dick.

As a text based RPG, such as Fallout 1 and 2, more options seemed available. If your Charisma or Intelligence was quite low, the dialog game was practically unplayable (on purpose). A low intelligence speaks with “Ugh” or grunts. This made things far more immersive.

As Fallout 3 was fully voiced, it made it difficult to implement these options and allow people content to the game.

True, there’s some control taken away (the possibility to choose every line), but if that’s replaced with meaningful choices, could it make things more interesting?

I don’t have the answer, and like for example you merc pointed out: “even if the outcome is the same, I do enjoy having choice between loot/avenge”. And the player’s perception of control is very important.

That was one of the reasons I wasn’t exactly happy with Mass Effect dialogs: while they were cinematic and beautiful, sometimes I felt that I lost control over the character and he spoke/acted on its own.

I still think that the best dialogue implementation was in PlaneScape and Fallout 1/2. Key points being:

1) it took your stats & skills into account, giving special dialogue options for those
2) it added ways to define your character further, using the “lie” option etc. Even if the outcome is the same, I do enjoy having the choice between “I’ll kill you for loot and fun” and “I’ll kill you to avenge that noble knight”.
3) All dialogue options were clear in their meanings, and the player was in control.

Come to think of if: soccer management games are doing this. In a way. As a coach, you get to choose the strategy and you get to choose players, but how they act depends on them. There’s good and bad players. Some star players might have relationship issues and give poor performance. How you train, choose the actors and set the goals affects the outcome.

Cliff’s GSB is also about this. You choose star ships, choose parts and stuff… and let them fly. You get to choose, but final outcome might happen differently than you thought. You don’t control just one guy to fly to certain location – it’s in the hands of AI.

With this in mind, you could have group of heroes. You know that you gotta get through a door. Since you’ve chosen thief, mage and warrior you give them order to work it out. Thief might say that he has friends in his guild that can help get information on where and how to get the key. Mage who had a bad day is very close to throwing a fireball through the door, and warrior is clueless… wanting to kill something.

So, since thief has most leadership (or perhaps it’s in the hands of the player to pick “the strategy which to follow”) gets to choose and eventually you’d see thief finding info that castellan has the key. They go talking with the chap, and depending on how you chose the “formation” (speaking in soccer terms) they might try intimidate the castellan which might get you the key (=score a goal)… or attract city guards (“opposite team scores a goal” ;))

Or you could have done more mild way (“defensive formation”), just chit chatting with the castellan, and you could see this dialogue occurring… and by the end of it, your thief might have stolen the key or they might have bribed the castellan.

Of course there’s issues with this approach, and not even sure if this was what I originally meant… :) The reason why this works so fine in the football field is that there’s limited amount of variables (coaching strategy, training, player attributes etc) and limited amount of events (“number of goals determine who won”). And even though the same events are repeated over and over (“score a goal”), it’s still fun since you get to affect the outcome and there’s variation in teams.

If this was to happen in RPG, you’d need tons of content, and you really couldn’t have anything “procedural” here.

I might have sidetracked here a bit… but that’s fine. I merely wanted to think alternatives to the current way of handling dialogue, and of course it just might be possible to write tons of dialogue (easier than adding events ;)).

Good discussion.

Getting a bit dizzy here. Somebody else’s turn now.

Where do players get the goals? Are they mentioned in the game, or do players have to figure out the goals themselves?

How do players express their goals when interacting with an NPC?

How can players get feedback about how NPCs will react (anticipation) or do react (consequences) to expressing these goals?

Perhaps explaining out a scenario might help flesh things out. Let’s say I see a locked door. The castellan has the key, but I don’t know that. How does my character learn to get the key from the castellan by interacting with NPCs?

Option A – keyword based or free text, is pretty limited with today’s AI. I haven’t played Wizardry 8, but I got annoyed at many of the older titles which used this system.

Option B – movies based on goals. I think you can see this in a lot of JRPG’s today. Often you get presented a choice, something like “save the princess or take revenge” at which point the characters all talk, make choices, and you just play the battles.

I am a JRPG fan, but that gets annoying too, since sometimes it is nice to play myself as if I were in the situation. I think Dragon Age got the closest to that feeling than any of the other options.

Unfortunately, I can’t think of a better system without taking a leap of AI…

What I was trying to avoid is the thing some dialog engines offer: you have some choices to choose from, but they all lead to same outcome – so that it’s really irrellevant what you say.

All this is theoretical jibberish, but perhaps what I’m after is that I want to get rid of irrelevant chat. For example, some RPGs are done so that there’s tons of dialogue. And 90% of it’s irrelevant… you just go through the “hub” of options and choose all the things.

Sometimes there’s seemingly relevant options, but most often it’s just illusion that breaks after you’ve discussed bit more.

@Brian: “keywords” system – in my opinion – is step in different direction. I was thinking something like here (in scale of “freedom” or “micromanaging” versus non-freedom in choosing what to say):

(freedom) type text…keywords…treedialogue…goalbased (non-freedom)

But also same scale could be described as:

(non-meaningful) type text…keywords…treedialogue…goalbased (meaningful)

So, in the first scale, the most freedom is given when you can type any text you want. This suffers from the “non-meaningful”, as most of the stuff you say is not in the database, irrelevant or just doesn’t get you anywhere.

Keywords are bit less freedom, but for some very fun when they try to “solve the puzzle” on what to say.

Dialogue trees give less freedom on what to say, but they can provide more meaningful choices if done well (although from what I’ve seen in games, it unfortunately boils down to clicking all the options).

Next, I see this “goal seeking” option providing less freedom on choosing what to say, but more in “choosing meaningful action”. After all, you can choose to “join nazis” or “join allies” but you cannot choose both.

I really don’t know if what I’m saying here is simply speaking: “less choosing, but more meaningful options in dialogue”… or if I’m onto something else here.

For example, if you add “actions that have happened” and “attitude/skills” factor, then you could see totally different things happen depending what you want.

But like said, this is just me thinking on how games could be more about “making meaningful decisions”.

Hmm, now as I say that out loud… I notice that this comes from board gaming world – they are all about meaningful decisions :]

There you just select some theme and how you want to say it (angry, polite, etc)