Why Dialogue Trees Stink
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These days, as games look more and more real each day, it's as if they want to create this so-called "cinematic" experience, but fall short of it when it comes to interactive dialogue. Even in Mass Effect, arguably the best iteration of prerendered cutscene and interactive choice made yet, we're still constantly taken out of the scene unraveling as we're too focused on making our dialogue choices. Pause too long, and the scene comes to a halt. We want engagement and we want choice, yet this stop-and-go rhythm is still a bit jarring. It's like watching a movie on your computer and forgetting to turn the screen saver off, so you have to constantly remind yourself to move the mouse every so often.If you don't like choosing dialogue or using a keyboard/controller during cutscenes, then perhaps movies are the entertainment medium for you.
Furthermore, in a lot of games with dialogue trees, all we're doing is exhausting all the possibilities of each dialogue tree. If we're going to listen to all that anyway, I feel it would be best for designers to streamline that into a fully-realized custscene, rather than extend it out to an empty feeling, long-winded conversation. Even the best Mass Effect dialogue felt stagnant and impenetrable as I'd just be waiting for the line to be over, so I could select something else and gain as much information as possible. All of Mass Effect's most moving moments for me were during the parts I couldn't control, which is telling. I liked the dialogue with Liara, but it still couldn't hold a candle to how great those scenes could have been had they been less interactive and more well directed as a movie.
