Speech Checks in Videogames

[SchulzyAus]

Hey guys,
I'm working on an RPG mod and I've been brainstorming unique ways for sidequests to be implemented. I have personally never liked the way most sidequests work; you talk to someone, do a job, learn some lore and the runtime is bloated. You may get a couple item drops or some in-game currency, but it rarely (if ever) actually affects the game in a meaningful way.

An idea I've had is to implement completed sidequests into the Conversation system. In most games, the conversation system is treated like a number game

[Speech 29/100] haha sharp metal goes twang
 I don't think you should ask me to fight on your behalf
 Yea I'll fight

To me, it ruins the flow of the conversation. You are teased with the right answer but WHOOPS, you didn't spec enough into speech you bumbling moron. So my alternative goes as follows.
You talk to a faction leader and they say "here are 10 tasks we need doing. We desperately need these two completed. Can you help?" These two sidequests are still optional, but completing them grants unique dialogue that has a better result over the narrative. For example

[Mirrors] We don't need to fight over this. I already stole you some food.
[Paddlepop] Look, I have an extra apple here. Want it?
 That's my chicken tendie <start combat>

Do you guys have any other suggestions for how speech checks can be implemented into RPGs?

[MCerberus]

Having flags that open new conversation options is so old-school that Neverwinter Nights had a tutorial on quest making. Interesting bit of history, it involved testicles.

Fallout: New Vegas does that well with a lot of events triggering more dialog options, from quest completion, to faction rep, to the presence of perks, and non-speech skills.


The Mass Effect series attempted to turn speech into a more "Conflict resolution" kind of skill. You level up your paragon/renegade reputations and you're able to resolve tricky situations more with... most commonly shouting people down but other actions as well.

[Eldan]

Have you played Disco Elysium? That entire game is, kind of, a series of speech checks. Except you have like 20 different speech skills. Also, they all have opinions and are kind of your party members.

If you're looking for interesting implementations of speech mechanics, it's quite worth getting. Also, best game I've ever played.

[Cespenar]

Earlier RPGs already did what you suggest through a middleman: reputation system. You do things for them, your faction reputation goes up, it helps in some checks.

Apart from that, I find the best way to utilize simple skill checks is to throw in more options for the same check, and/or set some partial success/partial fail clauses.

Like, "Needs Speech 40/100, fail!" is boring, but "Needs Speech 40/100 OR Intimidation 30/100 OR Reputation: Liked" is better.

Similarly, "Needs Speech 40/100, fail!" is boring, but "Needs Speech 30/100 for Partial Fail, 40/100 for Success, 55/100 for Critical Success" is more interesting.

[Anonymouswizard]

Have you played Disco Elysium? That entire game is, kind of, a series of speech checks. Except you have like 20 different speech skills. Also, they all have opinions and are kind of your party members.

If you're looking for interesting implementations of speech mechanics, it's quite worth getting. Also, best game I've ever played.

Yeah,

It's an entire game basically based around interviewing people, and actually goes the old school route of rolling checks instead of using automatic pass/fail. The way it uses dialogue is interesting.

Some options are gated by flags, some include skill checks, some are just open. Many skill checks can be retried, but a lot of one's representing actual conversation can't be. Then there's that one conversation that's entirely unwinnable. Oh, and having your skills too high leaves you susceptible to NPCs locking your choices down by playing to your pride and the like.

Also, your skills are the voices in your head. It works, and leads to there being more dialogue with your skills than with the NPCs (except maybe Ancient Reptilian Brain and Horrific Necktie, but they're probably also voices in your head).

It's amazing. It's also designed for somebody high on the social and knowledge skills, because you're a detective solving crimes. I majored in Inland Empire, Logic, and Drama.

[KillianHawkeye]

Seems like Baldur's Gate 3 might be capable of this sort of thing, although I don't know if they're going that way or not. From the little I've seen though, it already has unique conversation options based on character tags, like "say this because you're an Elf" or "do this because you're a Warlock". It wouldn't be hard for them to add "say this because you've done this" kind of options.

Then again, this is really the sort of thing that adds a lot of work to RPGs, and I understand why most of them don't do it.

[Rynjin]

Seems like Baldur's Gate 3 might be capable of this sort of thing, although I don't know if they're going that way or not. From the little I've seen though, it already has unique conversation options based on character tags, like "say this because you're an Elf" or "do this because you're a Warlock". It wouldn't be hard for them to add "say this because you've done this" kind of options.

Then again, this is really the sort of thing that adds a lot of work to RPGs, and I understand why most of them don't do it.

This is something Larian has been doing for a while; it's a feature in the Divinity Original Sin games as well. It's the reason why it's one of the only games like it I will play one of the premade characters, because they're actually CHARACTERS and interact with the world in completely different ways.

For the most prominent one, Fane in DOS2 is basically the canon real main character and gets insights into the main plot other characters don't, and much earlier.

[Balmas]

New Vegas is a bit of a class in both how to do dialogue right and how to do it right, all at the same time.

On the good? It offers tons of options for player choices to shine. Speech is the best skill in the game, of course, offering peaceful resolutions to many quests. But there are also dialogue checks for the other skills, as well as checks based on faction reputation. F'r'instance, you can use Speech to convince Final Boss Lanius that you have an ambush lying in wait for him. But you can also use Barter to sell him on the idea that by pushing the Legion further into NCR territory, it'll stretch his armies too thin to maintain the territory they've already taken.

Now, the bad. One of the major complaints people have with Speech in New Vegas is that 90% of the time, it's an auto-win button. Dialogue checks almost always lead to a better outcome than other options. They allow you to skip entire quests, get free items, and so on, which mean they're effectively an easy auto-pick for anyone who has the skills to meet those checks. I can only think, off the top of my head, of two instances where a dialogue check leads to a worse outcome. In many ways, I think that a dialogue system which makes you think about your options, and the possible repercussions of them, would be a better option.

If you have an hour to spare, consider watching this video essay by Jon of Many a True Nerd. It specifically focuses on Fallout, but many of the things he discusses would be applicable to designing another dialogue system.

[Rodin]

The best conversation options I've ever seen is Deus Ex: Human Revolution in the "debate bosses". Not only are there no direct speech checks, the correct answers change based on how the conversation has gone. You can't play through the battle twice and pick the same answers each time, because the speech the antagonist gives each time is slightly different. Picking a winning answer one time may enrage the next time you pick it. You actually have to craft a good argument to win.

Unfortunately, this takes a hell of a lot of effort to implement and as such is really difficult to put across an entire game. I'd still like to see something like that for the Speech solution to major quests in an RPG. New Vegas's speech battle against Legate Lanius is "pick the option with the Speech requirement you meet" over and over, meaning you can defeat Lanius in a debate without even reading his dialogue. Only other game that comes close is Disco Elysium, and that game managed it by ditching all other gameplay elements and crafting a very short game full of paths to take.

[Thrawn4]

What really bugs me is that the highlighted/ unlocked options are always the best. Neither in Fallout nor Mass Effect do you have to think about it because the best answer is always marked.
It would be better if a higher skill just added new answers so that you actually had to think about the dialogue.

[GloatingSwine]

What really bugs me is that the highlighted/ unlocked options are always the best. Neither in Fallout nor Mass Effect do you have to think about it because the best answer is always marked.
It would be better if a higher skill just added new answers so that you actually had to think about the dialogue.

Then you're just playing a guessing game with the writer as to what they thought the appropriate dialogue for your skill was.

[Thrawn4]

Then you're just playing a guessing game with the writer as to what they thought the appropriate dialogue for your skill was.

It's not guessing if it is a logical argument, nor when the designer dropped hints which emotional appeal works best.
However it is a game, which is the point.

[SerTabris]

The best conversation options I've ever seen is Deus Ex: Human Revolution in the "debate bosses". Not only are there no direct speech checks, the correct answers change based on how the conversation has gone. You can't play through the battle twice and pick the same answers each time, because the speech the antagonist gives each time is slightly different. Picking a winning answer one time may enrage the next time you pick it. You actually have to craft a good argument to win.

Unfortunately, this takes a hell of a lot of effort to implement and as such is really difficult to put across an entire game. I'd still like to see something like that for the Speech solution to major quests in an RPG. New Vegas's speech battle against Legate Lanius is "pick the option with the Speech requirement you meet" over and over, meaning you can defeat Lanius in a debate without even reading his dialogue. Only other game that comes close is Disco Elysium, and that game managed it by ditching all other gameplay elements and crafting a very short game full of paths to take.

I feel like in the New Vegas case there's another significant tradeoff: Lanius, like most other high-level Legion people, is a horrible enough person that I don't want him to leave alive. (I actually once attempted to do the speech check and then shoot him in the back, but he runs away too fast for that.)

[Eldan]

What really bugs me is that the highlighted/ unlocked options are always the best. Neither in Fallout nor Mass Effect do you have to think about it because the best answer is always marked.
It would be better if a higher skill just added new answers so that you actually had to think about the dialogue.

Back to Disco Elysium again! Some of the dialogue options unlocked by having certain skills are aggressively terrible.

[Seppl]

It's not guessing if it is a logical argument, nor when the designer dropped hints which emotional appeal works best.
However it is a game, which is the point.

Reminds me a lot of the speech challenges in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which were implemented exactly that way. Were you by any chance thinking about those?

Which also reminds me of the great flaw in that kind of gameplay, because I found those speech challenges very hard, despite having a personality profile for my counterpart. It pits me, the player - not the character, in a triple indirect speech challenge against the writer. I, the player, must evaluate what kind of mood the author means to convey with each of the dialogue options my character has available. Then I, the player, must evaluate how these relate to the author's interpretation of the personality profile I am given. And finally I, the player, must evaluate what the author thinks what option makes the most sense given the previous two points, and the previous context of the conversation (which shifts depending on previous answers). And the only feedback you get in-game is after you have picked an option, while you cannot save mid-conversation, nor does a conversation follow the same path each time.

Maybe this is easy for people, who are really smooth-talking in real-life, but I found that very hard and any misjudgement at any point practically fails the challenge. Meaning that I cannot play a smooth-talking character in that game, unless I am not just very good at this in real-life, but so good indeed, that I can even solve this indirect challenge against the writers themselves. In the end, I ended up looking up most of the answers because I found these challenges rather frustrating.

[GloatingSwine]

Yeah, the social bosses in DXHR are a fun idea, but ultimately they present to the player as a puzzle not a conversation. You're not given space to express a character because the conversation has explicit win and lose states and a narrow path to the win state, not even varied ways to get what you might want out of it.

Like in FNV you might get a "better" result in a conversation with a skill, but it almost always isn't the only way to get that result.

[Rynjin]

The main iseue with those speech challenges is they're semi-randomized, as I recall. It makes the Social Enhancer augment a must have if you want to have a chance.

[Thrawn4]

Reminds me a lot of the speech challenges in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which were implemented exactly that way. Were you by any chance thinking about those?

Not really, no. I got the augmentation for that, which was a really bad idea. I focussed mostly on the hints it provided, rather than the dialogue.

Maybe this is easy for people, who are really smooth-talking in real-life, but I found that very hard and any misjudgement at any point practically fails the challenge.

The same is true for fights, where you either benefit from good reflexes (if it is real-time) or logical thinking (turn-based strategy).

[Spore]

Skill checks in general should not gate content (to much of my fellow Elder Scrolls's fans shagrin) but actually should prompt how presented problems are solved. That being said, speech checks as problem solvers should generally involve people who are not sure if they want to let you pass or stop you. Or they could increase the rewards with additional items.

Again, not a fan of gating unique items behind a speech check (making the glowy sword of destruction gated behind a check) but rather expensive but standard loot (give two potions of fiery death sword magic).

[Rodin]

Skill checks in general should not gate content (to much of my fellow Elder Scrolls's fans shagrin) but actually should prompt how presented problems are solved. That being said, speech checks as problem solvers should generally involve people who are not sure if they want to let you pass or stop you. Or they could increase the rewards with additional items.

Again, not a fan of gating unique items behind a speech check (making the glowy sword of destruction gated behind a check) but rather expensive but standard loot (give two potions of fiery death sword magic).

You can gate content as long as there are other ways to do it.

Take the glowy sword of destruction, and put it in a chest in a warehouse with guards on the door.

Option 1: Fight your way in, using the RPGs combat system. Loot the keys off the dead guards.
Option 2: Use your Thief skills to climb on the roof, pick the lock on the skylight, climb down a rope, pick the lock on the chest.
Option 3: Use magic to teleport through the wall, magically open the chest with a spell, then teleport out again.
Option 4: Talk to the guy and convince him you're authorized to claim the sword.

-----

The problem I have with speech checks is that Option 4 is almost always the simplest way of going about it. You level up Speechcraft, talk to the guard, then select the option with (Speechcraft X Required), and that's it. No analyzing the situation, no disarming traps, no fighting the guards. Every other method has a minigame, while the Speech check just has "click the I win button".

Speech checks could be fun, but they require additional thought and writing. Neither which tend to be in great supply in RPGs. Especially if you have to pay the voice actors extra for different dialogue.

[Bohandas]

I feel like in the New Vegas case there's another significant tradeoff: Lanius, like most other high-level Legion people, is a horrible enough person that I don't want him to leave alive. (I actually once attempted to do the speech check and then shoot him in the back, but he runs away too fast for that.)

Same here. I usually try to snipe him with the anti-material rifle or the dirty bomb before he can even try to interact

EDIT:
I also redirect Ulysses' missile rather than stopping it

EDIT:
Speaking of FNV's Ulysses, does anyone else really want to see a game that explores just what the heck is going on at Mojave Express that they have all these bizarrely superhuman employees like Ulysses and The Courier?

You can gate content as long as there are other ways to do it.

Take the glowy sword of destruction, and put it in a chest in a warehouse with guards on the door.

Option 1: Fight your way in, using the RPGs combat system. Loot the keys off the dead guards.
Option 2: Use your Thief skills to climb on the roof, pick the lock on the skylight, climb down a rope, pick the lock on the chest.
Option 3: Use magic to teleport through the wall, magically open the chest with a spell, then teleport out again.
Option 4: Talk to the guy and convince him you're authorized to claim the sword.

-----

The problem I have with speech checks is that Option 4 is almost always the simplest way of going about it. You level up Speechcraft, talk to the guard, then select the option with (Speechcraft X Required), and that's it. No analyzing the situation, no disarming traps, no fighting the guards. Every other method has a minigame, while the Speech check just has "click the I win button".

Speech checks could be fun, but they require additional thought and writing. Neither which tend to be in great supply in RPGs. Especially if you have to pay the voice actors extra for different dialogue.

In fairness, this implementation pretty much captures how this sprt of thing works in the movies. Jack Sparrow, or Obi-Wan Kenobi, or whoever, says something glib to the guards and then walks on past.

[GloatingSwine]

You can gate content as long as there are other ways to do it.

Take the glowy sword of destruction, and put it in a chest in a warehouse with guards on the door.

Option 1: Fight your way in, using the RPGs combat system. Loot the keys off the dead guards.
Option 2: Use your Thief skills to climb on the roof, pick the lock on the skylight, climb down a rope, pick the lock on the chest.
Option 3: Use magic to teleport through the wall, magically open the chest with a spell, then teleport out again.
Option 4: Talk to the guy and convince him you're authorized to claim the sword.

-----

The problem I have with speech checks is that Option 4 is almost always the simplest way of going about it. You level up Speechcraft, talk to the guard, then select the option with (Speechcraft X Required), and that's it. No analyzing the situation, no disarming traps, no fighting the guards. Every other method has a minigame, while the Speech check just has "click the I win button".

Speech checks could be fun, but they require additional thought and writing. Neither which tend to be in great supply in RPGs. Especially if you have to pay the voice actors extra for different dialogue.

Yeah, though if the skill system is designed well enough then the player who has Speechcraft X has made themselves worse at doing something else by investing less in those skills.

Speech skills tend to be an investment choice rather than a game mechanical interaction. You get a skill you can use to bypass some challenges at the expense of skills that would make all the others easier.

[warty goblin]

The problem I have with speech checks is that Option 4 is almost always the simplest way of going about it. You level up Speechcraft, talk to the guard, then select the option with (Speechcraft X Required), and that's it. No analyzing the situation, no disarming traps, no fighting the guards. Every other method has a minigame, while the Speech check just has "click the I win button".

Speech checks could be fun, but they require additional thought and writing. Neither which tend to be in great supply in RPGs. Especially if you have to pay the voice actors extra for different dialogue.

I think you hit the nail on the head here, speech checks are generally the least interactive (I might go so far as to say most boring) solution to a gameplay scenario, because they involve hardly any gameplay. Oblivion tried to solve this with the speech minigame, but, well, that wasn't exactly super interesting either. They can be interesting from a story point of view, but then a Speechcraft skill is basically just a "suck this much at the rest of the game to get the best story moments" tax, which is obviously unsatisfying.

I think the tag system that the Original Sin games use is a pretty good solution to this problem. It isn't a skill tax since you pick it at character creation, which also allows the writers to super-tailor some story options to your character choices. This is way more interesting and satisfying than Speechcraft > 5 so you win style checks, or even the fancy sort where you can use Strength to intimate somebody or whatever, at least to me.

[Cespenar]

The real info that can be gleaned from this thread is that no matter which route you go with for developing your game, you're not gonna make everyone happy all at once.

[KillianHawkeye]

The real info that can be gleaned from this thread is that no matter which route you go with for developing your game, you're not gonna make everyone happy all at once.

That's true for everything, not just game design.

[Cespenar]

That's true for everything, not just game design.

Even inside game design, there are plenty of aspects that people tend to agree on, say, more than 80% of the time. What I meant is that this doesn't fall in that group. It's too project-specific and above all, taste-specific.

[Psyren]

To me, it ruins the flow of the conversation. You are teased with the right answer but WHOOPS, you didn't spec enough into speech you bumbling moron.

That's intentional; it's telegraphing for a first-time or inexperienced player that speech skills are useful. If you only have the speech options appear when the player qualifies for them, you will have a huge swath of your playerbase go through the entire game without even realizing they should have been doing that. And even the experienced ones will likely want to know how much Persuasion they need to access a certain option, especially if skills are uncapped.

[Eldan]

That's another thing I think Disco Elysium does very right: it doesn't tell you the right answer until after you've rolled. It's more like "[Authority: 12]: You're a lieutenant. Pull rank on them". You pull rank and if you succeed on the check, you do it well, while if you fail, you just come across as an annoying prick or something.

[Gwynchan'rGwyll]

Solasta (a D&D 5e port) does something interesting with their conversation mechanic. I mean, it's D&D 5e, so usually you have a Persuasion and an Intimidation option, and sometimes a different option based on some other skill or trait. Each option is attached to one of the characters in your party based on their personality traits and skills, so each has a different skill bonus being rolled, and depending on the target of the interaction each has a different hidden DC. And then you choose which character is going to give their response.

However, if you have a good Insight check in the party, and you make that Insight check, it'll tell you what the odds are of each approach succeeding, effectively unmasking the DC for each check.

[Morty]

That's another thing I think Disco Elysium does very right: it doesn't tell you the right answer until after you've rolled. It's more like "[Authority: 12]: You're a lieutenant. Pull rank on them". You pull rank and if you succeed on the check, you do it well, while if you fail, you just come across as an annoying prick or something.

I feel like passive checks are more important in Disco Elysium than active ones, a lot of the time. You can reroll active checks or even quickload if you're so inclined, but passive checks just provide a constant background theme.

Generally, I think having multiple "speech skills" or whatever the local equivalent is, and expecting the player to have at least one, works best. If there's only one persuasion skill, the optimal route will always be to max it. Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire has several different "social" skills that are set apart from combat skills/spells and it generally works alright. The risk of this approach is that some skills might be more useful than others.

I remember one game where there actually was a legitimate tradeoff between combat and social skills: Age of Decadence. But I don't think it worked well. There's still no real player skill to it: you just either have the right skills or you don't. It's not bad if there are multiple approaches to any given conversation or goal, but one time I wound up in a situation where I didn't have the right combination of skills to avoid a fight... but I was woefully unequipped for the fight because I had no combat investment. I had to reload and buy the right skills.