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This Year's Top Game Design Innovations
Next Generation has one of those end of the year 'top 10' lists we all love so much, with plenty of room for discussion on this one. They claim to have picked out the top 10 game design innovations of 2007. It's hard to argue with elements like Portal's portals or Mass Effect's conversation wheel, but was Metroid Prime 3 on the Wii really as good as a mouse-and-keyboard PC FPS? "When people ask 'How do we make a good shooter on a console' what they really mean is 'how do we make a shooter that feels as quick and responsive as a PC shooter on the console?' Apparently the answer is the Wii mote. I was blown away by this fact. Nintendo had always been the 'family friendly' console to me so I didn't consider the FPS ramifications of the Wiimote but clearly it's the best tool for the job. With some tweaking and some refinement down the line I could see the Wii (or a console with Wii like controls) becoming the platform of choice for hardcore FPSers, even over the PC. If this does become the case it will owe it all to Metroid Prime 3."
The PC RPG The Witcher (freaking great, go buy it now!) does basically the same thing. They shorten the (sometimes very long) dialog options so they fit better (no scrolling). You can have captions if you want, and a left-click skips whatever line is currently being spoken, so you can do the reading thing too.
Also, I'm almost certain I've played other games that just give you the gist of what will be spoken for a given dialog option. This is hardly an innovation.