I guess the best way to start this is to simply describe my experience. It was one sunny day when my friends and I decided to stop by her house to play some Wolf Among Us, a game that she just adores to no end. Hearing this, I was actually pretty interested. Having never played a Telltale game nor anything that hinges completely on its dialogue system, I was intrigued. What would this experience entail? How would this game allow us to experience stories differently than other genres?

Thinking back to the moment we started playing, I think the game didn’t feel that different in the beginning. Except for a myriad of quick time events that brought a slight sense of urgency, this conversation simulator was just that, a way for the player to role-play and explore the world. Yet as we journeyed through the game’s narrative , I’ve come to realize that Telltale have achieved something remarkable. The game wasn’t that different from the traditional dialogue system found in other games. Yet, the content, the conflicts, and the minute changes in systems all meshes together in surprising and interesting ways to provide engaging gameplay.

Structurally, The Wolf Among Us face the typical problems that all games that seeks to simulate society face. It is simply impossible to account for every single interactions possible. We currently just aren’t capable of creating a Turing test unidentifiable AIs that can emulate people, and we aren’t capable of creating the amount of content needed for the entire permutation of human interaction. So how can a game even come close to modeling a conversation without it seeming artificial?

The answer in Wolf Among Us seem to be the creation of a search tree. This is really nothing new compared to the likes of Fallout or other rpgs. The concept is that an engaged player will respond in ways the developers intended and so the developer will be able to create a number of generic choices that would fit the different type of emotional responses, whether it be indifferent, shocked, anger, or etc.. On the surface, this system seems rather bland. Most of the times, we know what our choices should be, and how the characters would react is often laid out in systematic manner. There’s going to be the sympathetic choice, the indifferent choice, the accusatory choice, etc., and the player will simply choose responses according to the persona that they wish to embody.

However, the spin that The Wolf Among Us puts on this standard system is by posing its answers in an ambiguous manner. Each choices’ content is essentially the same, yet each has a slightly different wording. These dialogue choices all makes sense within the context of your character, but its ambiguity hides essential information behind these dialogues. What emotion will my character show? How are the other characters going to respond?

The ambiguity of these situations create interesting social situations and puzzles that calls players to understand and empathize with the game’s characters. Our real life experiences have taught us that the more we understand a person, the more we are able to predict their reactions. Meanwhile, the subtle differences in wording between each choice implies the importance of nuance in a player’s speech. The result is a system that heavily emphasizes the importance of subtle details, prompting the player to be observant of the social situation. It tells the players that the little shifts in tone and meaning that comes with word choice matters, and that if the player can understand the character they are conversing with better, they would be able to better control the social situation.

As a result, the moment to moment gameplay is extremely engaging. The player is constantly on their toes guessing, inferring each character’s personality, behaviors, and is attempting to act in ways that would best appeal to the characters they meet by piecing together evidence presented throughout the game.

Dialogue Timers:

Telltale also addresses another common problem with game-simulated conversations. Conversations are naturally rhythmic behavior. When one person speaks, there is a proper time to respond (not too soon so that you are interrupting them, and not so late that there is an awkward silence in between each responses). However, many games disregard this aspect of conversation, resulting in many awkward moments of pauses that evaporates any tension or flow.

Thus, Telltale included response timers. If the player doesn’t respond during a certain amount of time, the default response of silence is chosen from them. This simple yet effective system provides a time constraint for players to speak, mimicking the rhythm of conversation. Aside from mirroring conversation rhythms, a timer also allows designers deliberate control over the pacing of the game. A shorter timer can be used when responses are expected to be quick and the situation tense, while longer timers can be used during calmer sections without much happening. The result is that the designers and writers are allowed much greater flexibility in the pacing of its stories, enabling the design of a more engaging narrative.

Furthermore, response timers pushes the previously mentioned dialogue system beyond being systematic puzzles and transforms them to real social challenges. The timed response window disallow long contemplation on the effect of different choices and instead forces an informed yet quick decision as there are only so much time to think. So while players can still consider the effect of their choices on other characters, they are pressed to make choices based on their past social experiences as they relate most to the interpersonal conflicts that the game presents.

This break from the systematic approach of problem solving further immerses the player in the world and makes characters that they interact with seem more human-like rather than a pretty dialogue tree. By adding a timer to this detective-like gameplay, the game asks its players to recollect as much relevant information as possible within the time frame and makes a snap judgement on the spot. This pattern is surprisingly captivating, and I would even parallel these dialogue choices to making a strategic decision in an RTS game. It engages much of these same skills of information collection, prediction, and execution except in an amazingly refreshing context of conversing with others.

By tweaking the established systems of conversation to their use, Telltale creates a surprisingly original game without reinventing the wheel and have brought many solutions that facilitate the translation of social interaction into the videogame medium. And as seen in the release of games like Oxenfree, Firewatch, and many more, the innovations and success of Telltale’s conversation system have inspired a new wave of experiments that continues to explore the limits and possibilities of representing social interaction using video games.

Some side notes I didn’t manage to fit in:

Hidden Information

Hidden information and the lack of a failure state in The Wolf Among Us is hugely influential to its content creation. Since the player will not be forced to replay sections of the dialogue, the player only knows the response they get from the choices they are given. That means that the game is able to skimp on content by hiding the same result behind different choices. This allows much of the development time to be focused on a smaller narrative space and the increase the depth of its characters while maintaining the facade of agency. The character might respond with the same dialogue line despite what the player chooses, but as long as the dialogue doesn’t feel forced, the player will not notice until they replay the section. The ambiguous choices further plays into it by facilitating many options to have similar responses. While this might break down on repeated playthroughs, the first time remains very engaging.

Silence

The silence option is very clever. Not only does it provides a default option for the timer system, it also allows conversation to feel more genuine. In reality, the pace of conversations varies, and not every conversation is a regulated back and forth between one party to another. The silence option increases immersion because it allows fluidity in the flow of conversations. The characters’ response to the player’s lack of response also puts them as participants of the world. Just as speaking conveys information, not speaking also conveys its own information. Whether it the player’s lost of words, their silent judgement, or their confusion, silence is meaningful. While these characters that the player converse with cannot access the player’s mind, and might misinterpret what the player’s silence mean, their attempt to parse their lack of words makes them seem like living and breathing individuals.