Irreversible Decisions

[Broeckchen]

As far as I know, having such a system works under three conditions:

a) The player learns before making the choice that choices like that are irreversible. It's difficult to communicate this without a boring tutorial dialogue telling them so, but they need to learn it early on in the game and the learning experience should provide a change minor enough to not be annoying. For example, the player could choose to side with one of two characters in an argument, and subsequently only one of them is friendly towards the player, which could influence a really small quest.

The player has some way of avoiding the consequences. As in, they could make an educated guess what direction those consequences would go into before making the choice, therefore making a more conscious decision. Cabfes example is perfect for that - the player learns before making the choice that it will influence their relationship to the companion either negatively, neutrally or positively. So they can make up their mind if their gain from turning on the npc outweighs the negative they see coming.

c) All options of the choices should be viable options. Somewhere else someone mentioned false choice, which is when one option clearly outweighs the other one in gain. But if the consequences of the choice are to influence the whole game past this point, the options should be balanced, because only then the player won't be frustrated when (to take the Dark Soul example) they can't upgrade their weapons anymore ever. Dragon Age: Origins featured a great example of this in the Werewolf arc. Spoilers: Werewolves and elves have an old beef with each other, and you can side with either of them or stay neutral. Your options eventually come down to getting rid of one of the two species, and as soon as you do so, the area this takes place in will forever be inhabited by the other one. Both species have their pros and cons, different merchants and npcs, and since the players decision changes this area forever, their choice feels meaningful - but it doesn't "break" the game for them, so they don't need to regret it.

DA also made an attempt at solving the replay value problem by creating different prologues for the playable characters. So you could just choose a different background for your character and therefore play a whole new beginning of the story if you wanted to start over. Still, it couldn't lose the problem entirely, as the first chapter after the prologue stayed the same.

So basically: This probably can work and even enhance the game, if a lot of thought and care is put into every single instance of it. However, it really does bring up the problem of making the player have to start over to play a different path, and this needs to be kept in mind and addressed.

A little idea to deal with this problem: Maybe the player can learn something during their first playthrough that opens up a completely different path or experience in the opening chapter? For example, the character could find a small card on the ground and when using it, a picture of the house they started out in is displayed, with one tile in the wall marked. When the player next starts the game, they can find an alternative path for playing the beginning of the game behind that tile of the wall, or a way to skip the familiar part. Let's say their village is attacked in the first chapter - then maybe they fall (or can fall) asleep within their newfound hideout, and wake up well after the attack instead of having to play through it for a second time.

 

[Berylstone]

Don't be afraid to piss off your players.  Write well, design well, and stick to your guns. 

I tried this approach with a girlfriend.  Didn't end well

Sticking to your guns and not caring if it pisses people off is an admirable quality.  Unfortunately it's not always the most efficient way to co-exists or keep people interested.  So it's a big risk not to take into account the possible aggravation of your players as a priority and just hope your writing and designs keep them coming back for more.  It might.  But it also might not.  Better to play it safe I think and take every reasonable precaution not to piss them off. 

I need to point out than even in Dark Souls the choice isn't 100% permanent thanks to New Game +.

If you really need to combine irreversible choices with autosaves that's is a way to make it more palatable to players, especially if NG+ is needed anyways to achieve 100% completion.

The new game + approach is a much better way to provide multiple play-throughs.  It will still suffer from some redundancy.  But at least the player will feel like their previous progress is still valid.  So I agree.

 

[Shaz]

Don't be afraid to piss off your players.  Write well, design well, and stick to your guns.  I say, keep things going in a manner to where the player doesn't want to reload just to see what all the choices do in one playthrough.

Now I'm not great at picking up sarcasm ... I'm trying to figure out if you're actually serious


If you have decisions like this, your game must be done in a way that most players WILL want to play again, or pick up from an earlier save. You DON'T want to make them angry or frustrated. Even a free game, but especially a commercial game, has one goal - to make players enjoy it enough to finish (and maybe replay), and to tell their friends. That won't happen if you're inflexible.

 

[Tai_MT]

Now I'm not great at picking up sarcasm ... I'm trying to figure out if you're actually serious

If you have decisions like this, your game must be done in a way that most players WILL want to play again, or pick up from an earlier save. You DON'T want to make them angry or frustrated. Even a free game, but especially a commercial game, has one goal - to make players enjoy it enough to finish (and maybe replay), and to tell their friends. That won't happen if you're inflexible.

The real trick is really one of good writing.  You provide the two choices.  You don't provide them in a light that one is good and one is bad and detrimental things can happen if you choose the wrong one.  You present the choices in such a way that a player will consider the choice for maybe five or ten seconds and then pick the choice that most suits who they are as people.  Then, and this is important...  That choice comes into play much later instead of right away.  If a choice is a "right away" type deal, then players will definitely make saves at that point and see what happens, reloading over and over again until the best option is figured out.  If the player must slog through an hour of gameplay to figure out what changed (if anything), it tends to promote not making alternate saves everywhere and it also promotes "living with your decisions".  Here's where the trick of good writing comes in...  No matter which option you picked, it's a compelling and interesting story and there is no regret from the player over not picking the other option instead.

Systems that don't provide good choices (like Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Oblivion, Skyrim, etcetera) lead to creating a ton of saves to see what the results of every choice are before picking one to be permanent.  That, or consulting a walkthrough/guide in order to get the most out of a playthrough.  If you are aiming for "replayability based upon choices you can make", these choices have to be spaced between when they are made and when you see their consequences.  These choices also have to be tailored in such a way that they don't favor one position over another so that even if a player does reset and try the other choice, it doesn't provide any real advantage over the other choice.

Sometimes, I think games have been greatly hindered by save systems and the "save anywhere" thing.  There was a lot more potential when savepoints were at least half an hour of gameplay apart.  A reset at that point to pick the other option involved wading back through that half hour to choose it, so less players actually did it.

 

[Espon]

I need to point out than even in Dark Souls the choice isn't 100% permanent thanks to New Game +.

You can also go back and slaughter almost everyone right before killing the final boss since you would no longer have use for those NPCs (although I don't have the heart to kill Quelagg's sister).