The following case studies of two recent narrative games (Fallout 4 and Disco Elysium) will analyse how their dialogue systems are rendered through their user interfaces (UI). Of particular interest to me are how a player physically interacts with dialogue, how games visually present text, and how they communicate feedback on player choice.
Fallout 4
Dialogue options are mapped to four on-screen ‘buttons’ which ‘float’ over the conversation. On a controller, these buttons correspond to the A/B/X/Y (or triangle/circle/square/x) buttons; on mouse and keyboard the buttons correspond to up / down / left / right arrow keys, or can be selected by moving the mouse cursor in the general direction of each button. In contrast to Mass Effect, which places its dialogue options around a radial ‘wheel’ at the bottom of the screen, the options are presented in the centre. The Witcher 3 uses a similar system. This has the effect of drawing the eye into the scene’s cinematic presentation, though oddly more towards the chest area.
Once a dialogue option has been selected, the dialogue menu disappears and the characters are animated speaking their lines; voice acting is used throughout. Often there is some basic camera movement during this, but facial animation is severely limited. Emotional responses are communicated through generic gestures (likely motion captured). Options within a dialogue scene are paraphrased significantly, often to a degree so simplistic it’s difficult to predict whether the chosen response will be in line with player expectation. Dialogue is captioned by default, and appears at the bottom of the screen. Once a dialogue option is available again, the camera refocuses on the player and the 4-option menu appears again, with new options beside each of its buttons.
‘Checks’ – referring to choices that require successful skill ‘rolls’ to complete felicitously – are divided into easy, medium and hard, and rendered in different colours (yellow, orange, red). The systems at work here are more opaque than in previous Fallout games, which would often communicate percentage chance to the player, based off the strength of their relevant skill. In Fallout 4, a player with a ‘low’ Speech skill has a 10% chance of succeeding a hard Speech check, with this number increasing as their skill grows (but never over 100%).
UI feedback is limited; beyond being notified of quest completion, XP gain or change in reputation, there is a single selection noise. The UI design is in keeping with the diegetic ‘Pip-Boy’ inventory and menu system (the player operates a wrist-mounted LCD computer to perform inventory management and character advancement).
Disco Elysium
Disco Elysium presents its dialogue in a vertically stretched text box, uniformly placed on the right side of the screen. New text is loaded in with a swift swiping animation and a typewriter whirr. While the dialogue is present, the game camera can zoom in or out of the game action (generally it is zoomed in, though often some panning is required to properly compose the shot). This places the readable dialogue at the opposite diagonal to the player character and their companions’ portraits, as well as the player’s health and morale readouts in the bottom left of the screen – both these UI elements act as frames for the in-game action.
Low- and no-consequence dialogue choices are presented in basic orange; choices that rely on or have been unlocked by facility in a particular skill are marked with [brackets] and coloured in the skill’s colour (blue for intelligence skills, purple for psychological, pink for physical and yellow for speed). Higher consequence dialogue choices – those that involve dice rolls – are displayed in different colours. If a roll is repeatable, it is highlighted in white; if a roll is only attemptable once, it is highlighted in red. Chance-based choices are also accompanied by their percentage success rate (16%, 94%, etc), giving the player insight into both the game’s underlying mechanics and the choice’s likely narrative outcome.
Rolls are communicated by a brief animation of dice ‘rolling’, followed by either an orange-red ‘splash’ effect for failure or a blue-green one for success. This splash extends across the screen, briefly obscuring or tinting the action, and unifying both in-game and UI elements in a single colour palette. The failure splash will often result in a loss of health or morale; the UI element in the bottom left ‘flashes’ as this happens.
Portraits of speaking characters or voices are displayed alongside the dialogue box, slightly intruding on the in-game mise-en-scene. They remain there as long as they are speaking, and are replaced when a new character or voice speaks. Some lines (all in the Final Cut release) are voice acted, and character models are animated in response to significant dialogue choices – the player character performing a roundhouse kick, or another character losing faith in the player character.
Takeaways
The immediate physical reactions of characters, though generic, provide moments of compelling feedback. The resultant player experience is much less focused on the game’s writing than previous entries in the series – a source of some consternation for many players. I don’t know that this is all that bad.
Fallout 4’s reduction of player dialogue to paraphrasings of their ‘intentions’ is certainly an interesting development – I’m attracted to the idea of a player wanting to achieve an effect or take an action, but not necessarily knowing what they’ll say in order to make it happen. It’s slightly botched here by a lack of consistency (some intentions are questions, some instructions, some subjects), and the fact that dialogue is sometimes of the ‘hub’ school and sometimes of the ‘hatch’ school, as per my other case study. With some thought to maintaining consistency in where choices are placed, and an overhaul of when dialogue choices are demanded, this UI approach could help players reach a more instinctual, reactive mindspace.
Disco Elysium is a compelling case study in how to use high-impact visual and aural design, as well as carefully chosen animation, to make player choices feel impactful. It may suffer from the same informational overload as Planescape: Torment and newer games like Tyranny and Pillars of Eternity, but it uses visual design to signpost players towards plot-significant and ‘characterful’ choices much more effectively. Much work has been put into making the dialogue UI as responsive (or ‘alive-feeling’) as the world (and I’ve not even talked about the inventory or objective menu UIs, which are even more stylish!) – it’s genuinely a pleasure to read.
A tension between the two is the degree to which they expose game systems in dialogue choices. DE’s visual gating of high-consequence choice communicates both story progression goals (if I choose this, I will progress the game state significantly) and gives players a visualisation of the game’s structure. The communication of percentage chance also reinforces a sense of character identity and progression. In Fallout 4, this more numerical approach has been abandoned in favour of a more instinctual presentation, with varying results. I like how it allows the player to sit in uncertainty, but the lack of preview concerning even the likely consequences makes for an uneven experience.