# Limitations of ChoiceScript as a medium

**URL:** <https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/limitations-of-choicescript-as-a-medium/31843>\
**Category:** Game Development\
**Created:** [October 30, 2017, 1:32pm UTC](https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/limitations-of-choicescript-as-a-medium/31843 "2017-10-30T13:32:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 25

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**Author:** ![Havenstone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/choiceofgames/user_avatar/forum.choiceofgames.com/havenstone/32/198451_2.png) [@Havenstone](https://forum.choiceofgames.com/u/Havenstone)\
**Post date:** [October 30, 2017, 5:52pm UTC](https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/limitations-of-choicescript-as-a-medium/31843/25 "2017-10-30T17:52:28Z")

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> [@kgold](#):
>
> The general idea of attacking or defending whole artistic media or genres seems kind of pointless to me.

Sure. And I see a bit of that in Wraith\_Magus, like when he says that _all_ games should make as much use as possible of spatial simulation. But he’s also saying things like this:

> [@Social, Ethical, and Political Statements of CoR](https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/social-ethical-and-political-statements-of-cor/12481/43):
>
> [ChoiceScript] wouldn’t be the best tool to accomplish the idea I most want to put into a game. I am not saying “it doesn’t work for me”, I am explaining how the limitations of the machine and the engine limit the types of stories that can be told.

which I take to be a different issue. You can arguably tell different stories with text than you can in, say, a graphical representation of space. Articulating what you can and can’t do well in a medium seems like a worthwhile exercise.

And maybe even more usefully – what does ChoiceScript as a medium _nudge_ us towards doing? Not (_pace_ Wraith) like a straightjacket we can’t escape, but a natural tendency that we’d have to lean against if it was clashing with the experience we wanted to create? I don’t think Wraith is wrong when he says:

> [@Social, Ethical, and Political Statements of CoR](https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/social-ethical-and-political-statements-of-cor/12481/43):
>
> ChoiceScript is highly optimized for providing… linear narratives based around stat checks from earlier multiple choices made.

or points out that most CoG games thus slip into a structure where you’re pressed to make choices consistently with stat-maxing in mind – whether or not the choices actually make sense with what you think your character would do at a given moment. Achievements, now a core part of CoG, further incentivize playing your stats rather than your character.

Stats and story are two core elements of ChoiceScript, and they clash with each other–not inevitably, not inescapably, but pretty often. Stats are both a key strategy allowing the story to [develop through delayed branching](https://www.choiceofgames.com/2011/07/by-the-numbers-how-to-write-a-long-interactive-novel-that-doesnt-suck/), and also an ever-present distraction that risks pulling people out of the story.

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