Can't We Just Talk About This?

I am a coward. I don't much care for violence, and I have never been in a fight. Though, to be honest, I'm rather proud that I have never engaged in fisticuffs. In so many video games today, violence seems to be the only viable option for resolving conflict, so when a game comes along that gives me an option to talk my way out of a hairy situation, it's a nice change of pace.

Games like Mass Effect and Fallout have options to avoid confrontations through specific dialogue options. I always tend to pick these over the direct approach of fighting. I love the feeling of being a silver tongued badass. Plus, it saves me on health and resources. The thing with talking your way out of sticky situations, is that it never seems to nab you as much as experience points as it would if one had gone with the "kill everyone" route. Which to me, sends a rather negative message about talking your way out of things and coming to a peaceful solutions? What is a game that does this trying to say about peaceful solutions?

Anyhow, another thing that bothers me about these snake oil salesman options, is me. I never really pay attention to what it is exactly that I, or rather my character, is saying during all of this nonsense. Reason being, is that these options are highlighted with some kind of annotation denoting the effectiveness of what the dialogue option. Rather than reading what it says, my eyes are drawn to the [SPEECH 60] next to whatever dialogue option that I chose. In Mass Effect's case, there are several options throughout the games that are highlighted either red or blue. The text is so small in the first place that I can't even decipher what it was that I said. All I know is that it will get the job done in either a paragon or renegade fashion. Half the time, I don't even remember what it was that good old Commander Shepard said, other than I was left with a small sense of awe and the wish that I could be that cool.

I think that players should really consider what it is that they are saying. Older Bioware games that I've played, such as KOTOR or Dragon Age: Origins, allow for such contemplation. Both of these games present players with many dialogue options, other than just "paragon" or "renegade", because, often in life there is a lot that can be said. I have very fond, or rather stressful, memories playing these games and trying to decide what I could say that would be the best option. What I would say, would ultimately end up deciding the fate of whatever character I was interacting with. The decision came down to me. I felt the gravitas of the situation, and it was crashing me. This is what a game should do, if you're going to have dialogue options. I shouldn't just tilt the control stick up or down as a default to decide between good or bad, morality isn't that binary.

The principle of "think before you speak" should really be encouraged in video games like these. Players should have multiple options and should go over each of them carefully. It's a lot of responsibility being the hero, and what you say matters. I love Mass Effect, but I never stress about what decisions that I make. Sure, my squad-mates could live or die depending on my decisions. However, those decisions only come down to how many points I put into a certain skill bar, and that's only in the first game. The rest of the Mass Effect series streamlines the whole "paragon vs. renegade" system by keeping track of what dialogue choices the player makes. Again, morality is not so binary as to be either good or bad. It is by default in Mass Effect that if I want to be good, I'll choose the top option and the opposite for being the bad guy. I understand that there is a lot of work that goes into both writing, and recording voice acting, but the payoff is so worth it.