i'm currently deep in the weeds of finals season. during my limited self care/free time, in a craving for more Good Star Wars in the wake of andor, i've started playing KOTOR 2. despite being from 2004, its dialog system is maybe one of the best i've seen in a game. it does a couple of simple things that make conversations feel dynamic and interesting. i think a lot of modern narrative based games could learn from it.

spoilers for KOTOR 2's plot through meeting Atria for the first time below the cut. (screenshots of dialog for examples) i haven't played KOTOR 1 - if it does the same stuff, kudos to it. i'm talking about how KOTOR 2 made me feel.

in most movies (yes, movies and games are entirely different mediums, bear with me here), eventually you end up with two characters, in a room, having a conversation. there's an excellent Every Frame a Painting video on this idea; Shot, Reverse Shot. the idea of the video essay is there's lots of ways to shoot two people having a conversation - each of them makes the audience feel a different way.

for instance, this shot of syril karn having dinner with his mother.

and this sequence from the fantastically terrible Transformers: The Last Knight clip of the fantastically weird scene on youtube

both of these are scenes where characters are in a room talking to each other. they're shot intentionally, to make you feel something specific. the scene of syril karn having dinner makes the division between syril and his mother explicit, to make you feel the tension. the scene of the us military's lawyers negotiating with megatron in the desert (excluding the interspersed action scenes) is shot with the intention of making the audience think the military is incredibly badass (david and goliath imagery of guy standing up to giant robot) and also making a mistake (nervous lawyers).(1)(2) good directors/cinematographers use the shot/reverse shot to help tell the story.

so how do games use shot/reverse shot to tell their story? outside of cutscenes, games tend to fall into a few camps.

fixed camera for duration of dialog:

camera cuts on lines with a relatively fixed number of shots to cut between: an example of this from horizon zero dawn

maintain normal combat/nav camera:

there's probably a few camps that i've missed, but that's mostly it. either you use a pretty fixed camera, or you cut between a few (2-6) fixed shots, using the same ones in every conversation.

back in 2004, KOTOR 2 had a dialog system that cuts to new camera shots on specific lines. that alone does a huge amount to make dialog more dynamic, but KOTOR 2 goes beyond that to make the camera a more active participant in the scene.

in most 2022 games that cut on each line, the shots that are cut to are relatively standard - the kind of shot/reverse shot you'd expect to see in a CBS cop show. KOTOR 2 has similar default shots, but with more variation; if 2 characters are in a scene, KOTOR 2 switches between:

character close ups for both characters in a scene (from both sides, for both characters = 4 variations):

behind the shoulder of one character framing both characters in the shot (from both sides, behind the shoulder of both characters = 4 variations): the camera has at least 8 shots to switch between in every conversation. that could feel stale, but unlike most modern games KOTOR 2 (usually) doesn't move the player char to a specific location a fixed distance from the NPC you're talking to. because the distance isn't fixed, the angle of the camera in reference to the two characters talking is slightly different in each conversation. (compare the below example to the above.) this makes each conversation's 8 shots feels slightly different than those of every other conversation.

in addition to each conversation having the standard 8 shots (with those shots being slightly different from conversation to conversation), KOTOR 2 has custom shots in specific conversations for a variety of purposes: to do landscape establishing shots, show what's happening in a different location, build tension and give characterization:

anyway. the camera in KOTOR 2, specifically during dialog, is used to give emphasis to the story. in the big moments of the story and the small ones, with each shot in each conversation being slightly different, limiting conversations feeling stale.

modern narrative games should try to have the camera help tell the story more - i think it's at least worth thinking about a camera that's different slightly in every shot. i know i've been thinking of how i could mimic KOTOR 2's camera & dialog system using unity and ink

also KOTOR 2's writing is fantastic (though i can't stand discount han solo), and i highly recommend it to anyone who's in the post-andor craving for Good Star Wars.

anyway, time to go back to reading this book so i can write an essay

(1) "government lawyers negotiate with aliens in the desert" is a plot beat that i want in a good movie. transformers: the last knight is not a good movie. i do, however, recommend watching it blasted out of your mind with 0 context as it's bad in fantastically interesting ways. (2) michael bay is a bad director for a variety of reasons - he doesn't know when to not keep escalating tension, he's a massive misogynist & racist, he's got really fucked up political views, he edits every scene like its the action climax of the movie, he color grades to shit. but he understands that cinematography helps tell the story, and shoots with that intention. it's just the story he's trying to tell (cinematography and all) sucks shit and his camera work is always dialed to 11