How Would You Handle Having New Dialogue?

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@jpcerutti1 wrote:

How would you know if they had something new (besides the prompt you already get - which sometimes gets buried in the SAM prompts). Maybe a little blue exclamation point on the map (like waiting quests)?

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Some games make characters, those you haven't talked to yet or had new dialogue options, display a communication icon or an exclamation point on their heads. Not on the map; which could be reserved for important tasks, or could make it too cluttered in places you have just entered.

Regarding all the things they have to say ... I think it's all about timing. If you ended one mission but didn't really bother going to learn what others had to talk about it, why would they bother even prompting conversations about things you did ages ago? Timing is crucial. If there was any mission in which others had really something they needed to talk about, they could reserve an additional dialogue, if they weren't prompted immediately and stacked with the most newest event.

Let's see an example:

You kill Kalinda, which would make Peebee want to comment on that. However, you keep on playing and playing, then you go and find the place where Meridian should be. After you realize what happened in that part of the game and returned to the Tempest, you would go and talk to Peebee. The timing required you to talk about the most pressing situation – going after Meridian – and Peebee would say so. However, as the suject around Kalinda was important to her, she'd prompt you with something like: "And hey, Ryder, I know I shouldn't bring this up when we have so much on our heads, but ... blah, blah, blah". If it wasn't nothing really tied to her loyalty mission, I think she could skip any given past mission-tied conversations. If you haven't bothered to know her view on things before, only very delicate subjects could make a lingering return.

I don't like having to keep prompting a character to keep deploying a stacked, out-of-time list of long-gone conversations.

Some out-of-time personal input could be just hinted too, which could prompt Ryder to keep that new conversation. Using the same example:

"Well, Ryder, we did good, we got all tech we could find!"

"Yes, Peebee."

"Luckily we didn't had to kill anyone we know this time ..." (hints for Kalinda mission)

Here, it would prompt you to keep talking about that, or just pretend you didn't got the cue or you just don't want to talk about it anymore. But the way it is right now, it's terrible. It caused some teleportations in the Tempest too.