I don't follow all the technical ins-and-outs of this document, but what I do understand pleases me greatly! What I was arguing for on Baraag, and which it seemed you wanted to downplay, you present here as an amalgamation of the best of everything!

but every character has their own character image, which is always shown, when they speak, and their own textbox color.

That's exactly what I was hoping for!, together with what you seemed to suggest would be the thing that would be its adequate alternative. (You're an S to my M, aren't you? if we probe deeply enough. ;-)

It feels like you're trying to pull my chain, while behind the scenes you're planning exactly what I'm hoping for anyway, and probably thought of it way before me too.

One word of caution about the tiny images: Don't go too wild with many variants for each character. A rare change for a joke, or for a specific effect, is okay, but otherwise it should be simple, static and consistent. I've seen poorly done games where there is almost as much facial action and emotion conveyed by the tiny avatars as by the main game images. It's ridiculously distracting, and a sign of a crummy game IMHO. If you want that much action, on those tiny avatars, you should just admit to yourself that you are a frustrated animator who has not yet come out of the closet to say so to the rest of the world.

I wasn't talking about the the tiny images yet. But the same would be true for character images as well. You could override the default version for specific situations, but it's optional.

I think we might be talking past each other. I think we might be talking about the same thing, but maybe calling it by different names.

but every character has their own character image, which is always shown, when they speak

= tiny image (a.k.a. an avatar)

That is literally what I call a tiny image or avatar. What name do you give it? What part of the game do you think I'm trying to talk about when I talk about tiny images or avatars?

I was talking about the character images shown in the middle of the screen.

You mean like my artworx of En?

Are you on Tox?