The Choice in Choice Games: Variation and Player Autonomy in Endings?

[EndMaster]

@AChubbyBlackCat

In @EndMaster’s Necromancer one of our first choices is choosing between the demon, Big Red, or your Conjuration professor. It’s one of the most important choices in the game, I would argue, since it changes the beginning and end of the story. What Endmaster nailed perfectly, I think, is that you immediately get a sense of the story’s scope based on your very first choice.

Thanks, I tend to dislike making several branches/choices which are just variations that lead to the same ending, so I always try to branch a lot of my stories with key choices which will take them in much different directions for the major endings.

[will]

Just watched that — I’ve always seen their games as really cruddy mass-produced nonsense with a surface-level understanding of the medium and … the only thing that talk did was reassure me that at least they know their audience: undiscerning attentionless mobile users who live their lives in an unexamined haze. Can’t fault the company for knowing their audience and catering to it — I actually respect them a bit more seeing it all laid out like that. They know what they’re doing.

I do agree with some of what she’s saying, though — particularly with coming up with a compelling story first and working in the branching paths later. It has to be compelling before it is complex.

[CrappyBanana]

@Starkness

When someone plays a choice game, specifically a choice game which is planned to be a singular book: how much actual control do they need over the events of the story? how linear should it be and how much should player choice effect the ending?

I’m ok with events happening one after the other as the author seemed fit (in a relation of cause-effect), but I’d like to choose how to approach the challenge, how to feel about it and for my choices to effect later developments.

i.e. if in a scene I’m going to rob a bank I’m ok to be forced by the author to do so. But feelings, bearings and outcomes should be chosen by me. And my choices should have an impact later in the story.

Then I prefer long linear stories to shorter ones with a lot of branching and regarding endings I think only three exist. The Good (the hero wins), the Bittersweet (the hero wins, but) and the Tragic (not only the hero lose, but also).

I would add that if you’re planning a Character Driven story you need to present your readers a character with preset background and fatal flaw, then you let them decide if to follow an heroic arc or a tragic arc.

[Jackpot1776]

Personally I like the style behind games like Until Dawn. There is eventually only a couple endings, but the trade off is that each “major” ending has several minor variations. For example, the worst-average-best endings with a whole bunch in the middle. This is determined by, idk, like how many party members survive, how much of the enemy you defeated, did you solve the entire case or just parts etc. 2-3 major endings with different variations of each based on how well you did.

[cup_half_empty]

@Jackpot1776

2-3 major endings with different variations of each based on how well you did.

This is how most videogames do it.

[AgentV]

Basically, I’m not a fan of either extreme. If there’s no control at all, I’m taken out of the story. If it branches off over every single thing, I only get to see a small portion of the game.

The branch and bottleneck idea mentioned earlier in this thread is probably the best balance, but there is wiggle room in either direction for me.