First post here, and I've gotta say, Dishonored has me interested... deeply interested. My favorite game of all-time is Deus Ex, and has been since the day the demo hit the Net. This is how games should be made! And much of what I'm hearing from Arkane Studios sounds right on the money. But not all of it.

This initiative of Player Agency and Immersive Simulation is wonderful. Great sentiments to put at the forefront of your design philosophy! But they aren't really at the fore, are they? You want the player to be able to move and interact with the world on their own personal urgings, but you've scoffed at dialog trees and drastically underplayed the importance of verbal NPC interactions. These are as important to the simulation as anything else.

I get it, you don't want this to be Mass Effect. You want actions to speak louder than words. This is the Deus Ex way. But you mustn't hate words. I don't know about you, but when I'm involved in a conversation I need to be able to control my end of it. I need to have the freedom to chose how to express myself and opinions. Without it, there is no player agency; the social qualities of the character, the thing that makes them more than just a doll, is on rails. The exact thing you are trying to avoid is now a prominent blemish on an important facet of the game.

Granted, the men and woman at Arkane Studios have not out-and-out said there are no conversation trees. They mentioned there will be a few moments in the game where the player will need to make a choice in a dialog scene. But mostly they have kept very quiet on social interaction in-game... except to bash them in Mass Effect. This leads me to a measure of fear and loathing.

I have a hard time getting into games that don't let you play your role in the story portions, or exposition, but only when you need to kill things. My two favorite games are Deus Ex and Knights of the Old Republic. I see them as two sides of the same coin, each with their own strengths and weaknesses... some of them opposites. The only way to beat either of those games in my mind is to put them together; the player agency, immersive sim, and action-based decisions of DX, and the robust dialog trees of KotOR. Of course, both have great stories, rich atmospheres and solid RPG mechanics. Deus Ex has a broad social element, but the choices within the conversations are mostly an illusion.

Dishonored has the potential to succeed on all fronts, but only if the devs stop being so afraid of looking like Mass Effect. You won't look like Mass Effect if you do it better than them. But you will look like another tedious action game if you don't allow the player to participate in the story and conversations. You will never bore the player with this freedom if they can turn right around a stab the person they were just talking to.

-~::Pinky::~-

Thief did a pretty good job of it, and this sounds more like Thief than Deus Ex.

in either case i don't think it's really fair to Arkane to go THIS SOUNDS LIKE THIEF or THIS SOUNDS LIKE DEUS EX. Dishonored sounds like Dishonored, and should play how the developers feel Dishonored should play. it has nothing to do with being "afraid of looking like Mass Effect". i like RPG elements in games very much - especially when those RPG elements have nothing to do with numbers or stats - but i don't think every game needs to tack on dialogue.

I got this feeling from reading their GameInformer article. They deemed it important to tells us the choices in the game would be made through actions, not dialog trees "like Mass Effect". And while I appreciate that and feel it is an important distinction, it nonetheless gives the impression they feel there's something wrong with dialog tress, and they want to be as far from ME as possible.

And as for Dishonored playing like Dishonored and no other game... that's all fine and good. But they've given us much of their design philosophy, and this piece of the puzzle contradicts with the rest.

The quality of Thief not withstanding, your simulation will always be hurt if you cannot speak with the people on the street and manipulate many of the conversations. I'll always be wondering "why can't I talk to that person?" or "why can't I choose to react this way?"

you're assuming that you'll even be in that situation in the first place. nothing they've said about Dishonored makes it sound like it's hub-based, or that there's people on levels who don't particularly want to kill you. it seems very methodical and mission-based, like Thief, but with assassinations instead of theft.

Welcome Pinky_Powers! Looks like you're going to fit right in here. That said, I'm going to start right off the bat disagreeing with you.


I don't think shoehorning dialogue trees into Thief would have improved the game AT ALL. Thief was a game that was at its best when it had a razor-tight focus on stealth. The ability to make a bunch of binary plot and character choices with dialogue trees would have been pretty pointless.

And besides, dialogue trees are actually kind of a bad form of player expression. They're only used so often because we're still a long ways off from having a better solution. In most games (every Bioware game) they aren't even really particularly meaningful. Troika and Obsidian are rare exceptions, but it's still in no way a fantastic system.

"But you will look like another tedious action game if you don't allow the player to participate in the story and conversations."

Giving the player the opportunity to create emergent scenarios means they ARE participating in the story, and in much more meaningful ways than just "Press 1 for the evil response. Press 2 for the neutral response. Press 3 for the good response," which you get in Bioware games. Yeah, dialogue trees can add to certain games but they are far from a necessity in something like this.

On the contrary, it sounded very much like there would be large pieces of the city open to you, and you could explore much of it and take on side-quests. And it certainly sounded like there would be non-hostile NPCs; the magazine calls them "neutral NPCs". They talked of a side-quest where a bureaucrat was off in one part of the city running on his own AI-routine, and you could sneak into his house while he was away and nick his valuables. The key to his safe is squirreled away in a building on the other side of the street. And all this you can learn by eavesdropping on folk in the street.

Sounds like hub-areas to me, at least as large as we see in Deus Ex.

This is precisely why developers like this should be tackling the issue. Bioware did a good job with it in the old days, with KotOR being one of the best examples. But Mass Effect is little more than a dim reflection of player choice... especially in their dialog system. But Akane Stuidos is made of folk who seem to want to do better than the industry has done in the past. And I absolutely do not agree that a game like this would suffer from it. It would make it stronger.

"You won't look like Mass Effect if you do it better than them."

Sup Pinky.

The only hub based area i believe has been said to be a 'hub', is the Resistance hideout, which you'll go to between missions.

I assume you'll get to talk to folk here while upgrading skills and equipment. Possibly getting clues to missions further down the line.

When it comes to the level structure, i dont know whether it fits into the context of the game to go chatting with everyone you see. You're basically public enemy number 1; right inside the danger zone with enemies hunting you down. You wanna keep hidden, not go chatting with every guard just to see if you can bribe or coerce them.

possible spoiler from recent scans?...

Recent scans mentioned a sidequest style event during a mission. In an alleyway you'll see some men harrassing a young lady. This can possibly relate to conversation:

You have multiple options:

Go and help her, but be ambushed by more lackeys hidden from view.

Take out the lackeys quietly before saving the lady from the other men, on favourable terms.

Lure the men away to get dealt with by the authorities.

Or totally ignore it and focus on the mission.

If you save the lady, i submit that it would feel daft for there to be no exchange of words between the protaganist and the lady.

Overall impressions state, it's a mission based assassination game. The only dialogue necessary is overhearing conversations. But we'll see.

Except the other side-quest mentioned, the one I wrote about, makes it sound like you can go walking through the city and there are AIs that exist there just going about their business.

We need more information.

What if, for some reasonable plot device, the playable character is mute? Perhaps his touch with the outsider has rendered him speechless or unable to communicate. Perhaps his tongue was cut out during imprisonment. Then the fact that the player can only choose through action is completely justified and rather cool, since mute protagonists are featured in many action games but are hardly ever seen in RPG's given the nature of player agency... like you said... but now you must speak with the voice of RPG through action. Action that you freely choose within the simulation. Speaking louder than words.

That's like saying regenerating health is a great idea if it can be explained away through augmentations or somesuch device.

Just sounds lazy to me.

If I'm planning on sneaking in and out unseen in full stealth , the last thing on my mind is whether Timmy needs me to paragon his dog out of a well

Lol. How is that lazy? Lazy is sticking in branching "mutli-paths" connected to switches in a dialogue tree. Hard-work is making a game-world react realistically within the simulation to active action-driven player choice.

Player controlled dialogue has never been done well, in any game. Either its a faux-choice or the (extremely limited) dialogue options shoe-horn the world and the character you are playing.

With a mute protagonist, your character won't know any more or any less than you do, because your character is a pure conduit for your exploration in the simulation.

Forcing the player to speak through the simulation seems a purer and more interesting video game experience to me; since he'll be speaking only with your voice, NOT the developer's or an actor's.

Dialogue trees are featured in many games, even Mass Effect 3 like you noted. But how many games let users speak through the simulation of the game world?

A mute protagonist in this situation would be artistically valid and meaningful. I know how much you love drama Pinky, but don't think for a moment that good story, character, and drama in a game requires player-navigated dialogue trees. Open your mind, and you might like where it takes you.

This argument precludes both options, suggesting that it's just too hard. Deus Ex did it, and Human Revolution is doing it as well. This is how I can call it lazy.

My original post was perfectly clear. I never said conversation trees were better than action-driven player choice. A full-bodied simulation should strive for both. It's lazy to say dialog trees svck in all games and we shouldn't have them. First off, that's a lie. Second, this is the chance to make them better.


That's a valid way to play, but you're going to miss out on a large portion of Dishonored if you shun all the side-quests. From what I've heard they help fill out the main plot.

My argument wasn't that because dialogue trees svck in all games (which they do), that this game shouldn't have them. Rather, if this game doesn't have them, that doesn't mean that the devs are lazy. In this case a mute protagonist would have inherent artistic merit.

You really don't see how just making the player mute is a cop-out? Why go through the trouble of any of it if you can just make the player blind, deaf and dumb? Why work on player movement when he could be in a wheelchair? There's plenty of artistic merit there; we haven't seen that in an RPG before.

Whatever. It didn't sound to me like Corvo was deaf. But we'll see.

If you made the protagonist blind and deaf the player would have no way of interacting with the game (unless it was third person).

Movement is different from dialogue.

Movement is relatively simple. A physical simulation. Dialogue is extremely complex. You'd need extremely advanced artificial intelligence to simulate that.

That's why most animals are able to move, see, and hear, but most animals aren't able to speak and reason.

Did you know owls taste like butterscotch, and they know how to produce it through chemical manipulation. They are the only creatures that can do it. This is where butterscotch comes from.

Now we're both equally sensible. You don't think dialog systems work in any game, and I hold the secret between candy and birds.

Well that post is nonsense and amounts to spam. I don't think dialogue trees are necessary, especially when the game doesn't call for them. If they're making a game where dialogue isn't key and/or prevalent, then adding dialogue trees for the sake of adding them will probably make it worse. It will be there just so they can tick another box :\

Well I don't think we know enough about the game at this point to judge if dialogue trees are uncalled for or not. All I know is that a conversation system can potentially add a lot of depth to a game that portrays itself as a kind of immersive simulation like Dishonored does.
Also I have yet to play a game that does have dialogue trees, in which I feel that it would have been a better experience without them.

Are character apparently wears a mask that identifies him as an assassin who is wanted by the government. It's unlikely that most people would be willing to talk to us. The ones who are on the Resistance side, will probably help us with out convincing. So I don't seem much opportunity for conversation.

I personally don't want any dialog trees or much dialog at all (the protagonist). I mean if were playing stealth based game would it make sense to not talk all that much? And i like it when i was doing the dark brotherhood quest in oblivion and i heard the guards talking about the target i was going to kill. It felt more appropriate than walking up to the guard and doing speech checks about your target.

Movement gives more freedom than dialogue trees. 3 axis's, speed, momentum, climbing, jumping, running, "teleporting". Now think of the endless things a man might say in any given situation. Unless the game supplies thousands of dialogue choices, it'll be a limiting factor in the simulation.

Consider, also, their design of the protagonist. As far as we know we'll never see the protagonist's face. He'll always be wearing that mask.

I agree that dialogue is somewhat limiting a "pefect simulation" if something like that is ever to exist, but you are already limited in your choices by the narrative of the game and there can't be every possible outcome that you might desire.
Also I agree that choices you make should not be limited to choosing a certain dialogue option from time to time. I'd really prefer a mix of both. Also dialogue gives you a means of fleshing out your character the way you perceive him.
Take DX:HR for an example. Through dialogue you can convey if you're resentful of your augs and blame Sarif for it, or you can convey that you have come to terms with it and actually have come to like them.
I'm not even saying there should be many or in fact any conversations during the actual misssions, but(I can't know for certain obviously) at some point you would be talking to some story important characters,friends and enemies alike, members of the resistance, or people who offer sidequests. I just wouldn't want this aspect to be totally neglected.

I'd imagine gaining access to side plots by talking to NPCs will possibly take place in common public areas where stealth infiltration and or hiding from enemies/guards is not needed.

I usually do full stealth runs then explore the other options (like full assault) on another play-through.

I'm always open to dialogue trees and the results of player choice if Dishonored has them , then more power to em.

I'm more interested in the stealth aspects of this game, I have plenty games to choose from in the talking heads genre , but a full stealth no kill option is a rare breed these days since everyone wants to lock pick doors with grenades,or the stealth is so mind numbingly dumbed down to the point of including a one button controller with the game.