For Experimental Development, I’ll be looking into the Dialogue Systems mini brief, and exploring Inky for unity. I had already done some basic fiddling around, to see how it played out and followed through basic tutorials. However, its integration into Unity, how to display the text and dialogue choices, and how to properly structure story, etc.
I’ve learned rather quickly that there are two types of dialogue in games, which depend on how dialogue/narration heavy the experience is. These are non-branching dialogue, and branching dialogue.
Non-branching dialogue is pretty straight forwards. The player approaches an NPC, the NPC gives out their lines, and then the conversation ends. Sometimes if the NPC is essential, there will be the rare YES/NO answer, (or an answer revolving around a plot essential item), but other than that conversations tend to end. When interacted once again, either they will have exhausted their dialogue and repeat their last line. Examples of games of this kind are equivalent to early Final Fantasy Games, or The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Branching dialogue has the illusion of choice on its side. More story-focused games, such as the Baldur’s Gate or Mass Effect series live and die by its story, meaning the dialogue display and choices have to allow the player to explore every path granted to them, or to roleplay as a specific character/archetype we have in mind. Games like these will often branch off either according to a morality system (i.e: Paragon or Renegade choices in Mass Effect), or according to one’s characteristics, as seen in CRPGs (computer roleplaying games) such as Pillars of Eternity, Baldur’s Gate, Divinity, or Planescape.
The reality of the branching dialogue system is that it will rarely actively branch out, aside from major plot points or influencing other characters. The player’s choice, when talking to non-player characters for information, is not necessarily taken into consideration or merely outfitted by a different response, only to head back to the dialogue’s ‘hub’, or main display of answers.
Branching dialogue helps gathering more information on a subject, as well as grant the player freedom of choice. Dialogue is essential to roleplaying games: in tabletop roleplaying interaction between players as their characters creates the most crucial method of play and storytelling, while in video roleplaying games dialogue serves multiple purposes, gathering clues, furthering the core player fantasy, offering various answers that will fit the player’s own role or projected persona onto their character.
Later on, I’ll work on the structure of dialogue systems, and attempt to implement my own in the form of a basic interactive story. For now I’ve begun to teach myself Ink, using the tutorials for the tool. It is alot like learning a new language, but it comes with its own intuition.