vague idea, but i’ve been playing a a few dialogue-heavy adventure games, and i’ve been thinking about the weird gap between what you’d like to say and what you’re actually able to… there’s a kind of unexplored parallel to be made there with anxiety, social norms, social skills, and whatever other reasons you sometimes can’t say what you mean in real life. there could be a game where you start as a socially inept character, and all you can do is say the wrong thing, the awkward thing, or nothing at all, and only through persistent and repeated failure could you slowly unlock less terrible options.
the flip side of that is when the dialogue options present an idea that you as the player would never have come up with. in a lot of these games where winning an argument is part of the objective, you generally have a reasonable approach in mind and the game presents you one that is close enough to it, along with a few others. but what if the options presented were all wildly different from what you’d thought of, and you just had to pick one on instinct or tone and ride that line of reasoning wherever it took you? maybe it could be integrated into the story as the player being influenced by an external entity.
an extension of these two ideas; i think it kinda sucks how there’s often an obvious, canonical, ‘right’ answer to most dialogue choices. often, there’s the fun but impractical option, the evil option, and the right option. and they are all blatant af. i’d like more games where that distinction is completely muddled; where you can say the ‘right’ thing and be judged as a pedantic idiot, say the fun thing and get a laugh, and say the evil thing and get a million dollars (just like real life!)