Fable touts that the characters in its world monitor your actions, clothing and renown and act accordingly. However, the player’s choices are clear and restrictive. Interactions with several of the major characters are canned and cannot be altered. It is obvious that for budget and entertainment reasons, these interactions take up only 5-10% of game play. The game is really an action title, but uses the social aspects to differentiate itself.
Half-Life2 markets its realistic human characters, with advanced texture methods, lip synching and facial expressions. However, the player only interacts socially in cinematic scenes with very limited interaction. They will wait for the player to trigger the next section by manipulating objects or reaching a location, but the player never chooses any aspect of how his game persona acts. The technology here is to provide spectacular eye candy to a solid First Person Shooter style of game.
The older Morrowind utilized the concept of factions. When the player does missions for Faction A, members of Faction A like him more, while Factions B and C like him less. Interactions with individuals revolved around hypertext style menus, some choices of approach and a very powerful skill that could make everyone love your character. Computer run characters would check what they thought of the player’s character and make non-interactive comments as he passed by.
However, on an individual basis, the computer characters only functioned as methods of filling in back story and giving out missions. All problems with interactions could be removed through training a skill and having some money for bribing.
Knights of the Old Republic provides minor social interactions with short cinematics broken by a three choice menu. These choices may trigger an additional cinematic or drop the character into combat. The menus are clearly delineated into a Light side, a Dark side and a neutral choice, reinforcing the Jedi backstory.
These are quick interactions and the goal is not conversation, but rather to enhance the setting of a very attractive combat game. Beligerent drunks can be bought off, calmed or slaughtered, depending on player choice. However, the drunks are then gone and not available for further interaction.