Adventure Gamers - Forums

I made it out of Barrockstadt today. Yea!  And, so far I was right. The amount of walking/double-click-slow running was horrendous. Ranks right up there with LSL3 as far as needless travel goes. Best graphics, but my least favorite chapter. This is a game that would have greatly benefitted from an interactive map.

Now, while everyone else starts Aralsburg tomorrow, I get to start Komkolzgrad. If I remember correctly, the first visit to this place was relatively short. So unless I missed an instruction along the way, (entirely possible,) I should be heading to Aralsburg in the next day or two.

I hate being behind, but every now and then life just gets in the way.

TimovieMan - 17 September 2014 06:59 AM

I was referring specifically to the dialogues you have while using the notepad for topics… It’s like the topics of ‘Kate’, ‘mission’, ‘help’, ‘Hans’ and ‘train’ were each done in an entirely different tone…

It is true that there are a few inconsistencies in the tone of the dialogue, but they are imo neither as large or as frequent as you make it sound, and you will find similar problems in pretty much all games, to a varying degree of course. Syberia is imo neither the best nor is it the worst in this aspect.

I just replayed some of the conversations with the couple on the barge, to check how bad/good this actually is, so lets have a closer look at it. I didn’t replay everything only some samples, so most of the following is still from memory of my actual playthrough and perhaps not 100% accurate.

There is at least something like 20 different dialogues you can have with them, eg. there is I believe 4 different “help” dialogues, depending on at what stage in the chapter you are asking: a generic help, help towing the train, help opening the lock or help attaching the chain to the train. and similar with some of the other notepad questions like “Kate” and “mission”.

You can either talk to them very early in the chapter before you know what you need them for, or you can talk to them very late when you have pretty much solved everything else. There is I believe 4 natural points where you would talk to them, but you can also compress that into only 2 or perhaps 3 conversations. On top of this you also have some topics not directly linked to this couple, like asking about the birds or grapes, which you can do independent of your previous encounters with them.

Kate’s attitude towards them does vary between being polite, friendly and inquisitive to being annoyed, sarcastic and angry, but there are reasons for these changes in attitude, i.e. she starts out polite but becomes annoyed when they refuse to help her and ask for cool cash and overprice her. Also Kate does seem to cool down a bit between each conversation with them.

The two questions here is, is it possible to have the conversations and ask the individual questions in an order where Kate’s attitude makes perfect sense, and is the opposite also possible, to do this in an order where her attitude is all over the place. And I believe the answer to both is a YES, though only few players would probably get the exact order correct without any inconsistencies at all.

Generally there are two ways that you can avoid these kind of inconsistencies in games. You can either have more linear dialogues, for example I just played the first part of BoUT 2 where Wilbur has a similar attitude change towards a troll, but here the attitude change is done in fixed parts of the dialogue and not in the individual questions. Or you can have a constant attitude of the protagonist towards the minor characters, which is actually quite common in many games.

So what is my point with this, well I’m not really sure, but I just thought I would take a closer look at it, and I personally also quite like that Syberia let Kate’s attitude towards different NPCs evolve, even if it can lead to some inconsistencies.

Iznogood - 17 September 2014 09:56 PM

It is true that there are a few inconsistencies in the tone of the dialogue, but they are imo neither as large or as frequent as you make it sound, and you will find similar problems in pretty much all games, to a varying degree of course. Syberia is imo neither the best nor is it the worst in this aspect.

You’re probably right with this, but either I haven’t experienced these kinds of in-game dialogue inconsistencies in a while, or the order in which I’m playing through the game makes the inconsistencies all the more egregious.

Personally, I think a LOT of these inconsistencies in dialogue tone could have been avoided. They could have simply greyed out any dialogue options that have been exhausted (and that aren’t new or haven’t changed), so if Kate’s stance towards an NPC changes, you at least won’t feel compelled to listen to an “old” or outdated reply. Or they could have done away with the notepad and have given us the complete sentences that Kate can say (instead of a vague one-word description). We’d at least have more context then…



I’d also like to point out that at this moment in the game, I’m still not feeling/seeing/hearing the “change” in Kate, despite it being mentioned a few times already (both by Kate herself and by Olivia). To me it still comes across as Kate simply wanting to find Hans ASAP so she can go home…

I’m probably going to drop behind for a few days as my new PC arrived today and I’ve found it’s too tall to go under the desk and too heavy to sit on top of it so I’ve some reorganising of my computer room to do. Couldn’t get started today either as I’ve had an electrician in wiring in 8 double power points for me. It’s all happening at once folks

Having said about wanting to post a screen with the eagle and couldn’t (maybe the new PC will be more helpful in this respect ) Iznogood very kindly did try to get one for me but as it’s an action cut scene it even gave him a bit of difficulty but he did manage to get this for which I’m extremely grateful to him:

TimovieMan - 18 September 2014 12:15 PM

I’d also like to point out that at this moment in the game, I’m still not feeling/seeing/hearing the “change” in Kate, despite it being mentioned a few times already (both by Kate herself and by Olivia). To me it still comes across as Kate simply wanting to find Hans ASAP so she can go home…

Two issues. I agree that Kate’s intonation varies widely depending on who she is talking to and what she’s talking about. During the same conversation her tone can go from conciliatory to argumentative. Not sure whether that could, or should have been avoided by “proper” dialogue design.

Other issue: Kate’s growing independence: I think almost, if not all of the evidence of a personality change takes place in the phone conversations. In the first Dan call she sounds almost subservient. By the time she reaches K-Town she’s had enough of his domineering attitude. Her initial calls with her mother consisted mostly of trying to end the conversation. Then she initiates the call regarding the Helena information, and it’s no nonsense. Give me the information I need. Thank you. Good-bye. And the conversations with Marson are getting more terse with every call. (I think I said she had the f**k you option in Valadilene, and that opinion was criticized. Well, I think that option is much more likely as we approach the last few chapters.)

Kate has definitely changed. But I don’t think her objective has changed….yet! She still wants to get Hans’ signature on the contract.

I remember when I played this game with an old PC with just an integrated graphics card of 32mb, I did not believe a game could looks so amazing in such a limited Pc. It looked spectacular back then and even today the graphics look stunning.

I too - recall this. In 2002 it was an amazing game to me graphics-wise. I thought then and now too actually that Kate was a little one dimensional as a character and that some of the puzzles seemed very tacked on and were not at all organic to the story - BUT the steampunk-like graphics and cut scenes more than made up for it. A metacritic score of 82 is pretty-much spot-on:

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/syberia

TimovieMan - 18 September 2014 12:15 PM

Personally, I think a LOT of these inconsistencies in dialogue tone could have been avoided. They could have simply greyed out any dialogue options that have been exhausted (and that aren’t new or haven’t changed)...

I must admit that not greying out old topics and not knowing in advance what is new, is also beginning to annoy me a bit. Fortunately you can fast skip through dialogue you have already heard before, otherwise it would be unbearable.

TimovieMan - 18 September 2014 12:15 PM

I’d also like to point out that at this moment in the game, I’m still not feeling/seeing/hearing the “change” in Kate, despite it being mentioned a few times already (both by Kate herself and by Olivia). To me it still comes across as Kate simply wanting to find Hans ASAP so she can go home…

Well many of us have the advantage that we have played the game before, so we are probably more sensitive to this and notice things you might not notice on a first playthrough. Also as rtrooney pointed out, her objective hasn’t changed, though a at least subconscious, shift in her motives for continuing the journey is beginning to become apparent.

Jabod - 18 September 2014 02:30 PM

Iznogood very kindly did try to get one for me but as it’s an action cut scene it even gave him a bit of difficulty but he did manage to get this for which I’m extremely grateful to him:

I actually almost had a perfect shot of the eagle, but was just half a second too late, and only got thin air with a couple of feathers - and you are welcome.

Becky - 19 September 2014 09:57 AM

Dan just sounds frustrated with the obstacles Kate’s encountering. His advice is that she should just come home.Kate doesn’t sense how desperate Dan is—that a particular phone call may be the last chance she has to keep the relationship intact.

I think Dan’s frustration is primarily due to the fact that he doesn’t have smart, intelligent, good looking Kate there as his arm candy when he has dinner with the Goldbergs. The contract is worth more than Kate to him, and she is finally starting to realize this.

rtrooney - 18 September 2014 07:48 PM

And the conversations with Marson are getting more terse with every call. (I think I said she had the f**k you option in Valadilene, and that opinion was criticized. Well, I think that option is much more likely as we approach the last few chapters.)

Then why was her phone conversation with him in Aralbad her weakest so far? She sounded almost apologetic where she appeared way more stand-offish in earlier calls…

And why on Earth did she have such an apathetic response when Olivia basically told her she slept with Dan? Even if you’re preoccupied with your mission, you still need to react to news like that. Here it comes off like it doesn’t even register with Kate.

Kate confuses me…





Just finished the Aralbad chapter. What an amazing cutscene at the end!

But it did confirm my suspicions: Sergei is bonkers. We could have avoided a LOT of trouble (including for Helena) if we just used the metal shears on the organ automaton’s hands, took them back to the train and got the f@!# out of Dodge.

Also: up until now, everything has been really easy. Puzzles have been straightforward, and the only times where they weren’t, you just needed to phone someone.

Now at last, we had a difficult puzzle!

Took me a while to figure out what to do with the bottle of honey. Good thing I remembered a screen with hotspots (pun intended) that hadn’t been used yet.

Needed a couple of attempts to get the notes that needed to be played right. Especially since I thought I did everything (order and all) right at my second attempt and still failed. Good thing I tried the same things again after four attempts. I was convinced my second try should have been the correct one - duplicating it solved the puzzle (meaning I made an error on my second try and didn’t notice).

Anyway, this puzzle was actually hard. You had a lot of steps to make it work, and while you got several hints and in-game help, it still took quite a bit of thought - much more than any other puzzle in the game so far. It took me by surprise because of that…

Btw, can anyone tell me what the trigger was for the locker room door opening? Was it simply talking to James / OscarII about where Helena is or did it involve entering Helena’s (or Hans’s) room number in that keypad thing as none of the numbers I entered gave any sort of result?

I think Dan’s frustration is primarily due to the fact that he doesn’t have smart, intelligent, good looking Kate there as his arm candy when he has dinner with the Goldbergs. The contract is worth more than Kate to him, and she is finally starting to realize this.

I had to laugh mightily when I read this, the sad part is, it’s quite likely true. It is, once again how the phone calls Kate receives throughout the game add to the player’s experience and help immerse the player into this world.

Sadly, in the Nintendo DS version, the phone calls don’t work as well, the DS version has no voice acting, just text bubbles and that includes the phone calls.

TimovieMan - 20 September 2014 07:48 PM

Then why was her phone conversation with him in Aralbad her weakest so far? She sounded almost apologetic where she appeared way more stand-offish in earlier calls…

And why on Earth did she have such an apathetic response when Olivia basically told her she slept with Dan? Even if you’re preoccupied with your mission, you still need to react to news like that. Here it comes off like it doesn’t even register with Kate.

Kate confuses me…

As for the Aralbad call from Marson, I don’t know. I just got off the airship.

As for the conversation with Olivia, see my above comment regarding the source of Dan’s frustration. My thinking is that Kate doesn’t care all that much at this point in her quest.

I’m sure you have seen movie scenes where a character is talking on the phone to an unseen person on the other end of the like. The conversation is irrelevant/boring/intrusive/time wasting. That emotion is delivered via a close-up of the character’s face. The eyes-rolling tell you everything you need to know. That’s how I picture Kate at this point in the game.

I don’t know on what platform you’re playing the game. Mikekelly just commented that the Nintendo DS version of the game has no voice acting. I think some of the dialog nuances are missed if you don’t hear the voices.

rtrooney - 21 September 2014 01:11 PM

As for the conversation with Olivia, see my above comment regarding the source of Dan’s frustration. My thinking is that Kate doesn’t care all that much at this point in her quest.

This is precisely what I don’t get. I have not yet seen anything that convinces me of the fact that she doesn’t care about her old life any longer. And even if she doesn’t really care anymore, then that phone call by Olivia near the end of the Aralbad chapter should still hurt, yet Kate responds in the blankest way possible. I’m an apathetic guy myself, but hearing Kate’s reaction there is making even me go ‘WTF?’...

I’m sure you have seen movie scenes where a character is talking on the phone to an unseen person on the other end of the like. The conversation is irrelevant/boring/intrusive/time wasting. That emotion is delivered via a close-up of the character’s face. The eyes-rolling tell you everything you need to know. That’s how I picture Kate at this point in the game.

Why?
I get her newfound sense of adventure. I don’t get her inconsistent contact with the homestead (and I certainly don’t see how that’s already an “old life” she has no intention of going back to)...

I don’t know on what platform you’re playing the game.

I’m on the PC. I love the DS, but the DS is not a platform for PC ports.