4 ms·

It is definitely possible to make choices matter. Imagine that in the final mission, if you helped the Krogans before at one point during an alien attack there

by onli 7y ago

It is definitely possible to make choices matter. Imagine that in the final mission, if you helped the Krogans before at one point during an alien attack there will be a Krogan Squad crushing through a wall and helping you out (that's taken from an interview with a Bioware employee who described what went wrong and how the ending should've worked). Stuff like that is possible, even if branching storylines are hard to do (cut content for many players and all that, I'm aware). The Fallout games - with the exceptions of Fallout 3 - show how it is indeed possible to at the end of the game show the impact of your actions on characters and civilization. BG2 did as well! And ME1 and ME2 during and at the end and even ME3 somewhat during the game showed consequences of prior actions - just at the end of a trilogy focusing on choice not at all. Stupid mistake and definitely avoidable. I'm convinced Bioware sealed their fate with that (making mediocre games after did not help them though).

jerf 7y ago
You can build this (story goes right): * * * * * * / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ * * * * * * *-->* \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / * * * * * * And obviously elaborate on it. You can't build this (story goes down): * / \ * * /| /|\ / | * | \ * * * *-- /| |\ |\ \ \ / | | * * * * * * * * and so on and so on. The problem is, no matter how you disguise it, gamers sense in the first case that they're on some sort of rails. Then companies promise the second, whether they mean to or not. But they can't deliver across one game. I remember thinking when I heard the announcement about the Mass Effect trilogy laughing at the idea that they could do it across three. You just can't let the combinatorics explode that much and make decisions that change the story. (Note things like "whether or not a Krogan squad is there" are consequences, yes, but you'll note they do not impact the future flow of the story, so they don't contribute to a combinatorial explosion. It's a linear contribution; you have to model the event and voice act it, etc., but it's still just two story nodes not significantly interacting with anything else.) Fallout 1 & Fallout 2 were structured as several parallel instances of the first example, which is probably the best compromise you can make to prevent exponential explosion while still giving some heft to the choices. But ultimately, if you want your "choices to matter", you'd better stick to "classic" roleplaying. A Dungeon Master can react to your unexpected choices and set you in a standard "fetch the thing" quest but then react to you actually accidentally literally destroying the world when that wasn't written into their "plan", and then carry on with the resulting consequences if you like. Computer games are still a long, long ways away from anything like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H-1WJtuzPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H-1WJtuzPg
- cgiles 7y ago
  I agree with your basic premise, but I think the complaint about ME3 was that it didn't reflect any previous decisions you made in the ending, not that the story failed to fork exponentially at every decision point. Indeed, IMO, ME3 did a really good job of making it feel like your decisions matter...until the very end. Star Ocean: The Second Story is yet another example of an RPG that does this; it has 70-80 endings, many forking paths including mutually exclusive party member choices, relationships between characters, etc. The trick for making it feasible seems to be to make the ending modular so that it includes/removes different cutscenes based on what happened before. As I understand it there are quite a few old-school RPGs that do this. Of course it is harder if you are talking about voice acting and super-detailed 3D assets. But assets aren't that hard considering you already made most of them for the rest of the game, and realistic voice synthesis is perhaps not that far away. So I don't think most people were expecting model (B), but even that could be viable if you controlled the number of forks carefully.

by onli 7y ago

jerf 7y ago

You can build this (story goes right): * * * * * * / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ * * * * * * *-->* \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / * * * * * * And obviously elaborate on it. You can't build this (story goes down): * / \ * * /| /|\ / | * | \ * * * *-- /| |\ |\ \ \ / | | * * * * * * * * and so on and so on. The problem is, no matter how you disguise it, gamers sense in the first case that they're on some sort of rails. Then companies promise the second, whether they mean to or not. But they can't deliver across one game. I remember thinking when I heard the announcement about the Mass Effect trilogy laughing at the idea that they could do it across three. You just can't let the combinatorics explode that much and make decisions that change the story. (Note things like "whether or not a Krogan squad is there" are consequences, yes, but you'll note they do not impact the future flow of the story, so they don't contribute to a combinatorial explosion. It's a linear contribution; you have to model the event and voice act it, etc., but it's still just two story nodes not significantly interacting with anything else.) Fallout 1 & Fallout 2 were structured as several parallel instances of the first example, which is probably the best compromise you can make to prevent exponential explosion while still giving some heft to the choices. But ultimately, if you want your "choices to matter", you'd better stick to "classic" roleplaying. A Dungeon Master can react to your unexpected choices and set you in a standard "fetch the thing" quest but then react to you actually accidentally literally destroying the world when that wasn't written into their "plan", and then carry on with the resulting consequences if you like. Computer games are still a long, long ways away from anything like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H-1WJtuzPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H-1WJtuzPg

cgiles 7y ago
I agree with your basic premise, but I think the complaint about ME3 was that it didn't reflect any previous decisions you made in the ending, not that the story failed to fork exponentially at every decision point. Indeed, IMO, ME3 did a really good job of making it feel like your decisions matter...until the very end. Star Ocean: The Second Story is yet another example of an RPG that does this; it has 70-80 endings, many forking paths including mutually exclusive party member choices, relationships between characters, etc. The trick for making it feasible seems to be to make the ending modular so that it includes/removes different cutscenes based on what happened before. As I understand it there are quite a few old-school RPGs that do this. Of course it is harder if you are talking about voice acting and super-detailed 3D assets. But assets aren't that hard considering you already made most of them for the rest of the game, and realistic voice synthesis is perhaps not that far away. So I don't think most people were expecting model (B), but even that could be viable if you controlled the number of forks carefully.