Poll: Quality and length of dialogues

[Hellboy]

Alpha is out, there are first few quests and we even have voice overs so its time to ask you how you like the quality of writing.

Before you answer please note that - its doesn’t have final editing and polish. It was just translated from first version of Czech screenplay. One quest is written by me (Runs/Alchemy) one by Ondrej Bittner (Lock picking) the rest non quest stuff is written by multiple people and is not final.

I expect the dialogues to be a little bit shorter after the final edit. We are still discussing how much talkative the game should be. In my opinion its quite OK now. Sometimes people talk little bit more, but its always to the point and sounds natural to me. Those who dont like it could skip each sentence and those of you who want to may ask more questions.

So may question would be:
How do yo like the current translation?
Are the dialogues good, or do you think that they are too long/short/boring?
If you dont like the dialogues I would be interested to know why, so please let us know bellow.

• I like the writing and the length is ok
• I like the writing, but sometimes people talk too much.
• I like the writing but its too short! Gimme some more!
• I dont like the writing/translation that much but the length is ok.
• I dont like the writing/translation and on top of that its too long.
• I dont like the writing and its too short.
• I hate the writing!

Show results

[McWonderBeast]

I think the writing is right on point so far.

Sometimes the conversations seem lengthy but its also the same conversations I have been having since 0.1, 50+ hrs. of Gameplay makes it a lil dull.

I honestly have always mashed through conversations in RPG’s (especially in TES tired of hearing 3 voice actors be different people/races).

They only thing in this area I feel is lacking at this point is a back out, an instantaneous Im done with conversation option.

It can be a bit knackering to go through an entire convo just to say sorry I didn’t mean to interact with you.

[Urquhart]

the longer the better, cause I think it’s the only Method how you get to know a character and his behaviors…But it should up to the player how much information he likes to get. The player should be able to stop the conversion at any time he wants.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want a mess of “bla bla bla”. I think about background information’s of a Quest or a character… some nice jokes…some nasty tales to know this character even better.

[sully9088]

A back out of the conversation would be nice. If Warhorse wanted to make it more immersive, they could give a penalty for backing out while the NPC is talking. Henry could interrupt the NPC resulting in a small decline in reputation with that NPC. Just for immersion/RPG sake. Otherwise, cutting a conversation short is better than spamming the ESC button to skip dialogue.

[Hellboy]

The exit button is gonna be there. Its the way we were writing the dialogues that its not currently there all the time, but we are gonna change it.

[sully9088]

Currently the dialogue is good in my opinion. It doesn’t seem too long or too short. The writing is also distinct enough to distinguish the different personalities between NPCs (even before the voiceovers). I can’t wait to get lost in this game’s story and meet all the NPCs.

[Hellboy]

BTW there seem to be some people who have problems with the dialogues. In that case please we would be glad to hear why.

[Ruehling]

Well since I guess you want honest answers:
I like the writing very much, I don’t like the length of the dialogues…BUT that is because I am a very very impatient ‘stop-talking-and-give-me-quests-money-and-glory’ type of guy
That said, there are many games with very long dialogues and I still play them.
And I think that KC:D needs rather long dialogues since you want to get emerged in the world and the story.

[poweok]

I have just one thing that felt weird/akward:
“No time for this shit” as response to not do a quest… and the quest is related to guy shitting blood because he was poisoned. That is written as option to longer (voiced now) dialogue. Dialogue explains in, i guess fun way, that he doesn’t really have time for Other peoples diarrhea. I’v played that quest now with voice-acting and that option (text) just sticks out and feels forced, like “see? He’s Shitting, so i don’t have time for this Shit”, the longer response is fine i guess.
Other than a lot of people talking about diarrhea in a village, it’s pretty good, feels natural, i want to listen to it and ask more question without getting bored, i know there is a choice/approach that i will take and that helps too.
I’d say no more lenght. Like, i really do like Pilarrs of Eternity… but the amount of text and explaining is very draining and at some point i just have to exit the game and after too many exits, i might not even come back. That’s for quest related dialogues, lore related dialogue might be a different thing.
Right now, i can only hear village folk - less polite, no higher life standarts. I hope it’s not just that. I said in other topic, if there is too many “whores” and “fucks”, it will come as weak writing, so far it probably fits the setting.
Keyboard controls do exist too and they are not ideal now. I’d like to Exit the whole thing with Escape button and skip individual dialogue screens with like Space (whatever you want, just not escape). Skipping dialogues by escape is kind of forcing hand too far. I have hand on WASD and E is action and choice button, i have to kind of reposition the hand for skipping (for a lot of side questing i read the lines and skip, main quests and interesting side quests i listen to).

BTW, now if i approach blacksmith and start dialogue, i’m in first person mode… I gotta say, it feels pretty good. Now i have realisation: If there is no amazing voice over of Henry and God-like face capture… first person is good. If you have something amazing in store and if I choose Strenght based option and the mimic really adds a lot… gotta be hard making games.
BTW2: the first person dialogue works when i try to talk to him while hes using his hammer, interesting.
TLDR: diarrhea

[DrFusselpulli]

length of the dealogues are pretty fine. Like it this way, feels natural and immersive, with nice options to take questions. Some texts are longer, some are shorter. I like it, please keep it.

Shorter forms maybe would feel like they are in a rush, as they only told you the important parts for the quest. The way now is fine, it shows some story and some of the charakters.
Longer dialogues can have the problem that some people seems to act like a guidebook. I don´t want to have the feeling to talk to some members of the lokal tourist information if I don´t ask for specific things. The game is just fine the way it is.

[Urquhart]

There is something I’ve got a little problem with it. It sounds like Henry speaks to all in the same way. The Herb Lady, Bailiff, Mariana,… The Bailiff for example is a Person with high reputation in the village. In the Dialogs I don’t get the feeling Henry talks to such a person. I think Henry should not talk the same way to the Herb Lady as to the Blacksmith or the Bailiff. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I think there were a hierarchical structure in village community’s.

[stalli111]

I think its all on point apart from the dialogue with the herb lady in the hut, the dialogue option feels unrelated to what henry says

[Freix]

I like the current writing. I like how witty it is, I like the originality. The writing makes those characters feel real, they are not sterile like in many other games. The length is also ok, but I would definitely make sure to not make the dialogs longer, because I think that right now they are at maximum (in a good way) and more speaking might be too much.

I also must agree with the people who were little bit complaining about rough language… I’m all for rough language and I wouldn’t mind if you went even further in certain situations, but it’s important to not make it feel forced. And I felt that sometimes in alpha it was weird, like if they wanted to say a slur at all cost. Everyone was a bitch or whore. IMO it felt like that because those “naughty” characters where coming up with various slurs in one dialog. So my solution would be to keep slurs, but lowering frequency per dialog. But these are quite abstract advices, I know, it’s very subjective and for others it might feel completely ok.

That being said, I definitely wouldn’t completely dismiss super rude characters who would swear after every word. Those also have their place, but they should be more rare. Which brings me to the point that since there are just very few people in the Alpha and only one small village, it’s hard to judge whether this was normal level of rudeness or just specific for the lowest people, or just for these particular characters.

[bloom_cz]

Perhaps too many vulgarisms. Really people back then talked as much bad language?

[MadSmejki]

Yes, just as in any other times. When they are of low culture, are angry, drunk or just as a part of camaraderie speak. Vulgarisms have their place but shouldn’t be used just for the sake of it. I think we could agree on that, n’est-ce pas?
We had some internal discussions and we have found some parts in alpha quests where we would soften the language a bit. Plus some stuff appeared only in the English translation and were more restrained in the original text.

[Nautilator2k10]

So far I do like the length of the conversations. It is always possible to skip the talking and look up important parts in the quest log. I don’t think the current dialogues are too vulgar, I would probably go even further in terms of vulgarism (at least with the filthy peasants).
We are in a small village with peasants who basically have no education besides from their parents teachings. So their vocabulary should be quite limited to their everyday needs. While playing the current alpha I had the feeling, that they were a little bit too educated in their choice of words. Maybe the current synchronization is also causing this, as it could be rougher IMO. The Peasants never practiced conversations in school or something alike ;o)

[Phaidon]

Lenght and writing is good for my taste!
But what has to be changed is the way people approach Henry! It is ok when the Bailif and the blacksmith talk to henry from above addressing him with young boy or similar. But a plain farmer would be cautious with a foreigner. And the most important thing, when an npc look younger then Henry he shouldnt address him with “young men” or something similar, it sounds just wrong and weird

[USER47]

From what I have seen in multiple videos, I have few observations.

1. The length of the dialogue is fine I think. The writing quality is hard to fully judge with the terrible temporary voice acting. But I think you should definitely let some native speaker with experience in creative writing to go over it and polish it, since it sounds somewhat artificial most of the time.

2. You have to be careful about the structure of dialogue options. If player has a choice to ask two things in any order, one of the questions shouldn’t start with “hello”, since you end up in a situation when player greets the NPC after talking to him for 2 minutes already.

3. Similar issue when starting the dialogue with bailiff - you start with something like “what’s the smoke on the horizon”, even though you have a chance to find it out sooner from the soldier passing around. If you started the dialogue in some neutral way, the bailiff could start talking about the smoke himself and you could let him know the cumans did it. Also, bailiff suddenly knows about Zbyšek von Karolinenthal and soldier camp 2 seconds after you tell him about cuman attack, which is weird. If he knew about the soldiers in the village, it’s hard to believe he wouldn’t just ask them what they were doing there.

4. Not exactly an issue related to writing, but the flow of dialogues is negatively affected by the camera work. Sometimes it jumps around like crazy, switching from person to person (mostly in weird angles), sometimes it stays in first person (which is the best case to be honest), and overall feels very random and annoying. The game generaly takes any control from you on way too many ocasions (herb picking, door opening etc.), but that’s not relevant for this discussion. I would recommend to stay in first person in most of these smaller quest conversation, and only apply the cutscene approach to some larger story quests, and in those cases just get rid of the semirandom routines of major NPCs, so you can control the camera work and the whole cutscene better.

5. I am not a huge fan of “Samopesh” and “Merhojed”. I think Samopše and Mrchojedy shouldn’t be all that much harder to pronounce for English speakers, and since the game will be voiced, you don’t have to worry about players not able to know how it should be pronounced if the names stay in original language. Alternatively you could translate the names so their meaning is not lost. Like Corpse-eaters for Mrchojedy or something:). That would obviously require some research into the original names and again some native speaker with good imagination. If you keep the Samopesh/Merhojed approach, you basicaly lose both original sound and original meaning, which I think is not ideal.

[benko]

I agree with 1,2,3,4, I’d say that 2 and 3 should be emphasized. To add to immersion, dialogue/dialog should be consistent.