I’ve recently been playing a few games that were developed by Telltale Games and I always take note of the opening text “This game series adapts to the choices you make. The story is tailored by how you play”. This idea of choice is very appealing but, while I still enjoy their games, I am disappointed by how little difference the choices make in the grand scheme of things and thought it might be interesting to discuss the idea of choice in a video game.
Since video games are an interactive medium, having been influenced by traditional role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons as well as Choose Your Own Adventure books, it makes sense that games would allow players to make choices that influence and change the game they play. However, many video games only offer the illusion of choice to the players, changing some minor aspects here and there but failing to change the story in any meaningful way.
Let’s start looking at some examples. Life is Strange is a game that took the gaming world by storm when it was released in 2015, catapulting the little known studio Dontnod to fame and fortune. I became quite invested in the characters and the world that they inhabited and took each decision I made seriously to the point of agonizing over choices that had long since passed. However, once I completed the game and began to research the ramifications of each choice in the game, I was disappointed to find that only the final choice of the game had any impact on the ending of the game. I continue to think quite highly of Life is Strange but the realization still stung.
Another example I would like to bring up is Bioshock, another game that I and many others think highly of, it is often listed as one of the greatest games of all time. However, something that has always bothered me is the “moral” choice in the game of what to do with the Little Sisters. In order to become more powerful in the game, you need to gather ADAM, something that can only be gathered by Little Sisters.
Upon coming across an isolated Little Sister early in the game, two characters start shouting at you (and each other) informing you that you can either harvest a Little Sister, killing them in the process, and extract a lot of ADAM or rescue them and receive less ADAM but gain extra rewards in the future. What should be a desperate situation, representing a moral choice between your own struggle to survive and the desire to save these children, is rendered essentially meaningless by the fact that saving the Little Sisters earns you far better rewards in general than harvesting them with only slightly less ADAM overall.
A game called The Stanley Parable presents choice at the forefront of its gameplay. The game features a narrator who begins the game by explaining the premise and attempting to guide you. You can choose to follow the narrator’s directions and reach the ending of the game or defy the narrator in various ways. Beyond ending up in many philosophical situations where the meaning of choice and existence is discussed, I can also remember the question that stood out to me the most was whether a choice was truly a choice if all paths have been accounted for.
Oddly enough, some of the best choices I have found in video games actually come from RPGs. Bioware games such as Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic etc as well as the Witcher series from CD Projekt all feature a variety of choices that dramatically change the world you play in and the characters around you. When I first learned of the concept of choice in video games, it was to these standards that I held games to.
There are a variety of reasons why choices often prove so inconsequential in games with one of the most cited reasons often being how expensive video games are to make and why would someone spend large amounts of time and money on a section of the game that only a fraction of players might end up playing. Still, I would like to see the concept of choice pushed further as time goes on. Let me know what your favourite choices were from video games and what you think of choices in video games overall.
Thanks for reading and if you wish to seek any of the titles I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs! Also feel free to follow my curator page on Steam “JRPG Reviews” for thoughts and opinions on any JRPGs that I play and my YouTube channel “Victory Achieved Gaming” where I guide my friend through challenging games.