More Opportunities for Character Interactions

[meowgie]

Been getting back into this lovely franchise ever since the announcement of Elsewhere, the story and characters have always been a near and dear part of my heart and I'm very excited to see how they're characterized in this new iteration! Probably one of the most exciting parts about this to me is the fact we're going to get a ton of new quotes, as I've always admired the game's writing as one of it's best qualities. Each character is unique and endearing, and even if they're never depicted in-game beyond the survivors mentioning one another in their examination quotes, it's still clear the survivors have grown a strong bond.

I'd love to see the strong bonds they've grown continued into DSE! One of my many (maybe unrealistic) wants for DSE is more opportunity for character interactions, such as idle chatter. Like how characters talk in the lobby of hero shooter games, stuff like that. If two people are playing characters with an interaction, the characters will begin to chat. I only imagine it playing pretty infrequently, (seems like that was the reason dusk quotes were cut during the port from DS to DST- it would probably be grating to hear the characters mention it every time it turns dusk) but I'd love stuff like that to further flesh out the relationships between the survivors. I think it's far from necessary, as Klei does a great job at depicting character interactions both in examination quotes and shorts (which is a pretty impressive feat considering we have very few actual dialogue exchanges between them. They're very good at showing without telling!) but I'm a sucker for small things like this. 

I think there's other ways to flesh out character relationships beyond stuff like idle chatter and I want to hear other people's ideas for story-focused approaches Klei could take with this game, but it's one thing I'd love to see in this new iteration. It would be a great opportunity to show how the character's have developed between DST and DSE. 

[Harrowick]

Idle chatter would be so charming!! I don't imagine it would be all that difficult to implement either since proximity based quotes exist with the bee queen crown already! 

[meowgie]

11 hours ago, Harrowick said:

Idle chatter would be so charming!! I don't imagine it would be all that difficult to implement either since proximity based quotes exist with the bee queen crown already! 

Ooh you're right!!! I wasn't even thinking about that, great catch! 

I ended up writing some mock-ups based on what I think idle chatter could look like. Not sure if these are entirely in-character, but I wanted to get what I was thinking out there into the world! It'd be a lot of writing, each duo would probably have a rotation of quotes that could play. I wanted to use the characters already confirmed for the roster, but there's ample opportunity for more story-focused chats too, like a Winona and Maxwell interaction about Charlie. 

[meowgie]

Wrote some more examples taking suggestions from my friends! I think it'd be neat if there are some idle chatter that played under specific circumstances, e.g. one player is hurt or hungry. 

My concern is how tedious all of this would be to introduce, because I know it'd be a lot of writing and I assume they'd have to implement some kind of stat check everytime players are within a certain proximity of eachother. I recall seeing a post that showed off that characters could now walk and play their talking animation at the same time, which I think would work very well with this feature. 

Edited July 5 by meowgie