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My question is this. How much weight should player decisions be allowed to have in a video game? People talk all the time about how disappointed they are with the 'illusion of choice' in games where you end up either being a paragon of goodness who saves the world or else a raping, pillaging bastard who also happens to save the world in a similar manner for some reason. But what if the choices are more arbitrary, to the point that the game itself could actually end prematurely or take a shortened path based on what the player decides is most important? If you decide that you think the player should pursue a certain goal to the exclusion of others, would it make you as a player angry to lose the ability to continue onwards with those other goals after the first one was completed or would you enjoy the fact that your choices actually have real consequences and that by deciding what is actually important to your protagonist you also choose what isn't and have to live with that choice by possibly missing the content involved with it.
How would you handle such a thing, how many buffers and warnings would a player need and how obvious. Should there just be one big point of no return or would you prefer for the combination of all of your choices decides for you what path you will eventually follow. People say all the time that they want real choices, but if those choices come at the cost of real content per play-through beyond just doing a mission or two a little differently how many of you would still honestly want them? The more I think about it that's really the only way to have 'real choices' in a game.
Okay so this is something I've been thinking about for a while. My game that I'm working on is an adaptation of a story I wrote some time ago and have expanded since. Part of the transfer of that game involves a system where the main character (who at the start of the game is a young child) is influenced by the opinions of her friends and allies. This is done by having 2 core ideologies each with three connected ones that each reflect different views on life held by different types of people, and leaving it up to the player to decide which viewpoint the mc will gravitate toward over time. The 6 branch ideologies only affect the choices that can be made during certain missions and a few sidequests; the other two however at their core determine what the main motives are behind the protagonist's actions throughout about 2/3 of the game.
The main idea is that either she will keep on a path for revenge tracking down the person that killed her mother with no regard for the aftermath of such an action or she will be influenced in a more positive way by the people she meets along the way and choose her actions with more consideration for them. Along one path she gets her revenge; but cripples a military and destroys a government to do so, setting up her allies (revolutionaries of said country) for invasion on both sides and walks away from the situation because by the time she gets her revenge the damage can't really be undone.
Obviously if she instead is influenced by the ideals of those she is working with along the way and comes to care about their wellbeing more than revenge then her actions will be less rash, and while the country will be weakened by the overthrowing of it's current corrupt ruler it is done in a way that allows them to fight of the initial invasion on one front which prevents the invasion on the other side of the country from even happening, and the story goes into it's true final ark.
The main idea is that either she will keep on a path for revenge tracking down the person that killed her mother with no regard for the aftermath of such an action or she will be influenced in a more positive way by the people she meets along the way and choose her actions with more consideration for them. Along one path she gets her revenge; but cripples a military and destroys a government to do so, setting up her allies (revolutionaries of said country) for invasion on both sides and walks away from the situation because by the time she gets her revenge the damage can't really be undone.
Obviously if she instead is influenced by the ideals of those she is working with along the way and comes to care about their wellbeing more than revenge then her actions will be less rash, and while the country will be weakened by the overthrowing of it's current corrupt ruler it is done in a way that allows them to fight of the initial invasion on one front which prevents the invasion on the other side of the country from even happening, and the story goes into it's true final ark.
How would you handle such a thing, how many buffers and warnings would a player need and how obvious. Should there just be one big point of no return or would you prefer for the combination of all of your choices decides for you what path you will eventually follow. People say all the time that they want real choices, but if those choices come at the cost of real content per play-through beyond just doing a mission or two a little differently how many of you would still honestly want them? The more I think about it that's really the only way to have 'real choices' in a game.
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