Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
loguesprovidemoreplayer'sattachment, aslongastheyimplysomeportionofinter-
activity (the players like to be participants rather than silent observers) in the process
of familiarization with the plot. This feature is priceless and forms another important
role of the dialogue: a text-based puzzle. It can be considered as a first-rate, mini
game inside the main story.
A player tries to construct the conversation in a way that he would achieve maximum
profit intheformofusefulinformation, itemsavirtualcompanionwouldshare,andso
on. The challenge can be called a rhetoric battle, where each time the player should
choose the right questions to control the direction of the talk. In some form, any in-
teractive dialogue is a classical text-based adventure game.
Dialogues have a unique prerogative inside the story. They are allowed to lie; many
other narrative tools cannot do the same, otherwise, the story would collapse. Any
plot is based on the fact that all the events and things described by plain elements
are true. Of course, overall this is fictional (something that was generated by au-
thor's imagination), but inside that fictional world, all the descriptions are genuine
(may be in a greater degree than some things in our real world). For example, Sher-
lock Holmes lived at 221B, Baker Street. This was an absolute fact about the great
detective inside novels by
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
; however, outside them, in real
London, it was not. Baker Street did not exist when the novels were published for
the first time, so the address 221B simply did not exist. To keep the fictional world
solid,
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
, as the narrator, must regard all the important facts
about it. He could not suddenly write that Sherlock Holmes returned home located at
Gloucester place because this information would be incorrect. But he might write that
Sherlock Holmes, while trying to confuse some criminals, indicated that he lived at
that place instead of his real address at Baker Street. Hence an author cannot distort
facts about the elements he has already mentioned in his fiction (this is why innu-
endos are commonly used if a narrator wants to prepare for a twist; they give some
space for unexpected new facts) but his characters can; they may say everything,
which is the way you create an intrigue.
In games, this means that elements such as a character's visual appearance, the
level of design, mechanics, and so on should have absolute facts. They may evolve
