Last time, we went over high-level principles you should keep in mind when constructing a branching conversation scene. This time, we’re going to talk specifics–ideas to apply on a line-by-line level. Think of this as a toolbox, with specialized tools to be used in the correct circumstances.

Place Response Sets at Dramatic High Points

We discussed making the Player character the star of the scene and how choices matter in part four. This is one way to act on those lessons: The Player should be choosing responses at (and ideally only at) the most dramatic moments of the conversation. (And when I say “dramatic moments” I mean dramatic for the Player character–if two NPCs are reuniting after ages apart, that may be the most important moment for them… but for me, it’s just a nice touch.)

Of course, what qualifies as a dramatic moment will entirely depend upon context. A quiet moment between friends (the Player character and an NPC) in which the NPC confesses that he doubts the Player’s quest will succeed will have far more subdued high points than a hostage negotiation.

It’s also worth looking at this guideline from the opposite direction: If you find yourself writing Player response sets in which the Player’s lines aren’t especially compelling–where the Player is just pushing the NPC to keep talking and not really being a dramatic force in the conversation–you’ve probably either chosen the wrong place to have the Player respond or need to reconceive your conversation altogether.

Response Frequency

How long, on average, should an NPC go on before the Player is able to respond? As usual, the answer is “It depends.” Ask yourself how engaging the conversation is when the Player isn’t picking from different options, and you’re on your way to an answer.

Japanese-style visual novels like Hatoful Boyfriend tend to pare out responses infrequently compared to many other types of games.

Voiceover and cinematics tend to be more engaging than text–but text moves a lot faster, so the end result may be about the same. Two NPCs talking tends to be more interesting than one long NPC monologue (though a single NPC focused on me is more likely to hold my interest than two NPCs focused on one another and thereby stealing my spotlight). Forced Player lines (if done well–see below) can keep a scene focused on the Player character without requiring a response set, again heightening engagement.

Is the Player getting bored? Is the focus of the scene shifting away from the Player character? Is there a dramatic high point or item of interest the Player would want to respond to, but can’t? If so, you’ve gone on too long without Player interaction.

Once you know your system and you’ve seen it in action, you’ll probably develop a rule of thumb that fits your particular game. It might be “the Player should almost always have a response option after 2-5 lines of dialogue, regardless of the speaker” or it might be “NPCs shouldn’t say more than 50 words without at least a forced Player line, and never more than 100 words from all characters without a response set.” Write, playtest, and iterate to find the perfect balance.

Respond to the Last Statement Made

Here’s a simple but important one: when you give the Player a set of responses, make sure the Player is responding to the last thing the NPC said. For example:

NPC: The Fed chairman is corrupt. I’m sure of it.

NPC: Now I’ve lost my home, my bank, my Manhattan penthouse. Trust me–you haven’t lived in New York until you’ve commuted by helicopter.

Player Response 1: What makes you think the chairman is corrupt?

Player Response 2: That sounds awful.

Player Response 3: I shot down a helicopter once.

Responses 2 and 3 are fine (if not especially interesting), but the first response backtracks into the NPC’s previous line. You’re already diverting the Player’s attention from the NPC’s dialogue by bringing up response options–don’t confuse matters by making the Player respond to something that’s not even on-screen (for text games or games with subtitles) anymore.

For this particular example, the solution is probably to move the “Fed chairman” comment to the front–it’s important enough that the Player should be responding to it anyway. This ties into the need to place Player responses at the dramatic high points of the conversation, as well as our next item.

If It’s Important, Let Me Reply

The best way to get Players to internalize something is to let them interact with it. If an NPC has something to say that’s vital for the Player to fully understand, that’s a good place to give the Player a set of response options. Let the Player react to or question the revelation as appropriate. (Again, these revelations should ideally be dramatic high points of the conversation already.)

Similarly, don’t bury items I want to respond to in non-interaction portions of a scene. If an NPC mentions something in the course of a conversation that the Player wants to respond to but can’t, it’s immensely frustrating.

Differentiating Responses

We’ve talked before about giving different Player character archetypes and personalities different response options, but it doesn’t hurt to reiterate: Your Player should always find at least one response appropriate to her character in any set of responses. That doesn’t mean that every response set needs to highlight every possible personality trait a Player character might have–but if you have four responses and three suit extremes of personality, the fourth should probably be more moderate to cover the rest of your Players. (Questions work well as “if all else fails” responses–a Player who doesn’t like more decisive options will often settle for a question, unless total disinterest is a natural Player character response under the circumstances.)

Try to avoid situations where the Player is forced to choose between several responses that all indicate roughly the same thing, even if the responses are delivered with different attitudes. “Of course I’ll help you” and “I hate doing this” both boil down to agreement. Sometimes these sorts of response sets are a necessary evil, but do your best to minimize them.

If your game uses text for Player response options (as opposed to symbols), make your responses visually distinctive as well. That is, avoid multiple options that all start with “Can you…” or otherwise look the same at a quick glance. Your response options aren’t just lines of dialogue–they’re also UI elements, and the rules of smart UI design hold true.

Differentiated responses from The Wolf Among Us.

Generally speaking, avoid sets of Player responses that are all questions. (The possible exception would be explicit question hubs, if that’s a standard feature of your game.) Aside from the repetitive aspect, questions tend to put the Player in a passive position–sitting back and receiving information–rather than an active one. Even “Tell me about the victim” feels more active than “Who was the victim#8221;

How Much Branching?

As with determining response frequency, the answer to “How often should I branch#8221; depends on a hundred other factors. But if you’ve got more than a tiny handful of Player response opportunities in a given conversation and you’re writing a conversation-heavy game, it’s not unreasonable for most Player responses to lead to a few unique NPC lines, then merge back into the critical path of the conversation.

The fewer Player conversation choices you have in your game, of course, the more you want those choices to feel significant. In a game with rare conversations and only one or two choices per dialogue, you may want every choice to branch and never merge back.

Transition into the Scene

Avoid delivering important information in the first line or two of a conversation. In most games, dialogue sequences use a separate gameplay mechanic from the rest of play; Players need a few moments to transition into a “dialogue” mindset and refocus. Sometimes they need a few moments to turn the volume up! (Establishing mood or recapping something the Player already knows is appropriate here, and don’t drag the transition out–just a few seconds will do.)

Forced Player Lines Redux

We discussed forced Player lines at length in part two, but let’s revisit them briefly now that we’ve talked further about writing to a range of possible Player character archetypes and personalities. When you use a forced Player line–that is, a line that the Player didn’t choose through a response option–be certain that either:

a) The line is sufficiently neutral as to fit any viable Player character.

or

b) The line expresses a personality trait, but is exclusive to a branch where the Player already expressed that personality trait.

In the former case, the forced Player line is rarely going to be interesting–although it’s certainly possible to require that the Player character always be, e.g., funny, but allow the Player control outside of that aspect. (So forced Player lines for such a character could be amusing, but not express ethical or personal judgments.) Basic greetings and questions are usually inoffensive and can help massage a conversation along without destroying the Player’s vision of her character.

In the latter case, it’s usually fair to assume that if the Player just yelled angrily at an NPC, you can probably use a few angry forced lines following. (This same theory applies to Player choices, as well–if the Player expresses love for an NPC, you don’t necessarily have to offer the Player an opportunity to yell angrily in the next set of responses in the branch. On the other hand, it’s not a bad thing to let the Player contradict herself–she may have accidentally chosen an option and decided to backpedal.)

Very careful use of variables can also support forced lines of this type: If the Player swore in the last conversation to seek revenge on a foe, opening the next conversation with that foe with an angry forced line isn’t necessarily inappropriate. Be careful with this, though–Players change their minds, and Player characters should be allowed to evolve and grow.

Mass Effect 3 used significantly more forced lines than did previous games in the series, enhancing the cinematic style at the expense of some Player control.

One last warning on forced Player lines: There are few worse things you can do to break a bond between Player and Player character than making the Player character say or do something the Player doesn’t want. When in doubt, make it a Player option. Never, ever force a Player character to state something on the theory that, if the Player character feels it, the Player is likely to go along. That may be true in traditional media–when a novel protagonist I love hates another character, I’m inclined to feel the same–but in a game in which the Player controls the emotional inner life of the protagonist, you must respect that control as sacred.

Make the Player heartbroken or angry, and she’ll make the Player character heartbroken or angry herself. Make the Player character heartbroken or angry without consulting the Player, and you’ve just broken your pact with the audience.

Use Variables

Use variables to emphasize choice and consequence in two ways:

First, let NPCs reference (by having multiple lines that play depending on which variables have been set) past Player choices whenever appropriate. Even if this doesn’t branch the conversation in a meaningful way–even if it’s just one different line before the branches merge–it helps reaffirm the Player’s agency. In part four, we talked about how Player response options that “don’t matter” act as a sort of thematic filter for the story; NPC references to past choices act the same way. If every now and then, an NPC looks at me a little more warily because I killed a man at the start of the game, my experience is different than it would be if that murder never came up again.

Second, set and reference variables within the course of a conversation to add a degree of verisimilitude. If the Player is obnoxious and sarcastic at the start of the conversation, don’t branch the whole dialogue tree–but set a variable, and have the NPC deliver an alternate line when the Player leaves at the end. Use variables to avoid scenarios where NPCs appear to have the 5-second memory of the proverbial goldfish–scenarios where the Player’s attitude and questions are forgotten the moment branches merge.

Be careful not to overuse variables, though–while the Player may appreciate them, you’ll eventually make a conversation difficult to edit and understand, difficult to playtest, and difficult to script. A conversation in which poorly tested variables trigger the wrong lines is not one the Player will appreciate.

Use Non-Dialogue Gameplay Variables

In a game where branching dialogue sequences are only one of many types of gameplay (e.g., in a typical role-playing or adventure game), integrate non-dialogue gameplay choices into conversation through variables. Did the Player character sneak past enemies instead of killing them? Does the Player character wear the armor of an enemy faction? Has it been especially long since the Player character last talked to an NPC? Referencing such choices in dialogue helps keep the Player from feeling like she’s playing two separate games–a “story and conversation” game and a “non-dialogue gameplay” game. Each should impact the other.

Voiceover and Flow

One of the biggest challenges you’ll face when writing a branching conversation with voiceover (aside from getting the actors and directors to understand all the nuances) is maintaining flow from one line to the next. Every time you link from one branch to another, you undergo a tonal “reset,” and your actor must find a way to deliver the linked line that makes sense coming off multiple preceding lines.

In some cases, you’ll need to permanently branch a conversation just for tone. Imagine a branch in which the Player punches the NPC, angrily demanding answers; and a second branch in which the Player bribes the NPC. When the NPC agrees to cooperate and delivers the information the Player asks for, the lines could conceivably be the same in both cases–but the delivery should be vastly different.

At other times, you can try to return the NPC to a certain baseline attitude before merging branches–use a few lines to transition so that the NPC isn’t angry one moment and calm the next. This all assumes, of course, that you have a method of communicating your needs to actors and directors.

Avoid scenarios where one character cuts another character off in mid-sentence. During the recording process, lines will likely be recorded piecemeal and when it comes to branching, it will be difficult to figure out where lines match up. (It’s not impossible, but it’s very painful and time-consuming unless you’ve got multiple actors recording a scene together–and the end result may still not sound good. Judge the costs for yourself.)

Closing Comments

And that’s it for our series. Special thanks to Daniel Erickson and Cameron Harris, who read and delivered feedback on my earliest draft; and thanks to the commenters at Gamasutra for building on my analysis and adding useful insights.

I may return to this subject at a later date if I can find an interesting approach or another stone to turn over. In the meantime, I can always be reached through my website at alexanderfreed.com for further discussion.

Some final words of wisdom from our friends in Star Control 2.

As I said when we started, I’m a great believer in branching conversations as a narrative tool. Awkward as they may be, they’re still our best way of giving Players a sense of agency in dialogue and helping to explore a Player character’s emotions and inner life. And while they’re certainly not appropriate for every game, they’re an integral part of some of the most highly regarded narrative-driven games in the industry’s history.

They’re also distressingly difficult to do well, but let’s at least learn from one another’s mistakes. Do good work, my friends!

You have the tools. You know how to structure a conversation so you can work with and maintain it across a game’s full development cycle. Now… how do you make that conversation good?

This post attempts to summarize some key principles to keep in mind throughout the writing process. Some of these principles are obvious but nonetheless important–it’s surprisingly easy to lose sight of storytelling fundamentals when focusing on the complexities of branching. We’ll get into greater specifics next time, but the ideals below should suffuse everything you do.

Know Your Star

Many writers fall into the trap of using the Player character primarily to draw out an NPC’s personality. The NPC is witty or angst-ridden; the Player’s responses prompt the NPC to display her engaging self in a variety of ways. It’s a seductive approach, given that the Player character’s personality (being under the control of the Player) is by nature ill-defined.

But in most games (and if you don’t think it’s true in yours, be absolutely sure), the Player character is still the protagonist and undisputed star. NPCs are supporting cast members at best, and more frequently walk-ons. If your game were a film or a novel, your Player character’s desires, reactions, and concerns would be the driving force of any given scene.

The Mass Effect series excels at making the Player character feel like the driving force of each scene. (Screenshot generously provided by @LechucksBeard.)

Games are games, of course–not novels or films–but that only makes this subject more important. The Player character, in most types of games, is the utterly dominant presence. That’s the nature of video games–Players empathize with their characters in a uniquely powerful way. Everything is seen through the Player character’s eyes (literally or figuratively). Everything is secondary to the Player character’s needs.

Therefore, the standard lessons every writer already knows apply: most of the time, a given scene (such as a dialogue sequence) should put the Player character at the center of the action. The Player should feel like she’s driving the conversation through her response options. The Player should feel like the NPC serves to further her story. The Player should feel like she has the best lines and coolest moments (Players aren’t fond of being upstaged). Picturing a version of the scene without the Player character should be virtually impossible.

There are always exceptions, of course, and you don’t want to shortchange an NPC–making the Player character the star isn’t an excuse for ill-developed secondary characters. And different styles of games put different amounts of emphasis on the Player character as a true personality (as opposed to as an avatar or filter for the Player). But it’s often helpful to ask yourself–particularly in games with voiceover and cinematics–“If this conversation were in a book / film / comic / whatever, would it de-protagonize the protagonist#8221;

Plan Ahead

Every writer has his own process, and while I’m exorbitantly fond of outlines, some writers only feel comfortable working without a net. There’s nothing wrong with that…

…yet I encourage any writer who wants to work with branching dialogue to plan conversations ahead of time, at least in the beginning. Without a plan, It’s too easy to let branches spiral out of control and to forget what information the critical path of the conversation must contain.

For my own work, I like to get a clear idea of what every set of Player responses is going to reply to (even if I’m not sure of all the responses individually in advance). I like to know where I’m going to need substantial branches, and of course I want to understand whatever I need to communicate to the Player for the next sequence.

You may plan in more or less detail, but really: Try planning ahead. Don’t get bogged down needlessly.

Choices are Rewards

Let’s look at two different metaphors for Player response options.

In our first metaphor, Player response options are a crank that the Player must turn in order to push a conversation (and thus the narrative) forward. The conversation is genuinely entertaining and the response options still important–disgorging so much text without Player interaction would be tiring at best–but the act of choosing a response is the conversational equivalent of a quick-time event. It’s busywork to keep the Player feeling engaged.

In our second metaphor, Player response options are the buttons on a vending machine. The NPC’s portion of the conversation is entertaining, but just as exciting is the loose change the Player receives for every NPC line that passes. Player response options are the Player’s chance to spend that change and get something awesome.

You can probably guess which metaphor I favor.

Make every Player response option awesome. The outcome of any given choice doesn’t need to be beneficial, but it should always make for a compelling and memorable story. If responses are just busywork to get necessary information from an NPC, then what’s the point? Let them serve as an opportunity for the Player to express herself and her vision of the Player character, the character’s story, and the themes surrounding that story–and then build on what the Player is telling you she wants.

I’ll be honest–this conversation from The Witcher 2 doesn’t have much to do with anything. I just needed to break up the text and didn’t have anything more appropriate.

If the Player is choosing villainous responses, she wants a story about villainy. Give it to her (in whatever form you as the writer feel is most appropriate–you’re still in charge). Make the Player excited to get response options because she knows they’ll pay off with something interesting.

(This principle, incidentally, is another reason I’m not especially fond of question hubs–hub-and-spoke segments of a conversation which consist solely of the Player character demanding “Tell me more about X” and the NPC obliging. It’s not that a question hub can’t deliver compelling options and rewarding responses–but doing so is an especially difficult endeavor.)

Scenes are Scenes

Remember your writing fundamentals. Video game conversation scenes are still scenes. They should be dramatic. They should push the narrative forward in plot, character, theme, or all three. They should have a pace and a rhythm, building to a climax and then ending without wasting time. They should start with a clear hook to capture the audience’s attention. Yes, there are always (always!) exceptions, and yes, games work differently than traditional media–but scenes are still scenes.

Don’t get so caught up in making a conversation functional–in making sure that it delivers all the right critical path information to the Player, in making sure the Player has sufficient options, in making sure that the Player knows and understands what her next gameplay step is–that you forget to make the narrative work on a more basic level. If you rip all the choices out and pick one linear path for the conversation, does it make for a compelling piece of drama?

Every Choice Matters…

The worst way you can approach branching narrative (and branching dialogue) is to think of it as a “trick”–a way to make the Player believe she has choice and agency when in fact, she’s just going down the path you’ve set for her.

“But don’t most branches merge#8221; you may reasonably ask. “In fact, don’t most Player choices lead to only a handful of distinct NPC lines before folding back into the critical path? How is that not tricking the Player into thinking there is choice where no choice exists#8221;

To which I say two things:

First, when it comes to the choices that don’t “matter”–the ones that merge back into a critical path without long-term consequences–giving the Player a choice of how to characterize the protagonist means letting the Player choose the lens through which the narrative is perceived. Think of simple, “role-playing” response options as a thematic filter–the Player who chooses tragically brooding lines instead of smart-alecky ones in your vampire game is shifting the basic ideas that your game explores.

This is another reason why it’s vital to understand that the Player character is the star and the protagonist. Your conversation scenes are about the Player character, not the NPCs, and story derives its meaning from who the protagonist is.

A role-playing moment from The Banner Saga allowing the Player to reflect on larger themes.

Would Star Wars be the same story if Luke Skywalker turned cold and vengeful when his parents died and spent the rest of the movie in mourning, dwelling constantly on the human cost of space warfare and loathing the evil Empire? You could use the same plot–he could still go to the Death Star, rescue a princess, and destroy the enemy–but the audience would come away in a very different mood and with a very different sense of the film. The movie would be about something different. (In fact, the mere presence of different options, even if never chosen, frame a story’s themes and central conflict in a new manner.)

That’s why the choices that don’t matter still matter. They define the audience experience. Yet choices matter even more when they do have long-lasting consequences, which brings me to my second point…

…But Make Sure Your Biggest Choices and Consequences are Visible

When a substantive branch occurs–whether it lasts for a conversation or the remainder of the game–make sure the Player understands that the branch is happening. All the little choices that “don’t matter” serve as a force multiplier for the impact of these larger branches, but that multiplier is lost if the Player still thinks she’s been railroaded onto the critical path.

Making choices visible can be accomplished in a number of ways. For starters, make sure you’re signposting big decision moments adequately. Having a major NPC betray me late in the game because I was slightly rude to him near the beginning doesn’t make me feel like my choices have consequences–it just makes me feel like I live in a fickle, unpredictable world where I lack any real agency. I probably don’t even remember being rude to the character, and assume the betrayal was going to happen regardless.

On the other hand, if I receive an emphatic warning from the NPC’s brother before talking to him–“NPC Y is incredibly fickle. If you need to be rough with him, go ahead, but god only knows what wheels will start turning in his head.”–and the betrayal comes soon enough that I still remember the encounter, the sense of choice and consequence is much more powerful.

In addition to narrative signposts, make sure your Player response options are clear when the big moments come. You don’t want the Player casually picking the snarky option, figuring it’ll be funny but won’t matter, when that’s the choice that will determine whether the huge diplomatic treaty will be signed. Make sure your response options are bold and distinct from one another, whatever interface and system you’re using. (For your biggest moments, you may even want a “are you sure we should do that#8221; reply from an NPC to allow the Player to backtrack if needed. “Wait, no, I meant ‘commit genocide’ sarcastically. Yes, let’s sign the treaty.”)

Finally, part of making branches visible and feel consequential is picking where not to branch. You and your team only have so much time and effort to put into your game. When you create a branch, make it as beautiful and compelling as you can, and don’t distract yourself with other elaborate branches in minor scenes that Players will forget an hour later. Players will forgive a lot of limited choice if the most dramatic scenes in the game diverge in a variety of powerful ways… and they’ll never forgive you if they feel their agency has been taken away at the biggest moments, no matter how many minor branches you create along the way.

Characters are Characters

Again, remember your writing fundamentals. Characters should have distinct voices, should enrich our understanding of the protagonist or the story’s central themes, should have their own motivations and desires (that may be different from those of the Player character and may contradict what they say aloud). They should be as memorable as their role and the narrative support–walk-on characters shouldn’t upstage the supporting cast, but a dollop of humanity and dignity never goes amiss.

The colorful characters of the Wing Commander series brought emotional weight to a straightforward war story. (Wing Commander 3, pictured, was the first to use branching dialogue.)

I’ve seen talented writers forget everything they know when they begin game writing, creating “Ho, adventurer! I have a task for you!”-style quest dispensers, as if the NPCs have no lives or desires other than flagging down the first Player character they see. Don’t be one of those writers. Yes, if your game is laden, RPG-style, with one-off characters designed to provide quest content, you’ve got a challenge justifying why all these NPCs are on the Player’s path and crying for help–but remember to look at what you’ve done in all its sparkling game design functionality and ask, “Does this character justify his existence in the story#8221;

Know Your Player Archetypes

In part two, we discussed (under “Number of Options”) the need to figure out the most common personality types your Players will apply to their Player characters. This will, of course, be dictated by your genre and the particulars of your narrative–not many Players of your high school drama RPG will expect to be able to play a bloodthirsty psychopath, and not many Players of your space marine shooter will expect to be able to play as a shy wallflower–so give it ample consideration. Make sure that the types of characters, stories, and themes you support (by virtue of your response options, your gameplay, your supporting cast, and so on) match the Player’s expectations; if you don’t, you may end up with frustrated Players very quickly!

(Setting those expectations is best done before character creation–introductory sequences are useful here–and by out-of-game marketing. Why did your Player buy the game? What sort of experience did she expect? If you don’t offer that experience, of course you’ll have a problem.)

Let’s go back to that high school drama RPG for an example. Off the top of my head, I’ll want to support protagonists with the following characteristics:

Athletic, Smart, Witty, Ambitious, Slacker, Geeky, Brooding, Outcast, Male, Female, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender…

Note that while I’ve got “Smart” on the list, I didn’t put “Stupid”; while Players may not want to play an intellectual character, I feel like very few Players will be bothered that they can’t play a character who’s incapable of being smart. (Which isn’t to say you couldn’t have “Stupid” as an option, but will Players really feel like their experience has been negatively impacted without it?) I didn’t put “Power Hungry” either, because it’s not that sort of game or genre.

When I’m writing a scene, I should ask: does a Player character built from any combination of the above attributes get to act appropriately? This isn’t just about individual Player response options, but about the flow of the conversation as a whole. While yes, it’s important that my brooding character not be faced with an array of only cheerful options (no matter how different the options otherwise are), it’s also important that my athlete not converse with an NPC who breezes past a discussion of the school sports team to start talking about his parents. My Player character cares about the team, and would definitely have something to say about it!

In short, construct whole conversations with an eye to all viable Player characters who could be taking part. What motivates your protagonist is key to your story; don’t fail to acknowledge those motivators!

Mind the Players Who Don’t Care

How do you handle a Player who isn’t interested in narrative?

For some sorts of games, the answer is “You don’t.” If I’m writing a Japanese-style visual novel or a text-based Choose Your Own Adventure-inspired app, I’m not going to bother catering to Players who don’t care.

But what if I’m writing a first-person shooter with RPG elements, or a puzzle game with occasional narrative breaks? If most of what a game has to offer is non-story-and-character-based content, then how do I address the needs of those Players in dialogue?

A dialogue wheel from Star Wars: The Old Republic.

In such a case–assuming you don’t have mechanics that allow the Player to bypass conversations altogether–make sure you’ve got a clearly marked direct line through the critical path of the conversation. If you’ve got a “default” Player response option, it probably leads down this path; if you’re making the disinterested Player hunt for the right option to get out of the conversation quickly, you’re sort of missing the point.

Of course, your “shortcut” through the conversation still needs to be well-written. It’s most likely appropriate to a straightforward and focused Player character–the “man of action”-type in a shooter–which is an archetype you probably want to support anyway. In other words, the path for Players who don’t care, if done right, also serves a large number of Players who do.

Coming Up Next

We discuss ways to apply these principles on a line-by-line level and other tips and tricks for branching dialogue writing. We ask (and answer) questions such as “How often should the Player be given response options#8221; and “How should those options be differentiated#8221; in what is (tentatively) our final installment.

I’ll promise you one thing: It won’t get less exciting than this. The good news is, we’re keeping it short.

This is the part in our series where we discuss not art, but craft–and only craft. I’m not going to give advice on writing sparkling dialogue or how to grab the Player’s attention. Today, we’re going to talk about how to build the sprawling nightmare that is a branching conversation while making it easy to understand, easy to edit, and easy to script.

I can’t emphasize enough how important this is–a brilliant conversation that looks like a tangled knot will drag your project down when your variables turn out to be buggy or a story element must change. Spending hours trying to untangle your own work (or expecting colleagues to do so) isn’t an efficient use of time, especially when it’s not necessary.

Editing Tools

As we discussed in part one, building a branching conversation requires a specialized toolset. Don’t even think about hardcoding conversations or writing them in, say, Excel and having your game parse the spreadsheets. It can be done, of course, but it’s the equivalent of trying to paint a landscape using a paperclip.

Screens from the Dragon Age: Origins toolset wiki, the inklewriter tutorial, and Chat Mapper promotional media.

For experimental and educational purposes, the toolsets included in Dragon Age: Origins, Neverwinter Nights, and Neverwinter Nights 2 are top-of-the-line and readily available; due to their licenses, of course, they are not appropriate for commercial projects. I’m informed that Shadowrun Returns includes a very similar conversation editor, and you’ll notice vast similarities between these tools. Inkle Studios’ inklewriter software is available for commercial license and was used for Stoic’s The Banner Saga, although it’s primarily intended for more prose-heavy, Choose-Your-Own Adventure-style games. Urban Brain Studios produces Chat Mapper, another toolset available for commercial license (though I have no personal experience with it and can’t speak to its particular strengths; it was brought to my attention by a blog commenter).

No doubt there are other available and commercially licenseable toolsets in the world (and of course, programming a toolset from scratch is always an option). If you’re aware of good ones, please mention them in the comments. My own examples are drawn from a proprietary editor created by Rick Burton of Knight Mayor.

No matter what software you’re using, a branching conversation editor must do the following:

Branch. Not a controversial or surprising requirement, I’m sure. The editor needs to let the user create NPC lines and Player options. Different Player options must be able to lead to different NPC lines. Ideally, the editor also lets the user set variables and branch based on those variables, presenting different NPC lines or Player responses depending on the variables set (or not) on the Player character.

Link. The editor must allow lines to be “linked” (as a symbolic link in a UNIX file system or a Windows shortcut). This lets the user reuse the same line or branch in multiple places without writing it multiple times. Proper linking (as we’ll discuss below) is vital to creating clean and editable conversations.

Visual Representation and Navigation. An editor needs to let the user view the structure of the conversation as a whole. Branching dialogue is difficult enough when viewed one line at a time; seeing the flow of a conversation, where it branches, how long those branches are, where they merge, and so on is necessary to good craft.

Different tools may provide visual representation in different ways–my examples below are in the general style of the Neverwinter Nights editor, while inklewriter uses a different style of display and requires switching to a different mode to view the conversation “map”–and individual writers may have their own interface preferences. Nonetheless, it shouldn’t be difficult to translate one tool’s style to another–the fundamentals remain the same.

The Critical Path

With those functions of the tool in mind, how do you apply them?

The backbone of any branching conversation is its critical path. As we discussed last time, the critical path is the portion of the conversation tree that every Player sees; it cannot be missed or escaped for gameplay to continue. For that reason, it should deliver any vital information and story points the Player needs for a rich and fulfilling experience

It’s possible for a conversation’s critical path to branch into multiple mutually exclusive paths, as in the case of a major split in the narrative. It’s also possible for a conversation to have a nearly nonexistent critical path–an optional question hub might have a critical path consisting only of a greeting and a goodbye line, with everything else easily skipped by the Player.

It’s generally a good idea to know the contents of your critical path–at least in broad strokes–before you begin building a conversation. You can save yourself a lot of trouble by treating your critical path as a core, semi-linear part of your conversation that all other branches eventually must return to. Approaching a conversation the opposite way–writing “organically” and only afterward attempting to ensure that every possible combination of Player choices provides all necessary information–will make life far more difficult.

Basic Structure

So you’ve got your conversation editor and you know what you want to write. (We’ll discuss outlining and figuring out how to structure a scene in a narrative sense in a later post–right now, we’re only concerned with creating a perfectly formatted, albeit awful, branching conversation.) So what should a branching conversation look like?

Pretty much like this:

A conversation in waterfall structure (click to enlarge).

That’s a conversation using waterfall structure. A hub-and-spoke conversation would look very similar, but would “loop” somewhere, like so:

A conversation in hub-and-spoke structure (click to enlarge).

Let’s go through these and break them down.

1: Red Lines and Blue Lines. In this editor, red lines are NPC lines (and show the NPC’s name in brackets before the text) and blue lines are Player lines.

2: Forced Player Line. Note that the Player doesn’t have any options here; to make the scene flow better, we’re forcing him or her to call the NPC by name. (If this conversation has voiceover, presumably this line plays automatically rather than appearing as the sole available response option.)

3: Dualing NPC Responses. Note the two different NPC responses here, both coming off the Player’s “Stan#8221; line. This is a branch, but it’s not a branch based on a Player response option.

So what is this branch for? For this sample, we’re pretending that the Player character can be either “Philip” or “Elizabeth” (presumably a selection made at character creation). These lines would be scripted to check for a variable–“is the Player Philip#8221; If the answer is yes, play the first line; if not, fall through to the next NPC line (which assumes the Player character is Elizabeth).

Even for a very simple variable check, it’s important to get the logic right! A branching dialogue writer doesn’t need programming skills, but some basic logic skills can’t hurt.

4: Blank Nodes. Labeled for convenience. This editor requires that a Player line come after every NPC line and vice-versa; therefore, to have two NPC lines in a row, the Player line between them must be blank.

Blank nodes can be useful for scripting or commenting purposes in some toolsets and engines. In others, they may be useless or nonexistent.

5: Linking Down. The gray line indicates a link to another text branch. In theory, we could put the “real” branch at the top and put the link off the “Elizabeth” line–the conversation would function just as well–but in order to keep things as tidy as possible, it’s a good idea to link down (or at least in one consistent direction, if your editor displays things differently). By always linking down, it’s much easier to navigate the conversation when editing or scripting.

6: Player Responses. Here we have our first set of Player responses, in reply to the “Now I really want to know…” line. For this sample, since we’re broadly aiming for a voiceover-and-cinematics style, we’re also using paraphrases (designated by the parenthetical comments).

7: More Forced Player Lines. Getting a real back-and-forth going requires a certain number of forced Player lines–imagine this sequence if we paused for a Player choice after every NPC line. Of course, it clearly takes a degree of control away.

8: Merging Branches. After the back-and-forth, we link branches again. This branch could have gone on longer, with its own sets of Player responses, but remember that every time you branch you’re writing for a smaller segment of your Player base. Make sure that if you’re going to maintain a long branch that it’s worth it–the time you (and everyone else involved in production) spend on an obscure branch is time that could be spent polishing and improving the conversation’s critical path.

Certain conversation branches will clearly only lead to disaster, but it’s nice to know they’re available (from Star Control 2).

Of course, Players will swiftly notice and become disillusioned if every option leads to the same place. And there’s something to be said for supporting a Player’s belief that there’s rich and in-depth content she’ll never see–it supports the overall sense of a compelling, reactive game world.

Determining where to branch and where not to is one of the greatest challenges of interactive dialogue writing. We’ll talk about it more in future posts.

9: Second Set of Player Responses. This second set of Player responses doesn’t display the NPC replies (they’re compressed for readability–note the “+” and “-” signs next to every line that hide or reveal the lines below), but the conversation could go on indefinitely from here until the writer determines a conclusion.

10: Cinematic Sequence. The particulars here would obviously depend on your editor and game engine. I’ve noted it just for the sake of readability. (It can be very useful to have a way to add unseen-by-the-end-user comments into a conversation for fellow developers, reference, and so on.)

11: End Dialogue. With the NPC murdered, there’s no need for the conversation to continue. Presumably the hidden branches off the second set of Player responses include another way to end the conversation.

12: Hub-and-Spoke. This conversation follows a slightly different style than the first, using a hub-and-spoke structure. Note that each Player response (except the last, which presumably ends the conversation) leads back up to the same set of replies, removing only the response most recently used.

Note also that this conversation eschews paraphrases–hub-and-spoke structures tend to read more artificially than waterfall structures, so in this case, I’m envisioning the game not using voiceover (in which case paraphrases add less value).

Coming Up Next

And that’s it for the basics of building a conversation tree. Of course, building a conversation tree that’s engaging and dramatic is another issue altogether. Next time, we’ll talk about the guiding principles of branching conversation writing and answer questions such as “What makes a choice ‘matter’#8221;, “How do you put the Player character at the center of the scene#8221;, and “How do you handle Players who just want to skip the dialogue and go back to shooting things#8221;

So you’ve decided that a branching conversation system is the best choice for your game. You’ve got the writing and programming expertise to make it work, and the budget to support implementation and testing. But how will your system really function? You know your high-level goals, but it’s time to refine.

In this post, we’ll discuss some of the largest design decisions you’ll need to make before writing begins.

Voiceover or no Voiceover?

Full voice acting is a given for most modern “AAA” games, but text still has value and indie and mobile games operate under different expectations. Consider the following factors:

Budget. Regardless of design considerations, small projects may not have the budget to hire voice actors. This is especially likely with a branching dialogue game, where the number of dialogue lines could amount to several times that of a game with a linear script. Adding multiple Player character voices (as with a game that allows a speaking Player character to be male or female) compounds the burden. BioWare’s Mass Effect 3 reportedly had 40,000 lines of dialogue recorded, well beyond affordability for small studios and wildly inappropriate for mobile devices.

Presentation. But budget isn’t the only consideration when it comes to voiceover. A game that uses voiceover must wrestle with an extra expectation of realism in its presentation. Mid-conversation pauses–such as those caused by a Player considering conversation options–become more distracting; anything that inhibits the flow of the conversation as a conversation–such as abrupt shifts between subjects like those in a question hub–becomes a potential problem.

Voiceover is also more time-consuming for the Player than pure text. A typical Player reads much faster than a voice actor speaks, and while few people would suggest that fast-forwarding through a subtitled movie is a superior experience to watching it as filmed, movies have the advantage of actors providing visually nuanced performances that games can’t yet match. Games with voiceover must provide a compelling reason for a Player to sit through that voiceover. Well-rendered cinematic sequences assist greatly in this regard. On the other hand, voiceover playing over a static screen showing only text and character portraits can try the patience of many gamers, even with high-quality performances. (And we’re just going to assume the performances are high quality. No voice acting is almost always better than bad voice acting.)

In contrast, it’s difficult to create compelling cinematic conversations with text-only dialogue. Fully rendered characters standing in a scene and emoting–but not speaking–come across as odd and stilted. If realistic cinematics are a project priority or a strength of your engine, voiceover almost has to go with them. The more stylized your cinematics, the less voiceover will feel necessary.

Narration. Mixing dialogue and narration (‘Ralph wipes away a tear. “I miss my dog.”‘) permits a degree of intricate detail that the best cinematic sequences can’t match, but narration mixes poorly with voiceover.

Sorcery! is an adaptation of a 1980s-era gamebook for mobile devices. Clearly not a candidate for full voiceover (at least not without considerable design changes).

Text Manipulation. Voiceover limits direct alteration of the text. For example, in a game that allows the Player to determine the protagonist’s gender, different NPC lines will need to be recorded to reflect the proper pronoun (“So, <he/she> comes crawling back, huh#8221;). In a text-only environment, “tokenizing” individual words so that they can be swapped out according to variables permits flexibility made cumbersome with voiceover.

Recording. Producing scripts for voiceover doesn’t just require that a writer work under restrictions and avoid sloppy structure. It also challenges the voice actors and directors. Do you have a way to present scripts in a vaguely comprehensible manner that can be used in a recording booth? Do you have directors familiar with the format and the nuances of the medium? Do you have a way to tell a voice actor that line 214 can’t be delivered too passionately, since line 215 is linked from a separate, more subdued section of the conversation?

Familiarity. And of course, none of this matters if you don’t have writers who understand how to write for voice actors. Voiced lines need to be written differently than non-voiced lines. A compelling monologue in text can become implausible and dull when spoken. Character “voice” needs to be conveyed in radically different ways. (This is a subject that goes beyond interactive dialogue, of course, and therefore not one we’ll spend much time on here. It’s still good to keep in mind.)

Silent Protagonists. During the early and mid-2000s, as text-heavy role-playing games were transitioning to full voiceover and cinematics, it was common for games to have full NPC voiceover but silent Player characters (as in BioWare’s Knights of the Old Republic). Aside from saving money and avoiding problems with certain interface issues (see “Selection Interface and Options,” below), this allowed Players to imagine whatever voice they wanted for their highly customized protagonists–not a meaningless benefit, given that poor or inappropriate Player character voiceover can be a major detriment to a Player’s experience.

Nowadays, the silent protagonist has largely faded away in games using branching conversations with voice acting. As cinematic sequences become increasingly detailed and realistic, having one character–and the protagonist, at that!–say nothing while everyone else delivers voiced lines feels increasingly strange. The protagonist becomes a passive bystander in his own story while the voiced characters become the stars.

For these reasons, I can’t really recommend “silent protagonist, voiced NPCs” in many situations. In a game with cinematic conversations, it de-emphasizes the Player character. In a game without cinematic conversations, any voice acting can feel like a drag. There are always edge cases, of course, but there’s a reason the silent protagonist has been left in the past.

Hub and Spoke or Waterfall?

There are two foundational structures for branching conversations: hub and spoke structures and waterfall structures. They can be combined or not, but most games are best served by consistency–a game that uses a pure waterfall structure uses it in every conversation, and a game with a blended mix always uses hubs in one specific way. The base conversation structure will impact both the dialogue itself and the conversation interface you build–consider early and consider carefully.

We’ll examine these structures a little more next time and study how each should look from a designer’s (rather than a Player’s) perspective. For the moment, however, use the following definitions.

Hub and Spoke. In a hub and spoke structure, the Player chooses from a set of conversation options at a central “hub.” When an option is chosen, it branches down a series of unique lines and additional unique response options, until that branch is exhausted and the Player returns to the hub and can select a different option and progress down another spoke.

The conversation ends up reading like this:

NPC: What did you want to know about?

Player Option 1: Tell me about hubs.

Player Option 2: Tell me about waterfalls.

Player Option 3: Tell me about ornithomimids.

[Player selects option 1.]

NPC: Hubs are useful, but they don’t exactly sound natural.

NPC: Have you ever actually played a game with hubs and said, “That was a realistic conversation”?

Player Option 1: Actually, I have.

Player Option 2: Realism isn’t everything.

Player Option 3: Point taken.

[Player selects option 2.]

NPC: I suppose.

NPC: That’s enough of that, though. Did you want to know anything else?

Player Option 1: Tell me about hubs.

Player Option 2: Tell me about waterfalls.

Player Option 3: Tell me about ornithomimids.

A hub structure may hide options from the hub after the Player has selected them in order to prevent the Player from repeating large segments of the conversation, or it may limit the total number of options the Player may choose (ending the conversation after the Player chooses three of four options in the hub) to force the Player to prioritize. Certain branches (spokes) may end the conversation or add new options to the hub. Hubs can even be nested within spokes of other hubs.

Planescape: Torment is a blended game that’s never shy about using large question hubs. (Screenshot generously provided by Jasyla.)

Hubs are useful in situations where the Player may not want to view or hear all the available dialogue, or where making the Player feel in control of an investigation is paramount. At their best, hubs make Players feel clever and in charge, picking and choosing how to approach their subjects in interrogation. At their worst, hubs turn NPCs into information vending machines where the Player feels obligated to punch every button and get each available tidbit of data. Such conversations lose any sort of naturalistic flow; pacing ceases to exist and voice acting becomes implausible as actors veer wildly from one subject to the next.

Waterfall. In a waterfall structure, the Player can never go backward. Response options are never repeated. Instead, the conversation moves forward until it reaches a predefined conclusion (or one of several predefined conclusions). Player choices may branch the conversation and branches may or may not recombine (we’ll get into more details of structure in the next post), but a choice not taken is lost forever.

Waterfall structures lend themselves to more realistic conversations, where Players and NPCs can both give and take control of a conversation’s direction, characters can segue naturally from one topic to the next, and so on. A well-written branching conversation using a waterfall structure can and should read like a well-written linear conversation–no matter what path a Player chooses.

Of course, a writer working with a waterfall structure must take care to ensure that all necessary information is conveyed in every possible path. It’s easy to accidentally “bury” key topics under Player choices that may not get picked. The “must see” elements of the conversation comprise the conversation’s “critical path,” another topic we’ll return to in future posts.

Blends. Many games use a combination of waterfalls and hubs and spokes. Often, games use waterfalls by default and switch to hubs and spokes when the main path of the conversation is complete. The Mass Effect series permits characters to sidetrack from waterfall conversations into an “Investigate” submenu which offers a hub and spoke structure allowing the Player to learn about nonessential pieces of game backstory.

While blends can certainly prove useful, I find that any presence of a hub and spoke structure greatly diminishes the realism offered by a waterfall; the moment the conversation becomes “game-y,” my suspension of disbelief is strained. The more realistic or cinematic the conversation, the worse that strain becomes–when pure text without voiceover glosses over a subject change, it’s less bothersome than when voice acting and facial expressions fail to transition naturally from one topic to the next.

Which isn’t to say that blends shouldn’t ever be used, or shouldn’t be used in highly cinematic games–but they shouldn’t be assumed to offer only the best of both worlds, or have no negative consequences.

Selection Interface and Options

How your Player selects conversation options will influence emotion and immersion as much as your structure and your choice of whether to use voiceover. Below are a few items to grapple with when building your selection interface.

Presentation. On the most basic level, how do you present a response option to the Player? Do you show a menu of dialogue lines, allowing the Player to choose among them? Do you show symbols or short descriptors representing options instead? (A “heart” symbol for a compassionate dialogue choice, or a menu option reading “Angry Dismissal.”) Do you show a shortened or “paraphrased” version of a choice instead of the full, literal line? (The choice “I won’t help you” results in the Player character declaring, “You’ll have to take care of it on your own. I can’t participate in this.”) Do you use a combination (symbols and paraphrases) or “layers” of interface (symbols by default, full text on mouseover)?

For most games, you’ll want a system that lets the Player comprehend the choices available as swiftly as possible. A handful of symbols is faster for a Player to take in than a full menu of dialogue lines–but if the Player can’t intuitively grasp what each symbol means, she may find it time-consuming (and frustrating!) to guess at the writer’s intent.

Dragon Age 2 uses a combination of symbols and paraphrases in a relatively consistent order (“heroic” at the top, “aggressive” down below, special options on the left).

Consider how much control you want the Player to have, and that surprise decreases as control increases. A literal system where full lines are available for a Player’s inspection means a Player isn’t likely to accidentally choose an unintended response (“I thought the heart represented ‘rage’!”), but it also means the Player never sees her character brought to unexpected life. There can be great joy in choosing an “angry” response, then sitting back and seeing your character speak or react angrily in a manner both surprising and appropriate. Consider also the consequences of responses–if every Player choice causes the story to branch wildly, then it’s far more important to give the Player full understanding of the choices she’s making. If Player choices are largely (but not always) “cosmetic,” holding no long-term consequences, Players are more likely to forgive an occasional confusing set of options. (Just make sure they’re crystal clear when it matters!)

Literal menu choices tend to play poorly with Player voiceover–there’s little fun to be had in choosing a line and then hearing a Player character speak that exact line. The Player has already read the line in the character’s “voice” while browsing the menu.

Consider how much consistency you want in your presentation. Do you want options with the same attitude to have the same placement every time options become available? (e.g., the “evil” option always appears at the bottom of the menu, the “heroic” option always appears at the top.) Consistency usually adds to swift comprehension, but there may occasionally be reasons to take other approaches.

Note that consistency needn’t be obvious to be effective. In Star Wars: The Old Republic we arranged response options differently according to the Player’s character class, with the response most suitable to the class’s archetype (a classic Star Wars character) appearing first. The smuggler class always had the most “Han Solo” option appear at the top of the list, letting Players who didn’t care to read through all their options still experience a classic interpretation of the character.

Presentation is an easy area in which to “innovate” (“My game has thought balloons slowly rise out of the Player character’s head, representing how he instinctively wants to reply; the faster the Player clicks on a balloon, the more Confidence Points the character earns!”), but it’s also an easy area in which to go terribly wrong. Try new things–heaven knows we need to keep improving–but don’t be afraid to simplify and fall back on tried-and-true methods after playtesting. Be wary as well of possible intellectual property issues when imitating competitors’ presentation too closely (see, for example, this patent on the Mass Effect dialogue wheel).

Forced Player Lines. Does the Player need to make a choice every time the Player character speaks? Or are choices reserved for key moments, leaving the Player character to often speak “on his own,” whether according to a baseline personality or adjusted for the Player’s previous choices? How much control does the Player really have over the character, and what degree of control does the Player even want?

The more naturalistic you want your conversations to be, the more forced Player lines you’re likely to want to use–real conversations entail a lot of back-and-forth, and if you don’t make the Player character speak on his own, you’ll either end up with weirdly one-sided conversations or distract the Player with dozens of less-than-pivotal response options. And in most cases, Players won’t mind the Player character adding simple conversation “filler” (“Are you Bob#8221; “Keep going.” “What did she say#8221;) or building on the response already chosen (arguing back and forth with an NPC, say, if the Player’s initial chosen response was argumentative).

On the other hand, it’s easy to go overboard and leave Players feeling alienated from their Player characters, lacking true control or frustrated over lines of dialogue that don’t fit the character they’ve envisioned. This is a danger for every single forced line, and one you’ll need to be constantly vigilant of.

For less naturalistic conversations–if you lack voiceover, if you’re using a hub-and-spoke structure, and so on–forced Player lines will probably feel like less of a necessity, but much of the same principle applies. The less the Player character speaks up in a conversation, the less the Player character feels like a genuine, active character with a life, feelings, and opinions of his own and more like a mere interface for the Player herself.

A hub-and-spoke, text-only, no-forced-lines dialogue system can still support a character-focused story, of course. But such a system prioritizes Player agency over strong Player character definition, and the rest of the game and narrative should be designed accordingly.

Number of Options. How many options do you want to give the Player at once? This of course relates to presentation (and, accordingly, user interface design) but should also be examined on its own. The more options you allow the Player, the more control and granularity you allow in regards to Player character approaches and personalities. But every option also slows the Player down and makes the crux of the decision less clear.

Your number of options should reflect the “default” array of personalities available to the Player. We’ll discuss this further in another entry, but picture the major approaches most Players would choose for your game. In a high fantasy game, you might have Player characters who can be broadly stereotyped as noble heroes, brutish thugs, clever and witty rogues, and thoughtful seekers. That being the case, you’ll need a standard number of options large enough to cover those bases–or at least large enough to let the Player to find an option that doesn’t contradict her image of the character at any given time.

Most dialogue-heavy games tend to go with 3-4 options for most Player choices–two choices often feels too limiting and unnuanced, while more than four becomes slow and difficult for the Player to digest. Note that consistency is important here, too: if you train your Player to expect 4-5 responses most of the time, there’s a risk she’ll rebel when you only present two choices for an important moment. (“Why can’t I do X, Y, or Z#8221;) Conversely, if you only offer two choices at a time from the beginning, your Player may simply accept the lack of granular control as the style of the game.

Timers. Putting a time limit on Player responses–that is, forcing the Player to choose a response within X seconds or else leaving the Player character silent / defaulting to a particular Player response–is primarily useful for two reasons. First, it adds tension to a conversation and encourages the Player to react “in the moment” and “in-character” rather than looking for the “best” approach. Second, for conversations with voiceover, it limits the awkward stop-and-start effect of a Player taking time to ponder responses and ruining the natural flow of the dialogue.

The big downside, of course, is that Players may not have enough time to decide what they want to do and may become frustrated. If you do want to use a timer, it’s more important than ever that your response options are clear and distinct (both in nature and in presentation). Don’t let your Player waste precious seconds trying to figure out what her responses mean instead of which she wants to pick!

Interrupts. Do response options only appear when a non-player character stops speaking, or is it possible for the Player to interrupt an NPC? If so, are such interrupts presented differently than “normal” response options? This is a relatively rare mechanic–the Mass Effect franchise tried it in a limited capacity, and it came across largely as an entertaining gimmick–but if implemented successfully could add a much stronger sense of spontaneity into a conversation with voiceover.

Mechanical Aspects. Last but certainly not least: What visible role, if any, do other game systems play in your response options and dialogue?

For example, does the Player character have RPG-style skills? Are certain conversation options “locked out” unless the Player meets certain skill prerequisites? If so, are these options grayed-out if the Player doesn’t meet the prerequisite or are they not shown at all? Are options that require certain attribute thresholds marked differently? (e.g., an option that requires a Science score of 100 has a little beaker icon next to it; Seduction skill-based choices are in a flowery font, as in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines.) Can attempts at attribute-based responses fail, and how is that indicated to the Player? Can the Player adjust or “buff” attributes during a conversation by switching, for instance, to other game screens and interfaces, or must the Player make any adjustments beforehand?

What about options that change Player character statistics? For example, does the Player have a “morality meter” that tracks good and evil choices, fourteen “vice” and “virtue” trackers, or “reputation” scores that judge the Player character’s relationship with individuals and factions? Are options marked to indicate whether they will modify statistics? Do they indicate the modification only after the fact? Or is all modification invisible?

Is the Player given mechanical feedback on an NPC’s attitude while conversing? (For example, Westwood’s Blade Runner adventure game allowed Players to administer a “Voight-Kampff” test, similar to a polygraph.) How is this presented?

Deus Ex: Human Revolution provides extra information on characters that Players can use to find optimal conversation paths. It’s a clever idea, though a bit awkward for my tastes.

Tying mechanics into a dialogue interface can radically alter the way Players approach a game, for better or worse. Done poorly, it can shift the Player’s attention from narrative to numbers. Done well, it can create a sense of consequence and embedded narrative in a way basic dialogue can’t. This isn’t the right place for an in-depth discussion of mechanics in dialogue–doing so would require a larger discussion on the crossover of game systems and narrative–but how you handle this aspect of conversations will greatly impact their integration into your game as a whole. Are your conversations a minigame with narrative consequences but no mechanical impact? Or are your conversations a vital system interlinked with others?

Much of this series assumes a certain “baseline” interface for branching dialogue. Specifically, my default assumption is that your game’s system typically a) plays one or more NPC lines, b) reveals a set of potential choices to the Player, c) allows the Player to make a selection (possibly timed), and d) plays an NPC response. Any “extras” (paraphrases, interrupts, etc.) are embellishments.

But there’s no reason a selection interface has to match that baseline. A system could present nothing but timed interrupt options, letting a conversation flow if no interrupt is selected and never presenting more than one option at a time. A system could allow a Player to move forward and backward through the conversation freely, “fast-forwarding” and “rewinding” and letting the Player simply construct the conversation as she sees fit. Interplay’s Fallout combined a branching conversation system with the ability for the Player to manually enter keywords through a separate interface, eliciting NPC responses otherwise not available before returning to the main course of dialogue.

The more your system diverges from the baseline, the more you’ll need to re-examine traditional interactive conversation writing techniques (including those discussed later). In all likelihood, most of the conventional wisdom will still apply–but some of it won’t, and there will be new lessons to learn. Not a bad thing, really.

Coming Up Next

We forget art and game design and talk practicalities (in a much shorter post!) How do you build a conversation tree without creating an incomprehensible, unmaintainable, uneditable mess? What are the proper tools and best practices? It doesn’t matter how brilliant your writing is if you can’t fix it when things go wrong (or if you need to guide your colleagues through your labyrinthine branches whenever cinematic designers or scripters are deployed).

Video games are bad at handling conversations. Video games are especially bad at handling interactive conversations. There’s a reason most classic games are remembered for their gameplay or atmosphere rather than their dialogue: talking isn’t a strength of the medium.

But dialogue is a powerful and versatile storytelling tool–it characterizes, it builds relationships, it turns subtext into text, it gives rhythm and pacing to scenes, it creates an “index” of key words and phrases to a narrative, it brings drama into quiet moments… and so on. Foregoing dialogue altogether enormously limits the kinds of stories a video game can tell. So we’ve been using it from almost the beginning, despite our better judgment.

Basic non-interactive dialogue is easy. Screens of text or lines of voiceover are simple to deliver. Yet this approach inevitably turns the Player (the person behind the screen, as opposed to the in-game Player character) into a passive consumer of content.

In many cases, this is sufficient–but interactivity is one of the strengths of the medium. Thus, the dream of a truly reactive conversation, where a Player can engage in a compelling back-and-forth with non-player-characters, approaching them in different ways according to the Player’s whims while still producing witty and dramatic lines appropriate to the situation. We’ve been trying to do this almost from the beginning as well. We’ve come up with new tricks over time, but for the most part, games like Mass Effect and The Walking Dead use systems awfully similar to ones pioneered in the 1980s.

A dialogue screen from 1992’s greatest action / adventure / strategy game, Star Control 2.

Branching dialogue trees are clumsy, difficult to write and unrealistic. I’m one of the Players who loves them. I’m a writer who loves them. Because they’re the best we’ve got.

This Blog Series

When I say “difficult to write,” I mean it. We’ll get into more detail below, but writing for video games in general requires training and skills exclusive to the medium; branching dialogue trees are a medium within a medium, and they require a whole additional skillset to master. You can’t write strong branching dialogue without understanding game narrative, and you can’t understand game narrative without practice and experience. I suspect the number of writers in the game industry who can truly produce great work with dialogue trees is less than several dozen.

I’ve spent a lot of time working with dialogue trees–writing them, editing them, and training junior writers to use them. And like I said, I enjoy games with branching dialogue. I like to see them done well. (I like to see them done at all–they’re a relatively rare breed nowadays.)

Maybe this series will help.

My goal is to walk through both high-level considerations–how to design a branching dialogue system, when to use one and for what kinds of games–as well as techniques for actual dialogue writing. By the time I’m done, hopefully we’ll have a solid introductory manual to this weird, weird art.

At the moment, my plan is to break the series into five parts, as follows:

Part 1: You’re reading it now. We define “branching dialogue,” list reasons to use or not use it in a game, and discuss major pitfalls.

Part 2: The basics of designing a branching dialogue system, from interface to the choice of voiceover vs. text to integration of non-conversational game mechanics.

Part 3: Fundamentals of structure–how to build a dialogue tree that’s easy to understand and easy to maintain.

Part 4: High-level principles of branching dialogue writing. e.g., keeping scenes Player-focused, making choices “matter,” and handling Players disinterested in narrative.

Part 5: Tips for handling branching dialogue on a line-by-line level–differentiating Player responses, maintaining voiceover flow across branches, etc.

I encourage readers to post questions and comments over at Gamasutra or e-mail me directly. If there’s enough dense discussion material, I may add a sixth part to cover new topics.

Baldur’s Gate 2, from 2000–eight years later, but very similar. (This is the “enhanced edition” update.)

One thing I won’t cover is dialogue writing tips that generally hold true across multiple media. Differentiating character voices, keeping a scene moving briskly, writing for actors vs. writing for the page… these are important topics, but they’re covered in hundreds of other “how to” guides for fiction writing. Our focus is exclusively on interactive media.

Definitions and Examples

What do I mean when I refer to a “branching conversation” or “branching dialogue tree”? I mean a system where a Player character and one or more non-player characters engage in a simulated conversation in which:

a) The NPC says something.

b) The Player is presented with a limited set of options indicating ways to respond.

c) If the Player’s chosen response is not a literal line of dialogue (e.g., if the Player selects from a set of symbols), the literal result is displayed after the response is chosen. If the response options displayed are lines of dialogue already, we can skip this step.

d) The NPC replies according to the Player’s chosen response. (The conversation “branches” according to the Player’s decision.)

e) The Player is presented with a new set of response options distinct from the previous set. (Response options may be repeated in certain cases.)

There are many variations and different levels of complexity that can be involved, but that’s the core loop that defines a branching dialogue tree. While a proper history is outside the scope of this post (maybe another time–and if you’ve got examples of more pre-1990 games with conversation trees, please get in touch!), a few games that use such a system include:

• Space Rogue, Origin Systems, 1989
• The Secret of Monkey Island, Lucasfilm Games, 1990
• Star Control 2, Toys for Bob, 1992
• Wing Commander III, Origin Systems, 1994
• Fallout, Interplay Entertainment, 1997
• The Longest Journey, Funcom, 1999
• Deus Ex, Ion Storm, 2000
• Knights of the Old Republic, BioWare, 2003
• The Witcher, CD Projekt RED, 2007
• Alpha Protocol, Obsidian Entertainment, 2010
• The Walking Dead, Telltale Games, 2012
• The Banner Saga, Stoic, 2014

These games tend to be categorized as role-playing games or adventure games, or at least action or strategy games with RPG “elements” (Wing Commander III, generally considered a “pure” space combat game, is the major exception on this list). Note that many of these games were critically acclaimed at the time of publication and remain fondly remembered for their narrative. Games with conversation trees have staying power.

Why To Use Branching Dialogue Trees

What sorts of games and game narratives benefit from using a branching dialogue system? Generally speaking, branching dialogue trees benefit:

Character Emphasis. Any dialogue-heavy game allows the opportunity for extensive character development, of course, but interactive dialogue increases a Player’s engagement with the text; it forces a Player to think deeply about NPC interaction and makes understanding NPC and Player character personalities a part of gameplay.

The Walking Dead, Season 2, from 2014. The protagonist–a young girl–is predefined to an extent, but the Player can shape her personality, if not her background.

Player Character Customization. By allowing a Player character to speak according to the Player’s choices, a branching dialogue system allows unparalled agency and ownership of Player characters by Players. Players tend to feel more attached to and interested in the game’s protagonist.

Branching Narratives. Branching dialogue allows for a clear and simple means of branching a game’s overall storyline. If you’ve already decided to use a branching narrative, adding branching dialogue is a logical next step. (The same is true in reverse, as well.)

Complex Storylines. By focusing the Player’s attention and putting the Player in charge of learning about the setting and interrogating NPCs, a branching dialogue system supports complex, detail-driven plotlines. Uncovering the storyline becomes part of the gameplay rather than simply the result of gameplay, and the Player can absorb new information at her own pace. (This is, of course, the classic argument for hands-on learning over classroom lectures.)

Why Not To Use Branching Dialogue Trees

On the other hand, there are some games where a branching dialogue system is a poor fit. Generally speaking, branching dialogue trees don’t match with:

Predefined Player Characters. Does the Player character have a clearly and narrowly defined personality? Is the Player character intended to experience a specific emotional arc (e.g., a redemption story)? Branching dialogue puts enormous control in the hands of the Player to define the protagonist, and while Player options can be limited under a branching dialogue system (it’s possible to create a game with branching dialogue in which, in all branches, the Player is funny or patriotic or what-have-you) the options can’t be nonexistent.

Some traditional, puzzle-oriented adventure games allow no Player control of the Player character’s “inner life” or personality while still using branching dialogue; in these cases, the branching dialogue is typically focused on puzzle-solving and information-gathering rather than character development. Branching dialogue trees as puzzles is something I won’t discuss much in this series, but the approach is worth remembering.

Predefined Storyline and Quests. If a Player’s dialogue choices have no impact on the larger storyline and gameplay sequences outside of conversation, the result may be a letdown. Branching dialogue is best matched with a narrative that supports multiple stories and outcomes.

Pure Gameplay Focus. While branching conversation sequences don’t need to be lengthy and can match fast-paced gameplay, they can distract a Player from the flow of other elements. Branching dialogue might add narrative interest to Tetris, but it would probably detract from the overall feel.

Perils and Pitfalls

Suppose your game is a strong match for a branching conversation system. There are still a number of factors to consider before proceeding.

High Level of Skill Required. As previously emphasized, branching dialogue is very difficult to write well. If your team isn’t familiar with the medium, you may run into a number of unexpected problems and end up with a suboptimal result.

Tool Requirements. Good branching dialogue requires a dedicated tool to write and additional tools for implementation by audio, cinematics, and other departments. Microsoft Word or Excel won’t cut it. A few commercial toolsets are available but may not be appropriate for your needs. Be sure you have adequate programming support! We’ll talk a little more about available and example tools in a later post.

Instructions on “Preparing a dialog for recording” in the Dragon Age toolset from the official toolset wiki. Branching makes no one’s life easier.

Expense. Aside from tool programming and writing costs, consider the additional expense of implementing branches (whether done by a writer, programmer, or scripter), testing branching content, and any voiceover costs. Cinematics can become substantially more time-consuming to develop. Analyze the expense of branching dialogue to every department before moving forward.

Alternative Systems

While there are far too many potential alternative conversation systems to list here, a few common ones follow.

Non-Interactive Dialogue. Pure non-interactive dialogue–conveyed through text, cutscenes and voiceover, or another means–is implemented in most modern games. As a system, it’s unspectacular, and still requires a thorough understanding of techniques unique to game narrative. It can nonetheless be engaging and entertaining when used correctly.

Simple Choice. Rather than full branching dialogue trees, games that offer a “simple choice” present multiple options for how to approach a conversation upfront (e.g., “Threaten” or “Diplomacy”), then show the result. This type of dialogue is often seen in strategy games or role-playing games without much emphasis on story. It allows a degree of Player control and works well for scenarios where the entire conversation doesn’t need to be heard or shown word-for-word (allowing the conversation to be summed up in narration).

Simple Hub. A simple conversation hub allows a Player to choose from a list of topics (often questions) and provides a different NPC response to each. However, the conversation does not branch or present “layers” of additional responses–often, the optimal way for a Player to use a simple hub is to choose each topic in sequence until every one has been exhausted. Depending on how new topics are added (through interactions with other NPCs, entering topics manually via keyboard), a simple hub can give the Player a sense of thoroughly investigating a subject or a mystery.

Coming Up Next

We talk about designing your branching dialogue system and what’s appropriate for your game. Topics will include voiceover, interface, and “waterfalls” vs. “hubs.” (If you’re eager to get to the nitty-gritty of dialogue writing, all I can do is urge patience. We’ll get there…)