Delterius
Arcane
It wasn't my intention to suggest skipping the stuff you want to do, or stuff that makes perfect sense to do.
If I were to follow both of these suggestions then I'd follow sidecontent and skip the dialogue. This is not a good defense of a plot driven RPG.But I maintain that you would find this less of a problem if you stopped treating "exhaust all dialogues completely" as an obligation and more as an option.
We weren't born gamers. We all instinctively learned about the basic mechanics of these games. That the accumulation of 'Experience' makes you more powerful.Imagine if someone asked you about the SRR games ... someone who isn't a gamer.
No I did not.This isn't a strawman; you just suggested that xp is the primary motivation for playing some game content at all!
Experience is one of the goals of the game.
Preposterous. It's certainly part of the reward and progression system, but it's not a goal in itself unless you make it one.
RPGs are games about character creation and development. It just so happens that nearly every RPG is a story of a person whose life is more filled with killing and mayhem than a Die Hard movie. As such, their story is a progression from impotent nobody to badarse legend. In particular, this is a story where the PC goes from a small fish in some childhood gang to awesome shadowrunner in Chinaland. All because of an exotic father figure. Its a love letter to cheesy 80s action movies about teens learning to fight honorably (hopefully?) and live like some folk hero who speaks chinese.
Now, what is the primary thing that tells that story? Is it the dialogues with Duncan? The flashbacks? Hong Kong doesn't have nearly as much of that as it is, much less to become the primary mode of storytelling. The answer is, as with every game, the gameplay. And as with most RPGs, the character, progression and reward systems. You'd need something like Undertale to subvert that and, even so, its just a subversion. Its not a entirely new kind of game of roleplaying. You just do the opposite of killing everyone you meet.
As such, the narrative feedback from pursuing side content should flow very well. Especially when its mostly more dialogue in an already dialogue heavy story.
All that said, I NEVER said that I, personally, pursued every conversation because of the XPs. Nor did I say that I talked to every character to the very end. Unlike the NPCs from the Kreuzsbazar I did start ignoring the people from HK half way through the game. I only recognize that ignoring Experience Points has absolutely nothing to do with ignoring pointless loot. The former, by definition, isn't pointless.
Its not like I found every conversations dreadful from the moment it began. Its a degenerative process. You start interested in the supporting NPC that the game put in your way. And then you move to the next. And the next. And the fourth time you feel like their story could be told in a single panel or two, instead of 5, you start feeling exhausted.Well, you still pursued conversations long after finding them dreary because "maybe 1 xp!" That's silly and I've already made it clear why I think so. As long as you're playing in a way you find fun though, power to you.
Its like a really long loading screen. What's behind it is still a goal of yours. You just wish it wasn't so damn long.