Leaving Conversations with NPCs

I really like the possibility of leaving a conversation. I hate it, when I pick wrong answers by accident, so leaving and reentering a conversation is a nice feature.

As far as I'm concerned, anything that makes the conversations less rigid and cinematic is a win.

I still think BioWare's introduction of a distinct conversation interface was a mistake, and I'm happy to see any move away from it.

Prior to KotOR, BioWare conversations took place within the main game interface. NWN even left player control of the camera and character movement intact.

I want that again.

I never walked away on purpose. Sometimes the other person walks away (like the dragon researcher) and that ends the conversation as if you had walked away. I never even walked away from Vivienne but I hardly ever spoke to here either.

ETA: Yeah, what gervaise21 said

Really? Did they maybe allow for the fact that it was a first try and not very well executed? It wasn't the idea that was bad, it was the implementation?

One thing they should have done a lot more of is have the NPC say something about having the PC walk away. They did some of that (I think it was DAI, or was it Deus Ex? I can't remember). If you walked away, the NPC would interrupt themselves and, usually, complain. "So, what the village needs is them demons ... oh, aye, right then, I guess they don't teach manners where you come from!" Stuff like that.

They should also push more in the direction of the PC interrupting NPCs, as Oxenfree experimented with. And on the flip side, support silence as a first-class choice, ala Telltales.

Which would lead to a general relaxing of the rigid, locked-out-of-action dialogue wheel.

More often by accident than deliberately

Found it a quite handy feature when I made the mistake of talking to Solas. Just being able to nope to another room once I realized my mistake was quite satisfying. Also handy when I know what the npc is going to talk about, so I can just do it instead of talking about it. Especially if it skips a huge chunk of conversation I have no interest in listening to.
Also found it quite amusing when the NPCs would just walk off. Bye then! But I learned pretty quickly how to lock them in a conversation, so I never had any issues with them leaving if I didn't want them to.

But I used it more as a mix of one and two. Every now and then, because I don't have time for boring conversations.

I always flee from the requisition officer.

Never had a problem with the rest of the NPCs. I'd prefer more cinematic conversations to the blank, expressionless ones we get with most conversations, though.

I agree so much... if that was the trade off (though I imagine it was more a matter of resources?), it was totally not worthy for me... Personally, I couldn't care less about this feature

I always say goodbye to companions and advisors.

Every one else, eh, I'll press the end conversation button and walk away. They don't notice anyway. Myabe if they had that awful feature mentioned where they actually got mad would I say proper goodbyes.

I voted, "Never. Only by accident or when necessary, like if I had to go to the bathroom."



It's not that I dislike the feature, but I just never made use of it. Whether I'm playing Dragon Age or Skyrim, when I start a conversion with an NPC I commit myself to that conversation.

Here is the issue for me. This method works with different game types and different conversation structures. Let's take Skyrim as an example, which has this "leave" method for most of its conversations. One of the issues in that game is that you can lose access to all of the options in the conversation tree as you move forward. On occasion, before committing to the quest or whathaveyou, I will leave and take the other dialogue options, typically investigates that I missed out on. This basically replays the conversation over, allowing me to choose different options. In this game, I simply TAB away, rather than fully walking away from the NPC.

Dragon Age (DA2 and DAI) conversations have a different structure, with the investigates being clearly marked AS investigates, so you don't lose them except in particular circumstances where choosing one changes the options further down the line (because that's how real conversation works, you change based on what was said). I didn't feel the necessity to use the Skyrim approach to the DAI conversations; it just wasn't needed.

If I entered into a conversation to "check if an NPC had something new to say," in order to leave I would choose the "farewell" option, rather than simply walking away from the person. This is for the sake of RP, as just walking away from someone is rude (let's ignore the NPCs that do this... LOL!)

So, despite being touted as some great thing, I didn't find it a help OR a hindrance. The only thing I missed with the cinematic-style conversations, even if the NPC just stands there as in DAO, was the feeling of actually being in a conversation, and seeing their facial expressions as we talked. And yeah, I'm going to go there... this is especially nice with one's LI and gives a feeling of more familiarity and closeness. It was unfortunate if the NPC was in a poorly lit area, as with Dorian in the Skyhold library, or even his Haven location where he's standing in shadow.

That Req Officer is such a needy chick.