I tell the story of how playing Dungeons & Dragons in high school led to addition of dumb dialog (i.e., conversation options for low intelligence player characters) in Fallout and many of my subsequent games.
I'll always remember working on Fallout as one of the best times of my life. The work was fun, but it was all the interactions with team that made it great.
Would you be interested in doing a similar vlog about your experiences making Fallout? :) Even a written post. I would love to hear some of the behind the scenes funny moments. :)
I never really thought about it before but it's surprising how descriptive you can be with 1 syllable words. Just for fun I took a stab at it for the dragon scenario. "Large rich loot room with large guard who sit on loot and hoard all for self. Guard has two red eye, breathe big red heat which burn all it touch, fly with huge two wing, green scale skin and long tail. We must kill guard or we no loot." Thank you for the captivating story and fun scenario.
It's cool but you have to play a role of dumb character. This speech looks like some smart character figured out how to effectively use one-syllable words.
I need to tell the truth, dumb dialogue ruined gaming for me. Ever since my first playthrough of Fallout 1 I try to put just enough points into intelligence and then get disappointed when in most other games dumb dialogue isn't a thing :P Also dumb dialogue in Arcanum was a masterpiece, with Idiot Savant background
I’ve always been fortunate to work with great narrative designers who get onboard with features like dumb dialog, skill and attribute checks, and non linear design.
Dumb/Charisma/Evil are such an incentive to playing through games multiple times, I'm glad when I hear game writers/quest designers enjoy doing them despite the additional headaches they can cause. And maybe your Mother trading recipes during your gaming session might have been the origin of including them in your game manuals? 😄
I remember hearing a lot of celebrity voice actors in Fallout 1. Were you in the studio the day Richard Dean Anderson, Clancy Brown, Keith David or Ron Perlman came to record their lines?
No. I was completely engrossed in development of Fallout, so the only time I went to the recording studio was for David Warner, who was the voice of Morpheus. And he was amazing.
@@CainOnGames David Warner was a remarkable actor, as well as a voice actor. I always enjoyed hearing his voice in any media, whether it be animation, live action, or video games. He passed away last year, unfortunately... I wonder if you could go into a bit more detail on your impressions of him and his work.
That's a great story. :) I had always assumed that the dumb dialog was in place to handle conversations where the PC was recovering from drug withdrawal, or other temporary intelligence damage that would reduce the stat below what was normally possible for a generated character.
I loved building characters with flaws in ability scores in Pathfinder 1e. I realized that having big drawbacks was more fun than being perfect, so occasionally I wouldn't "drop lowest" if I thought I could build a fun flaw through "drop highest". Sadly, some of the newer games remove rolling ability scores, and I definitely miss doing this.
So rarely do i play dumb characters in Fallout and Arcanum but it adds such spice and feel to both the regular runs and the dumb ones. Just knowing about the choices makes the games feel so genuine. Fun how in Arcanum some backgrounds give you dumb dialogue (damaged brain larynx) but keeps the journal smart. And some keeps the journal dumb. And the writing of the dumb journal is so funny
The old Fallout games realy had that RPG charm and feel. The more ways you can do a quest the better. Divinity OS1 had me stumped on a sidequest. I failed a speech check. I couldnt lock pick a door. But... a small window was open. I felt like a genius when I figured out I couls just toss a teleportitem trough the window and then follow. It is so clear when real geeks have had control of projects. Fallout 3 and 4 were good. But I dont feel the same golden vein of nerdy creativity there
So I will say that nothing has given me more joy than Arcanum and the dumb dialog options for an idiot savant. My playthrough in Arcanum, which I remember fondly even to this day, was a 20 strength ogre with idiot savant (dumb dialog options) who was also a nudist. Even now, Arcanum is one of the only games I've played that has endlessly hilarious reactions to both of those things - having dumb dialog AND being naked.
I love that you brought up the super mutant conversation - that was hilarious and one of my favourite Fallout moments! I "grew up" with New Vegas, but I've finally made time to revisit the previous games in the series, and just finished a playthrough of the original. I first made a pretty standard diplomatic-type character, the kind I always like to play as. And as a fun side-character, because I'd read about the dumb dialogue of the first two games, I created Big Man, who was all brawn and no brains. Big Man ended up being so much fun to play that I finished the main story with him before my "real" character! He had so many memorable conversations that my boyfriend and I still laugh at (and being able to punch any enemy to death was pretty nice, too). Some other favourites: - The Overseer having to dumb down his explanations ("There is a bad place where the bad mutants come from. It is bad. Vault is good."), and getting frustrated when we handed him the wrong kind of "chip" - Calling Morpheus "Mom" and hearing him respond "No... I'm *Father* Death!" - Children of the Cathedral members assuming we're "a super mutant in training" - Brotherhood of Steel guard giving us some RadAway and showing us how to take it ("[Darrel motions taking the pills and rubs his tummy] Mmmm yummm."), then stopping us from swallowing it right then and there ("Wait until you get to the Glow!") - Scorpin? Scorpin! We also took the "back door" to the Gun Runners' fortress, by crossing the part of the acid moat that's narrower than the rest. Once inside, Big Man became perfectly eloquent! I think this confirms that the Gun Runners have managed to build an intelligence-boosting field (or maybe the devs just forgot that dumb characters would be able to get in there and talk to people, haha). Thanks for the great stories, it's really cool to know where these brilliant ideas originated!
This is brilliant. Last year I played a D&D wizard who had 6 Intelligence--but he used Strength as his spellcasting modifier (subclass from Hypercorps 2099: Wasteland, for anyone interested). He couldn't cast any spell at distance--everything was touch-ranged! So I modeled him as a Russian-accented moron with a pet pigeon (familiar) and caused all sorts of havoc for our DM, but Boris was one of the funnest characters I've ever played.
I like thinking about other instances where having a low stat can solve a problem for you or just be fun to play. Bad Luck speaks for itself. Low Charisma should give you only bad dialogue options that just offend the person you are talking with.
Another excellent video! I am 20 years younger than you at 38, but modern DnD players look at me like I'm ancient when I tell them I started playing DnD (in earnest) *right* when 3rd edition released. I was at the Gen Con in... Milwaukee? At 14 for a big release promo event, learning 3rd edition rules for the first time! Very cool that you had a (sort of lol) similar experience at the same age! We are kindred spirits! Ha. I was also 12 when I played fallout 1, at release! So.. thank you for enriching my childhood! :)
My best friend joined the Navy in 1980/81 and on his first leave he brought home D&D that him and all his mates played. Once it was all spread out on the table and I finally understood what I was looking at I said, wow, is there a sci Fi game like this? I spent the next year tracking down Traveller. Good times.
Awesome, I just started my first low int playthrough of Fallout 2 last month and it does have some zones where you can skip a lot of steps to get further in the quest. Sadly there are some quests where your dialogue gets upgraded and you can actually speak a bit better in full phrases
It is kinda sad that Fallout and Arcanum are still golden standard for RPG design some 20 years later. We do get better graphics, but design (in AAA in particular) is very stagnant. Respect to all exceptions (Kingdom Come comes to mind).
I have finally finished a Fallout game as a dumb character yesterday, and boy it was difficult! Thankfully, I played it before, so I knew a lot of stuff, but the sheer amount of limitations you are faced with can be quite dumbfounding for an inexperienced player. You can't hire any followers aside from the good boy Dogmeat. You can't take almost any side quests. You are severely limited on skill points per level -- just 7 at IN==1. But most importantly, you can't ask for directions or any quest-related information! Well, at least not normallly -- the "Ask me about" feature still provides answers, but you have to know specifically what to ask about. It is a really fun way to replay the game, and I would recommend anyone who decides to try that to also pick Good Natured and Jinxed, and roleplay Maximus from the show :)
I think in Arcanum the dumb dialog was even more fun, with the followers being voiced. Virgil's voice actor played it so damn well...young inexperienced monk trying his best not to be annoyed at my character absolutely butchering his name and drooling at anything more complex than axe smash zombie.
That's awesome! I didn't even know about Dumb Dialogue. I'm so playing Fallout tomorrow and creating a character with the lowest intelligence possible :P
It only applies to fallout 1, 2. And I'd recommend intelligence 2 or 3 instead of 1 because that way, you get a little more skill points and have the chance for mentats to smart you up if you need it.
Whats even more amazing is how other npcs react completely differently to your character when you roll a low int dumbass. Arcanum has these incredible interactions where every line directed at the player drips condescension
The genius part of Fallout is the replay incentive. Most games these days try to make sure you don't miss anything and experience everything there is to experience in the first play through.
We had a similar thing when I tried D&D in high school. My friend's boyfriend created a real lopsided super high dex and super low intelligence character and tried to really lean into it. Our first real dungeon we had just entered and he said he wanted to shoot a super spell into the darkness cuz that's what he do. He got a crit and ended up one-shotting the dungeon boss. It was epic and our DM was not into it lol. Other things he was trying to limit our creative expression about was I wanted to be a crazy cat lady druid and like is she really a druid or is she just homeless, so my main goals were talking to every animal in town to get an army of rats and everything we killed, stealing bones to create bone armor for my wolf familiar. He did not appreciate getting off track and didn't like that the bones were weird and wouldn't normally be armor. Which like isn't that the whole point of D&D? That the only limit is your imagination? Sufficed to say we didn't play a lot sessions with that DM :P
i feel like u would like my OC sheu ogama, she's the deity of insanity and since she is well.. insane.. she isn't really verbal.. well she is but it's hard to explain.. here's an example of how she talks "Me Sheu! Sheu Ogama! Mhm? Mhm!" it's really funny.. and she does dumb stuff too like be dumb.. one of the more things that she does is follow people around and if they ask why they keep following them she's all just like "Me Sheu!" XD
@@CainOnGames In this case, I recommend that you try playing Sonora. The author has been interested in the design of the universe for more than 10 years, especially with regard to isometric details, and competently entered his mod into the universe of the game, adding a Mexican flavor to the atmosphere of the game. as for "Nevada", it can please with a lot of unusual mechanics for isometric fallout, but still this is a sample of his pen as a novice game designer)
Greetings, Tim. I am a long-time fan of your work. Please install a better camera in your office, I really want to see your entire collection behind My humble question is: was there a design document for Fallout or Fallout 2 and if so, is it stored in your archive? Thanks!
With a name like VatsOfGoo, I would hope you were a fan. :) It's not the camera as much as it is the lighting, forcing the camera into a low exposure mode. I have a good light arriving Friday which should solve that. Anyway, the cabinet on the far left has Fallout goodies (and I have more in storage), and the other cabinet is a mix of The Outer Worlds, Star Trek, and Wildstar goodies. And yes, there are Fallout design docs, but Bethesda owns them now. Perhaps you could ask them to share them.
@@CainOnGames Thanks for the answer, Tim, yes I've been a fan since 1997. 🙂 Bethesda definitely won't share the Fallout design documents now and I'm not asking you to do it, for obvious reasons, but I'm very glad they exist at all. Maybe in many years it will happen.
Have you ever told your friend that he and his fighter are gonna basically live forever through that idea now? 🙂 Haven't actually played The Outer Worlds yet, hopefully they are gonna keep that for the sequel. Might be funny in the whodonnit kinda DLC for TOW1 though... ME WANT MOAR.
I ran a low INT fighter build in Fallout for one of my first playthroughs, and that's stuck with me as a gaming memory ever since. Reading my character blurt out "SCORPIN" at the first NPC quest giver was hilarious and priceless.
Dumb dialogue always reminds me of the very first RP adventure games where you could only type in two words at a time for commands, usually verb-noun. Like the commands: Open Door. Turn Left. Take key. Swing sword. That kind of thing.
Love this story. Thanks for sharing! I loved finding out how some NPCs that I previously liked were jerks to dumb characters. I also think it would be fun if your party members could step while you’re in dialogue and help you out, especially if you’re playing a dumb character. Sorry, the Vault Dweller is not the sharpest tool in the shed but we are really trying to help him to save his people.
I think that's my favorite video. Modern games simply don't understand how special abilities and special restrictions make the game feel much more real and personalized, and give a sense of agency and allow you to identify with your PC
Truly happy to see the brilliant mind behind games like Arcanum or Fallout. RPGs of recent years bring only disappointment and make me think people like you don’t exist anymore in the new generation.
They definitely exist but it does take a bit of searching, most mainstream RPGs have to go for broad appeal and that's not bad it's just if you're going to sink millions into making a game then you have to promise your boss it'll make money. I don't like vanilla Fallout 4 very much but I understand why it exists the way it does. Not to mention that Fallout 4 seems to of taken a lot of influence of RPGs that were popular when it started development, especially Mass Effect. I think Outer Worlds got away with the risks it took not just because Obsidian is just a talented team but also because it wasn't trying to be a AAA product and thus could appeal more to more traditional RPG players but funny thing is much as I love Outer Worlds a lot of people complained it wasn't on the same scale as even New Vegas which I think was pretty unfair on it since Obsidian was pretty honest about the scope the game was going to be. I do worry that it's sequel might come with a higher budget but also with strings attached about how it has to make X amount of money to be worthwhile so it'll have to have broader appeal.
I remember a few years ago when you were working on PoE, I submitted a question about low intelligence/charisma dialogs and you said in a video Q/A it would have it. I was a little disappointed it didn't happen. But I also understand the nature of game development also the nature of kickstarter games. Buy anyway, it was neat to hear the origins of this system. I wish more games incorporated these dialogs. Seeing intelligence and dialog on a spectrum maybe tied to wisdom or charisma would be neat. Like a person with a 10/10 intelligence but low charisma would talk really technical but be akward and people would find them boring.
Hey Tim! Long time fan of Fallout here, so getting to hear you talk about design like this has been very interesting! I have a question, though: I remember watching a video a few years ago regarding the Speech skill in Fallout, specifically how it became one of the best skills by nearly always offering some kind of diplomatic solution. This video mentioned how GURPS had multiple different skills that represented different methods of talking (similar to how DnD has different skills for persuasion, intimidate, and bluff), so was the game originally designed with these multiple skills in mind, and if so, was it difficult having to change over to everything being covered by the same skill? Would you change the balance of it if you were able to? Also, that shirt is awesome.
On one of my subsequent playthroughs of Bloodlines, I was delighted to see how the dialogue changes when my character had low Humanity, including the voiced reactions from other low humanity characters like Andrei and Pisha. Seems like a minor change, but it added so much to the experience.
Great story! I love how artificial limitations can makegames in general more fun and challenging. Cool to read how something like that turned into a feature in Fallout.
I remember playing GURPS some decades ago and our party encountered a treasure room guarded by two gargoyles. I played some mage type with one of my negative quirks being very impulsive, so I decided to roleplay my character for some extra GM cred. I decided to summon a wind elemental inside that small labyrinth we were located in and guess what happened? Jupp, I got a critical failure and we ended up running for our life with a very angry wind elemental chasing our tail. Safe to say the group was not happy about that and we never got to see what was inside that treasure room.
Tim - what was the music production process like for Fallout? Were you involved in that process at all? I love the OST because it has such a strong atmosphere. P.S. Your shirt is wild😆
That's a Star Trek version of a Hawaiian shirt, with Orions and Gorns in hula skirts. It was a gift from a good friend and I love it. As for the music of Fallout, I got to indulge one of my passions by handing over a pile of my favorite ambient CD’s to Charles Deenen, our Audio Director, and asking for “music that sounds like this”. He hired Mark Morgan, and the beautiful ambient soundtrack to Fallout was created.
I learned D&D in the late 70s too! I think my dad found out about it from some of his friends at work and my first game was with him as DM and my mom and I played two characters each, for a party of four. I fell in love with it and introduced it to my friends at school. I was always the DM though.
I remember the Necropolis Super Mutant dialog with a dumb character, I took a lot of combat drugs before talking to Harry the mutant because I thought it´s going to be a battle any way, they affected the intelligence of my character, and the dialog is just "Huh?" "What?" "Mom?" and both scratching their heads and I could just walk on xD
After watching your past videos, I realized that you are not indifferent to modern games and, also, perhaps Roguelike games. So I have to ask: Do you know about the Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead? This is a very fun game that allows you to experience the zombie apocalypse in a fairly realistic atmosphere, but also has some notes of futurism and fantasy, which was clearly done for balance and interest for the player. For example: if you meet an ordinary lonely zombie in the game, you realize that you can kill him with a pipe and the first or second level of hand-to-hand combat skill. Having met a crowd of zombies, you will most likely choose to run if you have a level below 3-4 in the melee skill. BUT! Having met an incomprehensible monster made of pieces of rotten flesh and black slime, can you be sure that you can kill him even with a 308. caliber? This is the interest of the Cataclysm - in studying! I apologize for such a stupid question, I just wanted to share :)
That game sounds fascinating. I love new innovative game mechanics. Players often say they want innovation, but then they fail to reward such games by buying them. I’ll look at the game, but I wonder how they’ll handle players looking things up online rather than learning them in-game.
@@CainOnGames i must say that this game is completely free,but recently they open page at steam for the donations For the price of complex mechanics,tho,this game sacrifice modern graphics Originally it was on ASCII,but now people made plenty of tilesets that made the game more readeble and good looking I personally likes "retrodays",which has a little childish-cartoon type of visual,but i like it for being more "readeble" for me
@@CainOnGames CDDA i think handle in game learning not too bad,but not so good either Tutorial,i think,has not updated for long, and new mechanichs,that added in 0.F and 0.G( the most recent updates),has not help in the actual teaching of player A lot that i learn i learn by myself,but from time to time i have to search for information at the forums(which is not so bad,actually) For conclusion,this game is not so much wiki-addictive as,for example,terraria,but CDDA is the oldschool-roguelike after all and "you have to learn by your own") (i wonder,will be this game difficult to learn for you?I don't know!Especially for the fact that you has 40 years of gaming experience :) )
I've always loved playing a specialized character. Someone who is really good at something... but has flaws that you, through skill and intellect, have to work around. For example, a sniper has a very high damage and range, but you better be sure not to get caught at close range with a large unwieldy rifle with a slow firing rate. [e.g. long rifles debuff accuracy at close range] Another example, a low magazine capacity with a long reload time, means you can dish out a lot of damage... at first... but if you don't deal with it fast you will be overrun and better get to running away. You learn how much you can reliably take down before running out of ammo so you don't keep getting caught with your pants down. You learning how to play this specialization is fun. It "frames" how you see and interact with the world. A long range guy and a melee guy will see the same level, the same situation, from two different perspectives on how to best complete a goal. The sniper is looking for good sniping nests, the melee guy is looking to avoid those same long range firing lanes the enemy can exploit against him. Same level, two classes, completely different gameplay. Fallout 1/2/Outer Worlds, and Deus Ex, are games that are incredibly replayable for that reason.
I always pump my characters int and charisma to get all of the possible dialogue while I struggle fighting basic enemies so funnily enough the dumb ones always escape me
To be honest with you? Games today don't have mean enough and dark enough dialogue. It's like if you had a film like Saving Private Ryan but no one bickers with each other and they all have some smirk on their face. It's just too......kind... Meanwhile their limbs are being blown off.
In FO2, I'll never forget having a low INT character and conversing with Torr, and how the two of you can understand eachother. In Arcanum, I'll never forget my hilarious low INT half-orc, and how people would try to take advantage of him. Those are the kind of gaming moments that stick with me.
Still remember laughing when my low int char tried to use computer terminals and the choices were all random words that had no bearing on their function - time to button mash and see what happens! :)
Great story for one of the best features in RPGs. It's strange that no one before you (AFAIK) has thought about it and whether someone had 3 intelligence or 10 intelligence didn't matter in conversations. Even in current games like Disco Elysium (which IMO is way overrated) they don't care about it which makes it ridiculous. In games like Age of Decadence or Planescape Torment it's not an issue since you can't go lower that 9/18 and 4/10 I think. Simple way to make less work for yourself while still staying plausible.
Well, it is a lot of extra work to add dialog options that many players will never see. Personally, I like to see it in games and add it to my own, but every developer needs to weigh the costs of adding new features against their benefits. You cannot add every idea you have to your game, or you will never finish it.
