Seems that whenever you choose "lie" in PoE it's always a permanent action and cannot just serve as a temporary conversational tool. This is not how things usually work in real life. For example in Something Secret the "lie" option permanently ends the possibility to give the dagger to Gordy, which doesn't make sense. What if I just wanted to first make sure that he really had some valuable secret worthy of all the troubles of getting the dagger? Then after I verified the authenticity of the "secret", I shall still hold up my end of the bargain and get the dagger for him, which sadly is not possible here. I forgot to save before triggering this event and the outcome made me quite distraught. Another example would be that in "Lord of a Barren Land" I lied to Osrya and claimed that I was sent by Lord Raedric to check on her work only to get more information from her. After that I should still have an option to decide to attack her instead of having to force attack her manually.

I suspect time is the main culprit, its a very finite resource in game development, so finer nuance often takes a back seat.

It seems to me that there's no practical difference between "lie" and "attack".  Maybe my character's just that bad a liar, but I always seem to get attacked when I lie.

Edited August 5, 201510 yr by magritte

I don't understand if you lie and are believed why would she attack you?  To me it makes sense that if you then wish to attack her you would use force attack.  Why have it in the mechanics if you never needed or wanted to use it?  Reputation builds on what you do or say.  My current character is known as an honest person so can get away with an occasional lie.  Which seems reasonable to me.

 

A Rosbjergs says time is important and is a limited resource.  Some things may be overlooked or just not be considered important.  Also the more complicated the scripting the more chance of a bug creeping into the game.  There are times when less is better.