Current Events > A small thing that bothers me about dialogue in video games

(+) Yeah! (+)

When one character is supposed to be interrupted by another, but the VA doesn't act like they intended to continue the sentence and stops talking on the final word before the interruption. Just sounds unnatural, man.
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And then there's like a three second pause where it loads the next bit of dialogue which is meant to interrupt them.

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Also if there are subtitles you know they're gonna have that telltale em dash giving away the interruption.

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Aaaahh so true. Like, how hard is it to make that more realistic? I feel like it shouldn't be very difficult??

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Starcraft did well in that scene where Kerrigan, Daggoth & Zasc were arguing.
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idk if this is really related but the best example of interrupting dialogue is in GOW for the PS4. Mimir will be telling a good story about lore while you're out in the boat, but then if you stop on shore he'll pause his story. Then when you get back into the boat he'll say something like "Now where was I" and finish the story right where he left off.

Really great level of detail.

I hate games that just abruptly end dialogue between characters once you enter a new area or cutscenes begin. Seems like poor game design to me. Why would you design a sequence of dialogue that could be ended by the player just playing naturally through the game?

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SwayM posted...

I hate games that just abruptly end dialogue between characters once you enter a new area or cutscenes begin. Seems like poor game design to me. Why would you design a sequence of dialogue that could be ended by the player just playing naturally through the game?

This really bothers me too. If characters start talking, you've got to stop immediately and stay put or you run the risk of skipping what they're saying and probably never hearing it again.

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UnholyMudcrab posted...

This really bothers me too. If characters start talking, you've got to stop immediately and stay put or you run the risk of skipping what they're saying and probably never hearing it again.

I feel like GTA is a particularly notorious offender in that regard. Remember in 4 always having to drive slowly if I wanted to hear the dialogue.

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Agreed. Delete all videogame voiced dialogue.

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It's common in all forms of spoken media.

When I was learning acting, they said that you should finish the line. Figure out what comes after the hyphen and keep talking, let the other person interrupt you instead of making a weird stop.

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