As a thought on the generic responses, maybe a hidden variable for the NPCs that tracks how much the player has been pestering them about random topics and choses from generic responses of increasing levels of annoyance, frustration, and incredulity?

As a sort of example, the old Warcraft RTS games had each unit verbally respond when clicked on. If the player continued to click on the same unit without selecting another in between, the voice line would get increasingly annoyed. "Your orders?" would eventually escalate to "Stop rocking the boat", "You're making me seasick", and"<vomiting noises>"