944 Dialogue Tech In Pyre

I love so much about Supergiant Games’ Pyre, there are so many small details, unique touches, and innovative gameplay systems.

A subtle one is the dialogue boxes that most of the game’s narrative is told through. Nearly every unique text box has one or more highlighted words, which the user can hover over with their cursor/joystick to see more details about the given term. It’s treated carefully to feel like the descriptions are somehow a part of the game’s world, as if maybe a view into the mind of the main protagonist as they ponder that given term.

Beyond storytelling, the system serves additional functions. It helps the player understand what the most important aspects of the lore are (clearly its highlighted for a reason), gives additional optional lore, and it helps the player offload some of the narrative burden, which can be helpful for more complex stories that have novel concepts that are tightly interwoven.

The system also uses an interesting way to progress text, using fades that happen on groups of text per comma while characters are speaking with audio (to allow the text to keep pace with the audio), and normal text displaying when there is no voice audio.

[ Today I Was Playing: nothing… ]

#game-mechanic-system