Is it wrong to give the player choices over how they play your game but end up with the same ending?

[Traveling Bard]

So I am working with a game idea where I give you lots of choices that help affect the outcome of a confrontation with the final boss. If you made the wrong decisions then you will die when you face this final boss. Plain and simple. The game is meant to be short so it's not like I will make you devote a significant amount of time only to lose based on your decisions. So it will be like the old school games where you start over and try again. 

 

Now, basically I give you these four spirits and they help you...you grow ties with them through questing and character development...you grow stronger together with them... and then in the final battle I rip them from you. They die while also fueling the bad guy's power. In the end, you have to have relied on your own strength, planning, and making the hard choices to win against the overwhelming power of the final boss. 

 

My question to my peers is, is it a bad move to give the player choices over how they can play your game but in the end even if they make the correct choice(there are several ways to win btw, not just a specific cocktail of choices...but obviously if you relied too much on the spirits' strength you would lose.) and defeat the final boss... the ending will stay the same?

 

You see, you face off with this powerful warlock using elemental spirits because you yourself are weak in the magic department. The warlock is trying to do a ritual that would drain the forest of it's life energy in order to make himself more powerful. Whatever happens you will lose the elemental spirits to the warlock and if you made a few good decisions on how to deal with this warlock earlier in the game then you might be able to pull out a win. Ultimately though, you are still weak by normal standards & realize that what the warlock was doing is pretty much the only way you would be able to gain power & be set free from the binding your family sadistically placed on you keeping you in this forest area. So YOU complete his ritual, destroy the forest, go back to your family's mansion, & destroy it along with your family who exiled you due to your weakness. 

 

Dark...yes I know. But interesting? Thoughts? 

 

 

[Susan]

There's a lot of 'destroying' in here I see.

Joke aside, I guess it depends on how you implement it in your game.

It sounds like you have what I'd call an 'Illusion of choice'.
Ultimately, the player has to do certain things in a certain way to win the game.

Please correct me if I'm wrong in interpreting your words.

Personally, I like the ability to change the ending for the better by doing things differently, or running side/hidden quests no matter how hard they may be.

Your story seems interesting though.

 

[whitesphere]

I think, if you're going to give the player significant choices that affect gameplay, it's important to have different endings.  Unless your entire theme is like the original Terminator movie --- that your path is fixed, choice doesn't matter, etc.

Otherwise, I think it's cheating the player, like the choices the player makes don't matter.   I might have at least 2 significantly different endings, one darker than the other.  The dark ending is what you described --- that basically the hero becomes the villain for others.  The lighter ending might have the player shatter the binding and leave the forest, but not have him/her destroy his family.  So at least it's a more hopeful/neutral note.

 

[Celianna]

When there is choice, there needs to be a different ending. When there's a lot of different choices, you should make more endings.


You don't want to end up like the first season of The Walking Dead. The game was FULL of choices, but only the very last one you ever made, had an impact on the ending (and even that was just a different variable, the ending is still pretty much the same regardless).


Don't add choices if the ending is going to be the same. That's frustrating to players believing they can get the ending tailored to their gameplay.

 

[wallacethepig]

First of all, it's good that your game is both short and has choices. Nobody would even know there were multiple endings if they didn't have the interest to replay the game.

I'm going to go ahead and assume you have roughly 6 endings: one for yourself, one fore each of the individual spirits, and one for all of the spirits. Now, 6 endings is quite a lot. Let's narrow it down to two: Your ending and the spirit ending.

From this, we should have two WILDLY different play styles. If the choices you make affect how you play the game in the first place, then yes, you should have a different ending. Both endings should be very different: In one, you rely on yourself, whereas in the other you have others to help you. Since they are so different, they merit programming different endings.

Just to clarify, choices don't always mean different endings. If you choose to save your friend or the kitten from the burning building, then yes, that would merit a different ending. But choices such as what kind of armor you wear, what skills you use (if you have a skill tree), and even what class or job you pick don't really affect the ending of the game. Since things like that have nothing to do with the story in the first place, there is no reason to warp the story around them.

As for your game, well. It looks like you already have a good end and a bad end planned out. EVERYBODY DIES! If that's the BEST thing that happens to you, what's the worst? You die? Okay, but that's just a normal Game Over, which most people don't really call an "ending."

Not only that, but it seems you have a specific ending in mind. That's fine, but change around the dialogue depending on the player's choices. If you rely on yourself, you wouldn't care too much when your spirits die, but if you relied on them, you'd be a little miffed.

tl;dr yes, you need different endings because the choices you make in the game are related to the story.

-Wallace

 

[Traveling Bard]

@Susan, It's not a SPECIFIC cocktail that is necessary to win haha but there are wrong choices. For example, choosing to strengthen the elemental spirits will not save them from being ripped from you. Not setting a trap for the warlock because it's dishonorable is probably a bad idea. Deciding to not study up on how to kill your opponent using magic may significantly increase the difficulty of the final battle. Etc etc etc...  

 

@whitesphere, true. I think I should probably go that design route now that you mention it. Truth be told, I was hoping to set him up to be a villain in another title eventually but giving the player so many choices and not allowing them to be good somehow would be sort of like cheating them...especially after I kill off their elemental spirits. I don't want to give him the ability to escape his binding though. He won't have the power to break free without the ritual/becoming evil. I'd want him to mourn the loss of the spirits because in a way they were trapped just like him only to be ultimately killed. I'd want him to come up with a plan to capture his family when they come to check on him and force them to release the binding. Perhaps he does this by using something he learned from the spirits. He will then leave them stuck in his trap which gives him enough time to escape. He'll leave his name & magic behind him, living out the rest of his life as a farmer or something. Idk, thoughts?

 

edit:

@wallacethepig, each choice that you make will drive the dialogue. I was going to pretty much go that route of having the same ending but switching up the dialogue to be more or less sad about the demise of your spirits depending on your choices earlier. One COULD  say that that is like having different endings but the result would have been the same. I think what everyone is saying about giving the player opportunities to be good per say, and then not letting those actions yield an ending where the player character is also good would be like cheating the player and making all those choices they made seem meaningless. 

 

Thanks for all the input, everyone!

 

[whitesphere]

You can allow the player to make real choices, and maybe have the main character go from "Totally dark villain who murders everyone" to "More complex villain who will kill, but has deep regrets over the loss of his elemental spirits."

Maybe when you Bind an elemental spirit, part of you soul is bound to the spirit --- so when the villain in this game rips the spirits away, it permanently shatters or breaks pieces of the character's soul, triggering the transformation.

The latter could be the villain you use in further games.  It makes for a more engaging and interesting story if the villain is (or was) human too, and still has genuinely good points.

Maybe the "kinder" villain reluctantly decides that the world is better off without humanity, but wants to leave the world in the care of the elemental spirits, so he becomes more of a Knight Templar --- the Ends Justify the Means, no matter how much he regrets the necessity.

I like more complex motivations.  In one of my games, the Final Boss was quite angelic.  She deeply felt the pain in the world (when she turned into an undead, she started feeling immense pain from it), and wanted very much to end the pain she felt.  She did horrible things, to be sure, but it was never one-sided villainy. 

 

[Susan]

The Walking Dead may just be the modern epitome of illusionary choices.

 

I still can't believe I let myself suffered through the entire season twice (maybe more) only to find that no matter what I say or do didn't matter at all in the end. Hard to say that I didn't see it coming though.

Still, I kept hoping to see at least one more person benefit/survive based on making the 'right' choices. Call me an optimist or just plain naive.

 

Back on topic, if you're dead set on following a fixed story line, and providing only one ending, at least make the choices matter in some way.

 

An example would be, your wind spirit is going to be captured by the warlock. You'd have the choice to run away or try to protect it.

If you choose to run away, well you obviously lose your spirit.

If you choose to try to protect it, you'd probably be beaten to an inch of your life and you still lose your spirit.

The difference would be that, if you'd chosen to run, you'd get nothing. If you'd choose to try to protect it, you gain an extra ability or power-up or something now or later on. It wouldn't be something that's affect a gameover if you didn't have. It's just a reward that'll make your life easier, etc.

 

[Warpmind]

As an added little thing (which can make worlds of difference - believe me)...
Make almost every little choice play the ending differently - it doesn't have to be major plot twists, just a single sentence phrased differently here, an in-character comment there; you'd be amazed at how much depth you can squeeze out of just a few words in the right context like that...

Never mind the boss fight itself; look just beyond that - how do the survivors go on? How do your actions affect the little things in life?

Perhaps someone you helped out will speak in your favor, when brave knights come to hunt you?
Perhaps one of the spirits you chose to strengthen is, precisely BECAUSE you chose to strengthen it, able to return to where you first found it and bring growth and life to its own little sanctum? Perhaps a water spirit returning to its well and ensuring a constant access to clean, fresh water for the village?

Something like that - just little snippets of consequences, good or ill, that happen in the aftermath of the Big Battle...

 

[Traveling Bard]

I am getting a lot of ideas here. Thank you all so much for the input Currently thinking about having 3 different outcomes with options & dialogue changed based on decisions. 

1. I'm a bad guy, I don't care that the spirits were destroyed, I killed the warlock in a desperate struggle for survival, used his ritual to gain power, broke my bonds, and destroyed those that would exile me for being too weak. Who are the weak ones now?!

2. I lost the spirits in the battle against the warlock and left with no other choice I killed him using dark magic. I was then left with a choice, use his ritual to gain power, break my bonds, and have my family live in constant fear that one day I would come for them for what they did or destroy the ritual site, wait for my family to come back to check on me, and demand they release me less I attempt to murder them as I was forced to do to this warlock. They will release me, I will leave without another word, and they will never hear from me again. Rumors will spread of what I may have become after this but regardless what I become will be on my own terms for I will never allow my freedom to be taken from me again.

3. After a desperate battle, the spirits that I treasured as friends sacrificed themselves to defend me and were absorbed by that 'monster'. The warlock underestimated me after this and I was able to defeat him using my wits and well placed/thought out traps. After destroying the 'devil's work' that was his ritual, I used this same wit to trap my sadistic family members and forced them to release me from my bonds. I finally left that place after all that time and never once looked back. My 'family', the Grand Circle, magic... as far I am concerned, all of them can rot. It took many years to deal with the loss of the elemental spirits. Watching them ripped apart by that monster to fuel his power unnerved me greatly. I later joined a group that sought to free elemental spirits from their forced contracts. If I could help free others from their bonds, perhaps somehow I could repay the debt I have to those four who sacrificed themselves for me. 

Something like that? Thoughts? lol 

 

[Milennin]

I don't really mind fake choices as long as they don't pretend to be more than they are. So, don't give the player the impression that they're about to make an important choice when in the end it's not really going to affect anything. Because it's really disappointing if a player is going to replay your game, thinking of taking the other path to see what happens and they end up seeing the exact same thing.

 

[Tai_MT]

Okay, I'm all for choices.  Lots of choices.  The more choices I can make in your game, the happier I am.  No, these do not have to be storyline choices at all.  If I can build an Archer in 5 different ways, I'd be much happier than if I could only build it in two.  Choices, customization, control.  I love these in games.

What I don't like is Illusion of Choices.

I'm not going to bash your idea.  There's really no need for that.  It sounds kind of interesting and seems to carry with it a message you want the players to take away from it.

So, here's my suggestion that you should take with a grain of salt:

Instead of making the boss "unbeatable", instead end the game with a cutscene of you losing the fight and give the player the "bad ending".  The problem with an "unwinnable battle" is that it feels like you did a lot of work for absolutely nothing.  It feels like the dev who designed it is giving you two middle fingers for not playing the exact way they wanted you to play.  A game should not feel like that.  Instead, turn your "you lose the game" into a viable ending.  It's frustrating to lose a battle and think you can win it if you just try harder.  Lots of players would naturally think your "unwinnable battle" would be just them not being strong enough.  After losing 3 or more times, they'd likely just give up on the game in frustration and never attempt it again.  There's a reason it's called a "rage quit".

Maybe during the scene when the little pixies or whatever are absorbed, the same scene ends with him just destroying you without a battle.  Maybe the boss could even gloat after your destruction and tell you what you should have done to avoid that ending.  "Mua ha ha.  If you had only relied on your own strength instead of the strength of others, you might have stood a chance!"  Etcetera.

Just my two cents.

 

[Diretooth]

IF you're going to make a game where all choices lead to one inevitability, then you'd better harp that everything they do is futile. Be it the boss stating that everything is preordained, a prophecy that lists every choice cryptically, or other avenues up to and including breaking the fourth wall.

It's easy to have multiple endings, it's difficult to have one single ending out of many choices.

 

[Susan]

@Travelling Bard :

- If you're going down the multiple endings route, then you're on the right track. How you devise your ending is up to you. Don't let us know everything now, otherwise there may not be a reason to play your game.

@Tai_MT :

- Agree with you. Just to add, if the boss is going to gloat about etc. etc., it better be about something that can really be done to achieve etc. etc. Again a referring back to TWD where someone mentions "If only we'd.... things might have turn out different", but nothing changes when you do something different.

@Diretooth :

- Preordained, destiny and prophecy are all contrived, overused and cliche. But then so is 'nothing is set in stone (preordained)' & 'we create our own destiny' these days. Not trying to argue or put anyone down. Your words just got me thinking and I'm just trying to suggest that the game maker can make use of either concept to achieve what you mentioned.

 

[Wavelength]

See, I actually do like the Illusion of Choice.  It's exceedingly difficult to create a strong narrative that also gives the player wildly divergent choices about how to play the game.  In a live roleplaying game this isn't as hard, but in a one-way interactive product, you usually have to pick one or the other.  The Illusion of Choice lets you tell a strong narrative and make the player feel like they influenced it.

However, from your description, I worry that you might not be constructing this illusion well.  A well-done illusion of choice will have the player convinced that the actions that they took caused the consequences that transpire in your story.  It's up to you to use whatever means necessary to point out that the specific choices the player made are the reason that the elemental spirits are ripped away or the hero turned to dark powers or some other, smaller plot event happened.  You have to smoothly connect the dots from A (the choice the player makes) to B (the eventual and inevitable plot point that happens).

Also be aware of the dissonance between what the player wants to do, and what the character they're controlling ends up doing.  Having a character lose control of the situation (e.g. because they're overpowered by a villain) is one thing, but having a character willingly submit to evil in order to gain power is another thing entirely, because the player is going to feel a giant disconnect with the character and the game if they wouldn't do the same.  They're going to feel like they've lost agency over their actions.  That's a really, really risky (and in my opinion unwise) thing to throw at the player near the end of the game.

If I were to go down the general route you're planning, I'd change it up a bit and take the power out of the character's hands (since it already seems to be out of the player's hands), and try to add a few hopeful shades to the ending based on what choices the player makes.  Maybe they also rescue an innocent kid after they start burning down the forest, maybe they re-establish a connection with one of the spirits in the aftermath in hope of building something new out of the destruction... just anything that feels a bit hopeful and connects with some of the choices that the player had made throughout the game.

Hopefully this is helpful!

 

[Traveling Bard]

@Susan: "Don't let us know everything now, otherwise there may not be a reason to play your game."

Thank you for the warning but I don't mind giving it all away to peers since I want feedback. Yes, you might play it but my audience in my mind isn't my peers, it's players out there. *points outside* and since I'm still learning and not doing this professionally, I see no harm as I doubt my ideas will be stolen or...haven't already been done before lol

 

As for where this topic is going about illusion of choice and whether or not I should harp to the player that their choices in storyline won't really matter in the end anyway, I hear you and I see where you are going with this. The fact of the matter is, the elemental spirits will be ripped from the player...just like how you had to fight the GFs at the end of FF8 or the aeons at the end of FFX. What I am trying to create is an emotional attactment to these spirits and then shock the player by taking them from them...not only THAT but I use their power to heal and empower the final boss! Ultimate slap in the face. Why? Because it's different to me. Most rpgs I've played end up being a battle of attrition between the final boss with his high damaging attacks and your team with their ultimate spells. Who can out last the other by spam healing and high damaging spells? That gets boring to me after the first 8-10 rpg final battles that I've encountered. 

 

So what about this warlock that you stand no reasonable chance against? What is the fun in knowing that you will lose if you didn't learn the forbidden arcane needle, set a trap that turns the ritual in on itself, take enough damage to defeat him with a magic counter like arcane shock(my homage to countershock), or use the sacrifice of the spirits to buy enough time to charge up your magic orb. I also give you the option to use arcane needle after losing as a desperate attack but you will get the neutral(#2) ending. To me giving choices and decisions that will greatly affect the difficulty of the final battle...up to even being able to win at all...sounds much more interesting than giving the player fire 3 and letting them spam it and heal 3 until they win after 20 rounds. Still sounds risky though? So does the boss battle at the end of Earthbound:

 

Spoiler

I know the game has been out for like 20+ years but the final battle to me is the best I've ever played so far where you end up facing "evil itself" as a non-corporeal entity. You cannot harm it. I mean you can sling your powerful spells and bottle rockets at it all day long and it'll deal damage but you don't ever deal enough. When all hope is lost.... you must 'pray'. Like...there is an ability for the female character called 'pray' that I and most others probably ignored the entire game and using THAT several times is what ultimately defeats the final boss. How was I supposed to know that? I wasn't. I was supposed to get desperate, try anything that I could, and eventually use it because I was out of psi energy & had nothing else left that would work. It was brilliant. Different.

 

Again, I like all the ideas and input being thrown around. I understand that I shouldn't give the player the idea that they will have the ability to save their spirits or have an ending where this warlock lives and they become friends somehow. I like that it's dark but seeing as some of the choices I give the player would be seen as compassionate or at least neutral instead of evil I should give the player endings that would reflect that mentality via dialogue and character actions. I feel like I'm signing up for a lot more than I originally planned to with this idea after all this brainstorming but I feel like that's how game design is haha if you all have any more input or ideas feel free to post. I love to hear your thoughts on these matters

 

[whitesphere]

I understand completely that you want a really unique Final Boss Battle rather than "Sling most powerful spells/attacks at Boss, heal, repeat until Boss dies."   But, when it comes down to the narrative of the game,  players don't like being forced into a Bad Ending.  Now, if they deliberately choose to be bad, that's one thing.  But if I played through even a short RPG, and no matter what I did, I ended up murdering my entire family, by my own free choice, I would stop caring about the game.  Why?  Because I know those actions are so repugnant to my real life personality that it would completely sever my identification with this villain.   And any suspension of disbelief goes out the window.

If I wanted a "Hero's Downfall" type of RPG, I would have a much more gradual build-up to the Evil.  If it's done well, the player is still rooting for the "Hero" long after the Hero started murdering villages...To do that well, it must be gradual.  For example I might try to tackle your plot this way:

Here, I'll call the Hero "Bob" for ease of typing:

1. Bob is good-intentioned but hot tempered and magically weak

2. Bob is upset at family because family is ashamed of him and bound him from ever leaving the woods

3. Bob nearly starves and dies in the woods until an elemental spirit saves him

4. Bob starts stealing food from villages to survive, the elemental spirit his only friend and confidante

5. Bob's spotted one night, slams guard back onto ground.  Guard dies when he hits his head, but this is an accident.

6. Bob feels guilty, then angry, steals a knife and carries it with him

7. Bob gets picked on, which makes him relive shame of his family.  In anger, he throws his knife (with elemental spirit assisting) at the bully, kills the bully on the spot.

8. Bob finds out about Evil Wizard, blames Wizard for all of his misfortune (because this all started around the time Wizard entered the woods)

9. Bob attacks Evil Wizard who steals all of his elemental spirits.  Bob is overcome with rage and defeats the Wizard.

10. Now consumed with white hot anger, not even seeing straight, he goes back to his family and murders them.

11. Next morning, Bob looks at what he has done, cries, then shakes and shivers, then washes his hands in the river and leaves the woods in complete silence.

That is still a rough idea but you see how Bob didn't just go from A to Z in one fell swoop?  He built up to the Evil, in player understandable steps.

 

[Traveling Bard]

@whitesphere: That is one way to write it. To me it's too hand holding and the player will expect everything that happens. They will expect that Bob would have something more painful happen to him like the loss of the spirits (his only friends or those that understand his pain) after doing something moderately evil. In stories like you describe there must be an equal exchange. For every good deed comes something good, every bad deed comes something else that's bad. I would much rather create the 'possibility' for evil actions by planting those seeds in dialogue, choices the player may make, etc and then have the ending be like "OMG...Did I just...wow, I can't believe he did that...crazy.........that's pretty cool. Not what I expected at all." I get the idea that doing something like that is polarizing but for those that like that "it's different" kind of ending, perhaps it'll do well.  On the subject of a forced bad ending, to me it's not necessarily a 'bad' ending it's just a 'dark' ending that I happen to think seems kind of cool while also not being too out of character with Bob's situation and how he might react when pushed into a corner like he is. 

Let's think about Bob's perspective for a second. He's weak magically speaking and physically speaking if we are being honest. His family see him as a black sheep and not worthy of being seen in public having their blood in his veins unless he is a decently powerful wizard. It's a scandal to them that he is weak and failed his entrance exam into a prestigious magic academy. So they exile him. As far as the father is concerned, he has no son until his son becomes stronger. A binding is placed on Bob so that he is bound to the forest and even with the aid of the four spirits his father enslaved for his use he cannot hope to ever break free... the father is relying on an old wives tale that by using elemental spirits long enough, your mana pool will grow...since Bob has a small mana pool this would be great, except that that's not true. He has no hope for escape. He can't leave magic and his family behind him even though he wants to. And then here comes a warlock who is looking to use a ritual that would drain the forest of it's life energy and convert it to power for himself...Bob lives in this forest...He will die too since he's bound there. So he's trapped, no one loves him, his only friends are these weak enslaved spirits, and a warlock is coming to kill him and destroy the forest that he is trapped in in order to get more powerful. I think at a certain point he would hate being stepped on so much. He would crave freedom no matter what the cost might be. If performing the ritual is the only way perhaps that he sees he can free himself at that moment, he might take it...depending on your decisions he very well may. Now once freed, depending on your choices, he may want revenge for everything that was forced on him. How he was left to die at the hands of this warlock or starve all for being 'too weak'. Well he won't be weak anymore after the ritual.

 

I mean I could go on, and *looks up* it would appear that I have haha but you get the gist. I feel like if it works, if it's remotely possible, if you 'planted the seeds' subtly enough, you can use it to create an ending that is interesting and maybe even deliciously unexpected to get a "Wow! That was kind of cool. Wonder what other games they made." from the player instead of a "yay, I beat it......next!" At least that would be my goal.

 

[Susan]

@ Travelling Bard :

- The more you elaborate your story, the more interesting it sounds.

 

Battle mechanics:

 

- The final battle in FF8 made me nearly break my computer. It was an unusual mechanic at that time, but the way they implemented it was infuriating. Outside of a miracle, I never did understand how to win it. Kept wondering how some people called it 'easy'.

 

- True, what you said about spamming attack, magic etc. and end up winning. It really does get boring after a while. Probably the most anti-climatic last boss battle I'd ever had was in Grandia. Ten seconds through that battle and I was like... What?! That's it?!

 

- Loved Earthbound! You're right about the winning method coming right of the blue. Died a couple of times while figuring it out too. Your actions throughout the game didn't benefit or detriment you in any way for that battle though. Tai_MT has a great point regarding that issue. Beware of sticking players in an endless, hopeless loop 10 hours into a game. He didn't say that you must have a happy ending..

 

Story:

- I understand the story you're trying to create, and the final battle you're trying to build the player up to. I guess if you used the 'fixed storyline, fixed ending, choices don't matter' route, it just boils down to your storytelling skills and the subconscious vibe your game sends to the player.

        - Fatal Frame series were downright dark - sad, but had no problem accepting the normal ending.

        - Koudelka & Shadow Hearts were dark games with some light moments - sad, but had no problem accepting the normal ending.

        - can't think of any games at the moment that appear light hearted but had a bad guy ending. (Disgaea doesn't count, I think).

 

- Whitesphere made a very good example of how to run with your story. Diretooth's has a good idea too on how to explain your actions don't mean squat.

 

- I'd like to add though that if you have too short a game time to elaborate it that way, or if you want it to appear like the 'hero' is good, kind, etc. but deep down he's something else entirely, you could spread tiny hints of it here & there. It can even be implied while using dialogue choices. Kind of like :

          - Choice A - Hero says "I like it"  -> spirit liking him, but he has an internal monologue stating he didn't really like it.

          - Choice B - Hero says "I don't it" -> spirit is angry, but he's, like, "whatever, it's the truth".

          - Not necessary that obvious but you get the point (I hope). It's with choices like these that I don't mind it leading to the same ending(good, bad or otherwise). It's just as Milennin says.

 

- Using a 'cheerful' looking environment throughout the game right to the end may send a completely opposite message from what your story is meant to be about. On the flipside, using a completely 'dark' setting throughout may create a 'saw that one coming' response from the player.

- Try to use darker tiles and sprites, set a slightly darker atmosphere with some light moments. Or, start in a bright, cheerful setting with tiny dark overtures which gradually turns darker with only a few to none light hearted moments.

 

- Choices that lead to better endings - enough said about that from me. Just wanted to add regarding a quirky twist made in 'Unlucky Hero' where your alternate ending lead to you becoming a villain, rather than leading to a 'better' ending. A good story doesn't need multiple endings. Commercially, multiple endings simply cater to what the fans wants. 'Don't like it = don't buy it".

 

- Creating an RPG is easy. Creating a good one is hard. You feeling a bit overwhelmed just shows that you care and want to create a good (if not great) RPG. Nothing worthwhile is easy. Keep at it and don't give up!

 

(Super long-winded, I know. Sorry)

 

Good luck!