Story and Games

[A Black Falcon]

No, what you described has very little to do with what DJ said. She said that it would be cool if you could control your expressions, as in facial expressions, on the spot during a cinema.

Words and images are just different ways of expressing the same thing, OB1. Yes, it's somewhat different, but it's closely related.

Well I do see where ABF is coming from. It is sort of the same overall concept, just a different expression of it, different enough that they could list it as a feature on the box probably, heh, I made a pun .

In Dreamfall, Tornquist has talked a lot about how the player should almost always have control over the character -- so not long cinema scenes but ones where you have choices. The main example used is this part where you try to hide from some police (in an apartment)... you get the choice to try to hide several different ways, and the scene plays out differently based on what you choose. It also has storyline implications -- not on what happens in the end, but on what you learn (one choice gets you a bit more story). Now, this isn't exactly what you said. It's more like what you'd find in PC RPGs like Torment, where your choices in conversations decide how much story you learn and some details of how it plays out without affecting the ultimate ending...

I'm not sure how your idea would work. How do you choose facial expressions in the middle of a cutscene? Does it stop for a dialogue box in the middle? A bit awkward, if it happened all the time... controls (like something pops up and you press a direction)? That'd give me bad memories of FMV games... :) And would it affect the story?

Really, it kind of sounds like dialogue-replacement... expressions instead of words. I'd rather see both words and expressions (you choose a reply and you get appropriate facial expressions to go with it)... well, except for possibly a Zelda game, where Link never speaks and expressions are all you have to go by. :)