Dialogue

How/why are responses paraphrased?

Jay Watamaniuk:
The dialogue system is something really needs to seen to be believed. The full demo I did at E3 we showed off two dialogues; a short one with the bartender and a much longer one with the diplomat where she reveals a major plot point. The selections of your character’s responses are not really abbreviations but more intention or gut reaction to what is being said to you.

In real life when someone if speaking you don’t think about every word you will say before you start speaking you only have a reaction to what is being said with only a vague idea on how you will respond. The dialogue choices you see will each have a different feel to then that allows you to speak by reflex rather than get the whole line before hand. This does a few things; it makes the conversation much, much faster and far more cinematic. One of the points I really tried to make before letting them watch the dialogue between Sheperd and the diplomat (with Sheperd’s choices being made by Scott Langevin, Mass Effect Lead QA or Prashan Gunasingam, Mass Effect Programmer, in the driver’s seat) was that the final effect is very smooth and cinematic and it is easy to forget that actual dialogue choices are being made in real time.

And

The short descriptions/abbreviations on the dialog system, how many words/characters can they consist of (max)?
Posted 09/08/06 18:10:52 by Chris L'Etoile:
To give a straight answer (hey, I can do that about stuff that doesn't matter!) The cap they decided on for paraphrases was 30 characters, including spaces. That's enought to fit the six options on the wheel with a legible font size.

Actual lines of V.O.'ed dialogue could thoeretically be up to ~180 characters long with the current font style choices. Since we're trying to get briefer, punchier "cinematic style" dialogue, we have a "voluntary" limit of 150 characters. I personally try to keep lines closer to 100 characters, but it's not always possible.

How can you choose a response without seeing it written out?

Have you tried using different coloured text/symbols or stage directions? To give a greater sense of control/idea of what the PC's response will be?
Jay Watamaniuk:
Ah you mean in the dialogue sections. The idea is that our gut reaction selections should convey a state of mind about what is being said to you and should be very clear. The words that you actually use will be a surprise but the intention will be the same. In our short demo you see us threaten the bartender (a very popular choice I might add when doing the full demo ) the choice for the character was something like “Threats might work”. That is very clear in what your character’s intention is even if you don’t know exactly how that will play out.

As a side note when you threatened the bartender and walked away your fellow squad members actually comment on what you just did “Well that was a little ‘extreme’”, “It got the job done didn’t it?”. This little exchange between the two of them happens as you are walking and does not stop the action but adds so much to the immersion. If you keep playing the game at odd with your squad members they will get increasingly angry and maybe even pick a fight with you.

And

Do you select a line of dialog (like KoTOR) AND (/then) an emotion to go with it?
Bob McCabe:
It may be an either/or thing, but we're still figuring it out.

For me, this facial animation/body language system is just so amazing to see in action. I mean, you ask someone a stupid question and they can just give you a look, like, "you really want to ask me that?" - and all those words get chopped out and what's left is just so much more powerful.

How do you actually select a response?

Do you select dialog by just pointing one of the sticks in the appropriate direction or do you then need to press a button to confirm it?
Jay Watamaniuk:
With the current controller scheme which may change you highlight a dialogue choice and confirm with a button press. With no button confirmation you might accidentally make choices you don’t want to and that might get you into trouble.

And

What is the current default control style
Jay Watamaniuk:
I believe you can use the D-pad or the stick to highlight the dialogue choice and hit the ‘action’ button to actually select it. The action button being whatever button that is in charge of interacting with your surroundings.

How do the NPCs interact with the player?

Many preview have mentioned NPC party member having far more dialog/comments on your actions and stuff is this context sensitive (like the marines in Halo, heavily scripted like Half Life 2 or more like KoTOR tied to XP/levelling up and a combination of the above. Jay Watamaniuk:
I alluded to this with my bit on the bartender dialogue. Your squad and who gets to be in it are a big part of how you play Mass Effect. Certain NPC will have wildly different views on how to accomplish things then you and each other. Playing through different sections with different squad members will quite dramatically change the experience. As this is BioWare game each NPC is created and carefully fleshed out to have his or her (or its) own story and personality. They will comment on your actions, the situations you find yourself in even the settings you find yourself in. It depends on who you take in your squad and what is going on.

Will aliens have alien voices/Languages in the game?

09/23/06 23:12:32 (GMT) by Chris L'Etoile:
Voices yes, language no. For the convenience of the player, we assume all the major races have either highly accurate automated translation, or speak a "lingua franca." This is not true for obscure or newly-discovered species.

Why are you using wet-navy terminology?

Posted 08/23/06 21:39:35 (GMT) by Michael_Patty
Which brings up another interesting question. Why are starship navies always portrayed in science fiction as using wet-navy terminology? It's far more likely that the air and aero-space military arms will be the ones put in command of such ships, should we ever become that advanced. Wet-navy terminology may well become "that quaint tradition of planet bound navies."
Chris L'Etoile:
GURPS Transhuman Space has the space forces grow out of the zoomies.

I think your "quaint tradition" comment is apt. Navies have history and traditions going back hundreds of years; Trafalgar, the Spanish Armada, Actium, Lepanto.

Aircraft just passed their centennial, and were only organized into separate military arms before World War II. The only inspiring, pivotal air force solo victory was the Battle of Britain. Aside from that air arms have mostly done strategic bombing campaigns and tactical support. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were pivotal "victories", but I doubt anyone would hold those up as examples of the glorious history of the USAF.

Besides, would you rather serve on the SSV Normandy, or craft number A557-04F6D? ^_^

Humans changed some Citadel space naval tactics when they arrived on the scene, precisely because they had only recently "graduated" from a blue water to a black sky navy.

Do NPCs remember your past behaviour?

Will the NPCs remember/record what dialog/actions you and other NPCs have said and respond differently/accordingly later in the game?
Chris L'Etoile:
They certainly can - it's just a matter of adding flags, which are easy. The real issue is bang-for-buck. Given the time available to write dialogue and the cost to get actors in the booth, how much does it add to the overall experience to build separate threads handling reactions to old conversations? In most cases, the answer would probably be "not enough."

And

09/09/06 00:08:10 (GMT) by Chris L'Etoile:
MusicDan: Not going to quote any particular part of your message, but I have two points to mention. Point one, that I said in most cases, it wouldn't be worth it. I didn't rule it out. I like that sort of continuity myself. But when I feel the inclination to do that, I have to consider point 2. Generally speaking, I have two weeks to write the main conversation file of a party member. Do I prioritize my zots to write and polish the romance / character stories, or do I add a bunch of (arguably fluff) back-references?

I choose to polish the main trunk of the character. If I have time for alternate reference threads later, so much the better.

And

Posted 09/09/06 11:21:47 (GMT) by Chris L'Etoile:
Posted 09/09/06 10:32:45 (GMT) by MusicDan
Hi Chris I'm really sorry if I came off as argumentative...

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply you did. I suq. >.<

I just wanted you to get an idea that we do have time pressures with writing. It's no different than any other part of game development. There's what you want to do, what your deadline is, and the Venn diagram circles that define where the two overlap. I'm told that we've actually done quite well in terms of time and number of rewrites for ME. Being relatively new to BioWare, I have no basis for comparison.
I had no idea you guys only had two weeks to write a party member dialog
Party members land around 10K words. So figure you need to do 1000 words a day to meet deadline. On a good day, I average 2K words of dialogue (Drew has been known to exceed 5K). But you want party members to be more polished than the average character, so you take more time with them.
... to be honest I'm shocked, I had assumed that the whole game, planets, level etc and a script (though not a final draft) was all planed out before the game went into full production
[*grin*] It was planned out (every location had an overview, plot outline, and list of characters in "D&D module" style). But it's a big game, and sometimes things don't work as well as you'd hoped. One of the two worlds I was responsible for required no more than tweaking to meet "gold standard." The other one went through two full rewrites (i.e., throwing everything out, and starting from scratch), plus a round of tweaking for each revision. That's "normal" to meet the BioWare standard of quality. If anything, we're doing better than average.
But then I was surprised when you told me that there were only four writers and your editor working on Mass Effect, I had expected it be more like 10 - 15 ...
Again, that's actually the normal level of staffing. We have more writers in the company than ever right now, but they're spread between three projects - ME, DA, and Something Secret.

Can you describe the voice recording process?

Could you tell us whether what stage BioWare are at in recording dialog... have you finished all the recording for Mass Effect? Are you hiring a studio for a few weeks in one go, or is it an on going process and how does this relate to downloadable content, will you just get the actors back in as needed or are you already recording dialog in advance?
Chris L'Etoile:
I'm afraid I can only answer in the most general sense.

With most characters, you get a single pass. You have to pay for minimum block of the VA's time (union rules). Bringing back "ambient guard 3" to re-record one line wouldn't be feasible. For major characters, particularly party members, it's possible to alter and add to old conversations even after recording has begun. They have to come back for multi-day sessions. We also schedule pick-up sessions for party members, to polish things that - on a full play through - need better integration.

For example, interjections (when a henchman comments in an NPC's conversation) are generally written by the person responsible for the world it occurs on. Worlds are written before party member dialogues, though we know the general attitude/personality they will have. After the writer responsible for the party member completes them, they review the interjections and make any changes necessary to bring them into character.

Will there be subtitles?

Posted 07/14/06 15:50:58 (GMT) by Bob McCabe
Mass Effect will definitely have subtitles. And, like Jade Empire, we'll likely set the default to subtitles being "off". At least, I think I remember the JE subtitles being set to off... I think.

And

Chris Priestly:
Hola Gilthass, BioWare's Evil Chris Priestly here. Su inglés es mejor que mi español. :)

Yes Mass Effect will have Spanish subtitles. They will be neutral Spanish rather than European or Latin American specific.

I hope this answers your question. :)

How much dialogue is there?

IGN/Drew Karpyshyn:
Mass Effect has a word count of around 400,000 words - somewhere in the area of 4-5 full novels. But, unlike a novel, we also have visual images and other ways to tell a story. Our word count would be even higher if we had to describe settings or characters, but we actually have art and graphics to do that for us. I think a better comparison to give the full scope of our game is to use movie scripts. In Mass Effect, every line of dialog has full voice over, and we have 20,000+ lines of dialog - roughly the equivalent of 20 movies. That seems like a lot - and it is - but it's necessary to keep a player engaged in our game and story for the 20+ hour critical path.