Dialogue Reaction Time

Just pause a moment and let it sink in.

Say you’re a designer, narrative designer, or coder placing a line in a game to be spoken by the protagonist (or their best buddy through an earpiece), triggered when they encounter something in the world or when there is a state change in the world.

You know the sort of thing. “Hey, is that a lever?” “Wow, look at this place!” “Okay, you’re in the vault now, Sammy – hurry up with that thermite!” “It’s open – go!”

Whatever it is, please think about reaction time. Whoever the character is, they need to take time to use their senses – sight, hearing, whatever – to notice the sensory trigger, to take in the new circumstances before they speak.

And this time will vary depending on what the trigger is. If something explodes, the reaction can be very quick. If something needs to be parsed and understood (“Say – is that Latin?”) then give it time for the character – and the player! – to absorb it.

Partly this is to make it seem more natural. And partly it’s to give the player their own time to absorb what they’re seeing before a dialogue line spoilers it, making them feel less observant than the game character.

So many first implementations of triggers fire instantly with no sense of timing. Please do add in some reaction time, or everything feels “gamey”.

Oh – and if you’re working with first-person views, put in plenty of checks to make sure the thing commented on is really in view of the character and that the player has had a chance to notice it. “We found the mystic tree!” is not a helpful line to hear trigger when you were spinning the view round rapidly and can no longer see which tree the character is talking about. Ideally check for the target object to be roughly in the middle of the current view, and to have been there for a few seconds.