The Illusion of Choice and But Thou Must

[VegaKotes]

So there's a mechanic of game design that I've been wondering about a lot lately.  The illusion of choice.  What is an illusion of choice?  Well it's where you're given 2 or more choices but they all ultimately lead to the same conclusion.

Let's have some examples. :3

Spoiler

You live in a small village.  One day your fellow villagers capture an orc.  They ask you if they should kill it or let it go.  Deciding not to be a dick you let the guy go in the hopes that he'll let the other orcs know your village isn't full of mean humans.  A few days later an orc army sweeps over your village killing most of your loved ones and sending you on a revenge sworn quest to destroy the evil orc king.  They attacked because the orc you let go told them where to find easy prey.
Well...damn.  That kind of sucked, guess we should kill him instead.

So we reload the game and go back into the choice, this time we kill him.

A few days pass and an army of orcs sweeps through your village killing most of your loved ones and sending you on a revenge sword quest to destroy the evil orc king.  Only this time they charged in because you killed a friend of theirs.

I...what?

How bout another?

Spoiler

You're a low ranking heir to the throne (think like 8th maybe 15th in line, no real chance of getting the throne yourself) and the rebellion contacts you about overthrowing your despot father.  You can either side with the rebels or stay loyal to the king.You decide that yeah, your dad is a dick and that you could run this country 10 times better.

So you go through a big old rebellion that ends in the death of the king and most of the heirs in your way.  Those that are still alive either flee or swear fealty to you.  Hooray, you're the king baby!  Now you have to raise your army, and build up your town to defeat the ancient evil that's rising.

But wait. What if you're doing a second playthrough and you want to play it a bit more Lawful Evil?  Well the game gave us the option right?

So this time we decide to remain loyal to the king, we hunt down rebels and all that jazz, but near the end a great lot of the heirs and the king himself are killed by suicidal assassins!  Now the remaining heirs that are higher than you either flee or hand over the throne to you, not wanting the pressure associated with it.

You're the king baby!

But...I didn't want to be king, that's why I didn't overthrow the king.

Well...too bad!  Now get to raising that army and fighting the ancient evil!

This isn't a complaint against railroading the plot, I'm actually rather fine with that.  It's difficult to create an entirely new game just because your players don't want to play through the one you originally gave them.  But lemme ask you this, do you really need to pretend that your game can be played any other way?

Kill the orc, don't kill him.  Doesn't matter, in a few days most of what you know and love is going to die anyway, why not just have the villagers kill him regardless.

And why not overthrow the despot king instead of pretending that siding with him is going to make any difference?  (or hey if you believe that siding with a despot king makes more sense, and there's certainly a good argument for that, go for it, but leave a rebellion out of it)

One can argue that it's the journey itself that has the value, not the end.  I do certainly agree that the journey is where most of the payoff happens for a player, but why bother putting effort into a fake choice when you can use that time and energy to expand upon your game in a meaningful way?

Note being given the choice in which order to pursue something isn't really an illusion of choice, that's just...well choosing the order in which to collect certain items.

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This is somewhat similar to "But thou must" which is another old trope I believe needs to die...in a fire...over a lake of molten rock. >.>

Now with But Thou Must you're also given 2 or more choices that all end up being the same thing.

If they aren't the same thing then you're just looped back to the original question until you answer "correctly."

Such as "Save the kingdom"

Yes. No.

When yes you embark on an epic adventure.

When no it just loops you back.  No matter how many times you select it. Over and over and over again.

A more sinister version of But Thou Must is where the "No" option gives you a Nonstandard Gameover.

Much like the illusion of choice I have to wonder if having choices like this should even exist.  There's nothing being gained here.  All you're doing is adding a few extra seconds of game that do nothing but annoy your players (okay well it annoys me, I don't know about the rest of you. XD)

But maybe you see a point behind using a But Thou Must, maybe it's just about giving the player the option to end their game there. After all what is a "You win, end of game" but a positive game over?  Both are the end of the game, just one usually comes with a credit roll and a cheery bgm.  Shouldn't we let players end their game when they want to?

I'm very curious as to how the rest of the forum thinks about this mechanic.

 

[Taien]

In an RPG:

I prefer to be grudgingly forced to do something that I don't picture my current character doing. As opposed to throwing his personality out the window and the writer just writing an action I'd never picturing him doing. These small things make or a break a decently written story, for me.

These things are subjective, so having several responses, for me, adds to immersion. It also allows little distinctions to be gained along the way, a few more gold here, a different item here, a character relationship change or even a side quest etc.

I will edit that - but thou must I do agree with. These can be avoided by the particular scene being plot driven, rather than character driven.

 

[hiromu656]

I think the whole looping until you select the correct answer, does need to go. It's completely unnecessary. However, some games like to give you a choice (like the orc one) and even though you get a similar resolution to that choice, it builds your character based on what you decided to do. For instance in Mass Effect, there are small choices, like whether you want to shoot some random side NPC, this may not directly change the story, but it builds your character as a Paragon or Whatever the Evil one is called. Then, based on what your character grows into, your story can change. So pretty much it takes multiple choices for you to realize a change in the story. But of course, there are games that give you this illusion and never give you any type of changes (kinda like Dragon Age 2, which I hate... a lot).

999: 9 Persons (etc) is a good example of a game that truly changes what happens in your story based on your choices, I highly recommend it.

 

[VegaKotes]

In an RPG:

I prefer to be grudgingly forced to do something that I don't picture my current character doing. As opposed to throwing his personality out the window and the writer just writing an action I'd never picturing him doing. These small things make or a break a decently written story, for me.

These things are subjective, so having several responses, for me, adds to immersion. It also allows little distinctions to be gained along the way, a few more gold here, a different item here, a character relationship change or even a side quest etc.

I will edit that - but thou must I do agree with. These can be avoided by the particular scene being plot driven, rather than character driven.

I do like the idea of being able to build a character to my own personality choices I guess I just feel cheated when those personality choices have little to no affect on the game's outcome.  For me I would rather have an established character that sticks to that path, rather than one that does something like this:

Kill, spare, kill, kill, spare, kill, spare, kill, spare, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, spare. (or an equivalent)

With each of those choices ending the same way every single time. (unless there's a morality system, more on that below)

I think the whole looping until you select the correct answer, does need to go. It's completely unnecessary. However, some games like to give you a choice (like the orc one) and even though you get a similar resolution to that choice, it builds your character based on what you decided to do. For instance in Mass Effect, there are small choices, like whether you want to shoot some random side NPC, this may not directly change the story, but it builds your character as a Paragon or Whatever the Evil one is called. Then, based on what your character grows into, your story can change. So pretty much it takes multiple choices for you to realize a change in the story. But of course, there are games that give you this illusion and never give you any type of changes (kinda like Dragon Age 2, which I hate... a lot).

999: 9 Persons (etc) is a good example of a game that truly changes what happens in your story based on your choices, I highly recommend it.

Well when you add a morality system in place that does allow for things to change up.

Say killing the orc adds points to your Renegade, and sparing the orc adds them to Paragon.  Later on the in game things change based on whether you have more Paragon or Renegade points.  In this instance every action that alternates your R or P points has an eventual effect on the game.  And while it might be a bit annoying to not see a change until near the end there is at least a noticeable area in the game that my choices have affected.

Also, 999 is a very fun game. XD 

 

[T.Bit]

If the choice is just an illusion, then don't put the choice in.
 
That being said, choices in games can seem to have no effect while actually effecting the story in a way that the player doesn't initially see.
 
For example:

Spoiler

Mr. Evil King gives Ms. Heroine a choice:

1. Willingly battle in the arena to the death.
2. Be forced to battle in the arena to the death.

Not much of a choice right? In the first choice, Ms. Heroine bravely kicks ass until she becomes exhausted at which point the resistance swoops in to save her! Yay! In the second choice, Ms. Heroine goes kicking and screaming to the arena and kicks ass reluctantly until she becomes exhausted at which point the resistance swoops in to save her! Yay?

That seemingly unimportant choice can be full of small changes. For instance, in choice #1, Ms. Heroine receives the Gladiator's Blade (which is super powerful). She also gets a boost to her attack stat and the resistance sells her cooler stuff because they respect her more. In choice #2, Ms. Heroine receives the Bunny Slippers (which makes her super fast and better at running away). She also gets a boost to defense and certain members of the resistance thinks she is a coward.

 

[VegaKotes]

If the choice is just an illusion, then don't put the choice in.

That being said, choices in games can seem to have no effect while actually effecting the story in a way that the player doesn't initially see.

For example:

Spoiler

Mr. Evil King gives Ms. Heroine a choice:

1. Willingly battle in the arena to the death.
2. Be forced to battle in the arena to the death.

Not much of a choice right? In the first choice, Ms. Heroine bravely kicks ass until she becomes exhausted at which point the resistance swoops in to save her! Yay! In the second choice, Ms. Heroine goes kicking and screaming to the arena and kicks ass reluctantly until she becomes exhausted at which point the resistance swoops in to save her! Yay?

That seemingly unimportant choice can be full of small changes. For instance, in choice #1, Ms. Heroine receives the Gladiator's Blade (which is super powerful). She also gets a boost to her attack stat and the resistance sells her cooler stuff because they respect her more. In choice #2, Ms. Heroine receives the Bunny Slippers (which makes her super fast and better at running away). She also gets a boost to defense and certain members of the resistance thinks she is a coward.

I remember playing a group of Neverwinter Night 1 Modules called the Bastard of Kosigan.

Spoiler

In the first one you could help the church or the coven of witches.  Either way the Lord of Chaos escapes and you return home.
In the second one you could remain loyal to your uncle or betray him.  Either way he ends up dead.

In the third one you could try to help the angels or stick with the Lord of Chaos, either way you become an enemy to the angels and have to throw your lot in with the lord of Chaos.

In the fourth one you could have chosen to gain a noble title or decided to stay an adventurer.  You could have killed your uncle and the rebels.  You could have avenged your uncle.  None of it mattered, you became the new king, and your only political rivals all end up dead, near the end of the 4th module.

But at best those big choices seemed to change what NPC's you would interact with later on and maybe a few small item changes, if any at all.

For a smaller choice (like the one you proposed) I think it works, a smaller choice results in a few changes.  But for something big like that it feels like I'm being cheated.  XD

 

[Tai_MT]

I have yet to run into ANY game where choice was NOT an illusion.  It's the sole reason I embarked on a quest to see if a game with MEANINGFUL choices could be created and played, and enjoyed, as a kind of middle finger to multi-million dollar game companies.  That's not to say it's coming along well, or isn't a complete pain in the butt to code...  But, it's a far more serious attempt than any other game I've ever played.

Even the Mass Effect series that I enjoyed lead you down the EXACT SAME PATH regardless of your moral choices.  No way to side with Saren or the Reapers, so why even have a "Renegade" option?  Being more Paragon or Renegade doesn't lock quests off to you.  It doesn't make people act any differently towards you (you don't build a reputation, you just unlock more dialogue choices with this morality system and nothing more), and it certainly doesn't change how any of the games actually end, save for the last one where being the universe's most massive douchebag actually gives you hope that your character survived the events of the last game, as opposed to the other 20 endings in which he dies.

This is not choice.  It never will be.  If you present the player with a choice, that choice should be VERY meaningful to the game itself.  If I ruthlessly murder a band of space pirates, people should recognize that I did it and either respect or fear me.  Perhaps, that might even lead to other job offers.  The point is, NO GAME has ever attempted it.  Well, maybe some have, but none that I've played.  Even in Fable if you're the most murderous thieving scumbag on the planet... you still have to defeat the "big bad" and save the world, for which the entire world instantly forgets how horrible of a person you are/were and celebrates you as some kind of hero.  You are forced down the exact same path regardless of choice, which makes all choices pointless.  It also makes an "evil" run absolutely freakin' boring.  It also makes a "good run" far more rewarding.  You get nothing really that special for being a douchebag in any game.  No developer wants to make that the "most acceptable" path to the end of the game.  Why not?  I have no clue.  But, why shouldn't the "quick and dirty" path be the most rewarding?  In real life being a paragon of sunshine and happiness is the most difficult thing to accomplish in the world.  You have to stick to your morals and have those morals challenged all the time.  It's much harder to attain things like respect by simply being a "goody two-shoes".  More often than not, you're seen as "naïve".  Meanwhile, being a pushy jerk does tend to get things done faster and keep them done for longer periods of time.  No game ever reflects reality in that respect.  As such, choices make little impact upon the game what-so-ever.

If a video game ever touts "choice" as a defining feature, run far away from it, because these are blatant lies.  A game with choices would never advertise it as a defining feature, because the player would figure it out fairly quickly how important choices are to the gameplay.

Choice in a video game is always an illusion because developers very seldom want to "take a risk", and instead want to "cash in on what works".  Why redefine a formula?  Why think out of the box?  Selling a sequel that plays the same as the original is much more cost effective!  Touting choices while only programming in the same storyline events and endings is also more cost effective!

 

[VegaKotes]

I have yet to run into ANY game where choice was NOT an illusion.  It's the sole reason I embarked on a quest to see if a game with MEANINGFUL choices could be created and played, and enjoyed, as a kind of middle finger to multi-million dollar game companies.  That's not to say it's coming along well, or isn't a complete pain in the butt to code...  But, it's a far more serious attempt than any other game I've ever played.

Even the Mass Effect series that I enjoyed lead you down the EXACT SAME PATH regardless of your moral choices.  No way to side with Saren or the Reapers, so why even have a "Renegade" option?  Being more Paragon or Renegade doesn't lock quests off to you.  It doesn't make people act any differently towards you (you don't build a reputation, you just unlock more dialogue choices with this morality system and nothing more), and it certainly doesn't change how any of the games actually end, save for the last one where being the universe's most massive douchebag actually gives you hope that your character survived the events of the last game, as opposed to the other 20 endings in which he dies.

This is not choice.  It never will be.  If you present the player with a choice, that choice should be VERY meaningful to the game itself.  If I ruthlessly murder a band of space pirates, people should recognize that I did it and either respect or fear me.  Perhaps, that might even lead to other job offers.  The point is, NO GAME has ever attempted it.  Well, maybe some have, but none that I've played.  Even in Fable if you're the most murderous thieving scumbag on the planet... you still have to defeat the "big bad" and save the world, for which the entire world instantly forgets how horrible of a person you are/were and celebrates you as some kind of hero.  You are forced down the exact same path regardless of choice, which makes all choices pointless.  It also makes an "evil" run absolutely freakin' boring.  It also makes a "good run" far more rewarding.  You get nothing really that special for being a douchebag in any game.  No developer wants to make that the "most acceptable" path to the end of the game.  Why not?  I have no clue.  But, why shouldn't the "quick and dirty" path be the most rewarding?  In real life being a paragon of sunshine and happiness is the most difficult thing to accomplish in the world.  You have to stick to your morals and have those morals challenged all the time.  It's much harder to attain things like respect by simply being a "goody two-shoes".  More often than not, you're seen as "naïve".  Meanwhile, being a pushy jerk does tend to get things done faster and keep them done for longer periods of time.  No game ever reflects reality in that respect.  As such, choices make little impact upon the game what-so-ever.

If a video game ever touts "choice" as a defining feature, run far away from it, because these are blatant lies.  A game with choices would never advertise it as a defining feature, because the player would figure it out fairly quickly how important choices are to the gameplay.

Choice in a video game is always an illusion because developers very seldom want to "take a risk", and instead want to "cash in on what works".  Why redefine a formula?  Why think out of the box?  Selling a sequel that plays the same as the original is much more cost effective!  Touting choices while only programming in the same storyline events and endings is also more cost effective!

I think being a hobbyist game maker presents us with a unique opportunity.

To challenge these age old tropes and to see if they work without the pressures of being a AAA company.

Of course it's seven kinds of a pain in the ass to do, but anything worth doing generally is.

I myself am trying to make a truly branching game, so that basically means it'll take some time before I even have a demo ready.

Maybe I can accomplish it, maybe I'll fail spectacularly, we'll see.

As for the rest, it's a thought that maybe Renegade and Paragon (good and evil, lawful and chaotic, etc) points maybe should cut off quests.  Maybe they should prevent players from taking certain avenues.  But those avenues they cut off should be ones the player likely wouldn't take in the first place.

A chaotic player likely wouldn't want to become a lawman so perhaps all the quests leading to becoming a Sheriff or Knight should be cut off?

Hmm...the idea I think is not to punish a player for going down one path or another but to remind them that going down that path will have consequences, just perhaps not ones they'll care about.

 

[Tai_MT]

I think being a hobbyist game maker presents us with a unique opportunity.

To challenge these age old tropes and to see if they work without the pressures of being a AAA company.

Of course it's seven kinds of a pain in the ass to do, but anything worth doing generally is.

I myself am trying to make a truly branching game, so that basically means it'll take some time before I even have a demo ready.

Maybe I can accomplish it, maybe I'll fail spectacularly, we'll see.

As for the rest, it's a thought that maybe Renegade and Paragon (good and evil, lawful and chaotic, etc) points maybe should cut off quests.  Maybe they should prevent players from taking certain avenues.  But those avenues they cut off should be ones the player likely wouldn't take in the first place.

A chaotic player likely wouldn't want to become a lawman so perhaps all the quests leading to becoming a Sheriff or Knight should be cut off?

Hmm...the idea I think is not to punish a player for going down one path or another but to remind them that going down that path will have consequences, just perhaps not ones they'll care about.

Already started on that idea, ha ha.  I've already got several months of work in on the thing.  I'm hoping to have a demo out by sometime close to the end of this month.  That's not looking promising though.  The demo itself is writing 3 different stories which can then branch into an multitude of other stories just based on choices made.  From a writing standpoint, it's a massive pain in the butt.  From a coding standpoint, equally so.

Just having worked on it for a few months, I can see why companies would NOT want to pursue this way of game design for "choices".  Not because it's particularly difficult for a game company with hundreds of workers, but because paying all those writers would get quite expensive after a while.  Especially when your world changes in drastically different ways and even your end goals for the player change dramatically.  Then there's if your characters even survive or what their motivations might be now that you've got all these choices in the game.  There's also investing in a way to track NPC disposition towards individual characters...

Yeah, it's a freakin' NIGHTMARE.  Ha ha.  Easier for a team of people to accomplish in a 3 year time frame than a single man with no talent beyond writing stories can accomplish.  I'm attempting the project to prove that it can be done.  Not just to me, but to anyone else who wants to try it.  We don't have deadlines to meet or publishers to please.  That's a unique situation right there.  We don't have the pressure of "this game is part of my career, so it has to sell just so I can eat".  It's why Indie developers can try strange and new things all the time.  There's very little risk to them other than time lost from making it.  Very little pressure to them as well.

I don't really like the idea of "if you're evil, good guy quests are cut off to you" as a result of choices.  It's too bland.  It also is an illusion of choices.  If you are presented with a choice it should have a MAJOR impact on the STORY, not on the GAMEPLAY.  All choices should be equal and viable while also making them sweeping changes.  Characters should change, motivations should change, the story should change.  If all that changes is the loot or what quests are available to you, then it's easy for it to become "meta-gaming" in which players just choose the simplest way to do things (like they do now) and do them that way.  Likewise, cutting characters off from taking certain quests just based on disposition tends to make any moral choice a kind of loaded question.  It then becomes less about "is doing this right or wrong?" and more about "which questline would I rather do?".  Why couldn't an evil character take up being a sheriff?  Maybe that makes him uniquely qualified to stop criminals.  Maybe he wants to be a sheriff to perhaps get kickbacks and bribes from citizens.  By cutting a player off from those quests instead of changing how you'd attain, complete, or even use the questlines as part of your character, you're essentially denying them choice much sooner in the gameplay than most developers do in "choice based" games.

 

[monkeynohito]

I don't think But Thou Must is too much more than a joke these days if it was ever really meant seriously. To me, the ghost of this sort of non-choice actually tends to pop up in gameplay through linear, but circuitous level design or QTEs that have no real consequences. For example, I watched a playthrough of Metro:Last Light and there are sequences all over the place where you have to QTE a door open. Fail and the other guy says pretty much, Oh, but thou must and you try again.

A related choice that frustrates me to no end is a trivial decision that has consequences completely disconnected to the choice. You see this pop up a lot in VNs where your choice of beverage during lunch might mean the difference between catching a date with the class dreamboat or a horrible death. I can't even feel like I failed or succeeded when the consequences are so random.

 

[VegaKotes]

Already started on that idea, ha ha.  I've already got several months of work in on the thing.  I'm hoping to have a demo out by sometime close to the end of this month.  That's not looking promising though.  The demo itself is writing 3 different stories which can then branch into an multitude of other stories just based on choices made.  From a writing standpoint, it's a massive pain in the butt.  From a coding standpoint, equally so.

Just having worked on it for a few months, I can see why companies would NOT want to pursue this way of game design for "choices".  Not because it's particularly difficult for a game company with hundreds of workers, but because paying all those writers would get quite expensive after a while.  Especially when your world changes in drastically different ways and even your end goals for the player change dramatically.  Then there's if your characters even survive or what their motivations might be now that you've got all these choices in the game.  There's also investing in a way to track NPC disposition towards individual characters...

Yeah, it's a freakin' NIGHTMARE.  Ha ha.  Easier for a team of people to accomplish in a 3 year time frame than a single man with no talent beyond writing stories can accomplish.  I'm attempting the project to prove that it can be done.  Not just to me, but to anyone else who wants to try it.  We don't have deadlines to meet or publishers to please.  That's a unique situation right there.  We don't have the pressure of "this game is part of my career, so it has to sell just so I can eat".  It's why Indie developers can try strange and new things all the time.  There's very little risk to them other than time lost from making it.  Very little pressure to them as well.

I don't really like the idea of "if you're evil, good guy quests are cut off to you" as a result of choices.  It's too bland.  It also is an illusion of choices.  If you are presented with a choice it should have a MAJOR impact on the STORY, not on the GAMEPLAY.  All choices should be equal and viable while also making them sweeping changes.  Characters should change, motivations should change, the story should change.  If all that changes is the loot or what quests are available to you, then it's easy for it to become "meta-gaming" in which players just choose the simplest way to do things (like they do now) and do them that way.  Likewise, cutting characters off from taking certain quests just based on disposition tends to make any moral choice a kind of loaded question.  It then becomes less about "is doing this right or wrong?" and more about "which questline would I rather do?".  Why couldn't an evil character take up being a sheriff?  Maybe that makes him uniquely qualified to stop criminals.  Maybe he wants to be a sheriff to perhaps get kickbacks and bribes from citizens.  By cutting a player off from those quests instead of changing how you'd attain, complete, or even use the questlines as part of your character, you're essentially denying them choice much sooner in the gameplay than most developers do in "choice based" games.

Good luck!

And you know the more who attempt the same thing, the more likely at least one of them is to succeed. :3

I think I worded it poorly, and I didn't give enough thought to the types of things that could be cut out.

It's a hard concept to wrap my head around...hahaha.

Hmm the more I think about cutting quests, then making equivalent quests, the more I think what's the point in having a choice in the first place.

So then cutting quests is out, that leads back to the same problem.

How to go about making a real change then...in the end the best thing I can think of is the story, and you mentioned this yourself.

The items, the quests, the challenges, none of that has to be changed.  It's the story that needs to be reworked for each branching choice.

Which means more developed npc's.  It's easy to slaughter a bunch of nameless mooks you know nothing about.

It's harder to kill off a town of npc's you've come to care about.

Hmm, even when leaving out killing or not killing, and just a general set of choices split between "For others" or "For myself" having strong npc's seems to be the selling point, there has to be conflict for the choices to matter, otherwise it's just a "Good" or "Evil" run with no real thought as to why you're doing it.

I don't think But Thou Must is too much more than a joke these days if it was ever really meant seriously. To me, the ghost of this sort of non-choice actually tends to pop up in gameplay through linear, but circuitous level design or QTEs that have no real consequences.

A related choice that frustrates me to no end is a trivial decision that has consequences completely disconnected to the choice. You see this pop up a lot in VNs where your choice of beverage during lunch might mean the difference between catching a date with the class dreamboat or a horrible death. I can't even feel like I failed or succeeded when the consequences are so random.

I think one of my more entertaining memories of a But Thou Must would be from Custom Robo.

You could choose to go with your friends or stay behind.

There was a good 15-25 different responses for choosing to not go and it would eventually let you stay behind.

But then that resulted in a Non standard game over. XD

I agree with that, choices should have clear or at least rational consequences.

 

[Clord]

The Walking Dead season one is one of best examples in recent PC gaming history with illusion of choice. No choice changes the last scene after the episode 5 credits. However 400 days DLC gave some lasting changes and it made some of the first season's choices again matter a bit.


You can break the illusion and make them meaningful by making late game greatly reflect your choices in the game.

 

[Tai_MT]

Good luck!

And you know the more who attempt the same thing, the more likely at least one of them is to succeed. :3

I think I worded it poorly, and I didn't give enough thought to the types of things that could be cut out.

It's a hard concept to wrap my head around...hahaha.

Hmm the more I think about cutting quests, then making equivalent quests, the more I think what's the point in having a choice in the first place.

So then cutting quests is out, that leads back to the same problem.

How to go about making a real change then...in the end the best thing I can think of is the story, and you mentioned this yourself.

The items, the quests, the challenges, none of that has to be changed.  It's the story that needs to be reworked for each branching choice.

Which means more developed npc's.  It's easy to slaughter a bunch of nameless mooks you know nothing about.

It's harder to kill off a town of npc's you've come to care about.

Hmm, even when leaving out killing or not killing, and just a general set of choices split between "For others" or "For myself" having strong npc's seems to be the selling point, there has to be conflict for the choices to matter, otherwise it's just a "Good" or "Evil" run with no real thought as to why you're doing it.

I think one of my more entertaining memories of a But Thou Must would be from Custom Robo.

You could choose to go with your friends or stay behind.

There was a good 15-25 different responses for choosing to not go and it would eventually let you stay behind.

But then that resulted in a Non standard game over. XD

I agree with that, choices should have clear or at least rational consequences.

I never liked the whole "make equivalent quests" or "change how the quest operates because of your choice".  Granted, that's one way to do it, but it feels somewhat lazy to me.  It's again basically doing the same thing, except now you're doing it evilly!  MWAHAHAHA!!!  Yawn.

My current system has quests that are "set in stone" that you can complete.  NPCs ask you to do things, and you can do them if you want.  But, I changed it in that Quests can be completed in various ways (including evil ways, including evil ways in which nobody knows you were evil, and even including outright REFUSING to take the Quest with no ill consequences!).  There are some Quests that pop up based on how you completed these Quests (sort of like a Quest Chain) and some things in the story or the NPCs stories can even change.  Let me give you an example.  The very first Quest you are given in my game is to go talk to a guy.  Right off the bat, he gives you your first weapon, a wooden sword.  He then asks you to kill some enemies in the area and bring the bits of them back to him for research, since you MUST be his research assistant, after walking into his tent and asking for a weapon.  You are offered a choice just once during this.  You can, quite easily, walk away with the sword and never return to him.  Quitting the Quest in this manner counts it as "completed" and gives you a minor reward (because just quitting a quest isn't really challenging enough to reward you with more than the sword you just stole) and the man disappears from the tent.  Once he disappears, you can access the chest behind him (which would be available if you completed the quest correctly or not), and obtain another minor reward (it's more significant if you stuck around for his whole questline).  However, what happens with the events changes quite a bit.  The loot is just the immediate change you might notice as a player.  If you stole the sword, later that NPC comes back and hinders your progress at a critical moment which may result in a character death or something equally bad.  If you completed his Questline, however, he invites you to show up to his home in the castle and catch up with him later when his research is done.  That first Quest effectively changes how the world works and which Quests are available depending on how you completed it.  Sometimes the choice is between "awesome loot" and "maybe bad consequences later".  But, not every choice I have is black and white either.  This is just an early example.  If the way a Quest can be completed seems obvious, I've tried to code for it.  Theft, lies, completing the Quest before picking it up, etcetera.  The way some Quests might even be completed may change depending on what you did in the game and what choices you made.  Dialogue even changes depending on disposition and such.

Changing the story is more rewarding to the player than giving them loot or levels.  We can get loot and levels just by killing monsters, it really breaks immersion when our choices have no consequences.  Ever play an MMO in which you have to conquer a really big monster?  It really breaks immersion when everyone on the server does it, and all the time, 'cause it always respawns.  It also really breaks immersion when your character doesn't matter to the overarching storyline and the "big bad" is killed by the NPC heroes instead.  Everyone wants to be the hero of their own story.  They want their choices to matter and feel like what they are doing is having an impact on the world they are playing in.

THAT is the real essence of choice.  That's the only reason you'd ever include choice in an RPG.  To make the player feel important.  If you are unwilling or unable to do that, then just nix the choice and tell the player what to do and where to go, 'cause that's what you're going to do anyway.

 

[Espon]

Main reason I give the player choices is just to allow the dialog to flow a bit differently.  If I decided to add it to a game, it would also work well in a relationship system.  Depending on what you say would change how other party members think of you which could have some sort of effect on the ending, even if the story flows the same way.

One series that comes to mind that uses this is Star Ocean.  It doesn't affect the main storyline, however it does affect what extra scenes play during the ending.

 

[omen613]

When thinking of games that had choices influence the game to a greater degree....

Chrono Cross comes to mind.

For certain playable characters are gained and lost by certain key choices the player makes in the game....

An idea to spin off your kill the king or not kill the king that could change the way the player plays the game could be....if you choose to become a rebel then the main character's job class for the rest of the game is for example a Dark Knight....and it they chose to be loyal...the whole game they are a Paladin or something.....make playing the game 2 or more times more likely.

 

[Tai_MT]

When thinking of games that had choices influence the game to a greater degree....

Chrono Cross comes to mind.

For certain playable characters are gained and lost by certain key choices the player makes in the game....

An idea to spin off your kill the king or not kill the king that could change the way the player plays the game could be....if you choose to become a rebel then the main character's job class for the rest of the game is for example a Dark Knight....and it they chose to be loyal...the whole game they are a Paladin or something.....make playing the game 2 or more times more likely.

It's easier to get replay value in a game by making the game have more gameplay or story than can be viewed in a single sitting.  This is why choices altering how the game storyline works is a much better idea for "replay value" than any other idea.  If one player talks to another and their stories about the game are wildly different from each other, they are more likely to play through a second, third, or even fourth time just to see what they missed, if anything.  Just to see if the story plays out differently or their choices really mattered beyond a simple gameplay mechanic.

If a choice only affects a piece of the gameplay, then the most you can expect to happen is that someone will create a guide for those sort of choices and urge people to take a specific direction because one side is much better than another.  All you have to do for an example of that is to look at Seiken Densetsu 3 character guides.  They ALL recommend the same classes to level into because those are the most effective classes for the entirety of the game.  There are even guides out there that discourage picking certain characters for a playthrough because of their uselessness.  Or, there are guides that give you the most balanced teams based on who you want to take as a hero.  Despite all that choice, there's only one or a few really good ways to do things, and players will find them, use them every single time, and not play through again, 'cause they've seen all the game has to offer.  Though, admittedly, SD3 does do one good thing...  Every character has their own backstory and story conclusion, so it's fairly worth it to have a file for every single character and see how their story ends up playing out.  Despite all the non-choice the game gives you, it does do a good enough job in giving you slightly different stories to make playing each character as the hero a "fun idea" that would add replay value.

 

[Taien]

The Walking Dead season one is one of best examples in recent PC gaming history with illusion of choice. No choice changes the last scene after the episode 5 credits. However 400 days DLC gave some lasting changes and it made some of the first season's choices again matter a bit.

You can break the illusion and make them meaningful by making late game greatly reflect your choices in the game.

I'll come out and say it.

The factor companies, and I mean big names, are leaning toward not offering different endings to a story now, is a step backward, especially when for example epilogues for characters that people have spent 50, 60 or a hundred hours with, don't take that much work to put together. I could quote many titles. This isn't a fair reflection on the game as a whole either sadly, but the fact still remains that it sticks in people's minds that the conclusion is the same whatever they do, and often the epilogues are missing for the characters they have become attached to.

I also understand a sequel needs a common base to build off of, but there are ways to work with that if you have half decent writers.

 

[SLEEP]

Does a choice have to make a significant difference? It can be used as a way to add a bit of interaction to dialogue-heavy parts of the games, and require the viewer to pay more attention and do more than scroll through dialogue boxes. Even if a dialogue choice doesn't affect anything but a bit of text in the next dialogue, it still adds a bit of flavour, and that might be all it has to do! Adding huge differences based on choices can bloat out games development and quickly snowball into something too large for a lone person or small dev team to handle. Developers may need to embrace that significant choice has to remain an illusion, and do what they can do with little choices, or insignificant choices.

As a game-for-thought, play One Chance. This game only allows one play, and gives a good insight into how a narrative highly affected by choice might go. Significant choice occurs, to the extent that the core mechanic of the game is making choices. It's also a short game. Also also, it's really hard to imagine a game allowing the same amount of choice using an RPG template. Which is why I say above: You might need to choose between making a game based around choice, or a game with a single narrative, a few flavour choices, and it's core mechanics elsewhere. Choose wisely.

 

[Matseb2611]

This is a good discussion.

 Generally I'd agree to the fact that a choice needs to make some difference to the playthrough, no matter how small it is. No point giving a choice if it bears no consequences. Having said that, having choices changing the game entirely is something that's not very productive when making a game. For example if in the first conflict of the game you get a choice to either side with the rebels or the king, and this choice then changes the entire questline and everything else in the game till the very end, then you can see the problem here. You develop these 2 entirely different paths, yet the player will only be able to experience half of it in the first playthrough. Now having more choices like that in the game and you can see how long it could take to make a game like that, not to mention the amount of resources used and the cost. Not to mention that they'd miss out on a huge amount of storytelling that you worked so hard on trying to show them.

However, smaller choices should be no problem. Heck, choices don't even have to make a huge impact on the events. It could for example simply change how your team members see your character, and whether their disposition towards you increases or decreases. Perhaps even making certain choices can decide which character you'll have a romantic scene with (kind of like the date scene in FF7).

Then you should also ask yourself, what do you consider as a worthwhile consequence of a choice? Do you want it to be something merely story related with no impact on the gameplay or does it have to have some kind of impact on the gameplay? For example, in my last game I gave the player some dialogue choices that occur during one of the boss fights. If you select the correct ones, then by the end of the fight this boss character will end up allying with you. But if not, then this character simply dies and is treated as dead for the remainder of the story. With a few other bad choices this can then cause another supporting character to die by the end of the game. These events only impact the story side of things, but not the gameplay aspect. At no point does the game become easier or harder regardless of whether these characters live or die. On the other hand, you could have say a scene where being a jerk to a certain NPC early on then ends up with him being a tougher boss in late stages of the game, and so on.    

Oh and for the 'But thou must' choices, I'd agree with the notion that they need to be killed with fire, unless they're done specifically for comedic purposes.

 

[Clord]

I'll come out and say it.


The factor companies, and I mean big names, are leaning toward not offering different endings to a story now, is a step backward, especially when for example epilogues for characters that people have spent 50, 60 or a hundred hours with, don't take that much work to put together. I could quote many titles. This isn't a fair reflection on the game as a whole either sadly, but the fact still remains that it sticks in people's minds that the conclusion is the same whatever they do, and often the epilogues are missing for the characters they have become attached to.


I also understand a sequel needs a common base to build off of, but there are ways to work with that if you have half decent writers.

I mostly agree with this. However making a multiple satisfying endings is way harder than making just one ending for the game. You can of course get around that by having one ending with minor differences like what characters say and have system which guessed what character player preferred most.