Topic: Why videogame dialogue sucks.

This is an interesting article.

http://post-hype.blogspot.com/2010/06/secondary-concerns.html

Here's a small part:

I was told to rewrite the lines where anyone expressed a strong desire not to die. It was "sadistic" to kill people who directly asked you not to kill them. This sort of sadism is exactly the stuff that gets us a red flag from the ESRB. I felt pretty bad about this -- I had written sadistic material! -- before I thought about it. The thinking was, it wasn't sadistic to create elaborate torture sequences as a heavily marketed feature; it was sadistic for the people being tortured to death to raise objections. It was sadistic to suggest that the individuals you killed had resembled human beings, that they were afraid to die.

Bit too long to read (except for the quote) but I think it's because gamers don't expect anything fancy and because video games try to do more than films (they're interactive after all) but for a lot less money. Plus it's hard to write scripts for multiple outcomes so they have to keep stuff "generic" for whatever the player decides to do.

One of the reasons why I prefer my games without a story; I'd rather have no story than a badly written ones, games don't need stories IMO.

I'm inclined to agree, even the games that are supposedly reknowned for their story telling(Final Fantasy, Metal Gear for example) are usually comprised of pure cheese.

well there are a good few ones. Mass Effect, Halo, Indigo Prophecy, Half-Life, Bioshock , come to mind.

I personally think the pokemon games have a good story.

Only had time to read the quoted passage, but that only applies to games with torture, of which I can think of approximately... um.... none. The primary reason games have bad dialog is they have bad dialog writers.

The Mother series is an example of what you get when a professional writer is behind a game, and despite having more text than even the average RPG, each game's written all by the one person, so there is consistent quality.

The Metal Gear Solid games are written pretty well, too, if not plotted half as well. I have no idea what happened in MGS4 because it's so ridiculously over the top, but that didn't stop me from enjoying every word.

Well, I think he was referring to the Punisher video game. Punisher, being the Punisher would beat or threaten to kill people unless they gave him information (and of course the player usually did anyway). I think he had a problem writing lines that would be approved of the criminals begging for the Punisher not to kill them.

A good read.

But the author was mainly concentrating on the dialogue of secondary characters or NPCs (think GTA or Bully for the Wii).

And the gist seemed to be that the dialogue was poor because it wasn't created by the main writer(s) - they were essentially throwaway lines, which didn't always work in context.

what edhe said. that article wasn't so much about the main plot or story as it was the random NPCs saying things pretty much to make noise or fill dead air-space... sometimes those lines are pretty funny because they're so odd. after reading that, they make a little more sense, lol.

Because apparently the Punisher never kills people who beg for their lives in the comic books, now.

Bioshock did not have lousy dialog, especially the one scene where... Well, when you meet Andrew Ryan in person. If i said more then that, i would pretty much give the whole story away.

Mass Effect had great dialect in my opinion. That's proof video game dialect is great.

I understood that it was in reference to a particular game, but the quoted passage can hardly be applied to games in general, which is what I was getting at. That's a very specific instance. Most games don't deal with issues like that, which makes it an odd example, if it's representative of the article as a whole. Seems less like "why video game dialog sucks" and more like "why this video game's dialog sucks."

Probly because the games they play suck because the ones I play usually have good voice overs along with good dialogue

I think people get to wraped up in story line stuff for games as long as the game play is good I don't really care how bad the dialogue is.

Agreed. You can tell that Shigesato Itoi is a true novelist through his wordplay. His games manage to blend both comedy and tragedy to create an amazing piece of artwork. Although I thought that there was a sufficient amount of text for a game of it's style since It's more of a play-along story than a video game.

He's not a novelist, actually. He does copywriting and essays. I believe he's particularly famous in Japan for his interviews. If he wrote a novel, I would be busy learning Japanese right now, haha.

And there is certainly a lot of game to the series. Granted, it's very easy, but there's more to it than just a play along story.

By the way, I'm not sure what you're getting at with "Although I thought that there was a sufficient amount of text." Sounds like you thought I said there wasn't much text? Mother 2 & 3 both pushed their respective format to its capacity trying to cram everything in. That's way more than sufficient. That's the result of someone who loves his game.

Well I did say it was MORE of a play-along story than a video game. Of course, it still had to have video game elements to it or it would've gotten way different publicity from fans. And I meant that the game was like book from it's fantastic story-telling, which makes me feel like Shigesatu Itoi deserves to be called a novelist.

Um, you guys realise this kind of thing (being asked to rewrite parts that don't fit the interests of the studio/ publisher) apply to the film, book and music industries as well, right?

Storytelling in games is still in its infancy. Look at how terrible the dialogue was in the films of the 1940s... that's about the equivilent level of development of the games industry.

That's the reason that most games have terrible plotting, it has nothing to do with the evil corporations that the conspiracy theroists are quick to assume.

No... it really stands out and annoys when its bad. When its good, you don't hear it because it sounds natural.

In House of the Dead 2, survivors would yell "I don't wanna die!" and I'd shoot them. ESRB seemed cool with that.