branching dialogue sucks! linear dialogue is good! I want a 1000 deeply thought out interactions instead of a 10 choose-your-adventure lines shallower than an inflatable pool
give me reactive dialogue, timed dialogue, dialogue that shows up when I do stuff- but not dialogue I chose down a stream of endless infinite trees of speculating on my desires & motivation.
I do not need to interrogate the cashier about their run ins with the villain of the game to feel immersed! quite the opposite actually- that would be fucking weird!
Branching dialog should be linked to implicit player actions instead of explicit dialog options. Deathloop does this really well, and you affect the story only through your interactions with the world. Even better, this allowed the game to actually do a Hegelian dialectic by setting up every scene with a thesis, having the antagonist bring up an anti-thesis, and conclude each play session with a synthesis that becomes the thesis for the next scene.
