人们说话的方式多种多样，并没有固定模板，从电影、游戏、书籍和音频等内容来看，这一点确实不假。而艺术想象力可能会催生不自然的对话。这是我们编写对话时需要注意的基本要点。

Guy Hasson不久前曾撰写了一篇关于游戏剧情设计之台词禁忌的博文，但我不得不提出他的一些观点让我不敢苟同。事实上，他所提到的游戏对话设计禁忌中，正是我在日常生活中常遇到的情况，所以我打算另作一文表明我对自然或真实对话的看法。

所有对话内容基本上都能反映出一种个性或性格，假如你是一个幸运的游戏文案写手，你就可以同时塑造出人物性格（或者至少是人物个性），如果不幸的话，那就只能按要求编写几乎没什么发展余地的对白。

我认为告诉人们哪些是禁忌，哪些不可行，这实际上是一种消极的做法，最好是直接告诉大家哪些是正确的做法，哪些行为会产生适得其反的结果。

dialogue(from devoir-de-philosophie.com)

自然的对话

编写优秀的对话实际上只有一个法则，那就是想象自己一直与某个角色同在。想象他们的发言是否自然，是否符合其个性，其对话是否契合当时当地的情景？换句话说，这些对话是否合乎逻辑！自然对话源自逻辑性。你在日常生活中与官方或权威，对下属或上级，对同辈、亲朋好友等人如何对话？要注意观察城里人怎么说话，这并不是说要偷听他们说话的内容，而是更侧重于他们说话的方式。或许还可以挖掘一些历史材料，看看视频纪录片中的历史人物们怎么说话。尽量避开虚构小说或现实电视媒介中的内容，因为它们所涉及的对话都是事先安精心编写（甚至是真人秀节目也不例外）和摆布的内容，其后期编辑和处理程度远超你想象。

指导性对话

导师、教练、老师、家长或那些苦口婆心的长者，总是孜孜不倦地用“这一点非常重要”等话语再三强调某个真理，即使听者早已了然于心，这就是所谓的教诲。技巧就在于要让这种内容听起来具有真实感，而这一点在涉及玩家界面的元素时却往往难以实现。除非你正在听从指导的条件下玩游戏，否则你不可能听到导师提到左控制按钮。因为这种情形会时不时破坏人们在游戏中的沉浸感，这也正是让玩家准确理解信息所需付出的代价。所以添加一个指导鼠标该往哪移的文本对话框虽然并不具有沉浸感，但它至少比老调重弹、听起来极不搭调的人物对话要强得多。

最理想的状态是一切从简。但为玩家提供一个安静而空无一人的房间或场所，让他自己探索发掘控制操作方式，这也并不总是可行的做法。但假如真能如此操作，并且能够融入故事情节的话，那就再理想不过了。玩家的这类初次体验总是很有意思，他们在这种情形下一般会怯生生地环顾四周，希望没人发现他们无意中在墙上留下的烧焦印迹。这种情况发生在游戏测试室中时更为有趣。

无论如何，通过尝试而获得知识是一种自然的学习过程。另外，你的故事/情节/对话越是出色，游戏对引导玩家如何正确操作的说明性内容的需求就越少。

可视性对话

人物角色可以看见对方吗？更准确地说，他们说话时能否看到彼此，还是说只有一人可看到对方，如果是这样的话，那么另一个人是否知道说话的人物可以看到自己，而说话的人又是否知道这种情况？有时候，让人物角色误解谁可以看到谁的情况，其实有助于增加真实性，要知道现实中的人们也总是常回复“嗯”？“什么”？“再说一遍”这类迷茫的话语。

作为一个游戏对话写手，你又该如何避免出现无意识的对话错误呢？模拟一下对话发生场景，可以找一个编写搭档，或者一个想休息片刻的程序员来帮忙。一般情况下由写手自己来当发言者，但有时候如果有人可以用一种与平时说话不同的声音说出台词，那可就派上大用场了，因为这种情况有助于突出对话中的存在问题。

将说话角色彼此安排在与游戏场景大概相仿的环境中。假如游戏中的两个角色所说的台词并不涉及对方，或者他们是通过一个非可视性的对讲机说话，那么就可以通过一堵大门敞开，但你们看不到对方的墙壁来模拟这种情形。或者你们也可以背向对方进行对话。这种方式有时候可以发现你们的对话结果为何如此令人意外。另外不要忘了问问对方，他觉得念出这些对话的感觉如何。写手对这些台词已经烂熟于心，对其敏感度会低于他人，而初次听到这些对话的其他人却可以客观地指出自己读这些对话时的感受。另外他还有可能想出一些很棒的对话，游戏毕竟也是一项团队合作的结晶，不是吗？

这部分内容非常冗长，我还是长话短说为妙。最关键的是学会想象。如果一个人物告诉另一方“你可能得摁下角落里的那个按钮！”但事实上你是在房间里，而另一者却呆在走廊，他看不到是什么情况，也从来没来过这个房间，那就说明你存在一个可视性对话问题。虽然这可能只是一个次要的东西，但敏锐的玩家会在意这些情况，电影、书籍、漫画、动漫等其他媒介的用户也同样不例外。试想一下你的游戏好不容易让玩家沉浸其中，但却被这些次要元素搅乱大局，这就有可能导致游戏最终流失大量玩家。

叙事性对话

这种对话设置非常困难。不过我们并不是非用叙事性对话不可，这主要取决于写手的艺术选择。叙述主要用于补充故事背景，展示相关内容，交待事件发生时间等。可以用一个空洞的声音，或者干脆让一个实际的游戏角色进行旁白，也就是说，我们并不需要一个专门的“叙事者”负责这项任务。BioWare公司在这方面的操作极为出色，他们使用了游戏中的主角，而非那些只会遇到一两次的配角进行旁白。BioWare并非第一个也绝非最后一个使用这一招的公司，这里我仅用他们的《龙腾世纪II》举例说明。该游戏中的角色在旁白时并不总是复述故事实际发生情形，却能方便半途退出的玩家跟进有关情况，这种操作确实颇具新意。

龙腾世纪2(from kotaku.com)

BioWare的《质量效应》和《龙腾世纪》等游戏系列都有非常显著的对话分支，我很感激他们在这类大制作游戏中进行了这种操作，因为这确实是一项耗时耗财的工作。但像我一样的故事情节控总是很在意旁白对游戏情节的影响，虽然采取这种措施的游戏也并不鲜见，但我认为这两个游戏系列的表现最为出众（游戏邦注：这种做法的根源可以追溯到早期的文本冒险游戏时代）。

这里我要简单列举一些在这方面值得一提的公司和游戏：BioWare（所有游戏）、Obsidian（《无冬之夜2》、《星球大战旧共和国武士2》、《阿尔法协议》、《辐射：新维加斯》）、Ion Storm（《杀出重围：隐形战争》）和Eidos Montreal（《杀出重围：人类革命》）。我认为还有许多拥有强大故事情节、绝佳叙事方式和对话，以及出色配音的游戏，但无法在此一一点明，真希望有专门研究这一领域的网站能够提供相关资料。

人物原型的对话

这部分内容我没有太多看法可以分享，只是认为这主要还是涉及艺术选择的问题。也许有人会认为，游戏角色的原型并不存在于现实生活中，但事实总会让人出乎意料。在此我不宜具体指向哪款游戏，哪些角色，因为这可能会引起一些政治或宗教争论，而这并非本文所要阐述的观点。我只想简单说明许多游戏角色都可以在现实生活中找到原型。写手们最好小心行事，不要让玩家过于入戏，陷入某种角色原型的行为（尤其是他们的对话）中，除非这是玩家自己的原本意图。现在玩家的心思真难捉摸！

混合对话

在这一点上我没有特定的立场和观点。我们以这种情形来举例，你点击了一个玩家角色，或者只想与某物进行互动（而实际上根本没有互动的必要），以便让他开口说话。或者是闲谈，导致角色长久站立着说话。这种设置很难说是成功还是不妙，它也有可能被人们忽略。我个人认为，它为这类特定的游戏制造了一种幽默的氛围，例如在Monolith的《无人永生2》中，游戏角色与镜头对视时“混淆”了自己的“台词”这种情况。也就是说，这类游戏融入或承认了“第四堵墙”（游戏邦注：戏剧术语，它的作用是试图将演员与观众隔开，使演员忘记观众的存在，而只在想象中承认“第四堵墙”的存在）的存在，它认为人们是为了获得乐趣而玩游戏。但在另一些游戏中，这种做法却可能影响玩家沉浸感，无法带来喜感，甚至破坏整体游戏风格。“简单即是美”这句老话可谓道出了艺术的微妙之处。

另外要注意的是，有时候无声胜有声，没有任何对话也可以传达许多信息，这一切要取决于人们的思想和个人生活阅历，无言的力量可能会比任何声音或词语更为强大。但目前成功运用这一法则的游戏还不多。

检查对话的拼写

如果条件允许的话， 每完成一部分稿件时都要检查一下字词拼写是否正确。没有人乐意在项目接近尾声时再匆匆修正一些细枝末节的琐事。多数拼写检查员只会告诉你某字是否拼写错误，但却无法辨别正确的字词是否用错了地方。如果在“where”中漏写了“h”，就会变成“were”，拼写检查员很难发现类错误。所以即使他们告诉你所有内容无误，那你也要清楚事实并非如此。

音量控制

我并不是一个游戏成就狂，也不是竞争型玩家，我更喜欢以故事为主线，拥有优质配音的游戏。但为何现在的游戏中不设置一些似类于“消除获奖宣言”的选项呢？要知道已经有一些服务可能已经提供这种选择了。假如游戏支持玩家获得成就，那也应该让玩家有所选择，让他们直接绕过这种设置直奔目标。如果字幕都可以调整，其他的设置为何不行呢？

音量大小有时也是一个不成则败的设置。我自己常把对话音量设置为100%，将音乐和特效声音控制在50%至75%左右。对话听起来总是比其他声音更小，而其他声音又总是太大。还有不少游戏总因一些莫名其妙的原因没有设置过场动画音量调节滑块，而是使用音乐和音效的音量，这就导致过场动画基本上没有声音。为过场动画添加一个音量滑块真有那么困难吗？为何不使用对话滑块设置？在这里我假设视频过场动画的对话音量是标准设置，假如过场动画视频中的对话有一个独立音轨，那就最好添加一个可在玩游戏过程中使用的音量滑块设置。

结语

写作并非一门简单的艺术，人人都有犯错的时候，而为游戏这种时常变动的交互式媒介写作的确需要大量勇气。作为一名游戏文案，你只能祈祷按时拿到薪水，玩家喜欢你写的东西，或者再好一点就是抬高了编写游戏对话的艺术门槛，作为一名艺术家你总不希望降低自己的水准对不？

时刻记住对话方式多种多样，我们只需要找到最适合特定情形的一种即可，让它恰到好处地传情达意，这就是一种艺术性的体现。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Natural Dialog or Dialogue?

by Roger Hågensen

There is always more than one way to say something, sometimes multiple ways. This is true for movies/games/book/audio. The artistic vision may even call for un-natural dialog. This is a very basic list of things one should consider when writing dialog.

(Guy Hasson did a Top 10 Don’ts list unfortunately for him I really do not agree with him at all, sorry dude! I originally intended to write a comment there but realized I had more to say on the subject, so I felt that a proper post on it’s own was in order.

The issue I have with that list is that I actually in my daily real life do pretty much all those don’ts, so in my eyes that list basically states that I’m not talking the way I should, which is ludicrous obviously. This made me think of what natural or real dialog actually is! I’ll avoid the temptation of a numbered list, but it is still a list however.)

Dialog or Dialogue

Pretty much everything that has dialog has some kind of personality or character, even a simple desktop computer. And if you are lucky as a writer you get to create the characters as well, or at least create their personality. If you are unlucky you get told to dialog for something with little room for growth or evolution.

As it is much easier to be negative and say what you shouldn’t do, I am instead going to be completely insane and say what you should do, which could potentially backfire really bad in this case, but what the heck, let’s give it a shot!

Natural Dialog

There really is only one rule of good dialog writing. Always try to imagine actually being there with the character. Does it sound natural, does it fit their personality, does the way the dialog is delivered make sense in the current situations? In other words is it logical at all! Nature is based on logic (or even chaotic logic one might even say). How do you yourself talk in your daily life? To officials or authority, to those under/above you, or your peers, your family members, friends. Note how people on the town talk, obviously not eaves dropping what they are saying, but more like how they are saying. Maybe try to dig up archival recordings of people talking. Listen and look at how various historical figures talk in video recordings. Avoid fictional media or reality TV media, these are always scripted (yes even reality tv), and edited more than you might guess.

Instructional Dialog

A instructor, trainer, teacher, parent or somebody that tries to hammer home a point will always use wording like “this is very important” even if it is obvious to you or the character being talked to, this is known as conditioning or drilling. The trick however is to keep it real, which is difficult when you suddenly have to mention player interface elements. You will never hear an instructor mention the left control button, unless you are being instructed in playing a game. It instantly breaks the illusion, and it is a pain in the back to get right. so although a text box telling you to move your mouse to look around isn’t exactly immersive, it is at least not jarring like a spoken dialog saying the same.

Ideally nothing should be needed. But it is not always practical to provide the player with a quiet room or location with nobody else around so the player can discover how the controls work. but if possible and it makes sense to to the story then this is the idea way. It is always amusing when a player first experiences this, usually followed by a slight sheepish expression as they glance around them hoping that no other people saw them leave a scorch-mark on the wall accidentally. Might be especially amusing in crowds or play-testing rooms.

In any case, learning by experimenting is the natural way to learn something. Also, the better your story/plot/dialog is otherwise, the less instructions are actually needed to point the player in the right direction.

Visibility Dialog

Can the characters see each other? Or more precisely can they see each other when they speak, or can only one character see the other(s), and if so does the other character(s) know that the speaking character can see them and is the speaking character aware of this? Sometimes it may even make sense to let a character miss-understand who can see whom as that ads realism, it is perfectly normal for someone to react with a “Huh?” “What?” “Repeat that please!”

What can you as writer do to avoid un-intentional dialog mistakes? Visualize the scene, grab a writing partner, or alternatively a programmer that really need a break by now due to having hammered on the same bug for the last five hours. Usually the writer will be the speaker, but sometimes it might help the writer if somebody else speaks the line as ones own voice always sounds different from how one actually sounds like. Having a character speak in a different voice also helps highlight possible dialog issues.

Position each other in a way that roughly matches scene. And if the two characters have no line of sight of each other or are talking over a non-visual communication device then a wall with a open door is a great way to hear but not see each other. Alternatively turn your backs towards each other. it can sometimes be surprising how different the dialog may sound. And do not forget to ask your helper how the dialog sounded. A writer is used to seeing the same dialog again and again, but your helper may be hearing it for the first time and out of context which gets you as close as possible to a unbiased opinion on how a line sounds. Also your helper may come up with some awesome dialog as well, after all it is a team effort right?

This part is getting rather long so let me try and  cut this short. Essentially try to visualize. if one character says something to another character “You probably need to push that button in the corner!” but you are in the room and the character saying it is in the hallway, has no line of sight, and has never been in the room, then you have a Visibility Dialog issues, it may just be a minor thing but players do pick up on things like this, same with movies, books, comics, anime and other media as well. If your game has managed to immerse the player, then minor stuff like this start to add up and might make the player slip out of the game world eventually.

Narrative Dialog

Oh boy! This is a toughie. Even this very post actually falls under this as I am actually creating a narrative. I am taking you from one point to another using words, this very sentence is itself a self-referencing narrative.

However a narrative dialog do not have to be used, this is a artistic choice. A narrative is often used to fill in back-story, do exposition, provide passage of time. A narrative may be provided by a disembodied voice, or by an actual character, in other words it does not need to be done by a “Narrator”. BioWare did something interesting that uses an actual character in the game as also the narrator, and not just a character that you run into once or twice. Although BioWare are not the first nor the last ones to do this with Dragon Age II, it is a nice current example. and the fact that the character narrating may not always be telling the story exactly as it happen (thus allowing the player leeway in exactly how things unfold) is rather refreshing.

Companies like BioWare with series like Mass Effect and Dragon Age have very heavily branching dialog, and I’m grateful that they do this with big production games like that, as it is something that is very costly and time consuming. But story lovers like myself obviously love the narrative influence we get over the games story, other games do this too, but those two game series are among those that really stand out. I’m sure people will mention others in the comments here, there is a lot of older games that did this, dating as far back as to the text adventure game era. But I’d still like to thank BioWare and other companies like it that keep rich narratives that you can influence like this alive in modern games.

Just to namedrop a few that would probably be mentioned in the comments. BioWare (whole bunch of games), Obsidian (Never Winter Nights 2, Knights Of The Old Republic 2, Alpha Protocol, Fallout: New Vegas), Ion Storm (Deus Ex, Deus Ex: Invisible War), Eidos Montreal (Deus Ex: Human Revolution), I truly wish I could create an all encompassing list of games with this type of story telling, as these are the type of games I feel have the strongest stories, best narratives and dialog, and good voice acting, so if there is a site out there that focus on and highlights games like that then please mention it in the comments here.

Archetype Dialog

I’m not going to say too much on this, except that this again is a very artistic choice. One might think that characters like that do not exist in real life, but you would be surprised. I won’t mention any examples as that would probably spur a political and religious flamewar, which is not the point of this post really. Let me just say that over the top characters exist in real life. One should however be careful not to force the player into a archetype (in particular with their dialog), unless that is what the player actually want. Oh how fickle the players are!

Miscellaneous Dialog

This is all the stuff I couldn’t think of specifics for. As an example take the situation of player character saying something because you clicked on or tried to interact with something that there isn’t any point in interacting with. Or idle talk, leaving your character standing to long and they say something. Things like this can be a hit or miss, or it may pass by mostly unnoticed. Personally I think it adds to the atmosphere and humor of certain games like Monolith’s game No One Lives Forever 2, where a character messes up their “lines” and glances at the camera. In other words a game that messes with or acknowledges the fourth wall or the fact that you are playing a game for fun. But in other games it would really ruin the immersion and fail to deliver any laughs and could ruin the story. Old sayings like “Less is more” which indicate that the art is in the subtlety.

As no-one really ever finish mastering the art of writing, in fact no-one ever really finishes mastering anything, there is many more dialog categories that can be covered or talked about in depth, but as this post is getting long enough I will start to wrap things up now, but hopefully you will end up with some ideas of your own on how to think about dialog beyond what I can express here in a simple post like this.

Also remember that sometimes just like silence can be a sound, no dialog at all can also say something, and due to the way the human mind and ones own life view colors what we always experience, the effect may be more impactful than any sound or word could be. Very few are able to pull that off well though.

Spell-checked Dialog

Really? Do I really have to spell this out for you…? *grin* If possible do a spell-check each time you have a new draft ready. The last thing you wanna do when the clock really starts speeding up at the end of a project is to correct thousands of annoying little b…….. Well! You know what I mean, heh! By the way, most spell-checkers only tells you if a word is spelled wrong, but not if a correctly spelled word is used wrongly. Missing the “h” in “where” makes the word become “were” which might not be picked up. So even if the spell-checker says you did perfect, you most likely did not, sorry!

Nitpicking & Volume Dialog

I’m not into the achievement/trophy stuff, not my kind of thing. I’m not a competitive player, I prefer story centric games with good voice acting. But why of why is there no option in games (That I’ve seen!) like “Disable Trophy Announcements”, now keep in mind that certain services might have that option. but if the game supports achievements, there surely must be a way to have a user option in the game, that the game can pass along to the service. if sub-title display can be toggled why can’t other stuff, right?

Volume levels are a hit and miss setting sometimes. I often find myself setting dialog volume (if that slider exists at all, which it does not always) to 100%, then I set music and effects at anywhere from 50% to 75% volume. Dialog is almost always to low or the other stuff is always too loud. And for some bizarre reason many games do not have a cutscene volume slider, and seem to use the sound effect or music volume instead, so that means very quiet cutscenes. is it that hard to add a cutscene volume slider? Or why not simply the cutscene volume use the dialog slider setting? I am obviously assuming here that a video cutscene is properly dialog normalized. And if the cutscene video has the dialog as a separate track then please use the volume slider settings that the game uses during play. Why the music/sfx track and dialog track in a cutscene video does not follow the games volume slider settings overly annoying.

Final Dialog… erm. Words

Writing is an art, it is not easy, everybody makes mistakes, and writing for a continually evolving and interactive medium like games is really brave indeed. The only thing you can hope for as a writer is that you keep your paycheck, the fans like the way you wrote it, and that maybe just maybe you managed to raise the bar a little on what good writing is, because as a artist you certainly do not wish to lower the bar do you?

Make us proud to enjoy your work! Now get back to work, the break is over. (I know about half of you are probably reading this at work right now. *laughs*)

Always remember that there is more than one way to say something, finding out which way is the best for a given situation, now that is where the art lies!（source:gamasutra）