In starfield you can toggle walking on, and your fastest speed is SLOWER than the npcs so you have to keep toggling it off to keep up. Insane.

"... if the NPC walking speed is slightly slower than the player character walking speed..." THIS, THIS THING RIGHT THERE.

In the game Asuras Wrath, every boss has a monologue and you can interrupt them at any point with a punch to the face. very cathartic

I remember starting the witcher 3, and I got a walk and talk/ escort quest. I dreaded what this quest would be, but then I realised the person I was following would run when I was running. Didn't know I could get so happy watching an npc run

i like how a lot of dialogue scenes in katana zero have a dedicated "shut the fuck up" dialogue option that lets you interrupt characters while they're speaking

Walk and talk sequences are the unholy offspring of cutscenes and escort quests.

Another thing that sucks sometimes about Walk and Talks is that sometimes the talk takes longer than the walk, so if you want to catch all the info you can, you basically have to stand around doing fuck-all while they finish talking.

This video reminded me of Bastion, where the narrator tells what is happening and what "the kid" is doing, at the player's own pace. If you fall from the ground he says something like "no, that was not how it happened". And the bonus is that you have no clue of what is going on even with the narration! That was a really good beginning.

Game developers need to start asking themselves if this really is the best way to convey their narrative. And if the answer is yes, they need to start asking if this is the right narrative for an interactive medium.

I always liked the way Borderlands 2 handled npc dialogue. Leaving the general vicinity of the npc just puts them on your comms system. This allowed you to look around and loot while you wait for the npc to finish (although some sections still have horrendously long dialogue with nothing to do).

I remember in that Bard's Tale action game, the game gives you to press a skip button and *the* Cary Elwes would say "SKIIIIP!" or "BOOORIIIING!!!" when you press it... so satisfying!

Ghost of Tsushima thankfully had it where the npc character would move at the same pace as Jin, either walking or running, which was a huge breath of fresh air for the walk n' talk. Also, on his last point there, Asura's Wrath had a few moments that allowed you to press the "Shut the fuckup" button. You even got achievements for it!

I like how in Furi you could press a button to auto-walk so the walking and talking kept going but you didn't have to keep pressing W and could just chill instead.

I think it's interesting when you consider that, while not the biggest fan base, there is a fan base for visual novels. Visual novels are all talk with no walk, yet the players can still enjoy the best written games because they often give you way more options in pacing. Text speed, skip buttons, a list of previous dialogue, and on a blue moon, a go back to previous lines button. This is something that AAA games with big budgets seem scared to do, putting all this time into forcing the player to take text in their way.

That "shut the fuck up" button idea reminds me of that Post-ZP stream of that "Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood" game. Specifically, the part where during a dialogue tree, Yahtzee pointed out that at any point, you could turn into a werewolf and start killing things. He then proceeded to do so and even commented that he wished that Deus Ex had had a "fuck it" button.

High on Life did this everywhere and its great. You can skip dialogue and walk away from characters and they'll get mad and yell at you but you can still just move along.

That bit at the end about the whole telling your opponent to ‘shut the fuck up’ reminded me that Asura’s Wrath did the same thing. The first real boss Wyzen starts getting mouthy and a pronto appears asking us if we’d like to shut him up, and if you push the button Asura decks Wyzen in the face.

Honestly, that was a very refreshing part of Stranger of Paradise. Jack would interrupt the monologues of his enemies and just start combat. My favorite is right before the Lich fight. If only other games had what Yahtzee said where you can just skip forward and the NPC's decide to stop monologuing or exposition dumping. It only really worked against a late-game boss in Elden Ring where you can smash his face in during his monologue and kill him before he finishes.

That last bit with the STFU button being a hardware function of the controller, and using it to passive-aggressively bully E3 presenters is brilliant.

Hi-Fi Rush does the Walk and Talk pretty well. Most of the time, you have to traverse long corridors while people are talking, but because items are hidden everywhere in the game, you’re still engaged in looking for them while the conversation is going on. Also, it’s more of a Run and Talk, which makes it feel less annoying.

Remember when the Witcher 3 had the other people keep pace with Geralt? Yes you can walk behind them while talking but they will actively run while you discuss everything

Here’s an idea: At the start of the game, the player character is given a test of some sort about the game’s mechanics, and after that are only given tutorials on the questions they got wrong.

had to look up that bionic commando thing, the Delivery on STFU is Incredible

About that Tears of Zelda bit... You can actually walk at your pace and Zelda will follow. Yahtzee just didn't want to make a fuss and followed politely

Another thing that sucks is companions/mc that spam you with the solution for a puzzle.

As an example of dialog over game play, there's a little game called the deadly tower of monsters which frames itself as a 50s sci-fi B-movie, with the director being the narrator as a commentary track, talking about whatever was happening at the time. There were something like a dozen lines just about your character spinning around in place, it was great

Does BG3 “attack” button counts as the “shut the fuck up” button?

In the first Psychonauts, the "boring stories" character starts telling a story before the Basic Braining exercise, but instead of forcing you to walk behind him, the game lets you explore the campsite (whatever little of it is open before Basic Braining) and it's way more fun thanks to that.

When this particular trend started getting super annoying for me was, super ironically, in Bayonetta 2. The game swam in high speed cathartic action combat for 3/4th of the game's runtime but there are several sections where you have to walk slowly while your supporting squirrel/Child companion talks to Bayo in the moments of cooldown from the action. It urked me at first but it happens every time you replay that level and when Im just trying to get to the fights as fast as I can these segments made me lean back in my chair and sigh, why the fuck were they in a BAYONETTA GAME of all things?

It's a narrative mechanic that CAN work, but often doesn't, and it's not one you want to over-use.

Pretty sure Asura’s Wrath did the Bionic Commando thing with almost every boss fight… except you got to shut the boss up by PUNCHING them in the face.

another great example of that reactive design you talk about is the supergiant games, especially apparent in bastion's narrator. Great vid and keep up the good work! FEEL VALIDATED BY MY AGREEMENT

I think Witcher 3 handles those sorts of sections pretty well. Just the fact that NPCs always matched your speed worked out so well not just for the walk & talk sections but _any_ time you're going somewhere with an NPC

This is something I appreciated about the dialogue options of Katana Zero. I remember Yahtzee complaining about them, but they implements a "Shut up" button at (most) opportunities. You can almost always cut whoever's speaking off to remind them that you're about to slice them into sashimi. and then you do!

I was just thinking about "walk and talks" the other day. Specifically, the one at the beginning of Deux Ex Human Revolution that lasts over 40 minutes and is unskippable. I thought about how there's a popular mod for the game that lets you skip it. That's it, that's the mod, and it's the game's most popular mod. Nancy Drew: Midnight in Salem had a really long unskippable tutorial (the only one in the 33 game series that made it unskippable), and I'm just worried Nancy Drew game 34 will add a "walk and talk" at the beginning. It's like the "cinema-ification" of video games. Games don't necessarily work best when they're trying to be cinematic movies. Interactivity is often a video game's strength.

That is the "Players keep skipping our cutscenes, so let's stick em inside an interactive cutscene which cannot be skipped".

Katana zero made "shut the f*ck up" into a gameplay mechanic in story sequences. I'm not sure if I've ever seen something like that in another game before. It would be cool to see it again.

I must be one of those rare people that like the walk and talk segments. I feel like it creates a better sense of immersion.

Another good example of a W&T that works would be the classic Escape From Butcher Bay. After a tutorial, there's a long FPP W&T as you're led into the prison. You see its security systems, checkpoints, guards explain rules, prisoners start to introduce themselves, etc. And it's all interesting because you're gonna be busting out later, so of course you pay attention during intake. The problem is when it's just a lazy way to shackle the player to an NPC providing dry exposition.

Asura's Wrath funnily enough had the "press button to shut them up" option for every villain confrontation in the game during their monologue

Nero going Devil Trigger for the first time in DMC5 against Vigril with a loud "FUCK YOU!" was basically the STFU button.

In Skyrim you could at least do a quick save right before caracter creation so you could skip the ride to Helgen any time you wanted to start a new game, but with Starfield they either forgot that feature or did it on purpose as if to say "nice try twat, no skipping your vegetables if you want the rest of the meal!"

Ah yes otherwise known as “we need to load in a new area but don’t want to use a loading screen let’s hide it behind a slow walking sequence”

Yes, full agreement, do more of these! Do intro loading screens of the publishers logo that you can't skip next

To me the most jarring walk and talks were in the assassin's creed games. That engine has a literal button you can press that automatically matches pace with NPCs for you and somehow the W&T segments still have you circling back to continue your chat with whatever shlub is yakking at you

Example of good walk and talk: opening to Batman: Arkham Asylum. Good visuals and voice acting with a camera control tutorial.

The simple solution would be a follow button, the NPC sets the pace and pathing whilst monologuing. It has been done before and shouldn't be too difficult to implement.

6:00 Stanley Parable does something similar with entering the password behind your bosses desk before the narrator has a chance to explain the scenario to you

I dont think these are a problem if you have the option of advancing it faster. For example, in Tears of the Kingdom, you dont HAVE to walk slowly behind Zelda. If youve done it before or just don't care, you can just run past and let her teleport to you on occasion.

I liked that Furi just let you press a button to have the character auto-walk during these segments between the bosses. It gives you the option to essentially turn it into a regular cutscene, while you can also take back control and just take in the beautiful surroundings for as long as you want.

I’ve always loved the Asura’s Wrath approach to this. To skip the dialogue, instead of just interrupting with a snarky quip, Asura straight up launches himself forward and slugs the dude in the jaw. So much closer to what i actually want to, and probably will end up, doing to them.

That's it -- ZP needs to invent and distribute STFU devices for the next E3! _"When the diode turns red, press the button to tell the announcer to STFU!"_ Best E3 ever!

I love walk and talk when done well. Fallout 3, The Witcher 3, great methods to have something to look at during exposition. Gets me invested in the world.

Honestly it's sequences like these that make me think "just make it a freaking cutscene". There's nothing interactive about these sequences and it even feels like they make the characters talk deliberately slowly too.

Some of your best work, Yahtzee. Well done.

Asura's Wrath did the shut up thing a lot. Whenever there was an evil monologue you could literally just decide to punch whoever was gloating in the face.

I'm fine with these sequences on an initial playthrough, but upon replays (or dying/reloading) if I can't skip them they just feel tedious and annoying. I also can't help but be reminded of Cloudpunk, a game I enjoyed, but had a bad habit of mid-commute conversations that lasted so long that I'd reach my destination and just have to sit there while the whole chat played out before I could continue the game.

My least favorite instance of this trope was in the original Gears of War. They just KEPT making me (as Marcus) stop our adrenaline fueled death ride and do these slow lumbering walk sequences while Baird and Cole and DAAAHM! had to relay information I couldn't care less about. Such a tonal shift. Alright, run in, chainsaw some 8 foot monsters, shoot a demon in the face while the space laser tracks it and now... NOW... Walk slowly while DAAAHM tells you about his wife just HAS to be alive Marcus, she just HAS TO while I slowly bumble about in the general vicinity. It was the worst. I don't mind a bit of pathos in my action games, but the way they went about it was just so wrong-headed.

In the tutorial section of Black & White, after being told how to use the mouse to navigate(drag and drop) there is a segment where you're instructed to follow a few NPCs to your starting village. You can easily outpace them and if you do they say "Wait for us!".

To this day, one of my favorite gaming moments was when I got my heavy armor/weapon Orc to the end of the Mage's Guild questline in Skyrim. While the villain was monologuing about his plans, I hit tab, closed the dialogue, and power attacked him in the head, killing him instantly. Yes, more games should have a "shut the fuck up" button, I agree.

I had exactly the same feelings at the start of Starfield and it's also one of the main reasons why I've tuned out of most 'open-world' games. Locking you into these sections really, and immediately exposes the limited creativity on both the writing and direction of the game. It's all very obvious but it's sad and ironic that the biggest gaming companies have all the tools, power and talent to create amazing feats of gaming wonder that evolve the artform, but just play it safe because Fortnite and Last of us sold well. As much as there are exceptions in the indie area, we also see a similar tendency to emulate existing success (a million boomer shooters / furry pixel cozy crafters). What we really need are more ZANY AUTEURS and people to give these guys lots of money.

I think a game series that did this dilemma well was the Borderlands series. If an NPC is slowly walking somewhere to press a button, you're free to wander off and look around. If you get too far away from the person talking, the dialogue goes straight to your radio.

the bit about a game theoretically responding to rushing throuh the cutscene reminded me of the part in stanley parable where if you input a code before the narrator tells you it, he'll tell you off for being impatient and make it take even LONGER

Westerado had a 'pull your gun out' button, and it worked in any dialogue box, with individual responses depending on the context.

I'm reminded how one of the most popular mods for Skyrim is the Another Life mod where you can choose from different starting locations rather than be forced through the original Helgen sequence. I'm wondering if at some point someone will make a similar mod for Starfield.

This reminds me of a Marty O’Donnell quote talking about the “stop it, your boring me” limit to music in Halo. Halo *vomit sound* Combat Evolved’s music stops after 4 minutes at most because that’s when Marty thought it would become boring. That also allows the ambient noise to tell the story too.

Yeah I agree with this. Scenes like the original Half-Life intro set up the environment and foreshadowed future events, most of these scenes in modern games feel like padding/filler. I suppose it’s intended to avoid long cutscenes, but it basically is in most cases. I say just make it a skippable cutscene if they don’t feel like adding the extra interactive stuff Yahtzee mentioned.

When he brought up the Final Boss cutscene skip in Bionic Commando, first thing that came to my mind was Asura's Wrath, where you can do that several times, and it's also a capcom game.

Someone should call him a hammer, because he really hit the nail with this one.

And the worst part is when your walk speed is Significantly faster or slower than the NPC'S

Yeah, most of the time I'm fine walking and being talked to/at by someone or talking with them even, but it's the inconsistent walking speed that gets me. I either hang back a while and then walk up or I get ahead and just spin in circles while they catch up. Occasionally the NPC gets stuck on the scenery or something so I have to go back and get them to follow me, but that doesn't happen very often. I do love when the devs have the game set up to react to what my character does, like walking away or interrupting or what have you.

I'm glad he brought up the Arkham Asylum opening because that was the first example my mind went to of the 'walk and talk' implemented well

My first Walk n Talk was the infamous Metal Gear Solid 5 ride along with Mr Skullface. I don't know who thought that was a good idea worth replicating.

The lesson for devs is that, if they're going to make us listen to NPCs talk, they'd better be saying something that's fun to hear. "Dutiful dialogue" is what really super has to go.

The controller idea is a stroke of genius.

Walk and talk is usually a tone out moment i find, so yep agree need more ways to speed it up and/or bypass. But at times i also realize its a way for them to hide a loadscreen like tunnels and or elevators before i get a open world segment. Like anything, how and when its used is the important part.

I think one of my favourite instances of the "shut the fuck up" button was in katana zero where you can interrupt NPCs and, if you do, your answer always comes out as harsh. It gives an extra layer to the character. Are you an asshole with a katana or a dweeb with a katana? It works especially well since characters remember in further cutscenes if you were a dick to them, making the act of skipping a dialogue or listening to it a choice. (choices in my ludonarrative work? preposterous). With that said there is something I noticed about the opening lines of this video. How we, as an audience agreed with yathzee. I mean, I agreed with him, but that's because I'm interested in gaming and it's ramifications and if you've read this comment thus far, I believe you are as well. My question becomes : are we really a good representation of the gaming community? Are we too involved, too informed, too picky? Are we only able to pick up such annoyances because we've played so many games whereas the bloke who only plays one game a year doesn't have enough reference to care about such niggles? This isn't a "ooh aren't we so smart and aren't they so dumb" comment but more of a "how much is due to an idea really sucking or how much is simply us having the time to notice such annoyances?" All in all, great video as always yatz!

Not exactly a "walk and talk" but does anyone remember those weird "vision" segments in Halo 3 when your walking speed slowed to a crawl so Cortana and later the Gravemind could speak nonsense at you? Its a few seconds long every time but the way it completely halted the action and destroyed the pace of the levels always made me and my father groan after our first few playthroughs.

I've only recently come across The Escapist and I always respond to Extra Punctuation with "What does The Yuts have to b*tch about, this time" and it's with gleeful anticipation. He's that grumpy uncle we love to hear rant about hot dog sausages coming in packs of 10 but hot dog rolls in packs of 8. They're always such a delight.

I know exactly what you mean, when I played the BO3 campaign I'd forever get annoyed at that one mission when you move through the army camp and your walking speed is constantly changing, but mostly being slower than the people in front of you

I like that Cyberpunk's walk and talks appear to be avoidable and the characters seem to comment on it and move on

I actually really liked the opening to Starfield, and being introduced slowly to this new future world. I thought it made a really good first impression, and it struggled once you got out of act i rather than while you were in it.

The "sorry, I seem to be boring you," in my mind would be the best fix for every walk and talk sequence.

There is one egregious example of walk and talk in Red Redemption 2 where you're on foot and forced to follow a rigid path behind the NPC, and if you try to move outside the borders of the path the game will try and wrestle back control from you.

Was recently replaying Cyberpunk 2077 after the new DLC came out, and holy shit does that game suffer from that. The worst were probably the driving segments, where the game puts you into the literal passenger seat and forces you to wait until the NPC decides to say their line before you're allowed to play to the game again.

I would argue walk and talk is less immersive gameplay and more being part of your annoyance.

My two examples of agency to avoid the on-rails stuff are from VA-11 Hall-A, where Gil specifically tells you he'll STOP tutorialising you if you can make an advanced drink that proves you don't need it, and where in Breath of the Wild you can avoid getting the run-around from Purah by lighting her furnace before she even asks you to (which is also cleverly narratively spun into you awakening with *some* of your memory, which is why Link may have thought to do that -- and since you're likely to be doing this specifically because it's your second playthrough, you essentially *do* have less amnesia, because you're already familiar with the world & characters). It's a double-whammy of respecting the player's time & intelligence, and a huge dollop of gameplay-narrative cohesion all at once. I really hope we continue to see instances like these.

I actually really liked the Zelda one, for the simple fact that interacting with Zelda outside of cutscenes or bosses is incredibly rare.

I appreciate the cutscenes in FF16, the were all so well directed. But then gamers complain that it's like watching a movie and they get bored easily. So that's why the walk and talk is so prevalent because y'all too averse to actual cutscenes.

Oh, and here I was thinking "Well if it's particularly interesting it's not necessarily bad" and you're covering that already as well as another couple good points. Looks like another video you may find a lot of people agreeing with. Hopefully companies really are watching your videos for suggestions other than "Actually have Paper Mario fight a hole puncher".

One implementation I liked was in the Yakuza games. If you wanted to roleplay as a friend/lackey/ally and casually walk alongside your NPC partner during the Walk and Talk, you held R1 and the two of them would auto-walk together. However, if you wanted to skip that, just run ahead straight to the objective and trigger whatever cutscene it was leading up to. Often, they would start running after you to keep up. They likely wouldn't reach the end of their conversation at that pace, but them's the breaks if you're not interested in hearing it. Also, there was Gears of War 2. During one of the numerous moments where Marcus had his finger on his earpiece and was talking to Control while walking slowly, you could push the select button to have him abruptly end it with a "Yeah, I get it!" an "Okay. Shut up!", or some other randomized "shut up" statement.

FINALLY a video covering my biggest video game pet peeve. Thank you for this. Walk and talk is so stupid.

Could you do a video on your favorite kind of introductions in video games and what other developers can learn from this?

"Walk and Talk" is a popular trick in dialogue-heavy TV genres like murder mysteries and political dramas where the entire show could easily take place around one desk. Having the characters move around while delivering exposition and then and stop when *the plot* is moving forward plays tricks with how our brains work and keeps passive audiences invested. It's not a trope which translates well to video games. Because video games are a medium which requires a player to be part performer and part audience, the entire game is already essentially one long "walk and talk" scene. It's also not as simple as delivering necessary exposition over an in-game equivalent of "routine tasks." Yahtzee and I may both enjoy listening to podcasts while we putter around our ships in Starfield but I have several friends who can't even get the diahes done if someone is talking to them. What might be fun is something like a skippable "boot camp" sequence. "Going through boot" would give players exposition and a tutorial while "send me to the front" would drop players into the game's first big set-piece. Maybe that could also lead to slightly different starting items and a couple dialogue items. Later on, a player might choose between "go to officer's school" and get more exposition and tutorial, or to "stay at the front" and get an extra side mission instead.

Totally agree about something that lets you just match your speed with NPCs. I'd rather pay attention to the surroundings and conversation rather than making sure I'm keeping up or if I'm heading in the right direction. Kinda like the optional timed event dialog options in Cyberpunk 2077 that gives you a sense of interacting in the conversations or making comments about what your character is seeing. Feels a little more like you're more like a character in that world rather than a floating camera.

A great way to implement walk and talk sequences would be to use them to show off the character talking by how they respond to your actions. Maybe you could have one guy lose his train of thought and get distracted by the same thing you do if you play with random area objects; one guy who starts sprinting to catch up and says his dialogue faster in a breathless voice if you try to skip; one guy who just gets really sad if you run off ahead and quietly says 'oh that's fine then' like you've visibly hurt his feelings; and one guy who chases you down and grabs you by the ankles, holds you into the air, and drags you along literally because you WILL listen to his dialogue at his pace.

It in general depends on how it's implemented, though often it's just a pointless info dump, so they might just provide a wall of text and be done with it.

It wouldn't even be that bad if they didn't walk at a different speed than you.

One thing I liked about RDR2 was 1. You could arrive at the mission start trigger before the conversation had finished so points there. 2. If you lagged behind or were just far away from the person talking, they had the voice actors do at least two takes - one with them talking normally and then another take with them shouting cos you’re far away.

Now I'm remembering Alpha Protocol, which sadly is no longer available to buy. The game let you cut every dialogue with every NPC short. This usually pissed them off, but maybe you didn't care or wanted the NPC to hate you. Your relationships with reoccurring NPCs made up a key part of the game's dialogue. Also, when it came to boss NPCs you had the option to shoot them during the conversation. Heck, the tutorial about dialogues with NPCs even lets you ask "Why not just shoot first?" and it was answered by something like "You can, if you want. Except you never know what a target will let slip."