There'll be spoilers in this rant, so I'll mark them as needed.
I really hate games with the illusion of choice, games that seem to offer obvious branching paths yet funnel the player into one anyway.
Here's a few bad examples:
(Spoilers involved)
The Last Of Us
Probably the most recent.
You don't get control over Joel at all. Would you take the photo of his daughter?
Would you rescue Ellie or let her be operated on? It doesn't matter, you don't get a say. The devs know this, and the forced pause before key events like that almost seem to rub the player's nose in it. If you're going to create an illusion of choice and take it away, just make a film instead.
Binary Domain
Admittedly the game has multiple endings, so this could change, but one key scene irked me: when Faye is yelling at Dan, which side are you on!? You have to choose!
No, you don't. You fight her either way. Sure, it leads into some great plot twists... but again, illusion of choice.
Now, some GOOD examples:
Spec Ops: The Line
This game fumbles on choice on more than a few occasions, but you at least get to make decisions. Things will change, albeit slightly. Do you spare certain people? Do you kill yourself, or live with your sins? Etc. It at least allows the player some involvement.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines
Want to tell NPCs to eff off? Sure, go for it. Call them out on their BS, refuse to help them, kill them if it makes you happy! You can even be dumb enough to join the Kuei-Jin if it strikes your fancy. Sure, you're gonna be proven for the moron you are, but it's a choice you get to make.
Growlanser II: The Sense of Justice
This deserves major props if only for letting the PC decide that, you know what, the bad guy kind of has the right idea. And Wein goes off and joins him.
Devil Survivor
Most SMT games are great at this, but DS goes above and beyond in a lot of ways. Your friends may all turn against you on one path. And if they refuse to see the light? Fine. DIE.
So do you think player choice is important, or is telling a direct, linear story is more important? Either way, share whatever examples come to mind.
I know if I ever make an RPG, I'll try to allow as much agency as possible, though it'll probably involve a zillion bad ends.
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Such an illusion of choice could be a bad thing in a different game, but I feel that TLOU used them to it's advantage.
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but the part where they
The Last of Us isn't about the player, it's about The Joel and The Ellie.
You also forgot Mass Effect for having a mind bogglingly huge number of choices as well as The Walking Dead
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I haven't finished ME yet, but TWD goes in the bad category for me.
Very little actually changes. More illusion than choice.
ME seems to be good at it so far, though. It'll likely be on Bloodlines' level, though I suspect the endgame won't be.
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What you are saying is true, but I think it is very fair to be frustrated by the lack of agency in The Walking Dead. Sure, they probably had a very limited budget, and I would not have expected them to create a branching story path anywhere close to the complexity seen in, say, Alpha Protocol, but they could have done more, and should have done more. The fact that they constantly try to trick you into thinking you had a choice only makes it worse, after a while it almost feels like the writers are taunting you.
CJ, I am pretty sure I know your taste in games, and I'm pretty sure you will play an hour of Alpha Protocol and hate me. It is the game that you're looking for, though, in terms of player agency and choice.
Deus Ex
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
The player can make any number of decisions and choices that affect the game and how it plays and who is there, but there are plenty of events that you simply don't have the power to prevent. I like the mix.
Even if having to do both ending fights is bullshit.
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I think the best part of Deus Ex's branching is how organic it is. How many players don't even realise that you can
The way the game treats branching is a commentary on how vapid it is to consider branching narrative paths a 'morality system' or insist that they represent meaningful decisions.
But I think Spec Ops does it right. You do get to affect things, and they do affect the end. There's no major branching paths, but you do get to make slight differences.
Whereas in TWD, they make you think you'll get to affect things, but nothing really changes at all, for a game that makes such a big deal out of 'your choices matter'.
Another good example is, of course, The Witcher. You can totally turn quest objectives on their head if you decide the quest giver was full of it, or you'd rather side with your target.
I picked up Alpha Protocol for $5 a while back. It's definitely on my list, and I have high expectations based on what I've heard.
Personally? I decidedly dislike Spec Ops: The Line - I felt it had nothing to offer me and was pretentious and vapid. I don't want to dwell on negatives, though, and instead try to explain why I like The Walking Dead:
One thing that irked me in the past about choice in games was PR. The way PR always touted how their game was about choice, and all that. Again, my experience has me jaded in that regard. Choice almost can't matter, especially not in a series. If a game requires directorial control and rails and focus, every choice would risk all those elements; in such games, there is no... organic development from your choices, and if a designer/design team didn't work out your path, which is more likely the more different variables/choices are included in a game, it'll end up feeling cheap. Mass Effect 2 certainly did feel cheap in that regard to me.
The Walking Dead makes choices matter more as narrative moments, in their immediacy, rather than their consequences. It's counter-intuitive, at least to me, but what else can a game do? Account for all the variables? The Walking Dead allowed me to immerse myself in that world and story, so that the repercussion of the choice alone was enough to make an impact. Ultimately, that game's first season culminates in an ending that has more meanings than could have been designed, because you infuse it with your own story; with your own interpretation of events and the way you coloured them. And the way it succeeded, I think, is because it's intimate, and a manageable landscape, where characters aren't disposable and, ideally, choices make you feel - that's the consequence right there, and I don't really need any more than that.
While I enjoyed the story of Spec Ops, if you didn't or had gone through narratives before that, I could understand your feelings.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
However, Devil Survivor also has an example of illusion of choice during
I've really enjoyed games that give you options. Having an illusion of that would be like going to a fast food place, choosing french fries instead of tater-tots but getting the tater-tots anyway. I wanted fries, dammit. If I wanted something else, I'd have ordered it.
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But videogames are as much product as art, so I cut them some slack in expectation—a game with nice voice and visuals vying for mass market has to make sacrifices somewhere, and it's probably going to be the area that only 20% of their player base will ever see. Tell me a good story and I won't mind the particulars.
But the choices. Good god, the premutations that game can have are incredible. I just wish I could skip the gameplay for the dialogue, you know?
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Only he's pissed because you screwed up two missions ago and are still on his shit list.
I admire how The Walking Dead does decisions though, you always feel like you're in control, like the story has been personalised for you, it's only really on multiple play throughs, or through discussions with others, that you realise in general, regardless of what you do, the plot is roughly the same.
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A game doesn't need player agency and choice to be a game. It still gains a lot by being a game instead of a movie. Controlling the character through such a scenario... through THEIR scenario is kind of the point I'd say. You are not the character. It was never a choose your own adventure style game. The character is Joel. He is who he is. The big choices he makes are based upon what he would do not what you would do.
But being behind the controller still adds a level of tension to the overall atmosphere and understanding to the character that it is very important to the experience.
I don't really care about runtimes as long as the gameplay is good. Sadly, as noted, in AP it veers between bland and stupid. But, and this is a big one, the characters are diverse and memorable, the story is interesting, if confusing, and it's fun to just replay it and do slightly different choices just to see how wildly different some of the outcomes are. Obsidian in general is a studio I have super mixed feelings about, especially with regards to the topic at hand. While they do an excellent job wit providing the player with choice, a lot of their's games suffer from super shitty gameplay. And when their writing is bad, hoo boy, is it pretentious shit. And don't even get me started on Jeyne Kassynder.
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I'll agree that some of the events are so contrived that it is unlikely that the main character acting in two totally different ways would bring the same events about, but it is what it is.
There's also an old adage in writing: Character or Plot. Make one your focus. Obviously, the overarching focus in The Walking Dead is the characters. I think they did OK with the plot too even if it is just a series of contrived situations designed to get the characters interacting with one another.
Game length matters to me. I can deal with 4 hours of bloat, but Deus Ex should have been about 15-20 hours shorter. I liked DX but it was too goddamned long and the gameplay fails to evolve after about 10-15 hours and the whole game drags on after that for another 15-20.
With regard to this topic, sure, Deus Ex offers you a lot of agency and choices have real weight but I just get lost after a while.
Telltale should make a Deus Ex game.
Sometimes I've got upwards of 6 different responses to use that let me steer conversations different ways. Even if I'm being steered toward one singular conclusion it's nice. A lot of the time in games like this I find myself thinking "Well, crap. Why can't I mention X, or ask about Y" and Dragon Age actually seems to cover those basis somewhat with a wider variety of choices.
That's a remnant of Origins' extremely long development cycle, unfortunately. It started in the age where unvoiced protagonists in WRPGs were the norm still. Having the main character be voiced just doesn't allow for that range of dialogue choice any more.
The meta choice to stop playing is a crock of pretentious shit. That "choice" exists in every game ever made, hell, every form of media ever made. It requires zero effort and zero thought from the developer to "create", and acts as an all covering excuse out of any argument about the game. It's quite possibly the laziest, most vapid semi-philosophical dingleberry I've come across in gaming.
As much as I liked spec ops, I have to agree. If the argument is that you have a choice to stop playing a game, then a majority of gamers already make this choice every day, people on average do not finish their games. It's not something they have to point out as making their situation high art.
Part of the turn in the game, and why the agency fails, is that you are supposed to see what happens because of your actions, but also that it was an accident, and preventable. But even a little thought while playing would tell you know what is about to happen, and its not going to let you stop from doing it. Turning a game off, vs 'be forced into a horrifying scripted event' isnt a choice it's 'sigh, lol video games /click to perform war crime'
Incidentally, that very event was extremely jarring because I figured out what was going to happen in advance, but the game railroads you in such a transparent fashion into doing what the devs want, that it just breaks any immersion. Not seeing it coming probably makes the same event fairly powerful though.
I think it would have been less obvious, if
You may disagree with Joel's choices, but the story isn't about you, it's about him, and I don't see why that shouldn't be allowed in a video game.