Dorkly has the answer in their latest comic about why all the NPCs in various stores act weird and repeat the same sentences over and over again.
It’s absolutely not because their AI is simple.
Why NPCs Always Have The Same One-Liners
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8 responses to “Why NPCs Always Have The Same One-Liners”
now it all makes sense……
I kinda hated how Trails in the Sky didn’t let you ransack peoples’ homes and actually forced you to play the part of the characters – noble, virtuous kids who wanna be heroes.
I kept running around all these houses trying to use the action button on those deliciously tempting chest, crying, “C’mooon, let me ROB you, guy! I know you got nice things.”
That’s what I love about Gothic/Risen. You can steal anything that isn’t nailed down, as long as you don’t get caught!
Trails in the Sky also doesn’t have repeated one-line dialog for its NPCs though. They all have 3-4 lines and their lines change as the story progresses and new events occur.
Man. That is, by far away, one of the finest things I’ve seen in any RPG to date. ALL of the NPCs are named, as far as I’ve been able to tell, and ALL have their own little agenda/story/speeches.
It’s some of – if not THE finest world-building I’ve seen in a game.
…I just wish I could loot all those chests in peoples’ homes. THEY’RE CHESTS. CHESTS ARE FOR LOOTING. 30 years of gaming has taught me this!
Yeah, the Trails games have exemplary world-building. The problem is that all that incidental dialogue causes them to have ludicrous amounts of text and that’s why they’re so expensive and time-consuming to translate and why we’re only looking at getting the second of them early 2015 when Japan is getting the 7th of them this month.
Have you tried to re-open a chest once you’ve looted it in the game? All the chests have unique lines once they’re opened too.
Always. I love those lines. I was reading some board elsewhere with some conversation from, who is it… xSeed or something? Someone who said they were a translator was explaining that some of the jokes people were giving them credit for were actually the same/similar joke in Japanese, and they didn’t need to take much licence with interpretation at all, but the chest lines were some of the few they had free reign to do themselves.
The joke’s on him. While he was standing in his room, I walked behind him and stole everything, including the 30 books he had on the shelves, the potions on the night stand, the three course meal and his prized collection of weapons and shields.
I then walked out of the room without raising suspicion.