Unless you are prepared to spend a lot of time and money fleshing out branching dialog, DON'T PUT A DIALOG WHEEL IN YOUR GAME.
Yes, everyone (but me) loves Mass Effect. Yes, the dialog wheel did wonders for moving the branching choice system past the point-and-click snorefest of older games. No, this does not mean you need one in your game.
Although I'm sure they're not the only ones, I'm directing this at two games in particular:
Kingdoms of Whatever: Generic Title and...
Lord of the Rings: War with the Gamebreaking Glitches
There is a key difference between Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, Lord of the Rings: War in the North, and Mass Effect. Mass Effect is a story-driven game about asserting your influence over the universe, immersing yourself in conversations with alien creatures, and discovering the depth of the dangers facing Earth. I don't think Mass Effect succeeded at everything it was trying to do in that regard, but still: The purpose of the game reflects the need for a dialog wheel.
Kingdoms of Amalur is some unholy knock-off of Elder Scrolls, God of War, and Mass Effect without managing to capture the depth of any of them. At its core, it's much more Elder Scrolls. You gain levels, you take quests, you wander around a huge countryside, and you kill chickens for fun just because you can. It's a dick-around game, and there is nothing wrong with that. As long as you recognize that you are making a dick-around game, it's a perfectly legitimate genre.
But don't try to draw out your mysterious, generic fantasy plot like anyone cares. And definitely don't force me to fumble through dialog options. Remember how, in Diablo, when someone had a quest for you, they would give you a brief but colorful story behind their request and then send you on your way? This was a good thing. No one ever said, "Man, I wish I could ask Ogden why he called it the Tavern of the Rising Sun. That would have added so much depth to my gameplay experience."
"It's a very long and uninteresting story. Why don't you have a seat..?"
Brevity is key. We're here to dick around. Give us our quests, give us some color and character to make it memorable, but don't drag us through pages of text about Hobbit #5's backstory or about the barely thought-out ecology of your generic fantasy world.
War in the North, on the other hand, is a co-op hack-and-slash RPG. It's a loot game that you can play with your friends. I love this genre, but like Kingdoms of Whatever: Generic Title, the game has to recognize its own purpose.
War in the North has no characters. The three mains just pop into existence for the sole purpose of running around and gathering loot. They occasionally bump into characters from the novels so that hardcore Lord of the Rings fans can get excited, but none of this has any depth or purpose. There are a lot of talking to eagles for some reason.
None of this matters. The dialog is stilted and weak, it serves no purpose, and there's absolutely no reason to have a dialog wheel. All it does is bring the game to a screeching halt every time an eagle decides he wants to soliloquy about just how important the mission is.
And given that the game has multiple game breaking glitches, maybe Snowblind should have put more budget into QA testing and less into recording tons of unnecessary voice acting.
Bioware planned Mass Effect as a game with branching dialog. The project, as a whole, was constructed around this game mechanic. They were prepared to record countless lines of dialog, write tons of quips and replies, and the game mechanics as a whole reflect the importance of the dialog wheel.
Snowblind and Big Huge Games/38 Studios threw a dialog wheel onto their games because they're mimicking Bioware. They tagged a mechanic onto their game for the sole purpose of copy-catting a blockbuster title, like a younger sibling throwing on her teenage sister's clothes.
And the effect is just as awkward and embarrassing.
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