Originally Posted by PopTarts,May 25 2006, 01:49 PM

Remember how in KOTOR, the camera would show their face, and then it would show your face, and then it would show their face, and there were about five faces total for the entire universe? We put up with it because it was Star Wars, and it was well-written, but visually there was nothing going on there. That's completely over.

Imagine if the conversations you entered into were each expressed with a kind of "directorial vision," where camera angles themselves communicated drama and gravity! I know, it's crazy, but they're doing it. When you couple that with vastly improved faces that deliver on extraordinary emotional subtleties, subtleties that are clear even for non-human races(!) - nervous eye movement, a moment's furrow of the brow - and we are moving into another era.

They have moved away from the old "here are all your lines of dialogue" system, which worked fine but wasn't terribly immediate, and instead moved to a circular interface where you choose the basic form of your response. Things like threats or coaxing all occupy sort of set positions around this wheel, so you start to build a kind of intuition about the interface. One more thing - these basic options come up a little before the other person's dialogue has finished, so you're able to select your option and create essentially seamless conversations. It's surprising how much this effects the character of these conversations.