Game mechanics – Dialogue scenes
Otome games in general include a LOT of dialogue, between the player and a character, or between several non-player characters. this is usually shown by having the non-player characters’ shown on the screen as if they were facing the player, and when there are more than one, they face each other or are placed next to each other.
There are some small features off these scenes that, over time, I’ve realized that I like or don’t like. These aren’t game-breakers like the ability to skip through once-read dialogue, but they can enhance or detract from the overall impression I have of a game. I’m interested in seeing what other fans think of these little things, or if you even notice them.
1. The mouth-flap – This is the awkward term for games where characters’ mouths move when they speak. It sounds like a small thing, but I really noticed when playing Harutoki 4 this summer, because #3 had the mouth-flap, but in #4 they removed it. It makes the scenes seem not as alive, more like pictures with a voiceover rather than an actual conversation.
2. Blinking eyes – This is a nice touch sometimes, but I don’t miss it as much as the mouth-flap when it’s not there. During a long conversation between two characters it can help give the impression that the one not talking is actually listening, not just frozen in stasis.
3. Character ‘movement’ – I’m really talking about two different things here.
One is how often the character picture changes, in expression or pose. Some games are pretty stingy in showing different poses – I’ve seen some where the same body posture is used for all expressions, and it can make some of them look really odd – like in Trouble Fortune Company Happy Cure, Kuze’s body is sometimes shown facing sideways, but at least one of his ‘expressions’ has his whole head facing directly at the player – it’s kind of freaky-looking.
He looks normal here, but he has a pose where his head looks the same, but his body faces sideways – very odd.
The other is actually moving the characters around on the screen. Some games never do this past moving characters to the centre if they’re the only one in the scene, but some do a fair bit of it to attempt some dynamic interaction (without actually animating anything, lol). Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails. Takuyo games (e.g. Sorayume) do this a little, but one recent title that used this very well is True Fortune (yes, I’m finally playing it!).
4. Special effects – Apart from the regular poses and expressions, some games add manga details like question marks and sweatdrops to emphasize a character’s mood. It works pretty well in comedic scenes.
Do you notice these little things while playing otome games? Do you wish more games used them, or do you find them distracting?
4 Responses to “Game mechanics – Dialogue scenes”
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Tokyo Demons
Diabolik Lover
Renai Banchou 2
Atelier Elkrone
Juuzaengi
Brothers Conflict
Shinigami to Shoujo
I like those features you mentioned in a game, though up until now I’ve never really thought about it that much. It makes the game lively in my opinion. And more real, because except for #4, you’ll find every aspect in a normal conversation with live humans (or have you ever talked with somebody who didn’t move AT ALL?
)
So, yeah, I’d like more games have things like that.
Yes, I am a fan of those things too, there’s really something missing if they take out the mouth-flap and animations and only have a few poses for the characters.
How are you liking True Fortune? Isn’t it awesome? *_* Haha, yes, the animations in TF are really great! And I really love that conversation system, I already loved it in Kimikiss… and since I love Tarot stuff alot I really like that Tarot card drawing thing alot too. <3
Do you know what annoys me with TF what you didn’t mention… the textbox, it’s a pretty important thing to me, if the textbox looks too plain and like in TF if they put the name of the character who’s talking right in front of the spoken text, eww, that’s not really pretty. I also like it when you see a picture of the Heroine next to the textbox, seeing her expressions and all.
I KNOW RIGHT? I thought about adding textboxes when I was writing this, but thought it wasn’t really a ‘dialogue’ thing.
Yeah, I really enjoyed True Fortune (though it didn’t have as much unique material for each guy as I wanted, yes I’m picky), but the text box looked like it was from some budget 80′s game. Possibly the easiest thing about the game to change to improve how it looks, and they did nothing…
I was in ren’ai games fandom for several years before I realized that some games DON’T have still images with “paper doll” graphics, and dialogue on the bottom. For example, Littlewitch’s BxG games (such as Quartett! and Rondo Leaflet) are presented with graphics that are much closer to comics/manga. There’s speech bubbles and everything.