The most recent “Hangout of the Avatar” — the Google+-based Shroud of the Avatar developer hangout — was held last Friday, and was headed up by none other than Richard Garriott himself:

The discussion this time around concerned a couple of systems in Shroud of the Avatar that should be of interest to Ultima fans: its conversation system, and the way in which its NPCs interact with and remember player-characters.

Significantly, what Lord British and the Portalarium team are aiming to do with Shroud of the Avatar’s conversation system is take several steps away from modern, menu-driven RPG conversation system conventions. Instead, they plan to implement a system wherein players must type responses and questions into a field, which the game will then parse for keywords that NPCs will respond to. NPCs will have generic details to talk about (Name? Job? Bye!), in addition to quest-related information to give out.

As well, NPCs will form memories and opinions of player-characters, which will in turn spread to other NPCs naturally. In essence, the player will begin to develop reputations in different towns and areas of the game, for good or for ill.

A handful of other topics come up for discussion in the video, so I’d encourage you all to give it a watch and take note of any other interesting details therein. But these two were far and away the key elements of last week’s discussion.