With the recent announcement of The Novelist, we take a look at how choices and their impacts have been used to video games.
Labels really hurt the impact of our choices.
Let’s look at the general presentation of choices we have seen in games to date. The idea usually is that you are an above average citizen that, for one reason or the other, has the power to influence the world already you. Be it because of some level of military status or because of a unique power, the player has above average influence. Truthfully speaking, this is not a particularly relatable situation. Very rarely will we find ourselves in situations where we have such a direct impact on the lives of the people around us. While this is usually balanced out by making some of the characters in these situations relatable, the overall premise itself still tends to steer the ship a bit away. Ultimately, there is nothing wrong with that as a concept. We usually choose to play video games because we want an escape or to experience something we normally wouldn’t. Still, I wonder how that than impacts our decisions within the game world. My massive killing looting sprees in Oblivion were not based off of personal experiences; it just seemed like a fun idea at the time.
I think another interesting aspect of choice comes in the form of the systems used to implement them. More often than not, when we sit at the player creation screens for our favorite RPGs, we have an idea of what type of character we are going to be creating. You could choose to be a deadly assassin with a heart of gold. You could choose to be a hardy warrior with a mean streak and taste for blood. Or, you can choose to be a sorcerer that walks a thin line between good and evil, never taking advantage of the weak, but always putting your own interests at the forefront. No matter what your choice, you will than guide your character through the game with that type of approach. Sometimes, to a fault.
I think this is most clearly seen in games where the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ choices are highlighted and tracked empirically. I think Bioware games are the most guilty of this. The wheel of conversation answers is always arranged in a very predictable way. The top most answer is always the positive one, with the negativity increasing as you scroll down. The ultimate good and bad answers are highlighted with a blue color and with a red respectively. This design makes sense for a predictable play style. After a while, you don’t even need to read the response options. You just know you want to choose the top one if your character designs suggested a righteous hero. It makes the game easier to play the way you want, but does it take something away from the option of choice? Is it still choice if you knew you wanted it this way ages ago?
Mass Effect in particular had me annoyed with this. During my playthrough of Mass Effect 3, I had chosen the positive response for almost every single conversation that I had. The one expectation? When the Quarians started bad mouthing Legion. The only answer that made any kind of sense to me was to defend him. Unfortunately, that meant a “renegade” point. The result? I didn’t have access to final set of positive responses when dealing with the Illusive Man at the end. Shame on me for playing it how I would have in real life.
