i really liked how in fallout 1 you can ONLY talk the master down if you have gathered the necessary information. just rising some arbitrary stat is the wrong way to go. it has to be improved and expanded.

Toolkit selects an action. Toolkit select the *Joke* option. *[Joke 20]* Became a silver-tounged diplomat that use words. Not SWORDS. *[ Joke attempt failed, not enough pun or sense of humor level ]*

"those who have challenges with social skills, like gamers [...]"

They should be called "talk em ups"

The biggest problem I have with dialogue based games is that they are often just a series of questions with multiple choice. It's literally just taking an exam. The player can't plan ahead, they can only react to the NPC one question at a time. Only Ace Attorney and L.A Noir really engages me in that, I have to pick up information, chooses what questions to ask. It's much more pro-active, giving the player a sense of control. Only then, a player feels like they are playing a game instead of being played by the game.

The problem is that dialogue almost always ends up as basically a trial-and-error system where you have to pick the exact option that the developers intended you to pick, or fail. You have to navigate the tree to find the one path through all the options to get to the win condition. I think it's more interesting when each of the options are viable for a different reason and lead to a different outcome that you might want to choose, rather than just having right and wrong answers.

5:54 “Wouldn’t it be more fun...” (CONTENT WARNING Suicide)

Disco Elysian is a great example of dialogue being used as a fundamental mechanic instead of shooting and skill checks causing damage to health or morale even without physical damage

"Hol' Up A Minute" making its rounds I hear ;)

Ask npc to end his plans for world domination and surrender [skillcheck: speech, minimum 15] [skillcheck: player has speech 12, skill check not succesful] NPC: "no". Kill couple of rats to gain some levels and come back Ask npc to end his plans for world domination and surrender [skillcheck: speech, minimum 15] [skillcheck: player has speech 15, skill check succesful] NPC: "yes "

5:33 "It's been two years since that kid died, when are you gonna let me off the hook? Yeah, I took his life, he was a threat, and you knew it, so don't come here acting all high and mighty!" Mark Brown: *That's super cool*

I also love how Life Is Strange pushes this moment by disabling your time turning powers. Its the first real "life or death"-situation and its that much more real, because you only have one attempt, while the first 2 episodes up until this point have been mainly about learning to use this ability.

Katana:Zero handles the timed choices with a (in my opinion) great innovation : If you choose your sentence fast enough, you'll interrupt your interlocutor, giving you a great way of expressing the anger of your character. If you choose within the time window, you'll talk normally. Oxenfree do something similar if you didn't respond in time : Your character just don't talk. And the characters around reacts as expected when someone don't talk.

Another part of this is making sure the game fulfills the fantasy of being a smooth talking charmer, or debate god, or high-stakes lawyer. This does kind of boil down to the animation, writing, and voice acting, but it is a thing to consider; just like shooting wants to make you feel like an action hero, our dialogue choices should make us feel like we have a silver tongue. I actually felt Deus Ex: Human Revolution handled this well at a couple points (minor spoilers ahead). There's a point late in the game where you can confront a character about something, and you have the option to just ignore the sneaking and just walk into the conference he's holding and have a shouting match with him in front of a live audience. The camera constantly pans forward whenever you're doing well, as Jensen actually gets in his face and slowly advances on him, letting you know you're really putting the screws on this guy on live TV. It felt every bit as climactic as a gunfight (in a sort of soap opera drama way).

I have never been sweating so hard during a game as when I hit that conversation point in Life Is Strange. And I *had* been paying attention.

i have never seen a comment section with so much words per comment

Additionally, I think it would be cool if instead of using dialogue to skip gameplay or game events, perhaps we could talk our way INTO gameplay, such as convincing a faction leader into letting you participate in an important mission or unlocking some side quest that would be otherwise inaccessible to you.

"Can we make talking as much fun as shooting?" Danganronpa: "Why not both?"

Human Revolution's interactions are incredible and one of my favorite parts of the game. I would never have thought that when negotiating a hostage situation, one of the most effective ways to get a terrorist on your side is to just call him an idiot. It actually changed the way I look at dialogue in games. You're not superficially charming him, you're talking in a way he understands. You're empathizing with him. (It was especially notable because I played Mass Effect not long before, and I was continually frustrated that Shepard's dialogue would often be totally different from what the option made it look like he was going to say.)

It's a shame that this came out before Disco Elysium did.

I remember when I got to a point in vampire the masquerade bloodlines where I had to deal with this gargoyle but I didn't have enough persuade points for the option to pop up but the options I was allowed to chose did let me convince them to back down, I had to figure out what was the best option but I manage to figure it out. Something similar happened with fallout 1. you can get a document that proves the master's plan has a fatal flaw but you can also convince him to find out about the flaw. By the way I'm Autistic and I think these sorts of things could be great for helping us learn about social skills (I managed to pick up some after many years of observing media closely so I have some experience with this.)

To anyone who is curious, the social boss battles in Human Revolution are PERFECTION without that augment. I would try so hard to get a read on people, think about their what they've said or done previously, and when you are successful in the end, it feels so satisfying. I highly recommend playing the game without that augment.

11:10 I feel that social interactions in games are a safe space to learn those interactions, as actions have no real-life consequences. You can learn real life skills from video games, and especially multiplayer games with high communication content were immensely helpful for me to learn social and language skills (as the stressful non-verbal part is removed in that context and the communication is outcome/task focused, which helps immensely). I've learned as much about social interactions from games as from etiquette and communication books, or on learning about social behaviour from movies or series. This is always a double-edged sword, though, as it's difficult to ascertain if the interactions especially of single player games are realistic and thus helpful in real life. (High-functioning Aspergers, here. Basically just socially inept, very introverted/focused on a core group and seen as eccentric by most, but nothing debilitating. YMMV on a person per person basis, though).

I had an interesting but awesome expierience replaying deus ex: human revolution that I thought I'd share. For starters, it's important to know that I have played and beaten deus ex once before as a nonlethal/kind type of character. I don't like pushing NPC's buttons as it's not in my nature or personality to wanna see them react negatively. My second time around I went for a more roleplaying approach as tried out a lethal or nonlethal depending on the situation asshole of a detective type character. When I got to the police station I was convinced that the only way to TALK your way through the guard was to reassure him of what he did and he in return would let you through. Despite believing that I went ahead and went full boar aggressive against him. He of course responded very negatively, very angry at first. But some more pushing and he broke, he felt worse than he may have had before and simply let me through because of feeling defeated. This comepletely blew me away but it felt incredible to see how the world (more specifically a certain NPC) reacted to the way I chose to play my character. Still one of my all time favorite role playing video game expieriences. Thanks for reading.

Shooting or talking? Danganronpa: Why not both?

Was about to comment on the challenges people with autism might face when needing to read faces or social queues but then you mentioned it. That's a part of why I really like your videos, you don't just talk about the games themselves, but also about the wide variety of people that play them :)

I actually don't remember anyone doing that last idea, starting with single-person tutorial chats but quickly moving to more complicated multi-person conversation scenarios where you're not just considering the person you're talking to but also who else is present and if they will interrupt, if you can draw them into the conversation, or if they change their opinion about you just by being there listening. Just making sure that a certain "combo" of people are present when you make a diplomatic attempt could be its own mini-game.

"I told you, I only have SISTERS." Good lord is that some telegraphed writing.

I think there’s a problem with how these kinds of games punish you for missing evidence. It often becomes a game of hidden item collection before you can progress through the case. Sinking City had me going through libraries and city hall documents only to find out that I missed one clue that was hidden under a shovel. That’s pretty frustrating. It should’ve punished me for missing that evidence when it was time to present them, by either lessening my rewards or failing the case. Heck, I think it would be really cool if my conclusion was wrong or off-kilter due to my poor deductive skills and it gets me a different ending to the case. That would add some depth to multiple playthroughs because you’re not only facing moral dilemmas but your detective skills are also being actively put on the test.

You've talked about how dialogue options let you skip gameplay, but often shooting someone in the head lets you skip dialogue. So it can become a matter of what the player is interested in, and whether the designers put enough cool stuff in the dialogue, or indeed in the combat, to make it worth not skipping either of them. That choice of skipping one or the other is really valuable when as a player you want to do both, because at that point it is an actual choice between two actual valuable options. When faced by that kind of choice you can really properly lean into the character you are playing and let that guide your decisions, but those decisions have to have weight behind them, they have to build towards a complex whole greater than the sum of its parts, otherwise they'll fall flat. I find that I've played so many combat based games that I'll often take any chance I see to skip a fight, but in a roleplaying game I dont want to make that kind of choice because of who I personally am and what I personally like. In an rpg I want to make those decisions based on who I'm trying to play as, but shallow systems like that fallout nv 'skillcheck to skip the fight' dont encourage that mindset. Likewise systems that drop the ball on keeping combat engaging dont leave me with the kind of choice I want to face. It cant just be an all or nothing approach, and just having actions add points to the 'good' ending vs the 'bad' ending, and maybe there's a 'neutral' ending too (how exciting... not), that doesn't give me the kind of control over who my character is and their position in the world that I want to see. I can get that experience out of a ttrpg with a living, breathing, thinking dm running the world, but videogames seem to have a ways to go yet. So many of these hundred million dollar productions are barely dipping their toes into an ocean of interactivity.

This topic is actually something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I’ve always wanted social interaction to ge as deep and meaningful as combat in games.

Obsidian's Tyranny has some really great interactions and diplomacy. Getting a band of rebels to run away without a fight or surrender their leader is extremely satisfying when it's not down to stats or rolls but just choosing the right thing to say and having done the right things in the past.

Another thing to consider is that like, dialogue mechanics simply aren't fleshed out morally like combat scenarios are, like you have the classic lethal/nonlethal/ghost option in a stealth game for example, but talking to people in a video game is pretty much always the morally superior option unless you're specifically choosing the "jackass" dialogue option, but a morally complex system instead Consider the following: you need to go through hang territory for some mission, and you have a few options: fight, sneak, or meet up and negotiate, however if you choose to negotiate, the boss might demand you help one of his cronies to deal drugs, in a nonviolent sidequest, now the player has an important moral choice; is your dedication to pacifism more important than preventing drug circulation. Or maybe you can choose to pay him, but with officer funds, which later might get whistle blown that the police are colluding with gangs or something.

7:32 Did you sneak in a reference to another great KZfaq-Channel about Gaming there? :D

In witcher 3, you can avoid a lot of fights including bosses with a more "diplomatic" dialogues. You can even "jedi mind trick" people to make them forget about the confrontations. Also it might be simple but you can haggle your rewards thus give the feeling that we actually talking our way through for a better advantages.

11:02 Asperger's Syndrome, here. High functioning. I crave games like this. I would go so far as to say that games that require negotiation and provide the player with the option of talking their way out of battle have taught me more about social interaction than I ever would have learned otherwise. These games have helped me acquire social skills and empathy that often surpass the skills of those that were born with it. If I had the option to turn on some sort of accessibility options that made that part of the game easier, I may have never gained such a valuable skill.

Yes we can, if the dialogue is written and delivered believably, i often times prefer it when i can talk myself out of a situation in games that allow it.

You know what makes entertaining dialogue options? Good writing. There was generally more parity between writing and combat in a lot of older RPGs. Compare the first two Fallouts to New Vegas. More dialogue and less combat (because they were role-playing games, not shooters). Also, the game didn't tell you which options were from skill checks, and those options were more often a way to access additional content rather than just bypass the fight immediately in front of you. The end result was that using a high speech character gave you additional options for role-playing without just acting as a skip button. And, they were entertaining to read. I loved New Vegas, and I think it's a well-written game; but Obsidian inherited a set of high level design decisions that were bound to result in a game where a player views the combat as the game itself, and the dialogue as what happens between the game.

Fire emblem (at least sacred stones) had something interesting: Some characters could be recruited by talking to them, but it had to be done by a certain character. Which character? You learn that from the story.

The War Room from Dragon Age: Inquisition was almost my favorite part. A game that focused on that and then interacting with characters after missions, or conducting after action reports, and with a healthy bit of strategic/diplomatic thinking would be amazing.

I like the way The Council tried to implement RPG elements in an all narrative gameplay experience. It ends up being Life is Strange but you have a skill tree and consumables, and I think it turned out interesting enough on the speech challenges.

Another example of dialogue combat is insult sword fighting, from the Monkey Island games! Pretty rudimentary, but the comebacks are quite fun

I'm on the spectrum and found that LA Noire helped me to understand facial expressions through gamification.

Okay, can I just say that at 5:07 with the game you're mentioning, I love how they specify *EXACTLY* what you will be saying when you pick the options? This drove me crazy with Telltale Games, especially the Walking Dead.

In spite of all its flaws I think Alpha Protocol still stands up as having one of the best dialogue systems in recent years.

Can We Make Talking as Much Fun as Shooting? | American Teacher's Toolkit

In Fallout 1 you could talk you way out, but the phrase wasn't highlighted with a [speech]. Which means that not only you had to have the good level of speech and chrisma but you also had to think for yourself what you should say. Even if rightly skilled, not choosing the good reply could still had disastrous consequences.

I would love a combination of the deus ex and abstract mechanical approach to dialogue. Like you could learn about the person you're gonna face and build your card deck or whatever according to their personality, their history etc.

I think it's a cool mechanic that could be improved upon. However, I think developers who want to focus more on the social aspects of the game should make it clear that you need to be "paying attention" to certain things. Giving you more in game clues or hints about a certain environment the same way they tell you to prepare for a fight by leaving extra ammo or health right before it.

I always get a great sense of satisfaction when I can talk my way out of things instead of using fists and guns. There's something about defeating a foe with your mind and words alone that's so gratifying.

GMTK: Can we make talking just as fun as fighting? Toby Fox: *Yes. Yes I can.*

Disco Elysium says hello.

I was JUST discussing this with a friend the other day. Combat is often the "default" when it comes to gameplay in a lot of games, but I love seeing games focus more on non-combat gameplay Obviously RPGs do this a fair bit (some more successfully than others), but I'd love to see it in more games.

I particularly like the idea of the player having to pay attention to details in the story in order to go through a dialogue segment. There's a lot of cool stories that can take advantage of that.

Holy shit, Alpha Protocol has been mentioned. Nobody ever talks about that game, and I seriously love it. The gameplay is jank, but the conversation aspects, and freedom in options is wonderful. It's truly one of the best written games I've seen even if only for all the branching paths.

4:32 “All of these games test your emotional and social skills, just like how puzzle games test your logic skills and platformers test your dexterity skills” 9:53 “…but it does ultimately mean that combat and conversation end up feeling pretty similar, and are testing the same skills of tactics and strategy rather than your social and emotional abilities”

“Hol' up a minute” is spreading.

This channel is always great for helping me with planning D&D, and this video especially addresses a common problem in that!

There was this old point n click game that I still remember vividly (but not the title) that used a silent protagonist where you controlled his facial expression by a wheel during conversation (angry, happy, sorry etc) and the net selection decided the next response from the npc. Always thought it had massive potential once silent protagonists became a big thing and the potential of multidimensional dialogue trees in current games. Would love someone to steal that idea and run with it (as long as they don't do exposition through fucking dialogue!) The game was Greek myth themed. The golden fleece was a thing... Wracking my brain for its name.... Was pretty short so I'm guessing I had a freeware copy. That's how old it is and I still remember that mechanic! Edit: someone please tell me the name of this game! I remember a piece of wire being an inventory object, and catching mice in a bucket... Then you could catch a rat, but if you also put it in the bucket... No more mice!..... And one of the dialogues was to be continually angry at a Scottish man til he gave you... whatever. Was sort of fmv if I recall. Help me out of this misery?

Midway through, great vid so far, just wanted to say it’s dope that you have captions dude

Girlfriend reviews + Mark Brown crossover when?

I find it kind of remarkable that the graphics of L.A. Noire already look super dated. It doesn't seem that long ago that they were groundbreaking.

Great video! I only miss Oxenfree from the list. It represents greatly many of the talking as a game mechanic points you discuss. Remembering conversation details with multiple people at once, getting clues from the environment and previous conversations (even your previous run of the game), managing the slightly different responses and attitudes and people in the group responding accordingly to your choices and actions, and overall the dialogue system being the main game mechanic makes the title very enjoyable and would have been the cherry on top of the video.

On the flip side games that rely on emotional skills could be excellent learning tools for gamers with some form of ASD. As someone with ASD I often find that my brain draws from sentences I've already heard work in a given context especially if I'm on verbal autopilot because I'm running out of energy to socialize or trying to maintain energy because I know I have to do a lot of socializing. So a game as a teaching tool for people who like me tend to struggle in social interaction by teaching us to look out for certain tells and equipping us with a series of neutral phrases that we can fall back on if actually thinking through the way to many social cues that bombard us in any given social interaction is too stressful would be damn useful and helpful.

"If you ask me, it's a bit of a shame that the game just hands you this information." but also "Such in-depth emotional gameplay could prove inaccessible to those who have challenges with social skills [...] so accessibility options should be considered." Isn't the deus ex thing kinda just an accessibility option that's been integrated into the story?

Another thing that I don't see very often in these types of games: how which social group the characters are affects dialogue. For instance, I've been playing Shadowrun Dragonfall and there are skill checks that aren't just selectable based on how high your charisma score is, but what type of etiquette you use. For example, talking down guards requires having the security etiquette or having the corporate etiquette leads to better relations to CEOs and employees. I would love to see more games utilize this mechanic, especially games that involve characters trying to be social chameleons, blending into any type of social group. It's tremendously risky and requires great writing and a lot of thinking, but I think it would be very rewarding to players who want to play as conversationalist type characters.

This video came up soon after I had just played through Mass Effect for the first time and felt the same way about skipping Saren at the end. Being able to talk my way out of it simply because I had enough points in charm was underwhelming, no decision-making required. The one scene that immediately came to mind was the one with Kate in Life is Strange, I had to carefully think it through and it left me with one of the most memorable moments in any video game.

Bro I love your videos so much. Such good content, I could sit down for hours and listen to you explain how to make good games and such. Please keep making more videos! I love them!

I really like how the Deus Ex games do this. But I found that not using the augmentation was actually a much more enjoyable experience. That thing feels too artificial and also kind of confusing, as it feels like it's giving you red herrings. I had more success and found it a more interesting time just trying to analyse what characters said myself, and respond with what I thought they wanted to hear, rather than what the game told me.

The reasons I love the werewolf quest in the Witcher games. You can either treat him like a typical monster fight, or tell him the truth about his sister in law's intentions, thus leading to an outcome of a passive ending to the hunt (I'm avoiding spoilers for switch fans who are holding out for it to come and haven't played it elsewhere yet) there's a few others like this in the game, and when you do come across them it's an interesting change compared to combat with every single monster you come across, reminding you that sometimes monsters are living beings too

*oblivion's dialogue pie minigame* "Am I a joke to you?"

"These games test your emotional and social skills" No wonder I never played any of them.

A lot of the time dialogue choices or binary ones are about making the choice itself interesting. Sometimes by obscuring outcome, as when you don't know a person well enough, or the choice becomes an affirmation that you do when you have that information. Other times it's making it a moral conundrum, such as whether a decision that benefits you more than them is really worth it or you should just deal with the alternative. *Soft information* My favourite is when dialogue just leads to *Soft information* where its value isn't immediately apparent, and it really tests your ability to pay attention. It works best when there's also *soft interplay* between the game mechanics. Such as you're at a party to meet a diplomat to discuss something - that's your actual goal - but talking with people to find out a hallway is unguarded, use stealth to navigate it, combat to knock people out, get information from the environment, and talk your way out when you have that information, and because both the goal was different and the information casual, you have full ownership of that decision. *soft logged information* Another thing that's especially good, is if the game has a text-parsing engine, so you can type in conversational topics for extra obscure shit such as eavesdropping on some people using a code word - but to make sure you actually pay attention, you have to manually put it in as a topic. or something gets mentioned offhandedly, and you decide to press on THAT instead of whatever the game would normally serve as branching dialogue. Basically, to me, it's about agency and having ownership of the decisions through making them subtle and perfectly missable.

I ask that question in school every day

Really interesting video. I came into it thinking "No, talking will never be as interesting as combat or stealth". My mind has been changed.

Been awhile but Red Strings Club did a good job of this as far as I can remember. It was all about naturally setting the mood and leading the conversation to discover useful information which you'd then use to open up dialogue trees in other conversations or using the information to discover bonuses in the game world which would make conversations easier to navigate.

Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines exists so yes we can.

I'm actually really sad Neverwinter Nights 2 was not mentioned. If you played through that game as a conversation specialized Bard it was an amazing experience. It was the whole idea of the normal power fantasy centered around your overwhelming power being that of a skilled conversationalist. Bluffs, threats, diplomacy, putting on a performance, etc you handled different situations in different context appropriate ways. And then there was a trial where you lost any idea of whether you were wining or losing your conversation, which is a big deal since normally you'd know instantly if you succeeded or failed. The entire trial was brilliant, they went as far as to let you finish one of your answers with a bit of performance art specifically to sway the crowd. The only sad thing about that trial is that for story reasons it ends up the same as if you failed it and THAT was the sole missed opportunity of being a conversationalist in that game that I remember. But that trial is prolly PART of what you are looking for so you should play through it as a case study. Seriously though, if you really want to ask this question go back and play Neverwinter Nights 2 as a charisma focused bard with all conversation skills and the perform skill. Bar none it's the best I've felt to date as far as sheer impact of conversation, though there have been games that may do conversation more realistically in an engaging manner. The fact they delivered a power fantasy via conversation deserves mention and it fits your opening statement and text line perfectly so it's omission feels glaring after your Dungeons and Dragons and even Obsidian reference. But, and this is important, how you present your conversation depends on what your core aesthetic is going to be. If your core aesthetic is being more of a detective like LA Noire than what you've presented in the video is on point. If your core aesthetic is a power fantasy then you'll want something more like Neverwinter Nights. It's not JUST about "how do we make conversation in games fun", it's about "how do we make conversation in games fun in a way that serves the core aesthetic". Dues EX is neither of those kinds of game sand so neither of those approaches would be appropriate for that. End of the day a super fleshed out conversation system with information collection is unlikely to fit in properly with a fast paced action game because you're now taking away from the core aesthetic of your game.

This might just be because fps games bore me, but I always feel really accomplished whenever I manage to talk somebody out of fighting in a game. Although it’s a lot less cool when you know that since your number is higher than the number required you’ll just win with no effort

Thank you SO MUCH for making this channel!!! One of the best gaming channels on youtube!

Haven't watched the video but SMT and Persona does this really well by incentivizing with items or new allies and it's based a lot on your recognition on how demons previously interacted with you and understanding of them and I love it

Speech option is always my favourite option!

I kinda laughed when he mentioned the outer worlds, it's basically just New Vegas' speech system

6:02, bad choice of words “threatening to jump off a roof and you have to talk her down”

If you are talking verbal vs combat duels, there's no reason not to mention monkey island's insults sword duels. In a game about jokes you get to counter insults with other insults in a funny way, and after fighting a bit, learning all the insults and responses, you get to fight the "boss" that has different insults, but that can be countered with the same counters you have learnt up untill now with some connecting. Shallow? Yes, but it allowed a decent chunk of content with just some sentences.

Kate's depression subplot is by far the best part of Life is Strange.

Thank you so much for listing/crediting the music you use in your episodes. I don't think I would have ever found Blue Wednesday or the others if not for the credits.

My god this video was so well articulated and detailed. You summed up some ideas and thoughts I had really nicely. Subscribed:)

Omg thank you so much for writing this. I've wondered for years where are the games that actually explore social an emotional systems. We've pumped so much money into making games look more realistic and it's been hard to find games like those you've mentioned here. And I would have never come across these had you not compiled this list. This is getting me excited for a new project.

"You fight like a dairy farmer. "

L.A. Noir does a great job of using a dialogue system linked to evidence you collect. I would like to see more games use this to create different scenarios to diffuse a situation or potentially create a dangerous situation from one that was calm

Makes me remember Skyrim's wabajack's quest where you can skip the wackiest parts of the quest if you pass a persuasion roll. The concept only really works in tabletop where the dm can weave some improvisation into it. In a rigidly scriptured story, it'd only work as intended if tge player was limited to a one and only hardcore playthrough: you die and you can never try again

Great analysis. Most talking in RPG has been resolved very blandly. Great to see there are alternatives.

In-depth emotional/social gameplay also presents challenges when selling your game internationally. Manners and expectations are very different across cultures, after all.

Oxenfree was a great game whose main "mechanic" was its real-time dialogue system. Characters would talk in real-time, and you could choose from various responses or no response at all. No combat; it was purely about character building and exploration.

Great video, thanks! This reminded me of the hostage situation in DX:HR where I took an interesting approach, where I didn't convinced the guy to free the hostage still was able to shoot him with a tranquilizer gun in a split-second after confronting him, so the hostage was saved and he was sent to the prison and I could talk to him later. That was amazing, like a third hidden option, better than saving the hostage but being blamed for letting him go or killing or knocking out him but the hostage dying in the process. Best of both worlds, I felt like a hero, haha.

The lack of compelling non combat mechanics is also a common problem in pen and paper RPGs, hence some more modern solutions can be reconsidered (cards, social combat mentioned in the video, etc'...) . The suggestion to use abstract mini games opens up interesting possibilities. Moreover, expensive motion capture is ultimately unnecessary. Consider the system used in gyakuten kenji 2.

You should check out Dex. In that game your persuasion stats don't automatically give you the right answer, instead it opens a selection of dialogue options and you have to figure out the right one based on the context of the conversation

This was a really damn interesting topic, great work with the video!

You make such great videos! Really really interesting stuff, thank you.