Creating Emotion in Games: The Craft and Art of Emotioneering™

Chapter 2.3. Emotioneering Techniques Category #3: Dialogue Interesting Techniques

Give players an Insta-Pass to Your NPCs' personalities.

This chapter

focuses on making single lines of dialogue by minor NPCs interesting.

NPC dialogue often prompts action, sometimes gives crucial information, sometimes adds color,^[1] and sometimes, of course, it performs two or three of these functions at once.

No matter what the function of the dialogue, giving the speaker one or two Traits can make that dialogue a lot more interesting.

Let's see this concept applied to different types NPC dialogue.

NPC Dialogue to Add Color

Say you're playing a game set in WWII. You and the troops have been battling your way across Europe. The going has been rough. To get health points, ...