The Dreadful 'Walk and Talk' Sequence | Extra Punctuation
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- čas přidán 4. 10. 2023
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This week on Extra Punctuation, Yahtzee talks about the "walk and talk" sequences that a lot of games like to use.
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In starfield you can toggle walking on, and your fastest speed is SLOWER than the npcs so you have to keep toggling it off to keep up. Insane.
@Jcdlf7 people would rather complain than use the mechanics the game.
This is common in all games that allow walkspeed toggle, you're always slower than the NPC for some idiotic reason, so you're either sutter running or lagging behind. Just do a fucking cutscene...
@@Jcdlf7What does that have to do with following behind NPCs on a set path as part of a walk and talk section?
his point is that you have to run around an NPC like an idiot instead of being able to just roleplay and walk with them as they talk@@Jcdlf7
I installed a mod to adjust my walk speed just to fix this one issue lol
@OtakuUnitedStudio you can walk pass them and they'll follow you. Even while expelling the plot in starfield.
In the game Asuras Wrath, every boss has a monologue and you can interrupt them at any point with a punch to the face. very cathartic
Was going to say the same thing. Glad to see people remember Asuras wrath, the story about the angriest man on the planet and his journey to punch others in the face when they start talking about saving the world or the past because they are only interested in saving their daughter and punching anyone who makes him angry.
@@jetmysterytorpedo5935 You misspelled: "Punching anyone who made his daughter *cry* ."
Asura doesn't give a damn about punching people who makes him angry. Anger is all he is, and the tragedy is that he's aware of that. He knows he's a bad dad because the only parenting he can concieve of is the two-step variety.
Step 1: Find reason daughter is crying
Step 2: Punch it.
This includes villains in the middle of monologues. And I will never not appreciate the "Shut X up" prompt.
@@Jacobstx "I will never forgive you...FOR MAKING MY DAUGHTER CRY!!"
Asura's Wrath is an excellent experience that had no right being as emotional as it was.
@@jetmysterytorpedo5935 Wish they'd just fucking port that game over to Steam already.
Desperado: Double Barrel agrees strongly with that sentiment! 👍🏾
"... if the NPC walking speed is slightly slower than the player character walking speed..." THIS, THIS THING RIGHT THERE.
nothing shatters immersion more quickly than imagining my player character standing still in between taking a big steppy every few seconds to keep up with Exposition Grandpa because of mismatched walk speeds
Another thing that sucks sometimes about Walk and Talks is that sometimes the talk takes longer than the walk, so if you want to catch all the info you can, you basically have to stand around doing fuck-all while they finish talking.
God I HATE that!
yep when you walk at a normal pace youll hit a trigger too early and get conversational whiplash. witcher 3 did it a lot
That happens a bunch in GTA. Plenty of times playing San Andreas where I had to stop driving a bit before the waymarker so I could hear the rest of the dialogue.
i like how a lot of dialogue scenes in katana zero have a dedicated "shut the fuck up" dialogue option that lets you interrupt characters while they're speaking
God, Katana Zero is so fucking good.
Asura's Wrath had that as well
yeah and also it has the function to show the mc's thoughts developing (also allows murder)
Katana Zero's dialogue system in general is a very interesting mechanic as a whole
DOOM (2016) had that too, right?
Walk and talk sequences are the unholy offspring of cutscenes and escort quests.
I love cutscenes - as long as they’re skipable!
@@scottiedusntknow
I still don't understand why RE7 has unskippable cutscenes.
Walk and Talk sequences are specifically only the bad parts of cutscenes and escort missions with none of the good parts
Modern gaming in a nutshell.
I remember starting the witcher 3, and I got a walk and talk/ escort quest. I dreaded what this quest would be, but then I realised the person I was following would run when I was running. Didn't know I could get so happy watching an npc run
That is I think one of the best walk and talks in existence, just two ol' monster hunter buddies bantering back and forth while doing their thing. Both immersive and revealing of the world, characters, all the stuff you may or may not have already known but really need to from the previous games (etc). It should IMO be the textbook for how to do serious cutscene style reveals in walk and talk.
Those walk and talks don't break the immersion because it still lets you go at your own pace outside of small specific encounters. Sure, you, might lose out on insightful and interesting conversations if you go too fast, but since it's optional, choosing to let the conversation play out is a lot more engaging. Whereas forcing it on you would cause frustration and take you out of it.
However they'll always follow a really sub optimal path and may as well not even run.
The Witcher 3 is up there with GTA5 in being one of the absolute fucking worst at this. It forced me to watch so many boring-ass cut-scenes and to put up with so many pointless walk-and-blather type missions that by the time I got to play the actual game, and realise that it is shit, the number of hours that I had "played" had soared well past the cutoff for refund eligibility.
The Witcher 3 is the quintessential shallow, tedious, bad game for fake gamer stooges who can only tell whether they're supposed to praise a game based on its graphical fidelity, and for cringey fan-fic addled adult tweens who want to "live in that world."
@@JB-fp3fbnice attempt, but you went too hard too fast, and gave up that you're trolling
I remember in that Bard's Tale action game, the game gives you to press a skip button and *the* Cary Elwes would say "SKIIIIP!" or "BOOORIIIING!!!" when you press it... so satisfying!
"Nuckelavee oh Nuckelavee!"
God let's make Yahtzee play this. Maybe he could have fun for once...
I always liked the way Borderlands 2 handled npc dialogue. Leaving the general vicinity of the npc just puts them on your comms system. This allowed you to look around and loot while you wait for the npc to finish (although some sections still have horrendously long dialogue with nothing to do).
It's kind of what Borderlands was famous for, actually playing the game whilst dialog is talking along. They went way overboard with the sheer quantity later on though, it really is too much where seemingly everything from the enemies you're blasting to the minor quest NPC has constant witty quips to spout.
Game developers need to start asking themselves if this really is the best way to convey their narrative. And if the answer is yes, they need to start asking if this is the right narrative for an interactive medium.
Ghost of Tsushima thankfully had it where the npc character would move at the same pace as Jin, either walking or running, which was a huge breath of fresh air for the walk n' talk. Also, on his last point there, Asura's Wrath had a few moments that allowed you to press the "Shut the fuckup" button. You even got achievements for it!
"Extend Your Hand" 😀
That "shut the fuck up" button idea reminds me of that Post-ZP stream of that "Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood" game. Specifically, the part where during a dialogue tree, Yahtzee pointed out that at any point, you could turn into a werewolf and start killing things. He then proceeded to do so and even commented that he wished that Deus Ex had had a "fuck it" button.
It's actually a BRILLIANT idea the more I think about it. Teamates distract you in a multiplayer game? Press and presto! They are all muted. Cutscene? Skip! NPC speaks their stupid line for the billionth time when you're trying to hear something in a game? SHUT THE FUCK UP! Like. It genuinely would create metrics for interactivity and engagement for game developers, AND would force developers to question non-interactive components in the games of the platform that does it.
FUCK. Anyone interested in programming one for PC? Like... See which games would allow it and how, and start with them?
That was one of the few good ideas that game had.
Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood? That genuinely sounds like a parody of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
@@abox6989 Probably because it's set in the same universe.
@@abox6989 V:TM and W:TA are both part of the World of Darkness series/universe (Hunter: The Reckoning is probably the third most well known in the series). The word 'Earthblood' was probably to help signify the spiritual bond werewolves have with the planet since part of their creation was to protect the planet from physical and spiritual corruption by humans and from other supernatural beings (they failed due to complacency and infighting between the werewolf tribes/clans leading to what they call "The Apocalypse").
This video reminded me of Bastion, where the narrator tells what is happening and what "the kid" is doing, at the player's own pace. If you fall from the ground he says something like "no, that was not how it happened". And the bonus is that you have no clue of what is going on even with the narration! That was a really good beginning.
And if you die, he makes a remark that either sounds like he lost his train of thought or dropped the story to make a comment. It's so fluid!
Kid just rages for a while.
And then the Kid fell to his death. Nah, only foolin'.
Good example! That kind of stuff is always refreshing.
He's like a far less jerkass version of the Stanley Parable's narrator.
I like how in Furi you could press a button to auto-walk so the walking and talking kept going but you didn't have to keep pressing W and could just chill instead.
High on Life did this everywhere and its great. You can skip dialogue and walk away from characters and they'll get mad and yell at you but you can still just move along.
I think it's interesting when you consider that, while not the biggest fan base, there is a fan base for visual novels. Visual novels are all talk with no walk, yet the players can still enjoy the best written games because they often give you way more options in pacing. Text speed, skip buttons, a list of previous dialogue, and on a blue moon, a go back to previous lines button. This is something that AAA games with big budgets seem scared to do, putting all this time into forcing the player to take text in their way.
Mass Effect 3 has a major walk and talk sequence right at the beginning of the game, but it's scripted--you can speed through it with the skip line button just like you would any other conversation. If you must do a walk and talk scene that's the way to do it. It's almost visual novel in its execution since you can skip through the lines at will.
>blue moon
a glass piece of it, perhaps
@@richardvlasek2445Yeh, nowadays most modern VNs have a rollback function
I think there exists a critical difference between a visual novel and a "game" in the traditionally understood sense of the term. A visual novel is exactly that, the final-form Pokévolution of the Choose Your Own Adventure book. Because of that, the rules of engagement are completely different.
The same could be said (and has been said!) of walking simulators, those "all video and no game" walk-and-sometimes-talk (or find audio log or diary or whatever you're walking through the simulation for in the first place as the devs make sure you'll spend more than two hours so you don't refund the game after you beat it) whipping boys of the hardcore crowd.
And I by no means intend "difference between X and a 'game'" as a pejorative in any way. My most-played game on Steam of all time is American Truck Simulator, and that's representative of an entire genre of "game" that has none of the elements of the traditional definition of that word. You don't "win" a simulator, there's no story or framing narrative, it's just basically a fully-interactive version of playing with toy trucks (or model railroads, or toy airplanes, or whatever-all else) where the computer makes possible fully-realized worlds to rival and exceed even the most creative child's imagination of the task being simulated.
It's when you put these niche non- or semi-interactive elements into titles where the entire appeal is in the action that it becomes annoying or even infuriating. Heck, Doom 2016 has the absolute best lampshading of this I've ever seen when Doomguy listens to some claptrap in what basically amounts to an elevator version of the walk-and-talk and (to bring this back to Yahtzee's point) hits the Shut The Fuck Up Button so hard he smashes the controller before setting about the task of ripping and tearing. And it's awesome.
Any good visual novels worth giving a shot? Not a genre ive interacted with much (unless you count planescape torment huehue) but would love to get into a good one. bonus points if its on the switch.
That bit at the end about the whole telling your opponent to ‘shut the fuck up’ reminded me that Asura’s Wrath did the same thing. The first real boss Wyzen starts getting mouthy and a pronto appears asking us if we’d like to shut him up, and if you push the button Asura decks Wyzen in the face.
its mostly played for comedy in asura wrath as the characters monologue are overly long and pretentious on purpose to motivate you to skip them.
That last bit with the STFU button being a hardware function of the controller, and using it to passive-aggressively bully E3 presenters is brilliant.
Honestly, that was a very refreshing part of Stranger of Paradise. Jack would interrupt the monologues of his enemies and just start combat. My favorite is right before the Lich fight.
If only other games had what Yahtzee said where you can just skip forward and the NPC's decide to stop monologuing or exposition dumping. It only really worked against a late-game boss in Elden Ring where you can smash his face in during his monologue and kill him before he finishes.
C H A O S
Hi-Fi Rush does the Walk and Talk pretty well. Most of the time, you have to traverse long corridors while people are talking, but because items are hidden everywhere in the game, you’re still engaged in looking for them while the conversation is going on. Also, it’s more of a Run and Talk, which makes it feel less annoying.
That is the "Players keep skipping our cutscenes, so let's stick em inside an interactive cutscene which cannot be skipped".
Here’s an idea: At the start of the game, the player character is given a test of some sort about the game’s mechanics, and after that are only given tutorials on the questions they got wrong.
I liked what Outer Wilds did where the tutorial area is available at any time.
There was a game recentlyish called Ai Somnium Files and it's sequel Nirvana Initiative, and it did this really interesting thing I hadn't seen before, where at the start of Nirvana Initiative, the sequel, you would get asked some questions relating to the first game's mystery, since they're both mystery visual novels, and there were a bunch of scene changes throughout the game if you got them all right. It was a really interesting way to let the player show some level of intelligence and interaction with the material that I don't think has been done in a lot of other games.
No. Just let me figure the crap out on my own and make the learning process seamless with the gameplay. I can read key maps and controller guides. I don’t need to be given a guided tour through everything.
I used to know what every key on the keyboard did back when flight and war sims would use damn near every key (and sometimes even more). Coddling isn’t necessary.
horrible idea. give me an option on the first tutorial popup to skip tutorials automatically until I take off the toggle to skip them in the options menu, and let any tutorials encountered or would've-encountered be viewable somewhere too. I'm not gonna take a fucking test lmao, the test is whether or not I can progress through the level with what I already know about control schemes in video games.
Remember when the Witcher 3 had the other people keep pace with Geralt? Yes you can walk behind them while talking but they will actively run while you discuss everything
Cope harder, Shitcher 3 fan.
@@JB-fp3fb That was uncalled for. That was something that CD Projekt got right and I don't even like TW3 all that much.
had to look up that bionic commando thing, the Delivery on STFU is Incredible
Nero going Devil Trigger for the first time in DMC5 against Vigril with a loud "FUCK YOU!" was basically the STFU button.
One of the best moments in any action game.
Ah yes otherwise known as “we need to load in a new area but don’t want to use a loading screen let’s hide it behind a slow walking sequence”
nah, those walk and talk scenes don't need to be nearly as long to be hidden loading screens, an elevator ride or the NPC stopping to talk to someone is good enough to load the next area. hell, now that most games are optimized to SSD they hardly even need to exist anymore.
That might have been a good idea 20 years ago but now loading is done in seconds. Not to mention that games like Starfield somehow manage to chop the game world into hundreds of loading screens regardless of the escort quest. Why Bethesda needs to have a separate room for every shop on Neon ffs.
@@fare-5174 The last PC game I can remember doing loading screens for every building was the Witcher 1. It's an inexcusable regression.
In the first Psychonauts, the "boring stories" character starts telling a story before the Basic Braining exercise, but instead of forcing you to walk behind him, the game lets you explore the campsite (whatever little of it is open before Basic Braining) and it's way more fun thanks to that.
I...don't even remember that. Does he only even start talking if you happen to run into him while you're already exploring?
As an example of dialog over game play, there's a little game called the deadly tower of monsters which frames itself as a 50s sci-fi B-movie, with the director being the narrator as a commentary track, talking about whatever was happening at the time. There were something like a dozen lines just about your character spinning around in place, it was great
I kept dying in this one section of Hi-Fi Rush because I was too busy fighting wave after wave of robots to pay attention to the critical information my character’s friends were telling me. I felt pretty dumb once I realized what I was supposed to do.
@@erakfishfishfish That at least feels very in-character for the protagonist.
@@KingOfElectricNinjas true
Katana zero made "shut the f*ck up" into a gameplay mechanic in story sequences. I'm not sure if I've ever seen something like that in another game before. It would be cool to see it again.
I think Witcher 3 handles those sorts of sections pretty well. Just the fact that NPCs always matched your speed worked out so well not just for the walk & talk sections but _any_ time you're going somewhere with an NPC
Pretty sure Asura’s Wrath did the Bionic Commando thing with almost every boss fight… except you got to shut the boss up by PUNCHING them in the face.
It even incentives you to do it since there are achievements for doing it for each boss.
@@legomaniac213
Yep.
River City Ransom did that back on the NES. You were free to do anything when an enemy was talking, including running up and hitting them.
Another good example of a W&T that works would be the classic Escape From Butcher Bay. After a tutorial, there's a long FPP W&T as you're led into the prison. You see its security systems, checkpoints, guards explain rules, prisoners start to introduce themselves, etc. And it's all interesting because you're gonna be busting out later, so of course you pay attention during intake.
The problem is when it's just a lazy way to shackle the player to an NPC providing dry exposition.
In Skyrim you could at least do a quick save right before caracter creation so you could skip the ride to Helgen any time you wanted to start a new game, but with Starfield they either forgot that feature or did it on purpose as if to say "nice try twat, no skipping your vegetables if you want the rest of the meal!"
And then the Starfield community implemented a Random Alternate Start mod. Or if they haven't already, it's on the way, I'm sure.
"if you don't eat your meat you can't have any pudding! HOW CAN YOU HAVE ANY PUDDING IF YOU DON'T EAT YOUR MEAT!?"
I think skyrim even autosaved right before character creation just incase you had any immediate regrets. Plus it was basically just a cutscene so you could go to the toilet and come back to the character creation screen and have skipped most of the intro scenes
@@StevenUlyssesPerhero It's gonna be so goddamn fire when they do, but I think that'll require the creation kit. Right now all modders really seem to have the ability to pull off is graphical and UI tweaks.
There's a hard save automatically made before you start character creation, just like in fallout 4 right before you leave the vault.
This is something I appreciated about the dialogue options of Katana Zero. I remember Yahtzee complaining about them, but they implements a "Shut up" button at (most) opportunities. You can almost always cut whoever's speaking off to remind them that you're about to slice them into sashimi. and then you do!
My first Walk n Talk was the infamous Metal Gear Solid 5 ride along with Mr Skullface. I don't know who thought that was a good idea worth replicating.
As usual with MGSV, the answer is cut content. I'm convinced that speech was originally meant for the reveal of an underground facility below the unused elevator shaft at OKB Zero. There's apparently a jeep spawn at the top of the elevator, the geometry at the bottom cuts suddently, and there's some guard dialogue left about a tunnel connecting Serak Power Plant to some other camp. So the original mission very likely involved taking the tunnel back to the power plant, which would have made the ride shorter.
I've only recently come across The Escapist and I always respond to Extra Punctuation with "What does The Yuts have to b*tch about, this time" and it's with gleeful anticipation. He's that grumpy uncle we love to hear rant about hot dog sausages coming in packs of 10 but hot dog rolls in packs of 8. They're always such a delight.
About that Tears of Zelda bit...
You can actually walk at your pace and Zelda will follow. Yahtzee just didn't want to make a fuss and followed politely
I also find that sequence rather compelling, if only because I find Zelda's nerdy dialogue very charming and I like the slow buildup of the creepy music very effective. Perhaps if I wasn't starving for character interactions in that game, it would've annoyed me, but that's just trading a flaw for a flaw.
@@TheGrimSmileit's also really short, the only time you do that, and 'the brick wall' she's obsessing over is a huge narrative detail with greater significance later on. I agree generally though
Ah yes, that dangerous British disease that we over in the isles and desperately try to avoid so much, the dreaded "fuss".
@@TheGrimSmile Same; I liked the buildup to the reveal of Mummified-Ganondorf and Zelda rambling about the Zonai ruins. The only thing I found annoying about the opening was that it did exactly what I feared it would do: tease Link and Zelda adventuring together only to immediately separate them for the entire game with the main plotline being, "Link; you must find Zelda".
I'm tired of the series' overuse of "Link; you must find Zelda", especially after my favourite Zelda game: Spirit Tracks, outright mocked the series' overuse of that plotline.
@@TheGrimSmile My only real complaint about the Zelda one was my own experience of awkwardly sitting there with my dad, watching this go by when I promised the game was a big open fantasy adventure. Which kinda messed up the pacing and that same excitement. (Though also yea, it's kinda the big problem with the Open World Zelda style where you end up absolutely starving for meaningful character interaction.
It's a narrative mechanic that CAN work, but often doesn't, and it's not one you want to over-use.
Asura's Wrath funnily enough had the "press button to shut them up" option for every villain confrontation in the game during their monologue
When this particular trend started getting super annoying for me was, super ironically, in Bayonetta 2. The game swam in high speed cathartic action combat for 3/4th of the game's runtime but there are several sections where you have to walk slowly while your supporting squirrel/Child companion talks to Bayo in the moments of cooldown from the action. It urked me at first but it happens every time you replay that level and when Im just trying to get to the fights as fast as I can these segments made me lean back in my chair and sigh, why the fuck were they in a BAYONETTA GAME of all things?
Could be a disguised loading screen maybe. I haven't played Bayonetta 2 so I'm not sure
Metal Gear Rising unfortunately has the same problem of interrupting levels with codec calls that force you to walk slowly. It's even more awkward because you can pause the game and have optional codec calls with the cast, and it's a lot smoother because you can choose when to listen to them.
@@leithaziz2716 at least Kojima learned by MGS 5 that all that world building is better left to optional audio logs in between missions
Bayonetta's legs are so long she could just step into the next scene
@@SgtKaneGunlock optional audio logs that btw, you can listen while you play the game.
another great example of that reactive design you talk about is the supergiant games, especially apparent in bastion's narrator. Great vid and keep up the good work! FEEL VALIDATED BY MY AGREEMENT
Yep. Like that area covered in the ashes statuettes of the deceased. If you just go to town destroying everything the narrator questions your motives
I must be one of those rare people that like the walk and talk segments. I feel like it creates a better sense of immersion.
Well, if I'm going to be forced to listen to a lot of dialogue without any action, I do appreciate having *some* level of control. To wander around the room, or at least look around at the scenery.
I love immersing myself into the role of a character who has to quietly do exactly what they're told while being incessantly jabbered at for extended periods. That's why my favourite game is Front Desk at a Busy Hotel Simulator (it's all in real time); almost as fun as Working the Register at Walmart Quest, or the classic Protracted Holiday Dinner with the Entire Extended Family Souls.
Even if everyone's sense of immersion was the same, this still wouldn't excuse unskippable sections of this nature on repeat playthroughs.
There's a old dusty part of me from the old days that still goes "WoW! voice dialog in video games, must stop to listen to it all to appreciate what little they have in this technologically limited time where story is limited and games are almost entire gameplay." Just like old cutscenes were a "reward" for getting through the very similar gameplay in 90s games. However now much of games today are the reverse, more story and dialog with forced cutscenes, tutorials gatekeeping the actual gameplay simply because they can, got to fill out those 100 gigabyte blu rays.
I liked that Furi just let you press a button to have the character auto-walk during these segments between the bosses. It gives you the option to essentially turn it into a regular cutscene, while you can also take back control and just take in the beautiful surroundings for as long as you want.
That's it -- ZP needs to invent and distribute STFU devices for the next E3!
_"When the diode turns red, press the button to tell the announcer to STFU!"_
Best E3 ever!
To me the most jarring walk and talks were in the assassin's creed games.
That engine has a literal button you can press that automatically matches pace with NPCs for you and somehow the W&T segments still have you circling back to continue your chat with whatever shlub is yakking at you
I’ve always loved the Asura’s Wrath approach to this. To skip the dialogue, instead of just interrupting with a snarky quip, Asura straight up launches himself forward and slugs the dude in the jaw. So much closer to what i actually want to, and probably will end up, doing to them.
Example of good walk and talk: opening to Batman: Arkham Asylum. Good visuals and voice acting with a camera control tutorial.
ok accidentally commented this right before he mentioned it in the video. I guess we’re on the same wavelength
Another thing that sucks is companions/mc that spam you with the solution for a puzzle.
6709
God of War: Ragnarok was the worst experience I had with that; it gave me a deep resentment towards Atreus and Freya.
Atreus...
I'd love a Shut the fuck up button there to.
What games have ever done that?
I was just thinking about "walk and talks" the other day. Specifically, the one at the beginning of Deux Ex Human Revolution that lasts over 40 minutes and is unskippable. I thought about how there's a popular mod for the game that lets you skip it. That's it, that's the mod, and it's the game's most popular mod. Nancy Drew: Midnight in Salem had a really long unskippable tutorial (the only one in the 33 game series that made it unskippable), and I'm just worried Nancy Drew game 34 will add a "walk and talk" at the beginning. It's like the "cinema-ification" of video games. Games don't necessarily work best when they're trying to be cinematic movies. Interactivity is often a video game's strength.
Does BG3 “attack” button counts as the “shut the fuck up” button?
Yes.
I mean, yeah kinda.
the bit about a game theoretically responding to rushing throuh the cutscene reminded me of the part in stanley parable where if you input a code before the narrator tells you it, he'll tell you off for being impatient and make it take even LONGER
6:00 Stanley Parable does something similar with entering the password behind your bosses desk before the narrator has a chance to explain the scenario to you
I dont think these are a problem if you have the option of advancing it faster.
For example, in Tears of the Kingdom, you dont HAVE to walk slowly behind Zelda. If youve done it before or just don't care, you can just run past and let her teleport to you on occasion.
Honestly it's sequences like these that make me think "just make it a freaking cutscene". There's nothing interactive about these sequences and it even feels like they make the characters talk deliberately slowly too.
Yes, full agreement, do more of these! Do intro loading screens of the publishers logo that you can't skip next
The simple solution would be a follow button, the NPC sets the pace and pathing whilst monologuing. It has been done before and shouldn't be too difficult to implement.
I love walk and talk when done well. Fallout 3, The Witcher 3, great methods to have something to look at during exposition. Gets me invested in the world.
I think a game series that did this dilemma well was the Borderlands series. If an NPC is slowly walking somewhere to press a button, you're free to wander off and look around. If you get too far away from the person talking, the dialogue goes straight to your radio.
To this day, one of my favorite gaming moments was when I got my heavy armor/weapon Orc to the end of the Mage's Guild questline in Skyrim. While the villain was monologuing about his plans, I hit tab, closed the dialogue, and power attacked him in the head, killing him instantly. Yes, more games should have a "shut the fuck up" button, I agree.
The "sorry, I seem to be boring you," in my mind would be the best fix for every walk and talk sequence.
My least favorite instance of this trope was in the original Gears of War. They just KEPT making me (as Marcus) stop our adrenaline fueled death ride and do these slow lumbering walk sequences while Baird and Cole and DAAAHM! had to relay information I couldn't care less about. Such a tonal shift. Alright, run in, chainsaw some 8 foot monsters, shoot a demon in the face while the space laser tracks it and now... NOW... Walk slowly while DAAAHM tells you about his wife just HAS to be alive Marcus, she just HAS TO while I slowly bumble about in the general vicinity. It was the worst. I don't mind a bit of pathos in my action games, but the way they went about it was just so wrong-headed.
I've heard that the Gears of War slow walks are disguised loading screens (maybe could have been better, but can't just be removed)
I Ctrl-F'd "Gears of War", as it really stands out as an example of this in my memory. I don't hate it as much as you seem to though. Slowing the adrenaline death ride momentarily is fine. Most stories have rising and falling action, and in many cases the audience appreciates the crazy stuff more when juxtaposed against the slower stuff. The game also has some survival horror elements that benefit from the tension. I can agree that DAAHM's (lol) sob story was not done particularly well. Especially the resolution in the 2nd or 3rd game.
I'm of the opinion that GoW 1's simplistic story was a strength, and that when they tried to write personal stakes and angst the whole thing somehow felt even dumber than the bus sized men 'roadie' running and sawing monsters in half.
I had exactly the same feelings at the start of Starfield and it's also one of the main reasons why I've tuned out of most 'open-world' games. Locking you into these sections really, and immediately exposes the limited creativity on both the writing and direction of the game. It's all very obvious but it's sad and ironic that the biggest gaming companies have all the tools, power and talent to create amazing feats of gaming wonder that evolve the artform, but just play it safe because Fortnite and Last of us sold well. As much as there are exceptions in the indie area, we also see a similar tendency to emulate existing success (a million boomer shooters / furry pixel cozy crafters). What we really need are more ZANY AUTEURS and people to give these guys lots of money.
In the tutorial section of Black & White, after being told how to use the mouse to navigate(drag and drop) there is a segment where you're instructed to follow a few NPCs to your starting village. You can easily outpace them and if you do they say "Wait for us!".
My two examples of agency to avoid the on-rails stuff are from VA-11 Hall-A, where Gil specifically tells you he'll STOP tutorialising you if you can make an advanced drink that proves you don't need it, and where in Breath of the Wild you can avoid getting the run-around from Purah by lighting her furnace before she even asks you to (which is also cleverly narratively spun into you awakening with *some* of your memory, which is why Link may have thought to do that -- and since you're likely to be doing this specifically because it's your second playthrough, you essentially *do* have less amnesia, because you're already familiar with the world & characters). It's a double-whammy of respecting the player's time & intelligence, and a huge dollop of gameplay-narrative cohesion all at once. I really hope we continue to see instances like these.
I'm fine with these sequences on an initial playthrough, but upon replays (or dying/reloading) if I can't skip them they just feel tedious and annoying. I also can't help but be reminded of Cloudpunk, a game I enjoyed, but had a bad habit of mid-commute conversations that lasted so long that I'd reach my destination and just have to sit there while the whole chat played out before I could continue the game.
I think you missed an important caveat - you are 'fine with these sequences on an initial...' IFF they actually set up the world, establish the NPC or Player's motivations etc. It doesn't get a free pass on the first play through just because it is the first time this particular moment of the 'game' has wasted your time on banal, trivial, actively annoying to 'play' slow trudge forward game of follow the very arthritic leader. The walk and talk has to actually tell you something, or at least drop hints that reward you for paying attention to the background, and ideally actually be somewhat interactive. Otherwise it is just a cutscene, made slower and clunkier to get through with shoddier camera work!!
The lesson for devs is that, if they're going to make us listen to NPCs talk, they'd better be saying something that's fun to hear.
"Dutiful dialogue" is what really super has to go.
When he brought up the Final Boss cutscene skip in Bionic Commando, first thing that came to my mind was Asura's Wrath, where you can do that several times, and it's also a capcom game.
Asura's Wrath did the shut up thing a lot. Whenever there was an evil monologue you could literally just decide to punch whoever was gloating in the face.
Someone should call him a hammer, because he really hit the nail with this one.
And the worst part is when your walk speed is Significantly faster or slower than the NPC'S
Yeah, most of the time I'm fine walking and being talked to/at by someone or talking with them even, but it's the inconsistent walking speed that gets me. I either hang back a while and then walk up or I get ahead and just spin in circles while they catch up. Occasionally the NPC gets stuck on the scenery or something so I have to go back and get them to follow me, but that doesn't happen very often.
I do love when the devs have the game set up to react to what my character does, like walking away or interrupting or what have you.
Reminds me of the first level of Kid Icarus Uprising. You have full control over your character while you go through the tutorial and if you blast through all the basic shit because you already know how to play, the dialogue reflects this and just lets you go about your business
I'm reminded how one of the most popular mods for Skyrim is the Another Life mod where you can choose from different starting locations rather than be forced through the original Helgen sequence. I'm wondering if at some point someone will make a similar mod for Starfield.
This reminds me of a Marty O’Donnell quote talking about the “stop it, your boring me” limit to music in Halo. Halo *vomit sound* Combat Evolved’s music stops after 4 minutes at most because that’s when Marty thought it would become boring. That also allows the ambient noise to tell the story too.
Yeah I agree with this. Scenes like the original Half-Life intro set up the environment and foreshadowed future events, most of these scenes in modern games feel like padding/filler. I suppose it’s intended to avoid long cutscenes, but it basically is in most cases. I say just make it a skippable cutscene if they don’t feel like adding the extra interactive stuff Yahtzee mentioned.
The controller idea is a stroke of genius.
I think one of my favourite instances of the "shut the fuck up" button was in katana zero where you can interrupt NPCs and, if you do, your answer always comes out as harsh. It gives an extra layer to the character. Are you an asshole with a katana or a dweeb with a katana? It works especially well since characters remember in further cutscenes if you were a dick to them, making the act of skipping a dialogue or listening to it a choice. (choices in my ludonarrative work? preposterous).
With that said there is something I noticed about the opening lines of this video. How we, as an audience agreed with yathzee. I mean, I agreed with him, but that's because I'm interested in gaming and it's ramifications and if you've read this comment thus far, I believe you are as well. My question becomes : are we really a good representation of the gaming community? Are we too involved, too informed, too picky? Are we only able to pick up such annoyances because we've played so many games whereas the bloke who only plays one game a year doesn't have enough reference to care about such niggles?
This isn't a "ooh aren't we so smart and aren't they so dumb" comment but more of a "how much is due to an idea really sucking or how much is simply us having the time to notice such annoyances?"
All in all, great video as always yatz!
Not exactly a "walk and talk" but does anyone remember those weird "vision" segments in Halo 3 when your walking speed slowed to a crawl so Cortana and later the Gravemind could speak nonsense at you? Its a few seconds long every time but the way it completely halted the action and destroyed the pace of the levels always made me and my father groan after our first few playthroughs.
when the unskippable walk and talk pops out, the games score drops 3 points
Westerado had a 'pull your gun out' button, and it worked in any dialogue box, with individual responses depending on the context.
I like that Cyberpunk's walk and talks appear to be avoidable and the characters seem to comment on it and move on
if its not skippable you can move ahead and they will continue talking through comms. you can also follow them at their speed if you walk right behind them.
@@danilooliveira6580yup, one of the many things CDPR got right with that game.
I actually really liked the opening to Starfield, and being introduced slowly to this new future world. I thought it made a really good first impression, and it struggled once you got out of act i rather than while you were in it.
Totally agree about something that lets you just match your speed with NPCs. I'd rather pay attention to the surroundings and conversation rather than making sure I'm keeping up or if I'm heading in the right direction. Kinda like the optional timed event dialog options in Cyberpunk 2077 that gives you a sense of interacting in the conversations or making comments about what your character is seeing. Feels a little more like you're more like a character in that world rather than a floating camera.
Walk and talk is usually a tone out moment i find, so yep agree need more ways to speed it up and/or bypass. But at times i also realize its a way for them to hide a loadscreen like tunnels and or elevators before i get a open world segment. Like anything, how and when its used is the important part.
Was recently replaying Cyberpunk 2077 after the new DLC came out, and holy shit does that game suffer from that. The worst were probably the driving segments, where the game puts you into the literal passenger seat and forces you to wait until the NPC decides to say their line before you're allowed to play to the game again.
Yes a lot of new open world games suffer from this. If it's imperative that the player character experiences or engages in a dialogue with npcs, then sure maybe make it a cutscene or the occasional walk/talk, but this isn't always the case, and certainly don't start your game with it. It should be up to the player to decide how much they want to engage with lore that goes beyond their direct involvement. Also, getting prattled in a one-way direction by an NPC for 5 minutes doesn't seem like a realistic conversation.
I appreciate the cutscenes in FF16, the were all so well directed. But then gamers complain that it's like watching a movie and they get bored easily. So that's why the walk and talk is so prevalent because y'all too averse to actual cutscenes.
It's an issue of pacing. FF16 has a nasty tendency to play a lengthy cutscene, allow control for about 7 seconds, then immediately play another cutscene. As rightfully famous the MGS series is, those games have a real problem with this as well.
There is a middle ground where cutscenes are spaced out with actual gameplay.
One implementation I liked was in the Yakuza games. If you wanted to roleplay as a friend/lackey/ally and casually walk alongside your NPC partner during the Walk and Talk, you held R1 and the two of them would auto-walk together.
However, if you wanted to skip that, just run ahead straight to the objective and trigger whatever cutscene it was leading up to. Often, they would start running after you to keep up. They likely wouldn't reach the end of their conversation at that pace, but them's the breaks if you're not interested in hearing it.
Also, there was Gears of War 2. During one of the numerous moments where Marcus had his finger on his earpiece and was talking to Control while walking slowly, you could push the select button to have him abruptly end it with a "Yeah, I get it!" an "Okay. Shut up!", or some other randomized "shut up" statement.
Oh, and here I was thinking "Well if it's particularly interesting it's not necessarily bad" and you're covering that already as well as another couple good points. Looks like another video you may find a lot of people agreeing with. Hopefully companies really are watching your videos for suggestions other than "Actually have Paper Mario fight a hole puncher".
I would argue walk and talk is less immersive gameplay and more being part of your annoyance.
I'm glad he brought up the Arkham Asylum opening because that was the first example my mind went to of the 'walk and talk' implemented well
The last bit reminded me of my favourite thing about Fallout 4 - you can use the "negative/sarcastic response" button to skip dialogue, and when you do you'll hear your character think things like "shut uuup..." or "blah blah blah..."
There's one boss in Elden Ring (the 3rd from the end) where you can actually interrupt his monologue and start attacking him. It actually makes the fight easier and if fail the boss fight, he will go straight to fighting the next time you try the fight. It was really well done and I loved it. I wish more opening boss cut-scenes allowed you to just interrupt the boss by attacking.
Before I even clicked on the video, I felt a brief tinge of uncontrolled rage...at LA Noire. A "drive-and-talk", if you will.
To say that the death of this "feature" would be long overdue is to say that the copy of "The Wealth of Nations" borrowed from the library upon its initial publication and only just now getting returned is "a bit late."
There is one egregious example of walk and talk in Red Redemption 2 where you're on foot and forced to follow a rigid path behind the NPC, and if you try to move outside the borders of the path the game will try and wrestle back control from you.
Reminds me of a moment in Project Wingman where the characters get fed up with a monologuing character and tell him to shut up. I'm also reminded of how Undertale contextualised skipping scenes. There was no dedicated cutscene skip method, but the game did acknowledge the player having already seen the scene and would from there on always display a far shorter version of it to get back to the point. It may be a small detail, but this feature appears in so many scenes that it has to have been a headache to apply.
Personally I belive a a mix of the player running ahead and the NPC apologises for boring you.
Or a variation of it, depending on the character personality and scenario.
And the Asura Wrath 'I CAST FIST'!! Button prompts for bosses or more important encounters would be the best solution.
And yes for crying out loud, match the talking NPC's walking speed to the player's walking speed.
It wouldn't even be that bad if they didn't walk at a different speed than you.
"Walk and Talk" is a popular trick in dialogue-heavy TV genres like murder mysteries and political dramas where the entire show could easily take place around one desk.
Having the characters move around while delivering exposition and then and stop when *the plot* is moving forward plays tricks with how our brains work and keeps passive audiences invested.
It's not a trope which translates well to video games. Because video games are a medium which requires a player to be part performer and part audience, the entire game is already essentially one long "walk and talk" scene.
It's also not as simple as delivering necessary exposition over an in-game equivalent of "routine tasks."
Yahtzee and I may both enjoy listening to podcasts while we putter around our ships in Starfield but I have several friends who can't even get the diahes done if someone is talking to them.
What might be fun is something like a skippable "boot camp" sequence. "Going through boot" would give players exposition and a tutorial while "send me to the front" would drop players into the game's first big set-piece.
Maybe that could also lead to slightly different starting items and a couple dialogue items.
Later on, a player might choose between "go to officer's school" and get more exposition and tutorial, or to "stay at the front" and get an extra side mission instead.
I actually really liked the Zelda one, for the simple fact that interacting with Zelda outside of cutscenes or bosses is incredibly rare.
FINALLY a video covering my biggest video game pet peeve. Thank you for this. Walk and talk is so stupid.