Half-Dialog

Dialog in video games is an awkward issue. One day, voice recognition and artificial intelligence will be advanced enough that you'll be able to just turn to any character and start a conversation, and they'll respond intelligently. But until then, the game designers have to do something to cover for the fact that language - one of the defining aspects of the human experience - is missing. There are a few ways to do this:

• If the game is a dumb-enough violence-fest, they can ignore it entirely.
• They can concoct a setting where the player gets all their info in one way communications, like e-mail or recordings. Say, you're the lone cop fighting your way into the criminal's compound, Die Hard style. That's a neat solution, but it may require a really contrived plot.
• Have the player character say certain fixed lines. That can make the game seem more complete, since your character talks to others like a real person, but it can be frustrating if the character acts in obviously bad ways.
• Give the player a small menu of possible things to say. That gives the player more of a feeling of participation, but it still doesn't seem like a real conversation.

But there is another way: have other characters talk to the player, but not give the player a chance to respond. If the other characters give all the info the player needs, and never call attention to the fact the player is not talking, this approach can work.

That's the system used in the popular Half-life games. Main character Gordon Freeman never says a word. Others talk to him, but never seem to notice that Freeman himself stays silent. Well, there is one quick joke early in Half-life 2, when another character notes that he doesn't say much. It's a funny, self-deprecating joke from the developers, but it would have been better at the end of the game, so that you don't spend the whole game noticing how weird it is that everyone is talking to you without expecting any response.

The lack of speech would be easier to believe if your character were some underling that gets commands from more important people, without a chance for input. But Gordon Freeman is a physicist-turned-action-hero. Surely everyone would want to talk to him wherever he goes.

I suspect a lot of players don't really worry about this problem of game realism, since many of them try to break out of the story's reality anyway. In his book, Designing Games, Tynan Sylvester describes what he calls "desk jumping." It's when a player does something out of the ordinary in a game just because they can. For instance, you could jump on your commanding officer's desk while he's giving you your next assignment, just to see if he's been programmed to notice. I generally don't do this, and instead play my part: I want to get my money's worth out of the experience. So I've done what I can to try to make Half-life's conversations seem more natural. Unfortunately, that's usually limited to nodding or shaking my head in response to what others say, since that's the only way I can feel like I'm an active participant.

But it's occurred to me that Gordon Freeman has my ideal situation. As a person who is introverted but not antisocial, my dream is to have people care about me and pay attention to me, yet not require me to talk or start any conversation. I'd love to be in his place, even if I had to single-handedly repel an alien invasion to get there.