CREATING ROLE-PLAY FRIENDLY DIALOGUE?

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I brainstormed a two ideas for making dialogue that fits in with the personalities of customized player characters, but I feel that a lot of problems might arise from a writing and gameplay standpoint.

1) Player dialogue is all dependent on their character's personality scores. The personality of a character can be established in a tutorial level through a handful of dialogue options or actions made by the player. After the tutorial level, the scores can be readjusted to the player's liking if they are unhappy with the results. After this, all dialogue options made by the player fit in with their personality type. After talking to an NPC, they will have unique responses and dispositions towards players based on their personality. For example, a villager will avoid talking to the player if they are generally threatening.
The problem with this idea is that it can be quite restrictive. Players may want to demonstrate character progression through changes in their personality. Which brings me to idea 2.

2) Similar to the first idea, personality type is established in the tutorial but is subject to change throughout the course of the game. Again, personality is determined using a point-based system. Some dialogue options and actions will cause subtle changes to personality scores (for example, an evil player who saves a dog and reassures it will get a +2 in kindness and a -1 in 'evilness'). Dialogue options may be subtly written to show a progressing change in personality.
I find that this idea will allow for more flexibility but it seems impractical and very time extensive. I think that showing a gradual change in personality type may result in many dialogue branches, especially if I want to show a slow change in personality for every player. Another problem is pacing the character progression of the player in a fun yet immersive way. What if their player wants their character to go through a greater change in personality after saving that dog?

So is it worth using these ideas or should I just stick to using neutral dialogue? I personally like these ideas but I'm unsure if players would find it annoying or unnecessary.
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
TBH you're unlikely to be able to make allowances for all the variations people will think up. True character roleplaying is probably not attainable outside of actual person-to-person interaction, and there's no way for a developer to predict for it.

There's also the fact that, by slotting the PC into a premade story, you necessarily have to force them to act a certain way and make certain choices, which takes away all the point of roleplaying. Given that character choice is what really drives a story, this ends up making basically one character with just different coats of paint. (And IME they're never the paint that I want to give the character.)

Some of my most fun roleplaying experiences in video games have been in the silent protagonist games like Pokemon and the early Zeldas: minimal writing, which leaves me free to come up with my own character dialog in my head, and a fair amount of freedom in how I choose to operate in the world. The character choice is represented more by game mechanics than by writing, which gives control of the character to the player. (Granted, it still limits choice in terms of, say, I can't choose to join Team Rocket and become the Pokemon World Overlord.)

I think for video games in general, if you really want to do writing, then don't bother giving the player much say in the characterization, and just give them a plot and characters they want to see more of. There are some unique options for storytelling in video games; trying to copy what happens when you get a bunch of humans together around a table isn't playing to the medium's strengths at all. A video game is putting a player in a predesigned corridor and letting them go hog wild messing with what you've set up: you have no way of altering the corridor in response to the player's choice, you can only find ways to keep them interested in the path(s) you set up for them.
I suppose that's true. It would be restrictive to implement these features. I suppose using neutral dialogue would be a better option then.
That said, it might be a better idea to make NPCs interact with players based on what quests the player has completed.
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
Yeah, that sounds like a much better option in terms of facilitating roleplay, in that it gives a feeling that one's actions have impact on the world.
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