Hey guys, this is just a quick response from inXile to the reaction to the keyword dialog system as shown in the video. The usage of keywords in dialog as designed by us was undercommunicated up to this point, too few were expecting it to work this way, and that's our bad.
A lot of considerations go into this type of design decision. It counts for a lot that Wasteland successfully utilized this system, as did other great classics before and since.
Another key for us is that you play the part of four rangers rather than one character with a set background. The person speaking could be a Russian boozehound, a grizzled veteran, a straight-laced military man, or an easy-going rapscallion raised on the streets, not to mention the player can determine which one of them is doing the talking.
Furthermore, this keyword dialog system allows us to make a much more complex and dynamic system than a full line dialog tree would have. The video was not intended to show this off in-depth, it was more focused on giving an overall impression on progress, but this is definitely something we'll dig into in the future. There will definitely be choices to make through dialog and complex reactivity, its presentation doesn't change that.
As mentioned, we're doing an update that will take a much closer look at the system and how it works. After that, we'll be looking for feedback to figure out how we can improve upon it, ranging from changing simple keywords like "help" into short phrases like "offer to help" to making it so the keyword selections show up as short sentences in the dialog log, rather than as single words. Expect to hear from us fairly soon.
