Dialogue Wheel Mod (LE1)

The purpose of this mod is to make the dialogue wheel more clear, consistent and reliable in order to make conversations less frustrating and unpredictable.

Main Changes of This Mod

More explanations in “Further Explanations” (obviously).

1° It changes the positioning of the available responses within the dialogue wheel to be more consistent and indicative of the way the conversation will go.

2° This mod removes the fake or exact duplicate choices in the game, which in result will sometimes allow a conversation to flow freely without player input.

3° It alters “investigate” options to make the player automatically pick unique reactions on the condition they are purely informative and not reflective of a player’s character (unless neutral enough), as in ME2 and 3. It also removes the possibility to pick an investigative option again immediately after picking it.

4° On rare occasions, it also removes the ability for Shepard to inappropriately opt out of a topic or conversation entirely.

You might be thinking that this all sounds like this mod offers you significantly less player agency. In actuality, it does not. ME1’s dialogue wheel system can be a genuine mess that requires constant (and sometimes unnecessary) player input, and this mod merely cleans it up to bring it more in line with ME2 and 3. But I’ve been careful to retain every single characterized response the game allows, even keeping annoyingly similar responses available for the player.

In concrete terms, this mod alters over 90% of all the conversations of the game in some way. You may not always notice the difference, but it should be obvious at times.

Note: this mod is only available for the original English-voiced version of the game. It will not work in other voiced languages, but it will work if you play with original English voices and foreign subtitles.

Note 2: I am new to this modding scene, so I've tried to make the mod work properly through ME3ModManager, but it may give you a warning message saying the mod was not made correctly or something. I tested it and it still seems to work after applying it. If you have any issues or want to help me fix this inconvenience, you can contact me.

Contact Data

On Discord: Loadingue#7506, you can find me on the ME Modding server.

Further Explanations

(All pictures provided here are with my mod installed)

1° This is the basic premise of the dialogue wheel in this mod.

This is the same as originally, you may be thinking? In principle, yes. But ME1 often deviates from it, and there lies the issue.

Regarding the left and right sides: the right side, always present with at least one option, is the side that moves the conversation forward. The options that lead to a conversation’s end, be it simple “goodbyes”, or a Renegade option to refuse to deal with someone, will always be on the right side.

The left side is whatever makes the conversation last longer in opposition to the right side. As in the original game, the “Charm” and “Intimidate” options remain on that side, as well as the “Investigate” button. What’s new in the mod however is that a number of options have been relocated to the left side as they clearly prolong the conversation. For instance, in the original game, when someone gave you a side-quest, normally you’d have all 3 options located on the right, typically, from top to bottom, “I’ll do it”, “If I have time”, and “I won’t do it”. With this mod, the first two are relocated to the left, as the third one, “I won’t do it”, clearly ends the conversation and thus remains on the right.

Regarding the upper and lower sides: in the base game, these were more or less strictly set according to Paragon or Renegade. That is no longer the case. For the sake of consistency (which in this particular case, the game sometimes struggled to keep), the upper side now represents options where the player agrees or is friendly to their interlocutor, and the lower side represents options where the player disagrees or is unfriendly towards them, regardless of Paragon or Renegade tendencies.

In most of the game, that makes no difference. But when dealing with certain rogue characters, in comparison to the original wheel, the options will be reversed. For instance, when talking to a racist character, the option to agree with their racist statement is now on the upper side, whereas it used to be on the lower side as it’s clearly a Renegade response.

Note: this mod does not alter whatever Paragon or Renegade points you may acquire during conversations. With the aforementioned change in mind, this means sometimes picking the options on the upper side will give you Renegade points, and give you Paragon points for picking a lower option. Think of how you want your character to react!

Note 2: you think not having the wheel rely on Paragon/Renegade anymore is inconsistent? The base game itself had trouble with it. For instance, when talking with Garrus about killing criminals no matter the cost in innocent lives, the conversation can hit a point where the sides are reversed and forcefully telling Garrus that he's out of line counts as Renegade, despite disagreeing with him being normally counted as Paragon. Confusing, huh? This mod makes it all more consistent. Agree on top, disagree on the bottom. Always, for everyone.

2° ME1 is the only game in the franchise to suffer from an abundance of “fake choices”: the dialogue wheel gives you several options to choose from, but they all lead to the exact same Shepard vocal response.

Why? Bioware has originally intended that every single time Shepard says something, the player had to have picked a dialogue prompt (as in other roleplaying games). However they did not take the time to give Shepard different responses to a number of situations, leading to many, many fake choices which in the dialogue wheel files, look like this:

In this case, all three dialogue wheel options (“I’ve seen them!”, “Can’t you understand?” and “You’re wrong.”) result in Shepard saying “Fifty thousand years ago, the Reapers wiped out all galactic civilization”, etc. The illusion of free will. Fortunately, this kind of situation is pretty rare in the game, but it is regularly present in dialogues within the “main quests” or noticeably during Garrus’ and Wrex’ interactions on the Normandy.

This mod removes the redundant options, but only those that lead to the exact same vocal response, such as in the case above. Conveniently, if the game has only one option within the dialogue wheel, then it is scripted to automatically play it without any player input. This means that some conversations will now partly play out by themselves.

Also for the reason that ME1 almost always asks for player input before Shepard says anything, this mod also makes it so responses which follow up an investigative pick will automatically play out if there’s only one of them and they are considered neutral enough. For instance, asking about the beacon before Eden Prime, you then unlock an option to ask into whose wrong hands it could fall. With this mod, that option will be automatically picked and the entire investigative line about the beacon will be played automatically.

However, when an investigative topic unlocks two options that are in contradiction, the player still retains the choice (for instance, Pallin asking if Spectres should be held accountable). Furthermore, in the case of a particularly one-sided and not-neutral option, I’ve made it so the player also has the choice whether to say it (for instance, telling Avina that the Krogan “got what they deserved” with the genophage).

3° A minor Quality of Life feature of this mod is that it removes the ability to pick an investigative option immediately after picking and/or exhausting it. It only leaves the other investigative options. However, I know this might not be to the taste of everyone, as keeping the investigative option there helps players remember what they’ve already picked or not. Let me know what you think.

4° In the base game, Shepard sometimes has the option to completely opt out of a certain topic, question, or conversation altogether at the worst time. I’ve made it so that’s not possible anymore in the most extreme cases, though my intention was to keep the possibility for Shepard to just leave if it didn’t seem inappropriate. For instance, when Pallin asks Shepard if Spectres should be held accountable for their actions, Shepard can’t just chicken out of it anymore by saying “I should go” right then and there instead of answering Pallin’s serious query. I think it’s fair. If you really need to exit the conversation then, just pick one of the options and you can leave it one second later.

Known bug: for some reason, investigative menus may sometimes cause issues where one of the options becomes unpickable, and selecting “return” appears to pick another option. I’m trying to determine if this is random or not. If you come across this bug and you want to help, let me know during which conversation you’ve noticed it. But as far as my experience goes, it should remain quite rare. Update: I have found what causes the bug: having no neutral-right option when there's an Investigate option. I don't know why, but I will fix it wherever possible in the next mod update. If you notice it anywhere, let me know.

Future Plans

The mod allowed me to better understand the dialogue system of the ME games and to see the potential for more than this. My immediate plans would be to thoroughly inspect ME2 and 3’s dialogues and see if I can’t make a number of improvements, though I suspect it won’t be anywhere close to ME1’s mess.

More immediately, the mod will get a second-pass to iron out all of my own inconsistencies and mishaps. I also want to experiment with the ability to change some conversations' camera angles to make conversations less static, with Tali for instance.