Highlights
- RPGs often overlook the silver-tongued diplomat archetype, but games like Fallout: New Vegas and Shadowrun offer opportunities for players to negotiate and use speech skills to overcome challenges.
- Age of Decadence and Disco Elysium provide alternative ways to progress through the game without resorting to combat, with rich dialogue options and skill-centric conversations.
- Torment: Tides of Numenara and Griftlands offer players the chance to rely on persuasion and charisma, using fancy words and strategic negotiations to achieve their goals, while The Outer Worlds allows for diplomatic solutions and leadership abilities to navigate dangerous situations.
The tantalizing appeal of the RPG promises the player that they will be able to do anything in the game. That includes maiming innocent bystanders, committing break-ins, rising through the ranks of shadowy organizations, achieving reality-bending powers, and more crazy stuff that most people don't get to do in their ordinary lives.
8 Most Iconic Video Game Amnesiacs, Ranked
The amnesiac character is a famous video game trope, made popular by these iconic video game characters.
However, despite the explosion in RPGs or RPG features in games today, there is one archetype that gets overlooked in pretty much all of them: the silver-tongued diplomat who could talk their way out of an exploding fortress on the event horizon of a black hole (even if they don't actually talk in cutscenes). While other games train their players to use the art of the sword, these games (optionally) let their players master (and exploit) the gift of the gab.
7 Fallout: New Vegas
Like the pen-and-paper games they were originally inspired by, Fallout entries always tend to give players who want to negotiate their way through the world viable options, even in a world of radiation-mutated monsters and peppy military killing machines. New Vegas famously lets its players get by without firing a single shot.
Of course, they'll need other skills to supplement their run (Sneak, for example), as many of the occupants of the Mojave and the monsters aren't likely to drop their aim for a chit-chat. However, the number of options is impressive. If the player's stats and skills are high enough, they'll even be able to get the final boss to step down with words alone in a tense, heady conversation.
6 The Shadowrun Series
For anyone looking for a purely non-combat experience, a pure(ish) Shadowrun isn't that. However, for those who might be interested in speech builds for snappy writing, this will be right up their alley. In particular, the best way to go in Shadowrun (Returns, Dragonfall, or Hong Kong) might be to go with the Shaman class.
Combat is a fundamental part of the cyberpunk-meets-D&D classics, and Shaman is more of a support class. However, going with Charisma drops some of the game's best dialogue. Thankfully, creative multi-classing is also a viable option for those who like to mix and match their roles.
5 Age Of Decadence
Just because there's a way to play this game without resorting to violence, it doesn't mean that the experience won't be brutal all the same. Age of Decadence has such a richly realized world that players will want to learn everything they can about the lore and the circumstances of the world they find themselves in.
The 21 Hardest RPGs Ever Made, Ranked
RPGs run the gamut from casual and lighthearted to hardcore and punishing. Today we're focusing on the latter and ranking the hardest RPGs to date.
Then again, while it's entirely possible to make it through to the end, even with high stats, some find the diplomat route a little linear compared to the varied challenges of combat that the warrior type offers. Additionally, dialogue is skill-centric, meaning that while the player might know how to address the situation, the player character will be locked into a certain fate depending on their social skills (or lack thereof).
4 Disco Elysium
Disco Elysium
- Platform(s)
- PC , PS5 , PS4 , Xbox One , Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S , Stadia
- Developer(s)
- ZA/UM
- Genre(s)
- RPG
- Released
- October 15, 2019
It might be argued that this entry is a little bit of a "cop" out, given that the gameplay in Disco Elysium consists of about 98% talking. Then again, just as it's viable to go for a smooth-talker, it's just as valid to opt for a bruiser build (although that kind of character still won't be doing very much bruising) because perhaps the most impressive thing about Disco is that it creates conflicts outside of combat encounters.
As other RPGs might break combat skills down into nuanced parts, such as "initiative, heavy weapons, finesse weapons, and critical hits," Disco Elysium does the same by breaking "charisma" down into its constituent parts as well. Authority and Drama might get the player what they want, but choosing one or the other will impact the proceedings of the conversation, meaning that not only is the personality stat viable, but it's also richly complex, deep, and highly engaging.
3 Torment: Tides Of Numenara
Torment: Tides of Numenara is a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment, a title that many fans credit as being one of the early great examples of games that flex real writing (some old-schoolers might even say that it's a game about having incredible philosophical conversations with combat more or less tacked on). The developers behind Tides build their game around maximizing build viability. This means that (with a little build crafting magic) a player can complete the game with fancy $15 words alone, without having to resort to laying the smackdown (although chances are there'll be at least a couple of fights).
14 Of The Best Tabletop RPG Video Game Adaptations
Over the years, some tabletop RPGs translated their exciting mechanics into the video game world. Here are some of their best adaptations.
A charisma-based character is also well worth trying, especially through the Nano. Certain abilities (like Mind Read) can yield special dialogue options. The setting itself (Numenara) is a fascinating place with layers of history. Those who prefer to delve deep into a world's lore by actually playing the game and talking to NPCs will get a kick out of playing the face, especially if they're tired of games that insist on random battles every other minute. That being said (besides stealing victory through well-placed words), butt-kicking (or kicking other body parts) is also a viable option in Tides.
2 Griftlands
Just as real-world events and activities can be abstracted in various ways in video games (such as turn-based battles like in Final Fantasy or real-life perception checks like in Phoenix Wright), dialogue and negotiations can also be gamified. Take Griftlands, a deck battler that presents each persuasion attempt as a tactical resource management challenge. Rather than attempting to hit the right branch on a dialogue tree, arguments, and powerful rhetorical ploys can be played, defended, or attacked with a great deal of room for lateral strategy.
Interestingly, the charisma "skill" (more like a deck) also takes into account the main character's social standing with various groups, individuals, and social networks. Befriending one group or person might make a negotiation with specific people much more challenging later on, and vice-versa. When a negotiation fails, combat is always an option. The shift from eye-to-eye to hand-to-hand is seamless as duking it out as it takes the same deck-building approach.
1 The Outer Worlds
Excellent options for diplomats are par for the course for Tim Cain et al. and Obsidian, whose track record includes other "yackity-yack" friendly titles, including the original Fallout and Arcanum: Of Steamworks And Magick Obscura. Players who invest heavily in the Charm attribute (and the Persuade, Lie, Intimidate, and Inspiration skills) will be able to engage in a productive parlor to their heart's content, bypassing potential scraps and securing win-win scenarios left, right, and center.
Far enough away from the "civilized" areas, the planets in The Outer Worlds are still dangerous. However, if they're not up to sharpening their stealth skills (or they simply want to roleplay someone with bad knees), charismatic characters will be able to leverage high leadership abilities to command their comrades to take care of the bad guys on their behalf, enhancing their abilities through passive inspiration.