I realize the whole "UR CHOISES SHUD MATTER" trope has begun to show up more and more, especially because it's a way to artificially inject replayability into a game, but I'm not a fan. I play RPGs to enjoy a story and (hopefully) some engaging gameplay along the way, not to feel bad about how the game's only options forced me to throw various characters under the bus.
I just want to expand on this thought a little bit, as it's a really interesting game design tangent.
I feel that the main purpose of giving choices significant, lasting repercussions is not for Replayability - but rather for
Impact.
No longer are you simply doing what the video game asks you to do (and perhaps figuring out the best way to do it). No - now you are the author of your own story, a story unique to you and the choices you make, and a story you have to live with for better or worse.
People are hard-wired to care more about what they are doing when they feel like they have agency, and the best stories tend to be ones that feel like natural consequences of the choices that characters make. If a player wants to immerse themselves in the fantasy of a world, what better way than to give them agency over that world - sometimes unpredictable agency - through the choices the player makes?
Minor spoilers ahead for a few popular games.
- Undertale makes a point of reminding you that the good, bad, or crazy things happening around you are all a result of your actions and your desires. After a character's tragic death early in the story which feels mandatory (but actually isn't), another character literally tells you directly that it didn't have to be done - it was YOU who made the choice. By this point, most characters have already consigned themselves to the Neutral Path, meaning that most of their future choices won't matter much - but the game's mere implication of the impact my choices would have really went a long way toward making me feel emotionally connected (and very tense) during the game!
- In Persona 4 Golden, multiple girls develop romantic feelings for the main character. On Valentine's Day, you have to choose which one to date, leaving the others feeling lonely and dejected - and while the game could simply show you enjoying your date with the girl you choose, it goes through the pains to show you how much you've hurt the girls whose love you weren't able to requite (you can try juggling dates, but that ends up even worse). This has almost zero impact on the rest of the plot, nor on any combat gameplay, but you can't take it back, and as anyone who has ever needed to make a choice between two people in real life can tell you, you really feel the impact of that choice in your heart.
- Even a board game like Risk Legacy can drive home how much your choices matter! When you first open the game box, you're asked to sign your name on a "contract" acknowledging that you take responsibility for the choices you will make as you play the game. And throughout play, the choices you make affect not only the game you're playing, but all future games for all players who use this copy of the board game! Cities are permanently added to the map, factions permanently gain new powers, the instruction book expands via stickers added onto blank pages, and nukes can permanently destroy countries. The game literally instructs you take the card for a country that got nuked, tear the card up, and throw it away. A game that instructs you to throw away pieces probably isn't trying to promote replayability (although a cynic could point out that it sure encourages buying multiple copies!). Rather, it's reinforcing the notion that your choices matter - that what you've done doesn't disappear when someone fulfills a victory condition and you put the game away for the evening. It's an insanely cool feeling to experience with your friends and it's the very reason that the game was so beloved (despite its wonky Risk-inspired mechanics).
These are deliberate examples chosen where games deliver emotional and cognitive
impact through it's choices even when the gameplay and outcome change very little.
A lot of choices in games will deliver only the gameplay - for example your choice between two factions' sidequests might yield either a White Gem that increases your DEF by 20 or a Black Insignia that increases your ATK by 20. This can be fine in certain games -
Civilization IV's core gameplay clearly places tactical strategy over immersive adventure (even though it offers both), so it makes sense that the choices you make in its random events come down to which benefits or drawbacks will affect you the most.
But when you get the choices without the impact, in a game that otherwise feels immersive, it starts to feel hollow. Especially in an RPG, I feel like you can't go wrong by adding that feeling of impact to your choices and doing it well.
Replayability is better served by stuff like the direct choice between one of three skills, and less so by changes to the narrative or the way the player views the narrative, which feel like the creation of
your story.
None of this is meant to defend the original idea of the player inevitably failing to save one of two characters, which I feel is a major framing issue in the context of a video game. I'm just trying to elucidate that "choices that matter" - that truly matter - aren't just a cheap trick to drive player behavior, but rather give the work a deeper level of meaning that is hard to duplicate using any other mechanic.
For choices that aren't meant to be strategic decisions, it's all about the narrative and emotional weight that come from the consequences of the choice (and the little details like NPCs mentioning the player's decision an hour later) - and I have to agree that a lot of games fail this in practice. It's nice when games do it right.
