Castle Paradox

[Shadowiii]

Ok, so some of you probably have played that dinky Stop Teaser Release, and I was curious as to feedback.

What I want feedback on is the use of dialogue and NPC emotions to create convincing characters and environment. I know there isn't much yet, but considering this game is about 70% story, and since all story is told through character dialogue...I need to be sure I'm doing a decent job and not confusing you with poor ideas, etc.

Considering my goal is to make real, believeable characters (the best exampel I can think of currently is FF6), rather then dull characters (coughFF4cough, except Kain )...yeah.

So, yeah, take the poll. And reply if you have any specifics you'd like to mention.
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But enough talk, have at you!

[Iblis]

I had to stop near the beginning because something came up, but one thing that stuck out in my mind is that she speaks English despite the fact that she has no knowledge. Unless there's something I missed later on, if she has no knowledge then she should have no language.

I'll go play it all the way through to give you some more feedback.
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Locked
OHR Piano

[TMC]

No, not no knowledge, no memories. A bit of a difference... or is there?

I voted the second from the top, but then I remembered that professional dialog wasn't very perfect. Good job. Just make sure that the characters don't waffle on about something that doesn't seem important, or that the player doesn't understand, or seems to be only done to force a plot point or something.
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"It is so great it is insanely great."

[Camdog]

The dialogue certainly wasn't bad, but there was a couple of things I noticed. First off, the conversation with the boy and the shadow was awfully repetitive. This doesn't directly relate to the dialogue, but it was rather boring to sift through a rehash of how great it is to be stuck at the end of the time with no memories, and in a game that relies primarily on reading dialogue to entertain the player, this is important.

Second, I think you went a little overboard with the ellipses. Pauses are important to describe the flow of the conversation, but when you throw the three dots at the end of every other sentence, you give everything a very disjointed quality. It feels like a bad imitation of captain kirk spewing dialogue in chunks. In other words, all those pauses are a touch overdramatic; nobody really talks that way.

In terms of knowing the characters at the end, I don't think I really did. Infinity is lonely (I think you should play up on this more, if anything. it'll add to the atmosphere) and Stop is determined. That's about it. Having said that, I don't think this is neccessarily a bad thing. After all, how much character development can you cram into two short conversations, especially when most of those conversations are centered around finding out what the hell is going on? Basically, I don't think you need to worry too much about character development in this opening scene, otherwise you may end up sounding forced.

In general, I think this teaser is really cool. The story seems interesting, the atmosphere is great and well integrated into the game (she can't remember how to cast spells, save is 'remeber', quit is 'forget', etc.). Other than what I mentioned above, the dialogue is good. I'm really looking forward to playing the whole game. Good luck!

[Shadowiii]

[Iblis]

I just played through it. Here are a few comments, some of which are actually not about dialogue at all:

1) I hate the font, but this isn't really a big issue.
2) When the "Shadow" talks, it is kinda hard to read cause the gray of his text is about the same as the gray of the floor.
3) How does Boy know all that stuff about the Shadow and the End of Time? If he arrived there, also with no knowledge, who told him? Or is this another case of the knowing nothing/knowing everything effect?
4) The moment Stop woke up, she would gather knowledge from her surroundings. After that moment she would no longer know nothing and therefore no longer know everything.
5) Why does Stop have a sword and why does Boy have a gun?
6) When Stop tries to go, there is a bit of romanticism with Boy's words, and this seems out of place.
7) Stop has the spell "Ultima." Do I even need to explain why this shouldn't be there?
8) I thought Boy looked too old to be called a boy, but it's a tiny sprite so that's understandable (His sprite looks great though).
9) Overall the dialogue is well-done. But it seems like we got a lot of story just force-fed to us in a short amount of time.

[Mr B]

I liked the dialog quite a bit, actually. Of course, I know the basics of the story, so I understood what was going on a little bit (LITTLE bit) more than most folks.

I have to say that I didn't mind the elipsis, actually. I like using them a lot too, so Shadowiii's use of elipsis warmed my heart.

The only things that bugged me were 1) some missspellings and dropped letters, and 2) one of the sentences swaps between a singular and a plural third person pronoun. But that's done so often that I'm probably the only person who realized it... (man, I love elipsis)

And that's that. Overall, I thought that the dialog was quite good; much better than the typical OHR game (obviously), and, with those errors I saw fixed, as good as or better than a commercial game.

[Shadowiii]

Actually, I knew both of those mistakes before I released it. ONe I didn't fix becausei t would requrie retyping an entire text box. The other ("he" goes to "they" if I recall)I just didnt' fix yet.


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But enough talk, have at you!