This is probably KC2 material, but I think that a new gameplay layer to conversations would greatly benefit the game. KCD has a lot of social interaction with NPCs and almost all quests involve dialog checks. They should be made a more interesting experience. It should be something quick that doesn’t consume a lot of time and that doesn’t add a lot of complexity or difficulty, but that just requires some input from the player and the chance to get some bonus.
The idea that I came up with is to add some kind of optional quick mini-game to 2 parts of the dialog check mechanics: 1) revealing the NPCs levels and 2) Boost your level for the chosen skill.
-1) Revealing NPC levels. The perk that allways reveals NPC levels should come later in the tree, and guessing/revealing them should be an interesting part of Henry’s chance of success. The same factors that now apply to reveal them before you get the perk should apply, but also a quick mini-game could be added to give you some hints. It could be something similar to the pickpocket minigame, with an interface drawn over the NPC face with ‘tiles’ in various telling points in his/her face (eyes, mouth, nose…), you would have a limited time to move the cursor over them and check them. If you succeed, you’ll be shown -likely- levels of some NPC skills.
-2) Boost your skills. In order to give a small bonus to the skill toy chose to apply, you would be given the option to ‘emphasize’ your stance with somethig similar to a classic minigame of choosing a sweet spot in a slider: if you get too short, you don’t get anything, if you overshoot, you overreact and get a malus.
These are just two ideas. Surely other kind of mechanics an actual game designer can think of are more original and valuable, but the thing is that something more should be added to the conversational aspect of the game, being as it such a big part of the gameplay experience. Probably the second thing you spend more time on after travelling.
