Dead State - Design Update: You Could Do That?

Brian Mitsoda discusses branching dialogue choices and asks the fans their opinions on the matter in this week's design update.

I’m primarily writing dialogue for the game right now. One of the most exciting/frustrating aspects of game writing for me is figuring out which options the player would naturally want to take in certain conversations, and making sure that the choices in dialogue are going to lead to satisfying and meaningful branching in the narrative. The easiest way to do this is with a series of binary like/hate, good/bad, help/hurt kinds of choices, but in this game we have long-term consequences to multiple decisions made with characters and the alternate influence of your handling of their friends/loved ones. Some allies are major figures in the shelter and wield “power” due to their skill or authority, and many of these are the most complex and dynamic of the shelter’s inhabitants structurally. Some allies are not overly complex characters, which makes them the easiest characters to both manage in the game and finish dialogue for. It’s a priority for us to make these characters feel real and also that the shelter is an active society, with all the different types of personalities and motivations you would expect from a collection of people from different social backgrounds forced to exist together.

My question this week has to do with the “too many” brances in dialogue part. Maybe there’s a dialogue/relationship option for a character in an RPG that you would have liked to have experienced, but didn’t know about it until reading a FAQ or message board. Did you feel like the option was difficult to access because of the dialogue/quest structure? Did you feel that it was never a practical or logical choice to make with the character? Maybe you found out it was an odd combination of choices and/or skill to activate that section of dialogue. I would like to know which character’s dialogue or relationship branching made you react with “you could do that?” Is it something you’re pleased to find out about or unhappy about because it didn't feel accessible to you?