Design Musings: The Less Said the Better
September 14th, 2009Alright, so I’ve once again decided to start friggin blogging on this here blog. If I keep myself to a constant schedule, maybe I can actually do it!
So, I’m going to talk about things I’ve been thinking about in regards to game design in this blog, amongst other things.
So, today I’ll talk about something that I’ve noticed in playing games. Often times the less a character says, the more memorable they are. The classic example of this is of course the silent player avatar that appears in many Nintendo games as well as the Half Life games. Characters like Link, Mario and Gordon Freeman. You remember the character because you imprint yourself onto it.
However, I think this also extends to NPCs. Now, of course, a completely silent NPC doesn’t necessarily lead to a memorable character, but often a single piece of dialogue can be more iconic than a well rounded character with a full dialogue tree. The Legend of Zelda games are some of the best examples of this. In the first one, pretty much every line of dialogue is now considered an iconic line. Take, for example, “It’s a Secret to Everybody” or “It’s Dangerous to Go Alone. Take This.”
Ocarina of Time also had quite a bit of minimalism when it came do dialogue (except for that damn owl). There were many NPCs which had only one line of dialogue, but still left an impact on you. Take, for example, the dancing couple from Hyrule City who you find later on have relocated after Hyrule City gets taken over by Re-Deads.
Giving them only one line of dialogue also retains alot of mystery about the character. Often games will have generic NPCs filling the streets that you don’t really care about. But if you give a character a single memorable line of dialogue, suddenly that line is a portal into a character. There are whole subplots in Legend of Zelda that are told in very few lines of dialogue (Like that of Grog, which can be found here [spoilers]).
In a way, I see this as a return to a more fairy-tale style of storytelling. The characters in Ocorina of Time don’t necesarrily show complex personallities, but they have powerfull personalities, and that personality is communicated directly through their line of dialogue. Everyone represents something, and communicates that, and thus feel real, not because they are realistic, but because they represent something basic we know from life.
Another issue is immersion. Now, it might sound odd for me to say that less realistic dialogue is more immersive, but a bit of an uncanny valley effect comes into play. When a realistic chararacter that is fully voiced over reapeats the exact same line of dialogue because it’s run out of things to say, it breaks immersion. When a simple, fairy-tale-like character with only one line of dialogue repeats a line, it seems only natural, and retains emmersion because that line of dialogue is currently the most important information about that character.
I myself have tried designing characters in this style with Dadaists Gone Wild. I tried to make each line of dialogue (except one near the end…for obvious reasons) quick, direct, and memorable. This seems to have worked, as I’ve gotten feedback where people mention their favorite line of the game. I’ve occasionally had to resist the urge to make longer streams of dialogue in Dadaists 2, but have forced myself to cut it down to the bare essentials, generally trying to fit it into one talk bubble for a character at any given time.
-Malec2b (Alec)
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