Colicedus:
As far as NPC's go I don't think we've had very much information - other than Jeff mentioning that conversations were likely to work in a similar manner to
Broken Sword with the icons for topics.
I might have a look at
Avernum to get a better understanding for exactly what you mean - but for the moment I'll settle for two ways of handling NPCs.
Key Characters (Actors)
Nameless sods to fill the world (Mooks)
Personally I think that games would be better off mixing these methods without making it clear who is who...
Okay, firstly I should make it clear I'm a fan of random generation and dynamic worlds. IMO its more fun to see the world around you change as you travel rather than be stuck in some kind of stasis like the vast majority of games.
Oblivion tried to aim for something more dynamic but was so worried about breaking the game that they practically killed the dynamic nature of the NPCs. Breaking the game is a worry unless you have faceless npcs/mooks like
GTA. Doesn't matter how many you slay cos you can always replace them and its going to be fine.
I recently played
Dwarf Fortress and I think the its way of handling things is superb.
It knows how many of what are where and it knows who the key players in the world are. Everyone else is faceless
until you meet them. If the player fights, talks or interacts with that character they get marked as important and are tracked as part of the dynamics. If they die, a nameless character may or may not take their place as part of the dynamic world.
Personality can be randomly generated for all filler characters this way and they can then become more important npcs in their own right as the plot develops.
As for initating hostilities...
If you sneak up on someone with a weapon I think the game can assume you want to threaten/kill them - You could grab them if they aren't already hostile and enter a conversation with the option of killing them.
If you approach them in the street it could assume you want to talk - but have a conversation option to insult/attack them after which you get an initial strike (like the 2nd area in Lugaru) and the combat just continues as normal with folk joining in or staying out of the fight as required.
Of course David and the Team may have some other super cool method - or simply resort to another key
If anyone has played
Way of the Samurai you'll know what I mean, but I loved the way you didn't ever
have you say anything in that game - it just told you that you had the option, so you could interupt character or totally ignore them at will
.
For those that don't know, you had an icon on the screen when you could talk and a button was assigned to talking. If you pressed the button the game would pause. Left and right changed who you talked to, while up and down changed what you said. You didn't have to say anything and the game didn't pause for you - if you wanted to say something or interrupt someone you hit the button - the conversation options constantly changed in the background depending on what had just been said. A very short game, but the number of ways it could be played was superb.
Actually that had a neat feature - because the game was so short if you died that was that. Game over, you have to restart. But from the very start it didn't force you to fight anyone. You saw thing happen and you got involved when and where you wanted. Once you started however it cut off options and mad life more dangerous, but because death meant game over you really had to think about what you did. Very cool game.