After the previous post on Vampire I did just a little more musing on the topic of storyline and dialogue. I’d like to do a comparison between Bloodlines and Neverwinter Nights, which means essentially a comparison between the Bioware model and Bloodlines.

When it comes to quest resolutions and dialog options both games have a large degree of freedom to roleplay. However I’d argue that despite the Bioware games usually having a far larger story (perhaps not more intricate, but certainly bigger in sheer hours of play, locations, and characters) you get more real freedom and immersion in Bloodlines.

The thing that always bothers me about the D&D type games is that everything is centered around alignment. The freedom to roleplay isn’t usually a freedom to go “ok, I just won’t do things your way.” it’s a freedom to go “ok I’ll do things your way while being good, neutral or evil, lawful, neutral, or chaotic.” This makes most situations and quests repetitive to the point where, lets face it, if you played Baldur’s Gate, games like Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter Nights 2, and probably Dragon Age don’t offer any really new experiences. All they really offer are new stories (though that, too, is debateable).

Having never played Bloodlines before I was expecting a very D&D-like experience, and to a certain point it is: You go through dialogue trees with scripted options, so naturally your freedom is limited. The options, however, are not so much focused on “what do you want your character to be”. Instead they’re more focused on “what does your character want to achieve.” This makes the dialogs always seem more relevant and natural to me, after all, it’s not like I go into every conversation in real life thinking “who do I want to be?”, usually I just want information.

This does, however, bring about a different issue. This natural nature of the dialogue means that sometimes you’re going to say things that won’t get you what you need for a quest. For quests that are dependent on that dialogue this would mean one of two things: A: quest failed, or B: repeat dialog. Troika went with the second, which makes sense from a player frustration standpoint. After all, you don’t want players failing quests ’cause they want to play their character. However it also kills the natural feeling of the dialogue when you can just talk to the same person again, get the exact same dialog (or even different dialogue text, the problem would be the same), and pick a different option until you get what you want.

Bioware opted to have dialog be an irreversible thing a lot of the time. People will not often give you second chances in important dialog trees. They don’t mind telling you about the village they live in 400 times in the exact words the mayor had them memorize, but if you tell them to shove their lost child up their ass, they’re not likely to offer you the chance to go find him until the sequel comes along.

Personally I’m on the fence regarding this choice. Having just spent ages playing and loving the dialog and acting in Vampire I’m leaning towards that being the better option, but it just doesn’t make sense telling someone, in the harshest words, you’re not going to be their slave, only to not see your quest journal update, turn around, and kiss their feet.

Thoughts?