I realise I am eight years late to this party but I just want to say I really enjoyed this thread!
My faves:
When the main NPC genders can be randomised. It isn’t relevant to me in terms of romance, but I love getting to see how differently characters read in different play throughs with different pronouns.
When there is just absolutely loads going on. Spectres of the Deep for example. A decision to pursue a particular thread always made me feel like I was missing out on something really cool by choosing a path. It made the characters feel very real, and I loved the sense that they were busy pursuing their own ends when I wasn’t watching them. And the added dimension that if I didn’t watch them, something might just come totally out of left field for me!
I also want to second @Lycanthromorphic on race. I love it when I get to specify that I am mixed.
Also, I am curious. This original post was a long time (and a lot of games) ago. Have any of the things on your wish list become standard in more modern games? Do you have new things you would love to see based on what games are like now?
I just took a bunch of notes from this thread, so I’m guessing not as much as it could have. (Thank you for digging it up, by the way )
People have been refining choice mechanics in games for decades, but I think we’re still far from perfecting the formula.
I personally love the usage of ‘callbacks’, where a seemingly insignificant detail from a conversation early on is tagged in bool, to be recalled much later on in the story.
Every game with dialogue choices should be doing more of them.
I don’t know if you can reasonably call it little, but i vastly prefer it when the game decide to hide stats, and i remember only one game i believe that decided to do so?
When the game got personality traits and stats, especially when it matters, i constantly check how much do i got, did it change lately and i feel conditioned to pick not the option i would actually pick, but the one that increases the necessary stat in case it will be relevant for some check. For example if i decide to go Stoic, now i feel forced to pick every option that increases Stoic.
When they are hidden, i can just not care as much as go with the flow and natural decisions way more. So i would love to see more games taking this approach.
Yes! Callbacks are my favourite thing. I love the small details getting brought up chapters later. I must add more to my own writing. It always makes me feel like the game is more aware of me as a player when a character mentions something I said or did long after it happened.
I’m actually trying that for my WIP.
It’s challenging from a writing perspective, because you need to reflect the different relationships through the narrative alone.
It also leaves the stat screen a bit bare.
I get that, but i believe it’s a worthwhile tradeoff for deeper immersion and connection with the narrative. I would imagine there are a lot of subtle writing tricks you can use to substitute checking stat screen like a maniac. The less reader notices the “gamification” of IF the better, at least that’s what i believe.
A minor note, but “hiding” stats by not including them on the Stats screen isn’t going to really help the OCD people stop caring about them. All it does is now they’re forced to check these values either through the dev console and stats object, or through the state save file. Which only makes it more annoying process.
Perhaps a question the author should ask themselves is, what even is the purpose of tracking these numbers to begin with. Because if it’s for something like trying to present different text variations as automatic reactions from the MC, this is more likely than not just going to backfire for any player who isn’t just making their character a complete one-note cardboard cutout with only a single type of reaction to everything.
Well, no. It takes it off the table entirely for most players. Obviously I could learn to do what you’ve just described, but I never have and don’t plan to. There’s a level of OCD where you’d learn to code dive for stat management, but for most people the barrier of “the game doesn’t give me any obvious way to do this” is sufficient.
I agree that authors should always ask themselves “why am I tracking this?” and make sure they’re happy with the answer.
Personally, I use them largely to tailor how the story responds to you.
Have you been fueling a rivalry with another character, or have you largely tried to be friendly to them?
Are you famous, or an unknown genius?
Are you more of an artist, or a technician?
Do you tend to be more serious or more irreverent?
How much money do you have on you?
I’m not sure I’ll use all of those that much, and I don’t really plan on having the (if number > X, you can do the thing) type of checks, but I do think if a player has committed themselves to building a specific type of character, the game world should respond in some way. In my case, I think it would mostly be other characters acting differently.
For other stuff (“were you sickly as a child?”) I just use a boolean variable to branch later based on it.
The problem i see with this is, that its just a guesswork of what’s on the player’s mind and what specific type of character they’ve actually committed themselves to building, and that’s something that’s inevitably going to be a wrong guess in plenty of cases.
As a simple example – “do you tend to be more serious or more irreverent?”. This apparent “tendency” can be a result of many different things. Some players may choose to be serious in some situations and not others, while other players may choose to use a different pattern. Some may act serious when facing serious characters, some can do the opposite, some may choose it to be standoffish with a character they don’t like without being rude etc, and the resulting values will also get skewed with how much given MC interacts with those characters.
Without anticipating all this and running some very extensive metrics (and then interpreting them correctly on top of this) a game is likely to end up with e.g. “player chose to be serious 4 times out of 10” which… yeah. “Oh, so they tend to be irreverent” and suddenly everyone is acting as if MC has [always] been a snarky millennial. When it may very well be nothing like what the player has been building their character as.
While I’ve seen personality straitjackets used in enough annoying ways to have some sympathy here… at the end of the day an IF writer can’t avoid “wrong” guesses. The most you can do is try to minimize them, i.e. give the protagonist only trivial dialogue outside of choice blocks, and within the choice blocks, try to exhaust all reasonable options for how the reader might be expressing their personality.
That last step will still open you up to wrong-guess accusations–“None of these options are how my character would talk!”–and by inevitably reducing the amount of protagonist dialogue, the whole approach will invite the other most common IF MC accusation: “This protagonist is bland, the least interesting character in their own story.”
Personally, I’d rather accept some give-and-take with the author if it leads to a more memorable story with snappier dialogue–even if the dialogue isn’t what I would said in the MC’s shoes.
If all the author brings is “snarky millennial voice” imposed on the MC’s inner thoughts, the game probably won’t be my fave either. But for me, the solution would be to write better dialogue, not to leave the protag with nothing to say beyond what I specifically pick.
You bring up a good point, but I think you can still be responsive without changing the core character. For example, one of the opposed stats in my story is subtle vs sensational. Does the MC prefer to avoid attention or draw it? Then later, if the MC has to enter a room in which people are loudly arguing, I might use that stat and a multireplace on the verbs. A subtle MC slips in to the room while a sensational MC strides into it.The action then could be a choice: join in, intervene, derail with a joke, watch until you’re noticed, etc.
But then, I’m not a fan of blankSlate!MCs. I prefer a clear core character whose details align with my choices. I’d put how the character’s voice as part of their core character, not the details.
I mean, perhaps a better way to minimize wrong guesses would be not to make guesses in the first place…? That is, rather than guessing, the author has option to ask the player what’s on their MC’s mind. And, granted, the ways the player can answer that will be limited to what the author has thought they could be, but it’s still likely to help making more informed choices going forward.
(and when i say “ask” i don’t necessarily mean anything 4th wall breaking, although that’s an option too. But the MC self-reflecting on “what the hell am i even doing” is otherwise a pretty natural way to solicit input. “Why am i like this” doesn’t have to be rhetorical nor completely fixed)
But what happens if a character prefers to be subtle in certain types of situations/gatherings and sensational in others? This way you would stay within that 50% range and then the “normal” or neutral range should be introduced, otherwise the character will be flip-flopping between being subtle or not. For me what would end up happening is i would be forced to pick subtle every time because the “neutral” 50%-ish state of being isn’t encouraged in any way, only the extremes. I don’t think i frequently, or ever, encountered IF where you are encouraged to stay out of extreme ends of the spectrum. That’s why for me not knowing the stats is a good solution, if i don’t know what matters or what is affected i can care less about forcing consistency.
The player still decides how they act and what they do. If they want to be subtle after striding into the room, they can stand aside and listen until someone acknowledges them. Actions aren’t locked.
ETA: when I do these minor variations I usually break at 50, choosing which gets the even split each time.
ETA2: I also don’t base tests on opposed pairs alone. So, if your stat is 25% (making you quite the attention grabber), but you want to interrogate someone very subtly in a social conversation, you could still succeed with one of your skills (such as Words).
My point is, I suppose, that you can add variation and flavor without writing MCs at the extremes of the stats or locking readers into a certain set of actions or style of play. You can be responsive without being restrictive.
Kind of not what i mean. In your example of subtle vs. sensational, say i pick subtle option 9 times and and sensational 10 times, will everyone react to me like im a diva because of one more choice? IF games never encourage middle ground so after playing a lot of CoG and Hosted games IF i am trained like a dog to go into one direction or another all the way, actually ripping agency away from me and making MC a one note cardboard cutout. I don’t know if your game or next IF game have stat checks based on personality, how would i? Why would i interact with a game in a way i want if it becomes a stat check simulator that actively discourage me from engaging it in a nuanced way? If i go a sensationalist route, of course i will be forced to keep being sensationalist out of fear of failing some checks. There is no agency left at this point, i’m just reading a linear novel with a sensationalist MC. The only decision player had is sensationalist or subtle linear narrative.
No. However, I understand that this does happen in some games. I’ve played those, too, and wasn’t fond either.
This is another reason I dislike blank slates for MCs. When the MC has a core character, their depiction in the story has more stability, in my opinion.
I don’t know that showing stats vs not showing them will change this fear at all. Some games will do this. Some won’t. The only way to tell is to play and not assume the worst.
No. But I can only say that with confidence for my own story. If you want details on what exactly I’m doing, we can go to DMs.
Moving back to the thread topic: what is the little thing a story can do to alleviate this worry? How can authors signal that readers’ choices are not limited by their prior decisions? What is it that you want to see?
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