Quote Originally Posted by Formalhaut View Post
I don't know. For me, serious and mature doesn't necessarily mean stoic and silent. I keep going back to it, but I loved Dragon Age for the mature themes and story, whilst retaining a sense of party cohesion and dynamic. If nothing else, I cannot fathom a party of adventurers saying nothing to each other while traversing a large desert, or a snowy ravine, or a sunny beach.
To me it's more about the dialogue interrupting the flow of gameplay. I agree that a few more "party chatting cutscenes" interspersed throughout the game would have been appreciative to give the cast a better sense of growing together as the game went on. Actual just in-game party bantering would have been a logistical nightmare to implement in the game since your party is chosen by the player, meaning you may never hear some conversations and what not because you won't use certain characters; cutscenes would have worked better for that in my opinion. Dialogue in battle just always feels awkward to me when it's not tactical talk, and even then, writer's can screw it up "Yes Lulu, I know, use your fire spells to beat the Sin spawn, I got the first ten times you and everyone in the party said it". Considering how easy it is to get a character killed in battle in this game, having Vaan and Penelo have dialogue proclaiming their emotional state when the other is killed or being revived would have gotten really old really fast after the first difficult boss/Mark Hunt battle you engage in. Also, as Fynn pointed out, the relationship between Balthier and Fran works because they don't need to talk to each other, so it works better in cutscenes than in battles.

Calling your attacks also just feels so... shonen/comic booky for my taste, now it might have been cool to do what they did in FFTactics and have the characters occasionally and randomly chant a spell or ability before using it during the charge up time, so there I can agree with. I will agree that maybe having some dialogue when the game actually does the fanfare would have been cool as well.

I might feel more inclined to do this if I ever saw it done well, as it stands I always feel like games go overboard when they do dialogue as I really hate the banter in Star Ocean, FFX and XIII as it always makes the characters feel like cartoon characters to me instead of as actual people.