New dialogue choices?

So I've been away from this thread for a while, mostly because I'd said pretty much all I wanted to say about TWD and had decided to wait till S3 to start posting again. But recently I started thinking about some of the other things I'd like to see in TWD S3 and I'd like to first comment on the system of making choices in TWD, specifically making dialogue choices.

So, as you'll know, in TWD you can pretty much choose every single line of dialogue when you talk to other characters, no matter how major or unimportant the conversation is, which in theory gives the player maximum choice. In practice though, it actually makes interactions with characters completely inconsistent and can end up restricting choices- for example, in S2 I went out of my way to be horrible to Rebecca (I mean come on, she was prepared to let a little kid die in a shed!), and yet by the end of the fourth episode she called me her favourite person in the world or something, which horrified me. And it was the same with other characters- there attitudes towards Clementine were pretty much determinant, no matter how nice or horrible you were to them.

And the fact that you can choose every single line of dialogue can also create problems. Again, in theory it gives maximum choice, but it also makes conversations incredibly inconsistent- so you could be really nice to someone in one response and horrible in your next, which really didn't make any sense at all, and then of course the other characters are reacting to that dialogue so one moment they can be nice and the next they can be horrible back, so they're characters can be all over the place. Plus, considering that all that dialogue doesn't actually seem to make any difference at all, there is really no point of having to make every single choice.

So what would make a good new system? Well, the new system would need three requirements:

-The player would still need a good degree of choice, though not too much

-It has to ensure that the characters attitudes towards each other are consistent throughout the conversation

-There should be consequences to how you act towards others and what you say throughout the conversation

Having had a decent look around at some of the games I know and how they handle dialogue choices, I think a system such as the one used in "Beyond: Two Souls" would be a good sort of system to implement. Basically, at the start of each conversation you don't choose lines of dialogue, you choose an approach towards the individual (eg; so in TWD, you could be "hostile" to Rebecca); whatever approach you chose then carries through to the end of the conversation- so although the player is given less choice over the actual lines of dialogue, you can still choose how you want to act towards that individual. By cutting things down, attitudes between the characters can be consistent and your interactions with those characters will actually make sense and be determined by your approach to them, unlike in the current format were the characters see you in a certain way no matter what you have said to them in the past. Plus, though it's a smaller issue, you'd actually get the dialogue and approach you wanted- there's been some times in TWD were I've selected a line of dialogue thinking it'll be nice/horrible to that person, and it actually comes out as the opposite of what I wanted. Looking at all the people who play this game through on Youtube, you see so many people saying "that's not what I meant". It's only a smaller issue, but an issue never the less.

The advantage of this "Beyond: Two Souls" system of dialogue would also be that your dialogue could mean something- as you wouldn't be choosing every single line, just one attitude, it'll be simple to make dialogue decisions carry over to future conversations, or even to influence pivotal moments. Let's take for example dialogue with Rebecca again- if I was horrible to her in one conversation, maybe in another conversation she might be nasty back to me. This makes the game a whole lot consistent and your choices would actually have consequences, unlike in the current system were you can say whatever you want and you still end up with results you didn't want- so, though the proposed system limits the options, it actually DOES offer more choice and there is more meaning in the choices you make, which I'm guessing is what everyone wants out of TT's games- I mean, what would be the point of having a choice based game if you had hundreds of choices but they meant nothing?

What do you people think? Do you like the current system? Do you want it to be changed? Does anyone have any other suggestion as to how the conversations could be changed?