Let's do a fun example of how Planescape would look if it had a conversation wheel! I'll do a very simple one with only three choices, because otherwise it would take too long!
So here's Dhall asking you about your most basic and foundational experience of reality, and trying to rhetorically convey his own Dustman philosophy that this 'life' is just a transitional shadow, and that we need to die and get over with it in order to pass into a more real existence.
This is pretty heavy shit for five minutes into the game! No sweat, though: we can get some baller voice actor to read these lines wheezily. Maybe some old dude from one of the Star Treks, so the nerds can pump their fists when they recognize him.
Anyway, Dhall's lines are winding down, and up pops the wheel. We only need three options here, but they have to be able to be read quickly (and 'intuitively'), so the player knows what their response is and so can consciously choose to select the one they feel best represents their character. We've got a window of a few seconds here to get the information across and have the player express themselves (i.e. play their role) through them. Cake, right?
Option 2's pretty easy. We can strip this down to "How?" Okay, it makes the Nameless One's speech seem blunter than it is originally written, and we might not be sure what part of Dhall's speech exactly he is responding to (is he asking "How do I look inside myself?", "How is something lacking?" "How are these the elements that make up 'life'?" or "How are they part of that cage that traps us in the shadow?" Shit, this is hard, isn't it? But I guess the player will understand that the basic "How?" is a general interrogative that will probably result in more speech, even if they don't know about what, exactly. Fine, whatever. Alternatively, we could just throw a little question mark symbol here, but then maybe it just seems like the Nameless One is clueless or confused, when in fact his question is precise and directed... so that's less than ideal.
Option 3 isn't too bad either. We can just boil this down to "Enough philosophy"... except, wait, there's two sentences here. One shuts down what Dhall says, the other demands an answer to a self-interested question. The tone is pretty crucial here, too: it's abrupt, even hostile. I guess we could write "Enough!", though that's a bit aggressive and doesn't really carry the required undertone of contempt. Also, is he saying "Enough!" because he's bored, or because he's baffled, or because he's irritated by Dhall's rhetoric? In the original, "all this talk" has just the right whiff of dismissal to give us that last sense. But I guess we have to strip that nuance out for the wheel's sake: so we're either bored or baffled or angry, whatever. They're all the same, right? We just don't want to hear any more. So "Enough!" will have to do for now, even though it doesn't intimate that a follow-up question will be coming, which we may or may not have wanted to ask when we chose the option. Oh well, who cares. Even a little frowny-face would do the job here! Sort of.
Option 1, though. Fuck. Okay, 'fatalism' is a tricky word, loaded with extra-game content, and the Nameless One is deploying it here to introduce a nuanced argument, so let's scratch that one out right away. Let's see, he wants to say that he agrees with Dhall's stated position to
some extent, even going so far as to accept that 'misery' and 'torment' (two very abstract nouns, the latter of which is, hey, the name of the game!) are things that exist to be experienced in this world, whatever the status of this world is. That's some metaphysical shit, right there. But he's also saying they're not the "whole" of life, and the implication is that he can't subscribe entirely to Dhall's gloomy worldview, that he has seen or experienced good things in life that may reveal it to be very real, contra the Dustman philosophy as stated by Dhall. But how to represent all this in a couple of words, rapidly understood?
Well, it's not a question, though it
is an open invitation for a rebuttal or counterpoint, so on balance it should probably be on the right side of the wheel. And it's pretty earnest, so I guess it could go near the top: the player will know that this is a 'positive' option (or at least a friendly, engaged one). But what words to choose to distill its meaning? I guess we could say "Only a part" or "Not the whole", but I can't imagine most players gleaning the intent behind those. Shit. Probably the best thing to do is put a little shaking head. But that seems overly negative given the agreeable, even conciliatory tone of the original statement; it runs the risk of signalling outright disagreement with what Dhall has said. Or maybe it just means the Nameless One is sad at the thought. The emoticon would have to be impossibly perfect to represent the specific point of disagreement the Nameless One outlines in the original (hey, maybe that's why we developed language, because brute gestures weren't cutting it... hmmm...), and yet we can't have a different emoticon for every conversation option in the game for practical reasons. So maybe we'll just have to take the loss of meaning on the chin. Probably the best thing to do here is "I disagree", even though we don't know then exactly what it is we're disagreeing with (that something is lacking? that this is puragtory? that there is only sorrow? that these are the elements that make up 'life'? that they are part of the cage that traps us? all of the above?); and in fact may be disappointed when the line delivered isn't true to our intention as a player.
Well, that was messy, wasn't it?
But I guess this argument, this one fleeting option, could be stripped for parts and turned into just "How?", "I disagree" and "Enough!" We could even throw a neutral "Hmmm" in between the latter two, just for variety's sake, in case the player isn't sure whether they want to be "friendly" or "mean" (read: good or evil?). Of course, none of these options really say very much, and certainly say a lot less than was originally intended by the writer of Planescape. Worst of all, they make the player's engagement with what Dhall is saying minimal, and their thinking about it less than nuanced and all but non-existent. But shit, bros, they move the cutscene along crisply... and that's what the wheel is good for!
(And Jesus wept.)
