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There's this game in the back of my head that I've always wanted to play. It's full of choice and causality in infinite variations, and decisions have true ramifications that ripple and manifest for the remainder of the game. In it, a player can interact with other characters any way they want, and the characters will respond organically; the nature and consistency of your approach to them results in dynamic relationships being forged over time, for good or for ill.
I think the desire for this non-existent game first began back when I was playing both tabletop RPGs and videogames consistently. Dungeons and Dragons gave the potential for infinite variety, but the group I played with only cared about hack and slash, which defeated the purpose for me. I didn't want my experience to have to depend on another player, and it also lacked the visceral involvement of controller-based gameplay. On the other hand, videogames gave me control, but the choices and consequences were woefully limited by comparison.
Time goes on and still I dream of this game that combines the myriad freedoms and authentic interactions of tabletop gaming with the single-player immersion and immediacy of feedback that only a well-crafted video game can provide. Wish as I might, I still have to face the facts: it's a pipe dream. Real choice and consequence will never exist in videogames as we know them.
We're barely a decade removed from when choice really became a staple concern of game design. In 2001, Peter Molyneux was building his post-Bullfrog reputation by championing games like Black and White at Lionhead Games. Despite a later turn of affection from critics, B&W was certainly the first fully realized game of its kind: a title where moral choice had a wide influence over multiple gameplay systems and ultimately the outcome of the game itself. From there, it became more common for choices in games to have fleshed-out consequences that manifested in both the game world and in-game mechanics.
Meanwhile, as causality and morality were being explored in the god game genre, choice and consequence in both story and character interaction became the primary design concern of developers like Bioware. In 1998, Baldur's Gate provided choice and variance in character interaction in the form of an adapted D&D alignment system, while KOTOR in 2003 offered the classic Jedi/Sith polarities which form the basis of most moral choice systems in games today.
inFamous, Overlord, Bioshock, Fable, and dozens of other modern titles cling to the same basic design methods of story and gameplay systems from these earlier examples, and subsequently they have reaped the benefits in terms of both monetary and critical success. The only problem is that we gamers are a fickle and restless bunch. What once was hailed as unique and a sign of a developer's mastery of craft is now a source of complaint.
Now, I'm not saying that we should be complacent with cookie-cutter, bi-polar choices, because the medium should always be evolving and providing improved experiences to players. However, most of us probably don't realize what it is we're really asking for from our developers when we bitch about only being able to choose good or evil. Every time I hear another played out "rescue the kittens or make jelly out of the kittens" joke, my right index finger twitches as if it's trying to hit the Renegade trigger on its own.
While my annoyance is an irrelevant matter in the scheme of things, I'm sure this development is exponentially more concerning to game makers. While we as players only evaluate choice in the context of our game experience, game studios are faced with a paralyzing conundrum - generating more choice means generating more content. That content might be writing, dialog, voice-over work, gameplay systems programmed to react to a wider array of variables, and much more.
Implementing this expanded content has its cost on many levels. It takes time and money to put these additional branches in place, and while some elements of a game engine are re-usable for multiple story paths, every branch weighs heavily on the trunk of the tree. Most developers simply don't have the resources to put multiple branches in place, and even the ones with deep pockets and leeway for extended development cycles are making a sacrifice by taking this route. Every new choice means energy diverted from graphics, art direction, and most importantly, gameplay.
Alpha Protocol is a perfect example of this devil's bargain in action. The game basically offers a triple branching choice in both dialogue and story -- do you go suave, professional, or aggressive? The game implements these elements in a truly effective and engaging way. Everyone I've spoken with has had both a different story and even gameplay experience based on the wide spectrum of well implemented choices available, and that is to be applauded. I was able to enjoy the game despite its litany of flaws for these elements alone.
It was a ballsy but ultimately failed experiment that bore much fruit for further exploration. In true min/maxing RPG fashion, what Alpha Protocol gains in story and choice, it surrenders in grand fashion on the visual, gameplay, and level design fronts. Many facets of the game were simply broken. More choice will almost always enhance our enjoyment of a good game, but once this element begins to encroach on gameplay's turf, that's when bad things will always happen.
I've always been one in the past to look down my nose at graphics whores. I did, and still do, believe that the time, money, and system resources that are allocated toward the pursuit of flashier and more realistic visuals would almost always be better spent improving gameplay or story. However, my experience with Alpha Protocol really got me contemplating my own hypocrisy. Any element taken to extremes will crowd out the core gameplay that makes a game worth playing, my beloved choice and story included.
The truth of the matter is, we will achieve visual realism in games long before we achieve true fidelity of choice and character interaction in games. There are far fewer variables involved in recreating a perfect image than there are in recreating a human relationship or life path; our technology will likely catapult us over the uncanny valley many decades before we meet an NPC who can pass the Turing Test.
There are hundreds of games out there illustrating the point that graphics don't have to be perfect to be effective. Okami, Shadow of the Colossus, Psychonauts... the list goes on forever. Art direction and stylized presentation can often have a much greater impact than photo-realism. Is it really any different for choice and story?
Sure, the Alpha Protocol experiment shows us that three choices are for many players far better than two. Where does that line of reasoning end, though? Is the next logical step 4 choices? 5? 10? I personally don't feel that choice in games needs to follow the path of shaving technology; after three blades, the shave doesn't get that much smoother for the inclusion of additional blades on the razor. It just makes the razor look ridiculous and handle more awkwardly.
Choice in games is no different; the enjoyment of the experience is not directly proportional to the number of options. We don't need developers trying to add more blades, although in the short term that is one way to keeping pushing storytelling forward. For example, SW: The Old Republic looks to have about 20 blades, but the MMO structure, longer development cycle, and story-branching expertise of Bioware is what makes that possible. In general, that game will probably be the exception that proves the rule.
What we need are developers that are looking to make the 2 or 3 blades they can afford to manufacture as sharp and effective as possible. The Witcher was a sleeper RPG favorite from a few years ago that was widely praised for the use of choice and consequence in the game. The game, however, didn't rely on quantity of branches to drive player engagement. Every major choice in that game was 2 sided: either help one faction or the other, save this person or kill them, etc.
What made The Witcher's story unique was two things -- 1. The results of your choices were never clearly bad or good; there was always a sacrifice or a compromise to be made, and everyone didn't always walk away happy (or alive, for that matter). 2. The results of your choices on later gameplay or story were NEVER telegraphed. As a result, players were forced to make choices based on how they actually felt about the situation and characters, rather than on what items or bonuses (or even ending) they might get.
As gamers, I think we can get smarter about vocalizing what we want to see in our games while still being realistic about what limitations exist. Simply demanding more choices probably isn't going to get the job done, unless we're willing to pay a lot more for the branches that would need to be built for that kind of product. A much more reasonable request is to demand more impactful and surprising choice/consequence in our games; it's achievable, it's realistic, and it can happen easily within a standard development cycle if you have a little talent and forethought.
I'll always have that one perfect game in the back of my head, where the possibilities fan out endlessly to the horizon in a glorious fractal of branching player destinies. It's a shame I'll never get to play it -- this fanciful digital cornucopia of roads less traveled by. No matter; it will always be my internal gaming happy place. And that's enough for me as I continue to watch games evolve and grow before my eyes.
Contest:
4:00 PM on 07.06.2010 | 
Sean Carey for President!
Not one mention of Deus Ex or System Shock[/i].
But then, those games would defeat the argument posed here, wouldn't they?
That may not have the same sense of "freedom" but I think it would offer a more compelling game narrative.
That is to say, AP suffered from the neglect of some elements - but that isn't the NECESSARY outcome of offering a better choice system.
Except I don't think it's that people are trying to do as many choices as possible, rather all choices in games in general are pretty boring in the grander scale of things (minus The Witcher). Everything is too safe, I liked Alpha Protocol because certain people in the game could totally hate your guts based on your actions earlier in the game, it was possible to "screw up" if you were being a jackass the entire time.
Anyway, I'm sure I'll be ignored as some shameless self-promoter. Interesting article I suppose.
That was back in 2006, and I was pretty naive. Genesis is "on the back burner" until I gain sufficient resources ($), if that ever happens. In the meantime, I am working on another game, something that is much less of a pipedream, but also much more realistic in terms of being completable. The game is a top-down space shooter/RPG/RTS/Sim, taking elements of Star Control 2, Master of Orion, Privateer, etc. Graphics are minimalistic, and the basic game mechanics aren't much different from your average space sim. It has one major feature that sets it apart from every game in existence, and that is the AI. The end goal is something like the pipedream you describe.
Most games claim to have super-advanced AI, but it is always the same thing: pathfinding, survival, and killing algorithms. I am doing something quite different, even though this type of AI has been around for decades, it has never been effectively used in a game. How does it work? Think of the basic game as the stage. I give every NPC ("actors") emotions, ambitions, behaviors, desires, etc. Every NPC also has a state of knowledge about the universe around it, although not all of their knowledge is necessarily "correct" (i.e. it could be based on a lie or misinformation). Every resource and item in the game can be thought of as a "prop". Using some AI trickery that involves backwards chaining, propositional logic, and neural networks, I let all of the "actors" improvise. Every NPC's actions are a function of their environment, emotions, behavior, etc...just like "real life." Dialog is key. NPC dialog does NOT just involve you and NPCs, but NPCS can and will talk to each other, spreading information, lies, and so forth. Now, this would be really complicated if it involved a full understanding of the English language, but it doesn't -- rather it uses sentence fragments with pre-defined and tangible meanings. Using these fragments you can build a variety of dialog options. You could lie to an NPC about the location of a resource, you could insult them (with the weight of the insult being based on flaws that NPC perceives in themselves), you could negotiate a surrender, and so forth. This is just a small subset of my crazy list of ideas, but I am making genuine progress on this game and a basic engine is already in place (not that hard to build a top-down game set in space). The end result is a universe in which your actions affect the state of the universe, and NPCs react in a realistic and dynamic manner. Anyway, if you care to know more feel free to contact me at gavanw@gmail.com or twitter.com/gavanw. :)
When I started to play Mass Effect 2, I didn't care about paragon or renegade points, I just picked the options that I wanted. I soon noticed that I most of the time talked nicely but acted bad. Paragon way in conversations and renegade actions when possible. It was all fun and it felt like my Shephard is like that, talks nicely until it's time to action and then he goes all out.
All that changed when I hit a point in the game where it basically said that if you are not (almost) fully paragon or renegade you are now fucked. After that I went with paragon options whenever possible in the hopes that I could save the situation, but at that point the fun was lost from it. I didn't make choices I tried to collect specific points.
When I thought about that later, I realized that ME2s 'morality system' would have worked a lot better if there weren't any numerical stats, just let me handle the things how I like and don't punch me for it.
The gory aftermath of a vocabulary pileup on the grammitical superhighway. No survivors.
Other than that, some well expressed musings there. I think your solution in the second-to-last paragraph is very feasabile and probably inevitable. Another underused opportunity for self-expression through gameplay are open-world games. I'd like to see greater consequences for my actions than being stuck in jail overnight. Oh well, as you concluded with, the real game is witnessing progress and awaiting what's next!
Absolutely great piece. I got so enveloped in reading it that my boss scolded me. THANKS A LOT.
/unintentional alliteration
I'm not so sure about that. I know in Mass Effect, my hard renegade Sheppard was capable of making merciful or more cooperative choices when the situation at hand elicited her sympathy. In the same way my usually white knight vault dweller in Fallout could bring about furious retribution on wastelanders he thought were particularly vile and offensive.
Bad isn't always evil and good isn't always nice. I don't want my actions to be set in stone just because I have a habit of trending one way or the other.
The other thing not touched on is i personally think the 'more choice' desire is an illusion, what we really want is 'real choice'.. People say 'more choice' because they see dialogue choices as limiting. but when those choices are made through your actions ingame as they are in real life, then even if there are only 2 choices, they feel real and satisfying..
How often do we stop our real life to make a dialogue choice that affects us? not much?
How often do we make choice in real life by pursuing a set course of action out of 2 we clearly see?
A lot?
My argument was not that no games dealt with choice well, but that very few do, and that there are inherent difficulties to implementing them properly that I don't think we acknowledge.
I could have discussed Deus Ex or System Shock as an example of well implemented choice, but I chose The Witcher instead since it was a more recent example, and had a heavier story focus. All in all, I think we can agree that only a handful of games that get it right out of hundreds and thousands is a drop in the bucket, and it would logically follow that there are legitimate reasons for for that trend.
@nondual -- You're right about AP having additional restrictions on its development and resources. There's no reason why developers can't pull some amazing fertilizer for new games to grow in out of it.
@DinosaurPizza -- I enjoyed your use of Kohlberg in your post! There were a lot of examples that we had in common, which makes sense given the topic; KOTOR's a standard setter for choice and The Witcher is one of the few that gets it right.
So yeah, my biggest gripe about choices in games is the predictability. Good read.
I think this is the key to a functional, suspensful moral choice system in games. When a set of consequences is laid out in front of the player, mapped to a series of respective choices, this is very deliberately a system where the player acts according to utility. As such, they identify which path will most benefit themself rather than weighing each option on the merit of virtuosity - a proper moral decision. (Assuming the player follows a moral code other than utilitarianism - which is true 9 times out of 10.)
I remember once in the forums I mentioned that consequences are largely hidden or secondary in real life moral choices, which was met with shock by some guy. When I explained that the impetus of virtuosity acts as the motivator for morality, he quickly shut up :D
I have to admit I was all set to play the detractor but this is a good article, dude.
One of the problems I think games have is they allow "morality grinding." With rewards at 50 good guy points. What needs to happen is the rewards need to disappear and the whole system needs to become opaque. I don't want my game to say "you did a good thing" and I don't want it to be obvious either. I want to wonder if I did the right thing and watch the consequences play out. More paths is not necessarily the answer but a few very simple things could make existing morality systems far better.
Good article.
The most promising type of game concerning the subjects of this article are roguelike games. Look up Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. It's a free game. Play that. It has no cut scenes. It's about as non-linear as you can get. The only real problem is that roguelike games often don't have good UI or any gameplay that gives us have interpersonal relationships (it's often just based on combat). Also, check out what Dwarf Fortress is trying to do. I wouldn't play the game if I were you, but I would at least look at the official website and look at the crazy things they are trying to do.
The future is still looking very promising. Our dreams are not going to stay in the realm of 'pipe dreams'.
I do agree with a lot of your other ideas though; I'm one of the few people who think that the few choices we've had in games like Fable II or Splinter Cell: Double Agent have been great examples of what games can do that no other entertainment/artistic medium can.
also, it seems like you're thinking too quantitatively as opposed to qualitatively. Too make choices qualitative and meaningful, we need to absolutely take them out of Alpha Protocol's menus and have them be completely intuition-based and executable without a prompt. If you've ever played "The Darkness" (ABSOLUTE SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING STOP READING HERE IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT) you are forced to kill the mob boss at the end who has hurt you greatly, resulting in Jackie basically being condemned to hell. Now, because you are in control, a real person could have left the room instead of shooting the helpless antagonist, avoiding condemning themselves to that fate. The developers chose not allow Jackie to leave that room--which I think is legitimate because I believe that a character forcing themselves to choose their own doom is entertaining. BUT--if that one qualitative choice had been implemented, it would be VERY special because some players might not even think to leave the room, especially if they're used to traditional game design. Choice in games will be perfect for me when they are subconcious on the part of the player--so that the player might not even realize they are there. The number of those choices doesn't matter nearly as much.
A mercenary is just a job title, so I don't think it would be out of the norm to be swayed be the current emotion. However, if throughout a substational portion of the game you were taking jobs bombing orphanages for the right price, than it's highly unlikely that you'd be swayed by a crying mother wanting her child to be saved for a couple pennies.
A virtous(white) knight killing people solely because he's annoyed by them is a bad choice and completely out of character. Obviously there are plenty of shades of grey in life. For me though, being able to make random choices that are out of line with an established characters pattern is a poor game design if there were ever hopes of having a true to life character and world. Unless of course everyone had DPD.
However, the underlying assumption is still embedded in a numerical mentality. Gamers ( and by gamers, I self-importantly mean me and people who agree with me) don't necessarily want more choices, they just want the choices to actually feel like their choices and not the developer's choices. Granted, unless something is done procedurally, every choice a player makes has been designed by the developer. However the player is able to suspend his knowledge of this if only the developer doesn't label the choice. In other words, choices would be far more interesting if I didn't know I was being given choices.
The reason people complain about binary decisions is because the developer is blatantly saying "this thing will happen, or this thing will happen." It completely destroys the immersion. It's kind of like walking through the middle of a forest without any trail, only to find a sign that points in to directions, and realizing that the trees were so narrow that we couldn't have take another path anyway.
Deus Ex is still a shining example of how to do choices correctly. While the game does give suggestions, you can not only make decisions not even mentioned, there are moments that allow you to blatantly disregard the advice and do things the game tells you not to do. For example, in the subway, you were essentially told to help this one guy turn on the water in exchange for a door code. You could simply hack the key pad at the expense of multitools, but let's pretend you help the guy anyway. Basically, you needed to have an explosive to clear away rubble. If you didn't have one (which is surprisingly uncommon), the guy suggested that you talk to a gang a bargain for one. However, if you talked to a guy in the bathroom, he would trade his for a vial of crack. You could then either pay a drug dealer for one, or simply kill him and take it from him. Or you could kill him and the gang mentioned previously would give you one as payment for "eliminating the competition and giving them the whole station." You could even kill off the entire gang for one. The list goes on. Notice how the game didn't present a selection of labeled buttons. Just getting into the place would normally cost a good amount of money, but if you saved an out of the way person earlier on, they give you the password to get in.
Fallout also provides some good examples. Take the second game, where you could poison a liquor still and kill of lots people. You had little reason to do so, and I don't think the game even mentioned it, but the result makes one feel downright empowered. Another example from the third game is whether or not to blow up megaton. While the decision is ultimately to either blow up the bomb, do nothing, or defuse it, the choices are not presented, but must be found. I know one person who played the game through twice and didn't even know know about Mr. Burke until I told them because they never went into the saloon before defusing the bomb. Granted, the game hints you to going into the saloon, but never forces you.
It really is a pity that choice has become something of a bullet point rather than an actually method of creativity. It isn't the actual choice that matters, but how it is presented.
That's exactly the zeitgeist in video games. "Choice" nowadays has become a requisite, in the way it's used to lure the player into the character he has to merge with.
Look at the Persona series, where they usually let you choose between a couple of sentences which sometimes say the same exact thing (with different words) or just things you just don't wanna say. Anyway it really doesn't affect anything at all. It's just put there to force you into the game.
Now look at Metal gear Solid, where the only choice you have is to save Otacon or Meryl by resisting the torture or not. The choice isn't explicit, but it is there and changes the game, giving it the value to play it all over again, the "re-playability" factor.
Let's now look at MGS3, you don't have choices, not one (if I recall correctly) and it's still one of the best games ever and (at least) I merged completely in the main character and the story.
I think you hit the right point when giving the real value at HOW choices are presented, like in Fallout where you often have to make choices, and they are usually more than 2, and they decide the amount of info you get and the mood you set and a lot of other factors that affect gameplay, but didn't contribute to the quality of the gameplay, because they where too clearly exposed. They felt more like an extra.
Another game where you had to make life-deciding choices? Doom. You either could go right, or you could go left. Now if you went right and the yellow card was left, and you were suddenly surrounded by spider-demons, you died (or made an onslaught of blood and raped the way out of that room to get the yellow card). Either way the gameplay was extremely fun. Dieing wasn't really frustrating, it encouraged me to play better the next time (and turn left!).
The point? How current games employ choices isn't original nor fun. It feels more like an "obligation".
Also where choices aren't explicit, binary karma isn't really a problem, because you aren't sure where you made the bad choice, because it wasn't really clear anyway ...
+10 points to you, Drakehenran!
That decision made the later events of the game hit home all the more effectively, and was completely organic in its implementation. Absolutely fantastic moment of a real choice that didn't affect the plot - but affected the players level of commitment to it.
Might take the plunge and write a blog on it actually.