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> so your character says something completely different than what you chose Oh gosh. This grinds my gears so bad. Wherever this trend started (and I've seen it

> so your character says something completely different than what you chose Oh gosh. This grinds my gears so bad. Wherever this trend started (and I've seen it in many games -- I think RDR2 and Witcher 3 most recently for me), it should really stop. Do developers think it's some sort of positive surprise when you get to see how they paraphrased (at best) the menu option into dialogue? Or is it just laziness/sloppiness around keeping the menus and dialogue in sync? If I was to develop a game, I'd make it an invariant in the game engine that the wording on the menu option is what your character will say next, full stop.

BoorishBears 6y ago
It's terrible. There are times where it starts to feel like a bait and switch For example, without spoilers: There's a point where you're speaking to a friendly character, and a mutual contact is possibly hurt. Your options are essentially to blame your friend for what happened or to remind them that your mutual friend might be hurt (the idea being you can't afford to give up now) By choosing to remind your friend of this mutual contact... you berate your friend! Eventually... blaming them for what happened! I mean it's so painfully transparent that you can literally hear the switch up in intonation where your "fake choice" meets up with the real choice the game wants to go with.
ljm 6y ago
It might not have started with LA Noire, but that's the first game I remember playing where your seemingly moderate dialogue choices made your character out to be a total psycho. It was comically bad, watching your character lose his shit on a grieving widow when you doubted something she said. The wording of the question or choice had absolutely nothing in connection to the tirade of abuse the guy would spew out.
- justinclift 6y ago
  On a similar note, I was playing Horizon: Zero Dawn a few days ago, and while it's 95% pretty brilliant, there's a super stand out example of this that really annoyed me. The protagonist is a kick arse chick that literally hunts down and takes out bandits (by their hundreds) on sight. Yet for one side mission, it turns out the quest giver (a nobody, not useful further in the game) is setting her up to be robbed and murdered. She takes out the people trying to murder her, then catches up to the quest giver for some payback. He pleads with her not to kill him, and suggest maybe she could just "cut off an arm" or something instead. The dialog choice I chose was "It's going to be more than an arm"... ... so the protagonist then proceeds to tell him off with a warning and send him on his merry way. What The Fuck? She should have ended the dude, badly. Like literally any of the hundreds of random bandits she'd already taken out up to that point. :/

BoorishBears 6y ago

It's terrible. There are times where it starts to feel like a bait and switch For example, without spoilers: There's a point where you're speaking to a friendly character, and a mutual contact is possibly hurt. Your options are essentially to blame your friend for what happened or to remind them that your mutual friend might be hurt (the idea being you can't afford to give up now) By choosing to remind your friend of this mutual contact... you berate your friend! Eventually... blaming them for what happened! I mean it's so painfully transparent that you can literally hear the switch up in intonation where your "fake choice" meets up with the real choice the game wants to go with.

ljm 6y ago

It might not have started with LA Noire, but that's the first game I remember playing where your seemingly moderate dialogue choices made your character out to be a total psycho. It was comically bad, watching your character lose his shit on a grieving widow when you doubted something she said. The wording of the question or choice had absolutely nothing in connection to the tirade of abuse the guy would spew out.

justinclift 6y ago
On a similar note, I was playing Horizon: Zero Dawn a few days ago, and while it's 95% pretty brilliant, there's a super stand out example of this that really annoyed me. The protagonist is a kick arse chick that literally hunts down and takes out bandits (by their hundreds) on sight. Yet for one side mission, it turns out the quest giver (a nobody, not useful further in the game) is setting her up to be robbed and murdered. She takes out the people trying to murder her, then catches up to the quest giver for some payback. He pleads with her not to kill him, and suggest maybe she could just "cut off an arm" or something instead. The dialog choice I chose was "It's going to be more than an arm"... ... so the protagonist then proceeds to tell him off with a warning and send him on his merry way. What The Fuck? She should have ended the dude, badly. Like literally any of the hundreds of random bandits she'd already taken out up to that point. :/