Aerothorn on 5/8/2010 at 02:14
Hey - I'm currently writing a little essay on System Shock and am trying to find a quote for it. I remember either Doug Church or Warren Spector saying in a book or interview that System Shock's "log system" emerged out of their desire to improve the dialog tree. Namely, that they couldn't figure out how to make it better and decided to omit it altogether. But I can't for the life of me find the source of this quote. Anyone know where this was said (if it was said at all and I'm not just going crazy)?
Enchantermon on 5/8/2010 at 02:48
I don't remember this particular quote, although Levine threw out a negative thought about dialog trees in (
http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3153215) a 1up article. Not the same thing, but maybe it'll help.
Al_B on 5/8/2010 at 06:54
Is (
http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/?p=676) this article the one you were thinking of?
Quote:
Decision number 1: Delete our conversation system. We don’t like the fact our conversation system was less interactive and player driven, so we figured we’d guess rid of them. That’s the difference between Underworld and Shock.
Aerothorn on 6/8/2010 at 20:21
Not the exact one I remember (which, again, may never have existed!) but good enough for the book! Thanks much!
Al_B on 6/8/2010 at 21:16
Quote Posted by Aerothorn
a little essay
Quote Posted by Aerothorn
the book
Glad to help - but it sounds like you might need to reduce your word count a little! :)
Enchantermon on 7/8/2010 at 03:47
The essay on System Shock is a small part of a larger work. There's a thread about this endeavor floating around somewhere.
Aerothorn on 8/8/2010 at 00:01
Thanks! Yeah, Enchantermon got it on the nose. I'll probably post the thing for massive TTLG criticism at some point, but it won't be ready for that till May or so. Folks will probably be disappointed in my lack of a fully through examination of everything System Shock, but when you're doing 15 other games (and writing for a mass audience) you can only do so much.
Al_B on 8/8/2010 at 10:36
Quote Posted by Enchantermon
There's a thread about this endeavor floating around somewhere.
Ah, yes - I was just having a dig at the choice of words. If it's (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=132053) this one (and (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=132584) this one) then looking forward to seeing it if it gets posted.
Glad you finally tracked it down, Aero. One thing that he doesn't seem to bring up with regards to choice based conversations is how it allows the choices presented to be tailored to the character being played. The best example of the top of my head is the way that choices are changed or made available based on the intelligence of your character in Fallout and also Planescape: Torment (two other games on your list). In Warren's "voice recognition, natural language processors, basic knowledge databases, and speech synthesis" ideal system, I can't see how this would be implemented without frustrating the player.
Kolya on 8/8/2010 at 12:16
"I want wine."
"You're sad?"
"No, WINE!"
"Tissue?"
