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[crackajack]

Much like graphics options and dificulty levels, they could allow adjusting levels of storytelling intensity. Options are never bad, allowing the user to experience it however they want and a dev should have the vision to make all possibilities vaguely similarly enjoyable. Some games are built around story, skipping there everything would be a bit weird, but any gamey game, probably is alright without stories and could allow players to just ignore those.
The other way around a game like Detroit could remove all user inputs and you just choose one of a couple options in the very beginning, just deciding what kind of movie, basically which end, you want to watch, might also make sense and find a new audience. Especially women seem to be invested in crime stuff on TV without it being in an interactive medium, so might work for them.

 

[Mediocre Arachno-Lad]

I find this topic quite sad, some of you can't even stay engage for 4 lines of dialogues... Smartphones are ruining everyone's brain

Uh-huh, so smartphones are popular, most people have short attention span, and the most mainstream games have little to no dialogue to serve that audience, like Call Of Duty, GTA, God Of War... Oh wait...
Nah, you got it all backwards.
4 lines of pointless dialogue ARE there to keep your tiktok brain engaged.
The suits seem to believe that gameplay won't hold your attention by itself, so they'll assault your senses 24/7.

 

[SoloCamo]

Main reason I stop playing games, Atomic Heart comes to mind real fast.

 

[Zheph]

Uh-huh, so smartphones are popular, most people have short attention span, and the most mainstream games have little to no dialogue to serve that audience, like Call Of Duty, GTA, God Of War... Oh wait...
Nah, you got it all backwards.
4 lines of pointless dialogue ARE there to keep your tiktok brain engaged.
The suits seem to believe that gameplay won't hold your attention by itself, so they'll assault your senses 24/7.

Maybe I do, a lot of games are culprit of that (I have played Midnight Suns and it was indeed bloated in that deparment) so I am not denying that but it doesn't change the fact that our attention span is not as long as it used to be

 

[StueyDuck]

Main reason I stop playing games, Atomic Heart comes to mind real fast.

Yeah atomic heart was pretty aggressive with its constant blabbering... I didn't even make to the point where it becomes kind of open world

 

[Portugeezer]

Kojima makes up for dialogue with an incredible level of cinematography, which is a skill that more story-based game developers should look further into.

The base-level test in this is ‘how do you make two characters who are simply talking to each other, look and feel more engaging’.

Hell, there are still scenes in high profile games of 2023 and 2024 that can’t even hold a candle to the MGS3 intro scene.

Yeah but sometimes you want to chill for an hour before bed, play your game, but end up watching 30 mins of cutscenes.

 

[Valonquar]

Early on in FFVII Rebirth, there's a part in the Nibelhiem flashback when you walk into the inn... and like 30 NPCs all shit out dialog at once and the left side of the screen fills with text.

Fortnite Save the World Ray absolutely never shuts the fuck up ever.

 

[thefool]

Yes brother.
If i want a good story, i'll read a book or watch a film. It's all about gameplay.

 

[LordOfChaos]

There's definitely too much boring exposition explosions at times. In early Death Stranding there's an annoying ass tone phone call every few seconds at times.

One of the shops in Splatoon 1 had an insanely long dialogue tree if you hadn't gone to it regularly, I was in awe of how much time they thought it was ok to waste with it, and you had to keep pressing the right button to get through or risk cancelling it iirc, with no auto progress either. Sheldon I think.

 

[March Climber]

Yeah but sometimes you want to chill for an hour before bed, play your game, but end up watching 30 mins of cutscenes.

Then play a different game. I also wouldn’t recommend someone start the movie Dune or Blade Runner 2049 right before bed.

 

[zeroluck]

Either do proper story telling through gameplay or just make a god damn movie and cut the video into pieces and sprinkle into the game plus a skip button. All these uncanny valley at best cutscenes are breaking immersion.

 

[hemo memo]

That’s a long post about a topic of talking too much.

 

[Mossybrew]

I don't mind cutscenes, they are usually skippable, they are a break from the action, fine.

It's when fuckers won't shut up during the gameplay that I get really irritated. Whether it's your character talking to themselves, some other character talking to you constantly on "comms", idle banter between party members/companions, or repetitive combat barks during combat (I'm looking at you JARPGs) this shit gets REALLY old fast.

 

[March Climber]

That’s a long post about a topic of talking too much.

The difference is that the OP is not going off on a side tangent regarding what he ate for breakfast this morning, like a journalist would do if they brought up this topic and needed to meet a word quota.

 

[hemo memo]

The difference is that the OP is not going off on a side tangent regarding what he ate for breakfast this morning, like a journalist would do if they brought up this topic and needed to meet a word quota.

I was joking and yeah I agree. I don’t know if it’s the age or what, but when I was young cutscenes were like a reward. Now I just want the story to be told through gameplay. Not tell the story through item descriptions though, just meaningful cutscenes.

 

[Arsic]

Well told stories and cut scenes are not a problem to listen to. However even the best games you can see yourself skipping dialogue if it hits you over the head with it repeatedly.

Some exceptions are like Kojima games. We don’t skip shit here.

 

[hemo memo]

Well told stories and cut scenes are not a problem to listen to. However even the best games you can see yourself skipping dialogue if it hits you over the head with it repeatedly.

Some exceptions are like Kojima games. We don’t skip shit here.

I did with 4 though to be honest.

 

[Arsic]

I did with 4 though to be honest.

 

[FeralEcho]

I mean,I agree to some extent,I feel like most developers think the players are retarded and feel the need to constantly overnarrate things because gamers are "too stupidz".

You only have to look at God of War Ragnarok and the 5 seconds it takes Atreus to spill the beans on a puzzle without even giving you enough time to think about it.

But then the same devs that think you are too stupid to solve a simple puzzle apparently changed their mind in the middle of the cutscenes where you're supposed to understand the difficult nature of Kratos' struggle with himself by him not saying a single word and only grunting and sighing for 5 mins because it's so pretentious and deep

So make up your fucking mind already devs,are we too stupid or not,cuz you seem conflicted...

 

[SoloCamo]

While voice acting can be done right (few and far between though) I often prefer text for most of it, with voices used more for greetings / goodbyes, intro to basic boss fights or main characters, etc. Morrowind nailed this to me aside from the lack of variety of voices.

 

[Fbh]

I don't mind characters talking as I'm exploring or fighting. (though I do find it annoying how some JRPGs love having their characters go on a monologue mid fight).

What I'm increasingly bothered by are these story heavy sequences where you do nothing but listen to characters talk, like all these forced walking sequences, or these very scripted sequences which are about story and it feels like you are barley doing anything: like half of Uncharted 4, or the boring aquarium flashbacks in TLOU2, or every Atreus part in Ragnarok.
I'm also not a fan of games wanting me to periodically go back to some home base and talk to half a dozen characters (it's cool if it's optional though).

 

[Windom Earle]

I hate listening to stories so much I almost want a tl:dr about the original post above mine.

But, this was me with Metro Exodus. I just wanted to shoot cool shit and it was non-stop talking and standing around. Unbelievably boring. I tapped out in 10 minutes.

Metro Exodus was stupid in that regard, good example.

 

[WorldHero]

Horizon Forbidden West for sure. Everything was bloated in that game including the dialogue.

 

[Humdinger]

You got about 50 likes on this, so it's clear a lot of people feel this way. I'm certainly one of them. I think of Horizon Forbidden West, for example. At points, all the dialog was exhausting. I was thinking, "Shut the hell up already."

It would be different if the dialog were good -- like Elmore Leonard good, sharp and punchy. But it isn't. The dialog is typically boring, expository, weak.

I think one reason they add so much talk is to pad out the game's length. They don't want to end up with a game that it "too short" to warrant a $70 price tag. So they pad it out with overly long cutscenes full of this stuff. It's easier and cheaper than designing interesting, taut gameplay.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

I swear in Xenoblade 2 and 3, every single action scene has a part where everybody stops and stands there with weapons drawn for 20 minutes of dialog. The good guys will discuss their strategy at length, bad guys will give their speeches, maybe a flashback sequence or 3.

Xenoblade 3 has at least 3 villain battles like this, where they have a conversation like:

Good guys: “why? Why did you betray us and try to murder a whole town?”

Villain: “you want to know why? Because I’m jealous, that’s why. Everyone likes you guys, nobody likes me. You guys are good at everything, I suck at everything. I’m just a no good loser who can’t do anything right.”

[beat the ever loving shit out of the villain]

Good guys: “no, that’s not true! We like you! Don’t die!! NOOOOOOOOO!”

Spoiler

Shania, Jorah, and that nopon asshole who builds the killer robot are the 3 I’m thinking of, although there are probably more