Talking to NPCs

[greyday01]

Why don't any games use text parsers like the old Zork games to allow the player to ask questions or give orders to NPCs? I used to enjoy trying to find the right things to say to NPCs to get the response I needed. The wrong questions could get hilarious responses from them even if not particularly useful ones.

[ModularCocoon]

This all comes down to cost. 

AAA game studios nearly always use voice acting nowadays. It's something that means casual gamers can enjoy the game a bit easier and, with a lot of games also being released on console, you can sit far away on a couch and not need to worry about reading. For them to create a system such as Zork, they'd need to record countless lines of dialogue. 

AA and indie studios could get away with just having text, as this is common, but they'd need to write thousands of lines of dialogue. Which they might not have the budget for. 

I imagine with the growth of LLMs though, we'll start to see AAA studios do what you suggest in open-world games and RPGs.