Summary
Some people miss the days when games could direct the player without needing to put it into words. At worst, they had to explain the controls in the manual, and at best players could pick out what was what through the game’s design alone. But that was also back when controllers had two action buttons or so. It didn’t exactly take much brainpower to figure out what did what, compared to the 8+ they have today.
In turn, games have gotten bigger, offering larger worlds filled with more characters to interact with, and longer stories to keep the player engaged. All of which need dialogue, be they simple text boxes or voice lines, and some games offer more of it than others. If players want to dive into the chattiest open-world games around (or avoid them), they should keep an eye out for these titles.
TheMetal Gear Solidgames are infamous for their lengthy cutscenes that cut into the gameplay. Though, ironically, its first open-world title,Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, has the opposite problem. It offers plenty of gameplay time, as players can roamAfghanistan and the Zaire-Angola borderas long as they like. But its story was left lacking thanks to its messy development. That doesn’t mean it’s light on dialogue, though.
There are plenty of audio tapes to grab on the field or unlock through the game. Then players occasionally need to listen in on NPC conversations for intel, or to call the Codec for gameplay tips. That is, if Ocelot and Miller didn’t give them enough chatter whenever an enemy breathes their way (“Snake, watch out! The enemy sniper…”). It may be mild for anMGSgame, but it’s still anMGSgame.
WhenYakuza/Like a Dragonfans think of a game that relies too much on dialogue, they might think of that bit inYakuza 3where Defense Minister Tamiyareveals the whole plotthrough an interminable series of visual novel-esque text boxes. Others might point outYakuza 0’s slow start, which is more varied, but still walks the player through the basics, whether they’re newbies or veterans. ButYakuza 5is dialogue-heavy just through its sheer size.
It’s basically four to five smallerYakuzagames wrapped together, as Kiryu, Saejima, Haruka, Akiyama, and Shinada have their own campaigns, substories, and side-activities, some of which require picking the right things to say over its combat. By the time players are trying to figure out the best time to pick Haruka’s responses in the Manzai minigame, they’ll have likely forgotten the whole street-racing subplot from Kiryu’s chapter at the start of the game.
UnlikeYakuza/Like a Dragon, theGrand Theft Autogames weren’t as big on story. That doesn’t mean they had no plots or story beats worth mentioning, as the games have provided all sorts of colorful characters and narrative twists, likeGTA4’s dour case of an ex-soldier’s past coming back to haunt him, orGTA: San Andreas’ tale of betrayal. It just meant they played second fiddle to racing across the city and causing chaos.
Grand Theft Auto 5is the same way, but by giving players three characters to switch between, it gives players three times the banter to work with. Michael, Trevor, and Franklin have different interactions with each other, different supporting casts who occasionally cross over with each other, a multitude of missions, and the option to bark out extra dialogue/verbal abuse at Los Santos' citizens.
There are more ways to be reliant on dialogue than just having lots of cutscenes and textboxes.Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2and its predecessor still offer all that, as it takes more than just brute force to reinstate King Wenceslaus IV to the throne of Bohemia. The game will speech-check players as well as test their strength, and Henry of Skalitz has more than a few things to say.
Many of the game’s encounters give the player multiple responses via a dialogue tree, but they’ll get different options available to them, depending on how good Henry’s stats are. If his powers of persuasion, intimidation, and/or coercion are too low, he won’t get far. As a result, it makes for a very dialogue-heavy game that can be too much for players who just want to hack other knights in battle.
KCDdidn’t invent the concept of speech checks and stats. If anything, it’s been more associated with theFalloutgames, which let players use the gift of the gab toavoid difficult encountersback in their tactical RPG days. That is, if they had the right stats to open that option. Or they could make them purposefully low to get different, disrespectful lines in turn.
This was carried over to the open-world games, whereFallout: New Vegasgained a Guinness World Record for the most lines of dialogue in a video game at 65,000. This has since been exceeded, withFallout 4having 111,000, with a good chunk of that being the different voices players can pick for their character. Which makes people wonder how long its script would’ve been if it didn’t limit their responses to four options max per encounter.
Some people don’t mind overly verbose games, so long as the dialogue works for the story, character development, etc. Others would rather skip all that and just stick to the gameplay. It’s easy enough to do that inGTAandMGS5. TheYakuzagames offer a story-less “Premium Adventure” mode where players can roam around the city with at least a touch less dialogue than the main campaigns.
Even the story-heavyCyberpunk 2077will open after its first act, letting players tackle main missions, side missions, and other activities at their leisure. But it’s still a dialogue-heavy game, with plenty of walk & talk cutscenes where all the player can do is listen in or skip past them when possible. For some, it’s all part of the experience, helping to immerse players in its futuristic world and characters. For others, it’s a bit of a slog to get through.
The Witchergames are some of the best fantasy-based open-world games around, and the chattiest too. They could rival the novels they’re based on, withThe Witcher 3: Wild Hunthaving 450,000 lines of dialogue, 70,000 of which belong to its moody lead, Geralt of Rivia. Much of it is tied to the main quest, where he and Yennefer must discover why the titular Wild Hunt is pursuing his former apprentice.
But there are also plenty of side quests and activities to tackle, some of which require picking the right responses at the right time, like in “The Play’s The Thing.” It annoyed some players, who found the game was 30% gameplay and 70% talking. This is after editing too, as the developers cut out much of the 900 hours' worth of recorded dialogue, andthe quests they were tied to, for space and pace reasons.
Following up on the success ofRed Dead Redemptionwas a tall order. They just needed to put together a follow-up that was bigger and broader.RDR1took six years and about $100 million to make. The eventual sequel,Red Dead Redemption 2, took seven years and between $370-540 million to make Arthur Morgan ride around the Wild West as both it and the Van der Linde gang declined.
It took that much time and money to have five fictional states' worth of land to explore, which meant there were more players in its plot, more activities to dabble in, and other features that needed dialogue to explain the gist of things. Most of it changes, too, as players get different lines depending onhow much Honor they have. So, if players wanted to hear all 500,000 lines of dialogue in the game, they’d have their work cut out for them.
