Figured somebody here would get a kick out of this

[A Black Falcon]

They're not quite that bad, but the first was "Alien monsters get loose and you have to kill them, with a twist at the end", but the second was somewhat better. In HL2 you have a corrupt government working with the aliens and an underground resistance figthing them. Yeah, not the best stories ever, but they worked for what they game was trying to do.

OB1 is a serial exaggerator, remember... that just means 'they aren't original' really, I'd say.

Those are good examples. A bad example is having a lot of choices but you can just say whatever you want in whatever order with whatever followup response with no effect at all. However, if that NPC is revealing THAT much information, at the very least it's good that you can choose to only have to go through the info heading you want instead of having to click through a whole lot of info you didn't want on top of it.

The main problem with having a list of choices is that it often can make the conversation sound less natural (as you say, letting you say things in any order -- it's the standard way of operation in games with conversation trees and I'd just say that you get used to it... and as you also say it lets you choose what you want to hear as opposed to being forced through a scripted sequence, so I'd call it an improvement in most cases.).

*player walks up to vendor and clicks on them*

'Hello' :You greet the fruit seller:

"Hello there! Want to buy some of my fruits?"

'Fruit' :You ask what kinds of fruit he has for sale:

"I have many kinds of fruit for sale, including oranges, apples, and peaches."

'Apples' :You ask about the apples:

"The apples are nice and fresh, and cost 10 coppers."

*back to main menu*

'about you' :You ask the fruit seller about himself:

"I am Fred the fruit seller. Pleased to meet you."

'fruit' :You ask what kinds of fruit he has for sale:

"I have many kinds of fruit for sale, including oranges, apples, and peaches."

(etc... done in the style of Quest for Glory (that is, the player character doesn't actually speak, you choose words from a list and then it says a summary of what you said and the person responds. In other games, like Wizards & Warriors, there is just a response to the verb and not even a summary of what your character said...). :))

Now, this isn't always like this. It is in adventure games, but sometimes RPGs are different... Baldur's Gate, for instance, didn't feel quite like that. It phrased your choices in the form of sentences, for instance. :) (though I think I understand why it was done that way. Think about it... if what the player character says is not directly stated, you have to make it up in your head. This means that the character is more YOU and less what the programmer wanted that character to sound like... so in games like W&W or QFG where the goal is to make the player character(s) representations of the player, this approach makes complete sense; in a game with well-defined characters like most adventure games it wouldn't work.) It also had many fewer options to choose from, when compared to an adventure game... that's obviously because an adventure has conversation as a major aspect of gameplay while in most RPGs the main gameplay is the combat, not the talking, so there's less to talk about and when you are talking it's more scripted... but at its core BG uses that same system, just with more linearity in discussions (as opposed to a list you go through one item at a time, they tell you things and perhaps you can make choices along the way -- with a short list of topics at some point, but nothing like when it's done the other way).

I guess that in that regards over the past years PC RPGs have tried to be more like console RPGs. Why do I say that? If I look at old PC RPGs, you generally see very weak stories that are exuses to, as the saying goes, 'kill the foozle', and the player characters aren't really developed. They are what you want them to be. So if they speak with NPCs it's often just in the form of receiving a reply or in the form of speaking with a list of verbs (or verbs you type in, sometimes!). As the genre has developed story has become much more important and so has characterizing the main character as more than just a unclear representation of the character... yes, you usually can create a character, but if you compare Baldur's Gate to Wizardry VI, for instance... in BG you create a character, but then choose from a list of possible sentences to reply to things with. This allows for a lot more narrative depth in the conversations and elements like moral decisions that impact the game, in some ways increasing the sense that you are really this person... but it tells you what you're saying, on the other hand, so you can't say what you want exactly (even if you know that all the other person will do is look for the keywords in your response)... what BG does is probably the better system, when compared to Wiz VI, but I really like QFG's system... especially the one in QFGII-IV. That is really well developed and complex... I'd use that a a model for a conversation system for any game which is trying to create the sense that you really are your character as opposed to you fitting your character into what the game designers can think of as potential replies.

Anyway, PC RPGs slowly have changed, for the most part, from 'story as an excuse for gameplay' to 'story as an integral part of gameplay'... not in every case, of course, but to a large extent it's true even in the more open-ended titles. Is that an improvement? Yeah, mostly, but there is something to be said for a simple oldschool title sometimes as well...

In a game with any other story, dialog options I do believe are always nice when done right. For example, Zelda, starting with LTTP, made a habbit out of fake choices. OOT had the worst offenses . You know, things like "Do you have that shining stone?". You are given the choice, while staring into that hopeful shining face , of saying yes or no. Now, if you answer no, she just basically repeats herself until you say yes. That's not a REAL choice. A real conversation option would have had special consequences based on what you select. Selecting "No" could have led to a different story thing taking place. Instead of Impa showing up and escorting you out, for example, Zelda could have kept talking to you about Ganondorf, not really revealing much new info, but during it you are led, oh I dunno, into the castle through some secret passage. Selecting "no" gets you a nice secret passage, while selecting "yes" gets you another secret passage out of the castle. A REAL choice with real consequences. Also, with things like that, some serious replay value.

That kind of conversation "choice" is pointless... saying no has no worth, so why ever bother? It's just a way to let you not progress in the game yet if you don't want, not true interactivity in conversation, obviously. Zelda games usually don't have enough conversation to warrant converation trees, though, as with most console RPGs... oh, there often is lots of conversation, but it's not done like PC RPG conversations are so I don't know how well that structure would work... for a Zelda you'd need more speech to make it worth it, probably.

Oh, how about a good example of a console RPG that DOES have choice: Tales of Symphonia! Sure, the choices are somewhat rare, but they have a real effect on the progress of the game and what happens... I wish more Japanese RPGs (or Zelda games, I'd think that that kind of choice system would work well in a Zelda game) would do things like that. :)

Now, beforehand the NPC tells you they can only tell you a little and after that they have to go or risk getting caught.

Hmm... if it's just a 'I have fifteen options but after you click on four I leave and you can't read the others unless you reload and choose different ones', like Bioware does sometimes, it's just annoying and unwanted. But if it's 'what you choose from this list will have an effect on how you progress through this game (or how other characters will interact with you in the future)', then it's great and goes a long way to improving the game if implemented fully and well...

Ya know, I see what you mean ABF. Actually, thinking a little further, I think I idolized the whole conversation method in MGS2 a bit much, that is, the lack of control of anything except IF you talk. Conversation options are always nice, and honestly that COULD have been done in MGS2 now that I think about it. The end results of the conversation options would need to end in pretty much the same way, that is, the person you are talking to can't be controlled via conversation in any way. As for cinemas, I mentioned this before but I'm seeing more places where it would work in MGS2, being able to control the main character at least a lot more in those would be nice. That is, when Snake is escaping the sinking ship, I should be the one doing the escaping.

It's not much, but anything is better interactivity-wise than simply staring at the screen for 20 minuites at a time... implementing more interactive cutscenes and conversations would almost certainly also reduce people's complaints about how non-interactive the game is, so it seems like it'd be good all around...