I love dialogue-heavy sections in RPGs. These all-dialogue missions are a refreshing change of pace that give you a brief respite from running around and shooting people in the face a lot. In contrast, these two conversation encounters eschew combat in favor of character development and driving the plot in a way that doesn’t involve Mina talking into your earpiece while the world explodes around you. Granted, in order for these sections to work the dialogue needs to be pretty good, which is why I think the talk with Marburg is far superior to the one you have with Madison; it’s not that the dialogue in the Madison conversation is bad, it’s just that confronting Marburg is far more captivating. With Madison you’re just extracting information from a clueless secretary, while dealing with Marburg feels more like you’re in a battle of words where one wrong move might earn you a sniper bullet through the head. This may not be the case, but that feeling of being on edge the whole time is still there and it makes this one brief exchange feel far more compelling than any gunfight the game ever throws at you.
Stark Raving Sane 