So, what’s so special about
Resonance’s dialogue system? Well, for one thing, you can very easily ask any character about anything in the game. You aren’t limited to the specific choices the developers set down for you. That being said, if you go too far outside of what the developers expect, you will get a generic comment about not thinking the person you are talking to will know anything about that subject.
So, how does this work? Well, your "inventory" is divided into three categories. There is your typical inventory list that shows you everything a character is holding, and then there are memories. You have both short-term and long-term memory slots. Long-term memories are major events that happen in the game like a character’s dying words, or a conversation you had with someone. These can even be memories one of the characters bring up on their own. Meanwhile, short-term memories can be filled with the various objects in the world that you can interact with. For instance, when Ed goes up to the lab, he finds a broken window. You can add that broken window to your short-term memory. With these various items in your "inventory," you can then ask any character about one of them.
A good example about this, without trying to reveal one of the puzzles, has Ed needing to talk to an NPC about a valve that doesn’t have a handle. You drag the valve to the short-term memory and go talk to the NPC. You select the valve and he mentions that you need a tool, and that tool is in a specific location. But, of course, it isn’t where he said it was. You can put that location in your short-term memory and talk to him about it some more, but he is pretty insistent that it’s where he thinks it is. In the end, you have to choose one of the long-term memories where that NPC described an event that happened to remind him that he had the tool with him when escaping the building.
This really is a great and comprehensive system that feels both simple and intuitive. The only issue I had with it, which I alluded to in the Difficulty section of this review, was that being able to ask anyone anything doesn't mean you should try and as a result, standard adventure-gaming strategies like "work through all dialogue options" or "talk to everyone about anything you can" falls apart some and you can get a bit lost in attempted conversations.
Quite frankly, that’s a small issue, and it’s one that can be easily discounted given the flexibility the feature gives you. If the game didn’t have a great story and told that story in an interesting way, I would say Resonance was worth trying out the demo just to get a feel for the dialogue system. As it is though, it is worth the purchase.
