NPCs who are not present, or nowhere near the character, talk

[wjt]

The musician does not visibly appear in the ink combat rounds of the quest, but he still talks to you, at the start of round 1:

and when you collect the thread at the end of round 3.

Similarly in the void quest, the monk talks to you when you collect the thread despite being on the other side of the map:

and at the start of the grappling section:

and perhaps later, I can't remember.

This is kind of strange.

[manuq]

Indeed! This was introduced for the MVP and basically copied in the Void quest. I was assuming it as part of the fiction as an off-screen voice over. But could be reconsidered or at least explained, otherwise it's weird.

[wjt]

I'll turn this into a discussion because I think it's not an actionable bug/task but something that needs further thought.

[manuq]

I think this is a question for the narrative team.

[manuq]

From @saspiers :

This is a great question! If the character is not on the screen because the character is not there, we should not have them talk/have their dialogue appear. We should rely on environmental clues as much as possible, esp since that's one of our pillars.

We currently don't have it planned to introduce walkie-talkie type communication in the game - the thinking behind this on my part is that if we want to really hone in on the theme of connection, we should be directing players to interact with npcs or other key characters directly.