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[Fimbulvetr]

Choices are stupid. Let actions decide the course of the game, not obvious choices.

Choice and Consequence in games has never been limited to picking a dialogue option from a list(see. the Silent Hill series, Obsidian games, the Ogre series). Even ME1 had a Paragon/Renegade thing that was based more in action(incapacitating a certain enemy vs. outright killing them even though the resource for doing the former is in short supply, meaning if you wanna save them all you have to play carefully) than dialogue.

 

[jeremy1456]

Thing is, WRPGs never give you much choice. They're good at masking it, but I've never played one in which I felt the decisions I was making had any huge effect on the scenario or gameplay.

Oddly enough I've found that fans of the genre will straight out lie to you about it too. I think people are beginning to realize that you don't have much choice so it's not as bad as it used to be, but it's still pretty bad.

I think Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen out WRPGs any WRPG in regards to choices having real impact. It's seamless in the game.

 

[KarmaCow]

Fake/meaningless choices are a lot like QTEs. They end up highlighting how little control I have instead making me feel like I made a difference. Whatever is built up from the "choices" I believe I made is instantly soured when they are revealed to affect nothing.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

If you're making a player make choices in the game, there should be consequences and they should affect the game. I want my choices to make a difference. I don't want to be given a choice of "Yes" or "No" and have the result of my choice end up with the exact same result (how a lot of old school JRPGs worked when given a "choice").

But thou must!

Yeah, as a long time JRPG fan who enjoyed the shit out of the dabbles in that kind of agency that would happen with Ogres and Megatens, I got in on WRPGs juuuuuuuuust as the curtain closed on that era in most major releases. Seeing most of the current crop do less than those tentative products of Matsuno's and Okada's minds doesn't color them very flatteringly.

In other words, I hate faux choice, but this generation is at the beck and call of Agoraphobic Gamers, so I can only roll my eyes at these things.

 

[Vulcano's assistant]

Portal 1 and 2 demonstrate that false choices can be super entertaining during that first and unique playthrough.

 

[bounchfx]

can we please refrain from spoiling shit in the op unless you give prior notice?

Spoiler

yes, I consider what you said about the choices in the walking dead a spoiler in a way, for sure

as for the topic, I think it's fine, it gives players the illusion of choice and feel like theyre somewhat empowered and still lets the writer/designer lead in the direction they wish the story to continue. It's really hard to make a game where the choices actually MATTER to a degree that you seem to desire, let alone do it and make it not completely suck/be bland.

 

[Taruranto]

.

 

[Dion Blaster]

what do you think of meaningless threads on neogaf? am i better served doing something more productive with my time?

 

[Boss Doggie]

Thing is, WRPGs never give you much choice. They're good at masking it, but I've never played one in which I felt the decisions I was making had any huge effect on the scenario or gameplay.

Exactly. It's pretty laughable when people tout choices and yet it ends up being obvious.

 

[Mindlog]

Choice with no real impact for the sake of making the player choose is completely pointless and unnecessary, and a waste of my time.

How or when do you know if your choice has a real impact?

.

That's actually a pretty good picture. Despite the variety of paths the character is going to go through the game once. Stretch it out and the character's path is as linear as the bad example. Does choice only become meaningful because the game player can step back and explore every path?

 

[andymcc]

.

what about linear action games that are way better than open-world, open-ended games.

 

[MegaKungFuRadio]

How or when do you know if your choice has a real impact?

When you hop on GAF or YouTube and see something that wasn't in your game.

Or when you replay the game in Opposite World.

With most games, this completely shatters the illusion of choice, but it's funny that with others, it reveals a choice when you didn't even realize there was one. I'm still not sure why my helicopter pilot died in Deus Ex and others' didn't.

 

[SkyOdin]

How or when do you know if your choice has a real impact?

Often, pretty much immediately. If a game delays the impact of your choice to an unspecified future (or even to a future game), then you know your choice is pretty meaningless. However, if your choice causes an immediate and discernible change in the flow of the game, you know it has really huge meaning.

For example, most Mass Effect choices are the "delayed for some unspecified future" type. On the other hand, choices in a game like Way of the Samurai can have pretty dramatic and immediate repercussions. The very first choice of the game can end up with the player being invited to meet a major political player, meeting some friendly townspeople, or with the player tied to a set of train-tracks. For that matter, the player can just take the option of ignoring the entire event.

Likewise, the major choices in Tactics Ogre trigger a pretty gigantic change in the flow of the game, which is seen immediately.

 

[OfWhiteSkinOnRedLeather]

I think choices only need to have meaning to the person on the other end of the controller.

And if they have no meaning in the game, they have no meaning to me, on the other end of the controller.

 

[EternalGamer]

To elaborate, I'm referring to choices in games that have minimal impact or consequences, beyond maybe some altered dialogue lines or minor cosmetic changes.

I'm thinking of this topic because I recently finished The Walking Dead. It was a decent experience, but the final episode was virtually unaffected by choices made in earlier episodes. There were no real branching paths, characters ended up in similar situations no matter what the player did, and people even sometimes reacted the same to you regardless of how you treated them in the past. Even Lee Everett himself barely changed as a result of your choices. Mass Effect 3 is another recent game where this sort of fake choice is prevalent.

By contrast, I've played some recent-ish games with choices that had profound consequences. Fallout: New Vegas is a good example. Alpha Protocol is another, older one. Even the demo for Age of Decadence, a low-budget indie RPG, had far more impactful choice and consequence than the majority of games.

So my question is this: what do you think of Mass Effect 3-style choices? Do you find them deeply unsatisfying (like I do), or does this fig leaf of choice get you more involved in the story and characters of a game, despite being basically illusory?

Actually I just finished New Vegas and Walking Dead both in the last month so they are fresh on my mind for comparison. But I will try to keep this post vague and fairly spoiler free.


First, I disagree strongly with the idea that the choices in Walking Dead were "meaningless." Again, I won't go into spoiler territory, but I will simply say that having characters react to your decisions in a very contextual and human way is WAY cooler to me than the type of generic responses you get in Fallout New Vegas.

I mean, no matter what we do in life, we all in end up dead some day and everyone you know will end up dead. How you treat a random stranger on the street that you will never see again is likely not to have any visible impact on your life. And in the larger scheme of things, very few of us will make any "choices" that make much of an impact in the larger scheme of things that will last a hundred years from now. Does that make such choices all "meaningless"? I would argue not at all. The helped to define us and our relationships with others and that is exactly what Walking Dead does so well.

The type of choice where you get to decide between being the hero of the universe and you who kill and who you let live, as you do in Fallout New Vegas lacks any real human connection. I liked New Vegas better than vanilla Fallout 3, but I never felt really invested in anything that happened in that world because of all the generic responses and dumb AI. For instance, I hacked the sentry guns in the Brotherhood of Steel based and let them kill everyone that walked in their path then I stripped them of their goodies and sold all that stuff back to the merchant there. People walked around the dead bodies and characters talked as if nothing ever happened. That's not depth or meaning. That's entirely shallow. The choices you make rarely have any impact on the relationships you form with other character in New Vegas because you simply don't have many real relationships. Characters are rarely little more than dialog trees in that universe. I don't find hearing hundreds of people going around saying the exact same phrase--"Boy, I am sure glad <insert faction> is dead"--to be satisfying repercussion of my choices in the least.

In short, I think your conception of "meaningful" choices needs some serious re-evaluation. I could randomly hop in my car and drive to New Mexico tonight if I wanted. But that doesn't mean that is a more "meaningful" choice than the words I choose when I talk to my mother on the phone tomorrow even if there are not hyper-dramatic repercussions in the later.

 

[toddhunter]

Twd choices were about as meaningful as it gets.

However without going into spoilers there is a major choice that the game ignores. This ruined the end for me to some extent.

The key of course, is if you are going to do "choice" to make sure you do it really well.

 

[Taruranto]

what about linear action games that are way better than open-world, open-ended games.

Well, i think it mostly refers to wrpg. I think no one cares about this in, say, Bayonetta.

 

[scorpscarx]

Who cares, it's just a game, for branching choices that really is how I stand.

 

[crazy monkey]

skyward sword is full of it.

 

[Freshmaker]

I think Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen out WRPGs any WRPG in regards to choices having real impact. It's seamless in the game.

Tactics Ogre did that better IMO. No fictional character's ever pissed me off as much as the MC's sister did in that game.

OB went with that obnoxious alignment scale. Anything I did, oh that's evil! You're evil! So I made a vampire and had him shred everyone... Their fault for attacking me. Running from low level units was too annoying.

 

[djtiesto]

I find that all choices are meaningless in games because you know what you "chose" and you know the outcome, and you know, generally, what would have probably happened had you chosen otherwise. (Mass Effect 3 character fate spoiler):

Spoiler

in ME3, for example, Mordin can live or die-- making it absolutely meaningless because, at least for me, I was thinking "well that's sad but I'm sure I can play through the game again and make him not die" so his death didn't feel permanent and therefore did not have any impact on me, regardless of how well it was handled

.

I would much rather have a well thought out and executed narrative as opposed to one that could be compromised in quality because the writers have such a workload when not only writing a hefty script, but having to write multiple versions of different outcomes. That being said I understand that there are people who love this sort of thing, but obviously I'm only speaking for myself here. It's just something I'm supremely indifferent about.

Yup, I'm really indifferent about dialogue selection in games. I'd rather a game focus on a well-told story (or other things like combat system) than having subtle changes to the text depending on what I selected in a dialogue tree. The one game I can recall with an awesome choice was Front Mission 3. You can select whether or not to go with your friend about 2 hours into the game... and depending on what you selected, you got to play one of 2 completely different, fully fleshed-out, 40+ hour long storylines.

Thing is, WRPGs never give you much choice. They're good at masking it, but I've never played one in which I felt the decisions I was making had any huge effect on the scenario or gameplay.

Oddly enough I've found that fans of the genre will straight out lie to you about it too. I think people are beginning to realize that you don't have much choice so it's not as bad as it used to be, but it's still pretty bad.

I think Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen out WRPGs any WRPG in regards to choices having real impact. It's seamless in the game.

In the olden days they had more but I agree that many modern-day western RPGs are filled with meaningless choice that is just there for bullet point sakes. As it becomes more costly to produce assets/voiceovers/etc., companies are gonna want the player to see as much as possible with the game, so they will do the best they can to create the illusion of choice, in a way less blatant than the "but thou must!" of DQ1.

 

[Fimbulvetr]

So, where do people draw the line at what makes choice an illusion? Or whether that illusion can be done well?

Like, in New Vegas, when you’re given an option to retroactively flesh out your blank slate(by, say, claiming to have seen an NPC before, or something that otherwise implies some sort of history to your character). Is that act of informing your character only an illusion? If so, is that necessarily bad, even though it only serves to foster immersion?

What about, say, Catherine’s choices? 99% of them only affect which of the two love interests Vincent prefers and some minor dialogue, but that it-self has a major effect on the game’s possible endings.

Exactly. It's pretty laughable when people tout choices and yet it ends up being obvious.

Can you clarify this?

What about being obvious makes a choice bad?

I'm still not sure why my helicopter pilot died in Deus Ex and others' didn't.

You just have to take out all the enemies before the helicopter takes too much damage. It’s doable, even on a no-kill run.

If a game delays the impact of your choice to an unspecified future (or even to a future game), then you know your choice is pretty meaningless.

What about stuff like the recruitment missions in Tactics Ogre? Many of them are based on choices that only pan out in later chapters(like with Ravness or Ozma); it’s to the point where you may not even realize you’re making a choice at the time.

Well, i think it mostly refers to wrpg. I think no one cares about this in, say, Bayonetta.

Actually, the full comic is referring to games in general.

Yup, I'm really indifferent about dialogue selection in games.

Have you played Tactics Ogre or The Witcher 2?

 

[Mindlog]

Again, just for my own purposes I am trying to answer questions from the perspective of my first playthrough without knowing every outcome.

Can you clarify this?

What about being obvious makes a choice bad?

I like this question. My answer is similar to what SkyOdin mentioned earlier. Let's say I'm given a choice between letting a villain go or saving some hostages. If I make the obvious 'good' choice and save the hostages something else needs to happen in short order. If the game establishes a pattern where 'good' is always immediately rewarded then the choices are trivialized.

I'll take another example from a frequently mentioned game. We're given a situation where colonists have been infected and will attack you on sight. You must get through the colony to find the villain. You're given an option. You can either subdue the colonists with non-lethal weapons or just mow them all down. As before if the previously established pattern always rewards 'good' then my choice is trivialized. What if the game punished my 'good' decision?

This is going to take me back to one of my earlier questions/themes.

What if all the colonists I saved are once again infected by the villain and used to make the final encounter more difficult? In the context of an 'all-knowing player' my choice has been trivialized. Either way I have to kill all of the colonists. In the context of my 'ignorant first playthrough' it grants every future choice more weight (unless this device is used too frequently.) I'm forced to take into account that even the obviously 'good' decisions have consequences.

 

[Canis lupus]

Mass Effect, in the end everyone does the same thing with the exact same endings.

 

[Skyzard]

Just jumping in but it may be minimal in some ways but if it helps prevent you from breaking that immersion with (wtf are these choices-types of reactions) then it is relatively important imo, especially when you go for that sort of interactive story telling.

Hearing the appropriate response to what you would choose is enough of a consequence sometimes.

 

[REMEMBER CITADEL]

I don't think giving the illusion of choice is necessarily bad, but some games manage to pull it off better than others. If you plan on letting the player seemingly influence the story, you better have several different endings at the very least. I really hate it when you're allowed to change your mind at the very last moment. For instance, in Deus Ex (and DE: IW, I haven't played DE: HR yet) your choices don't really matter since you can always change your mind during the last mission. No, don't do that. Your alignments should be firmly set by that point.

 

[Anth0ny]

Pokemon Black 2 has so many of those bullshit YES OR NO? dialogues where you can't progress until you say yes. Real annoying.

 

[subversus]

Thing is, WRPGs never give you much choice. They're good at masking it, but I've never played one in which I felt the decisions I was making had any huge effect on the scenario or gameplay.

you haven't played The Witcher 2

 

[Randdalf]

Pokemon Black 2 has so many of those bullshit YES OR NO? dialogues where you can't progress until you say yes. Real annoying.

Golden Sun has loads of those too. What's funny though, is that you can disagree to save the world early on in the game if you select "No" enough, and then the world actually ends.

I prefer the games that have no explicit choices, and your choices are determined through your actions rather than through which option you select in a dialogue tree.

 

[Glass Rebel]

Golden Sun has loads of those too. What's funny though, is that you can disagree to save the world early on in the game if you select "No" enough, and then the world actually ends.

I prefer the games that have no explicit choices, and your choices are determined through your actions rather than through which option you select in a dialogue tree.

It's funny that the only question that has a consequence ends your game :lol still love them though.

 

[REMEMBER CITADEL]

Thing is, WRPGs never give you much choice. They're good at masking it, but I've never played one in which I felt the decisions I was making had any huge effect on the scenario or gameplay.

I'd really like to know which WRPGs you've played, there are quite a few in which your choices truly influence how the story plays out, and in most of them they certainly influence the gameplay.

 

[Droplet]

FFXIII-2 had some of the least meaningful choices you can find in a game. I actually liked them though. I don't like the stress of making choices in games

Spoiler

because I always make the wrong ones and I don't have the time to play them through multiple times

but it still provided me entertainment and gave me the ability to be at least slightly involved in the cutscenes that would otherwise be bland as hell.

I also hate it when games have obvious morally good and evil choices. I loved Catherine's choice system because even when I was shooting for what I thought was good or evil I still ended up answering things "wrongly" occasionally.

 

[fuzzyreactor]

i don't like them. i prefer my choice to be like dark souls where one yes or no answer can lead to a whole new play-through

 

[IonicSnake]

I hate meaningless choices. It's funny that the choices in black ops 2 have more impact on the outcome than both the walking dead and me3.

 

[DTJAAAAM]

Always hated this "choice":

C'mon, just look at Ledon! There's no way in hell I'd willingly drink tea from that guy.

 

[N30RYU]

Is not the choices, but the illusion of choices... like the invisible walls...

 

[Lancehead]

Actually I just finished New Vegas and Walking Dead both in the last month so they are fresh on my mind for comparison. But I will try to keep this post vague and fairly spoiler free.


First, I disagree strongly with the idea that the choices in Walking Dead were "meaningless." Again, I won't go into spoiler territory, but I will simply say that having characters react to your decisions in a very contextual and human way is WAY cooler to me than the type of generic responses you get in Fallout New Vegas.

I mean, no matter what we do in life, we all in end up dead some day and everyone you know will end up dead. How you treat a random stranger on the street that you will never see again is likely not to have any visible impact on your life. And in the larger scheme of things, very few of us will make any "choices" that make much of an impact in the larger scheme of things that will last a hundred years from now. Does that make such choices all "meaningless"? I would argue not at all. The helped to define us and our relationships with others and that is exactly what Walking Dead does so well.

The type of choice where you get to decide between being the hero of the universe and you who kill and who you let live, as you do in Fallout New Vegas lacks any real human connection. I liked New Vegas better than vanilla Fallout 3, but I never felt really invested in anything that happened in that world because of all the generic responses and dumb AI. For instance, I hacked the sentry guns in the Brotherhood of Steel based and let them kill everyone that walked in their path then I stripped them of their goodies and sold all that stuff back to the merchant there. People walked around the dead bodies and characters talked as if nothing ever happened. That's not depth or meaning. That's entirely shallow. The choices you make rarely have any impact on the relationships you form with other character in New Vegas because you simply don't have many real relationships. Characters are rarely little more than dialog trees in that universe. I don't find hearing hundreds of people going around saying the exact same phrase--"Boy, I am sure glad <insert faction> is dead"--to be satisfying repercussion of my choices in the least.

In short, I think your conception of "meaningful" choices needs some serious re-evaluation. I could randomly hop in my car and drive to New Mexico tonight if I wanted. But that doesn't mean that is a more "meaningful" choice than the words I choose when I talk to my mother on the phone tomorrow even if there are not hyper-dramatic repercussions in the later.

Your criticism of New Vegas is strange. Because while the game has some issues with its presentation of consequences of the player's choices, the consequences are meaningful for the most part. My biggest issue with New Vegas in choice and consequence is the lack of post-Hoover play, even though Obsidian didn't have enough time to implement that.

Which brings me to my point about end game choices. Unless the game has post-end game play showcasing reactivity to those end game choices, they almost always feel lacking, even if those consequences on paper are quite meaningful.

 

[Ravage]

It does piss me off quite a bit when a game promising 'a variety of ways to play' turns out to be a phony with meaningless fake 'options'. This applies to games with meaningless crafting mechanics which are essentially grindfests in disguise. Or games with hundreds of abilities/gear that basically do the same thing except A>B>C.

I'm indifferent to plot-related choices in games and have yet to experience an 'interactive' story that lives up to its promise. Doubt my stance will change anytime soon simply because of economic realities.

 

[Chairman Yang]

I've been thinking about this in the context of ending choices; Fable II, Deus Ex 1-3, Mass Effect 3, and especially Bastion. I think what I've come around to is that all choices in games are meaningless, and they only have value insofar as they measure the investment you've already made in the game.

Bastion is a good example to illustrate what I mean. Bastion allows you to pick between two endings. Obviously you can watch the one you didn't pick on Youtube or reload and replay or whatever (as you can with any game or any choice--anyone who played ME1 did a second playthrough where they picked the opposite choice at the nuke scene), so there's no actual consequence. However, if you've invested in the characters/setting as you've played the game, you internally have a dilemma to face. Yes, it's about nothing, but if you have even the slightest pang of guilt inside you, then you perceive that the choice impacts your emotional investment so far.

What I'm trying to say is that maybe instead of trying to measure the value of a choice, we should use the choice as a way to measure the way in which we value the game up until that point.

Fable III might be a counter-point, based on the rather significant choice made in the introductory scene.

Hmm...so if I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that choices have value because they're essentially a way of letting the player express themselves? Specifically, express their reaction to the game so far?

That's an interesting take, and one I've seen Walking Dead defenders use, but I'd argue that expression-by-choice is much more meaningful when the game reacts significantly. Like, if I believe strongly in Caesar's tyrannical regime in New Vegas, and I express support for him, having the world change as a result of that choice has lots of impact. You don't just get the appeal of self-expression, you also get the appeal of the game acknowledging that self-expression. It's like the difference between writing, say, a short story purely for yourself, and writing a short story for yourself that happens to be seen by lots of people who then react to it.

 

[Chairman Yang]

Actually I just finished New Vegas and Walking Dead both in the last month so they are fresh on my mind for comparison. But I will try to keep this post vague and fairly spoiler free.

First, I disagree strongly with the idea that the choices in Walking Dead were "meaningless." Again, I won't go into spoiler territory, but I will simply say that having characters react to your decisions in a very contextual and human way is WAY cooler to me than the type of generic responses you get in Fallout New Vegas.

I mean, no matter what we do in life, we all in end up dead some day and everyone you know will end up dead. How you treat a random stranger on the street that you will never see again is likely not to have any visible impact on your life. And in the larger scheme of things, very few of us will make any "choices" that make much of an impact in the larger scheme of things that will last a hundred years from now. Does that make such choices all "meaningless"? I would argue not at all. The helped to define us and our relationships with others and that is exactly what Walking Dead does so well.

The type of choice where you get to decide between being the hero of the universe and you who kill and who you let live, as you do in Fallout New Vegas lacks any real human connection. I liked New Vegas better than vanilla Fallout 3, but I never felt really invested in anything that happened in that world because of all the generic responses and dumb AI. For instance, I hacked the sentry guns in the Brotherhood of Steel based and let them kill everyone that walked in their path then I stripped them of their goodies and sold all that stuff back to the merchant there. People walked around the dead bodies and characters talked as if nothing ever happened. That's not depth or meaning. That's entirely shallow. The choices you make rarely have any impact on the relationships you form with other character in New Vegas because you simply don't have many real relationships. Characters are rarely little more than dialog trees in that universe. I don't find hearing hundreds of people going around saying the exact same phrase--"Boy, I am sure glad <insert faction> is dead"--to be satisfying repercussion of my choices in the least.

In short, I think your conception of "meaningful" choices needs some serious re-evaluation. I could randomly hop in my car and drive to New Mexico tonight if I wanted. But that doesn't mean that is a more "meaningful" choice than the words I choose when I talk to my mother on the phone tomorrow even if there are not hyper-dramatic repercussions in the later.

I see what you're saying...that consequences can have meaning if they deal with human relationships rather than just gameplay or story effects. I agree. I just don't see how the Walking Dead does those relationship consequences particularly well. There are a few differences here and there over the five episodes (mostly related to one character in particular,

Spoiler

Kenny

, and mostly in the form of a few changed dialogue bits) but you're mostly railroaded into a narrow band of possibilities. Aside from the one character I mentioned, your choices have minimal effects on Lee's relationship with others. If you're saying that TWD's choices essentially boil down to self-expression, that's fine, but as I mentioned in my previous post, self-expression has much more meaning if characters and the world react to it in more than a superficial way.

New Vegas actually did this relationship stuff much better than TWD, although it was easy to miss. Read up on Arcade Gannon, for example. Your relationship with him is profoundly affected by your dialogue and non-dialogue actions. I agree that there were plenty of generic responses, but with the depth and breadth of choice and consequence in New Vegas, that was probably unavoidable.

 

[Goldenroad]

It never ends up being my favorite part of a game, but I'm fine with it. I'd rather have some interaction with the game during the story parts than to have to just sit through a long dialogue sequence. Interaction is the very essence of this medium, so even if it's pointless, as most everything you do in every game is, it's still better than not interacting with the game.

 

[djtiesto]

Have you played Tactics Ogre or The Witcher 2?

Haven't played Tactics Ogre yet, even though I own both the PS1 and PSP version. Witcher 2 did both paths. I did mention in my post that I like when story choices have a huge effect on the games though (using Front Mission 3 as an example). But all the other choices in Witcher 2 felt kinda meaningless, after the confrontation with Letho the actual ending was really pointless.

I just don't find that choices add to my enjoyment of a game all too much. I see lots of great games get shitted on for their perceived linearity (mostly Japanese RPGs by westaboos) but I'd rather play a linear game without dialogue selection provided their battle system/challenge/art style/music/etc is better than the alternative.

 

[Kageshinzo]

Thing is, WRPGs never give you much choice. They're good at masking it, but I've never played one in which I felt the decisions I was making had any huge effect on the scenario or gameplay.

If I remember correctly, The Witcher totally gives you a whole new act depending on the choices you made across the game.

 

[ninge]

Best choice ever was at the start of paper mario. If you keep on replying "no" to whether you want to go on the quest to save the world it gives you a "game over" and throws you back to the title screen and you have to go through the whole intro again from scratch

 

[Kinyou]

The illusion of a choice has basically the same value as a real one. You just shouldn't play through the game again or look at other people's playthroughs (which however is for some weird reason encouraged by developers like bioware or quantic dream)

I actually disliked that I had to make a real choice in Witcher 2. I had to play trough the game twice to get the full experience, because very important story details get only explained/revealed in one of the story paths.

 

[1-D_FTW]

They're a lot better if they're just meaningless (Meaning I can say no, but you just make up a new excuse for the double-cross you're sending me on).

I remember the old JRPGs, where somebody was clearly about to screw you, and your options were:

1.) Go along.

2.) Happily join.

3.) Be BFF.

Picks 1.

"You've just been double crossed and kicked to the moon. Escape from the moon now. How could you have been so fooled?"

 

[megalowho]

I cringed at meaningless in the title, knowing that the OP had to be talking about The Walking Dead in some capacity.

Personally I prefer a game where the mechanic of choice comes from an instinctual place, a gut reaction distilled through the character you're controlling and the situation at hand, as opposed to an open ended power fantasy where whatever the player wants, they get. Or where a seemingly moral choice is essentially the difference between better guns or better armor.

Do I wish Telltale had a bigger budget to add even more personalization to their game? Sure. Is there room for both types of experiences? Of course. But having a core story that must be serviced doesn't make the choices you make in TWD meaningless. I reckon they'll stick with me longer than anything I ever did in the RPG's mentioned, at least. Shaping a character, even in a controlled environment, is just as meaningful as shaping a world.

 

[pantsmith]

As a kid I was fascinated with Final Fantasy VII's behind the scenes tally of who you'd end up at the Golden Saucer with for a date. There were no "Affection Increased/Decreased" signals, and I'm sure the first person to end up there with Barrett felt awfully strange when he went to talk to his friends about it, since they probably scored a date with Tifa or Aerith.

Again, like The Walking Dead, the rest of the game still plays out the same. Does that make the choice meaningless? I read somewhere that the game has unused code that keeps a tally of who you took into battle, how many times you let them die, and so on. Whether or not the game is keeping score, aren't these choices tiny roleplaying decisions still shaping your story? You can bet that Tifa became a staple of my party towards the second half of the game in large part because of her helping Cloud hold on to his identity, rather than her stats or the effectiveness of her limit break.

In my mind, any choice is an opportunity to shape the story to your liking, and while I really do appreciate games like Alpha Protocol where I can watch my choices literally shape the game I'm playing around me, I'd still like to think even an unrewarded choice has made a difference.

My Lee in The Walking Dead is different than your Lee precisely because of my possession of him. No matter how doomed each decision he made is, it was made with the utmost care and compassion to keep his group's humanity alive, especially Clementine's. I haven't finished the 5th chapter yet (and it's killing me to avoid all these spoilers), but I feel like I've done everything I could to put Clementine in the best position the game allowed me to, and that means everything to how I'll feel about the ending, and my time with the game.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

So, where do people draw the line at what makes choice an illusion? Or whether that illusion can be done well?

Honesty and respect for the player. It's linear? It better totally out of our hands. Choices? They better have reprocussions.

 

[subversus]

Your criticism of New Vegas is strange. Because while the game has some issues with its presentation of consequences of the player's choices, the consequences are meaningful for the most part. My biggest issue with New Vegas in choice and consequence is the lack of post-Hoover play, even though Obsidian didn't have enough time to implement that.

Which brings me to my point about end game choices. Unless the game has post-end game play showcasing reactivity to those end game choices, they almost always feel lacking, even if those consequences on paper are quite meaningful.

His criticisms are legit but hardware struggled with what it had to process. I think it's not possible to make AI more aware on the current hardware given the scope of NV.