Dialogue Trees

Overview

The dialogue tree is a way of letting the player choose how his character reacts & how the story plays out. they are most often found in RPGs and visual novels, but can be found in a variety of other genres as well. Most of the time, a dialogue tree is a list of sentences that the player chooses from. Usually each sentence falls into one of these three groups: positive, negative or neutral reaction. Some dialogue trees even have a limited window of time to decide on a selection, and if time runs out the character's "silence" is their response within the story. Examples of this include the Sakura Wars series and Alpha Protocol.

There are different ways that dialogue trees appear. Some are presented as a list, while others come in a circular "wheel" form like in Mass Effect. Sometimes the responses are spelled out exactly how the character will say them, like in Dragon Age or many visual novels. Other times it's more subtle, letting the player choose a type of reaction for the character, who will then say something that corresponds to this reaction, like in Mass Effect.