Questions about choices in PoE

[anameforobsidian]

I believe JE Sawyer said that Eternity will be aiming for the same amount of endings as New Vegas, or even more.

RE: Alpha Protocol, I don't recall their being multiple endings. I think it just boiled down to join Halbech or take it down.

...

Man I really want an Alpha Protocol sequel.

 

There were a metric crapton of different endings, since you would interact with each character differently based on your relationship with them and thus they would have different goals.  Hell, the choice to take down the arms-dealer or not in the first mission changed the outcome of the ending.  Yes, it only had two main endings, but FNV only had 4 main endings.

Edited February 21, 2014 by anameforobsidian

[Lephys]

I have no qualms with linear games, just qualms with games pretending to be nonlinear, giving me the finger, than throwing me down a single path.

Agreed. I don't need every individual choice (every line of dialogue you pick out of a list in a single conversation, for example) to produce some huge effect on the situation at hand, much less the future, but at the very least, you should be able to affect the general outcome of things.

 

I'm going to use an example of The Walking Dead: 400 Days to illustrate how this kinda sucks.

 

*SPOILER ALERT*

 

In one segment, you play as a "kid" (He's probably college age?) named Russell. You start out, walking down a highway as the sun's setting. Some crazy guy pulls up in his truck. You can hide from him, or you can "stand your ground" on the side of the highway. Doesn't really matter which. It might affect how he reacts to that character later on (in Season 2 or something, outside the span of 400 Days), which is cool, but it doesn't affect anything at all in Russell's segment of 400 Days. Then, he asks your name. You can either be honest, or lie to him. Your name's on your backpack strap, so he knows either way, and either just becomes distrustful of you or appreciates your honesty. Anywho... then, you can reject a ride from him, or just gladly accept the ride. Either way, you ride with him. You pull up at a diner/gas station. People inside start shooting at you. He asks you to cover him while he makes a run for other cover (so you guys can make your way around to the back of the diner), and you get the choice of doing so, or aiming the gun at him, followed by the choice of "[shoot him.]" (brackets denoting an action choice). But guess what? You don't get to shoot him. The safety's on or something. They don't really say. So, now he's just pissed at you. But, NO MATTER WHAT, the only two outcomes of that situation are:

 

A) die and stop playing the game or retry, or

B) shoot at the people in the diner and make your way around the back, then go inside and disarm the old couple in there, then either HELP the crazy guy kill them and take their stuff, or tell him he's a meanie-face crazy guy and walk away as he kills them and takes their stuff.

 

You get like 50 individual choices in that segment of the game, and yet, the ONLY difference you can effect in the outcome is whether or not you stick with the guy (who's blatantly crazy, no matter what you do... you don't even have to TRY to figure out he's insane and horrible), or walk away from him. You don't even CHOOSE to walk away from him. You choose to tell him he's frickin' nuts, and that's automatically a choice to have your character casually walk away and let him kill an old couple and take all their stuff.

[Sir Chaox]

Eh, it's not like we don't know how the game will end. The protagonist is going to kill the remaining members of the Circle of Nine, choose not to sacrifice him/her self to restore the Pillar of Balance, leading to the collapse of the Pillars of Eternity, and usher in a dark age ruled by vampires.

 

They already had the Neverwinter Nine; Circle of Nine would be redundant. How about the Square of Seven?

 

Otherwise, a flawless masterpiece in the making. Avellone, you've done it again!

[Hiro Protagonist]

 

Looks like I'm in the minority with enjoying linear games with the illusion of choice.

 

Sorry, that wasn't the impression I intended to give.  I have no qualms with linear games, just qualms with games pretending to be nonlinear, giving me the finger, than throwing me down a single path.

 

As I said, I don't mind that. I don't mind there being a big bad guy at the end (Sarevok, Irenicus, etc) and choosing different ways to get to the end. Choosing to decide to do certain side quests or not. But it looks like I'm in the minority.

[Caerdon]

Could we please stop talking about the number of endings? It's a completely meaningless quantity. Most of the time it simply refers to the product of the number of different choices at specific points in the game, and each choice will typically result in a specific piece of dialogue or cutscene. A game with ten yes/no choices can have 1024 endings, but none of those endings are likely to particularly meaningful, enjoyable, surprising or thought-provoking.

 

What matters is not the amount of different endings but how satisfying the ending is. Having the ending react to your choices during the game is one way and one part of making it satisfying, but it's not the only way or the only part. And while I love endings like that and I always prefer to have them, they aren't strictly required to make a game great - it just means that the other factors will have to be great enough to compensate.

 

As for the choices mattering during the game, I'd love it if the game locked you out of a signifcant amount of content based on your choices, whether that content is areas to explore, people to meet, loot to find or plotlines to follow. The old IE games didn't have much of that and were great in spite of that, but I feel it would certainly add to my enjoyment.

[Pipyui]

As I said, I don't mind that. I don't mind there being a big bad guy at the end (Sarevok, Irenicus, etc) and choosing different ways to get to the end. Choosing to decide to do certain side quests or not. But it looks like I'm in the minority.

 

 

Could we please stop talking about the number of endings?

 

Ohhhh.  I didn't even know we were operating in this context.  This first comment confused me at first. 

No, my previous comments shouldn't be read in terms of this context, but in terms of choice branches in general, and I still stand by these points.  I don't have any particularly strong preference towards having multiple endings.

Edited February 22, 2014 by Pipyui

[Lephys]

Of course, in regard to number of endings, it kinda depends on what you mean, too. I mean, if you can end the game with 1,000 factors in place, PLUS the 1,001st being your pet pig is still alive, versus ending the game with all those 1,000 factors exactly the same, but your pet pig dead, that could be considered 2 different endings. Which, I think, further supports the importance of the significance of choice-consequence representation in the ending, even if there's only "one" actual ending.

 

Ehh, in other words, someone talking about significantly representing choices throughout the game in affecting the circumstances under which even a single ending takes place could seem to be referring to the quantity of endings, when really they're just talking about being able to affect a lot of different particulars in the ending(s).

[RodWarrior]

Lephys I Actually Agree with the 400 days DLC choices, but I think the TWD "OC" is a very good example of choices done right in a linear environment. I actually got really involved with the story, and my experience (And the personality Lee and his relationship with Clementine) were VERY different of what my friends played.
So, while the story is the same, and everything happens no matter what, I think that certain choices help you get into the story and actually create a stronger immersion, even if they are "meaningless". 

[darthdraken]

Good writing is important but the main difference between a book and a game besides visual is the fact a game is a story book that your a part off and your actions reflect it.

A book is a form of reading someone elses story using your imagination to fill in the visual part.

Like a movie a none interactive story with visual.

So a game is a blend of all including choice.

Take a simple game like THE WALKING DEAD chapters 1-5 a prime example of choice, branching and game result.

I do hope a complex branch system is used that has a strong reflection on the world.

It is the way forward. If i wanted a game on rails then i would play call.of duty or the new thief game as thats on rails too.

[Lephys]

Lephys I Actually Agree with the 400 days DLC choices, but I think the TWD "OC" is a very good example of choices done right in a linear environment. I actually got really involved with the story, and my experience (And the personality Lee and his relationship with Clementine) were VERY different of what my friends played.

So, while the story is the same, and everything happens no matter what, I think that certain choices help you get into the story and actually create a stronger immersion, even if they are "meaningless".

In the interest of understanding, I'd really like to know why you agree with those choices. Also, for what it's worth, I don't hate that DLC segment or anything. Overall, I enjoy the 400 Days bit. I also realize that it's mostly setting up circumstances and seeds for future interactions and situations in Season 2.

 

I think you misunderstand me, possibly. I'm not trying to say that something is bad just because it's linear. Or that literally every different choice you make should effect some significant difference in an outcome. But, in situations like that, unless you've written the character, himself, to just be a certain way (if you've written some super hardened badass character, then you probably can't have him cry about people not being polite, and missing tea time, etc.), it's a bit bad form to offer SO many choices that feasibly SHOULD affect SOME-thing, but don't really do so.

 

I don't mind linearity, but, don't pretend something isn't linear, then just make it entirely linear. Russell's segment is really the worst one I can think of. The rest of them are basically just linear happenings, with a few little active decisions/branches here and there. But, Russell's... your character already knows this Nate guy is friggin' insane. And you can clearly choose to tell him that/feel that way, etc., and want nothing to do with him. And it even lets you aim a loaded gun at him and "shoot him," only to just pull a "PSYCH!" on you. And, ohhhh noooo, he doesn't like you. That's the "significant" result. Also, you can draw a gun on him there (and actually pull the trigger), just 'cause you think he's crazy while you're BOTH under fire, but, when he flat out tells you he's going to murder this little old couple that already claims he planned all this and has visited/attacked them before, all you can do is either join him or walk away after slapping him on the wrist and telling him "You'd better behave yourself, or else I'm going to like you even LESS than 0!"

 

If you want something to be linear, you write it a different way. Like with Shel's story. There's no option, at the end, to pretend to go to the trailer and just blow Roman's head off. That's understandable. The writers of that character are allowing me to control her, but she's still that character. I don't get to make her do whatever I want. And yet, you can decide to vote not to kill the blindfolded guy that they caught stealing stuff. And that wasn't even in the presence of crazy people you hate. But Russell, who's obviously against what Nate's doing with every fiber of his being (and just personally hates the guy), isn't even upset enough to attack him, or try and stop him, from killing a little old couple?

 

It's not any particular choice of that arc. It's just that literally everything you do in that arc only affects 2 possible things in the end:

 

1) Whether or not Nate dislikes Russell.

2) Whether or not Russell stays with Nate.

 

That's it. And it's one of the arcs with the most stuff going on in it, in the present of it.

 

That was why I used it as an example.

 

The thing about linearity in a story is, you're free to create it however you want. It's not like you're just telling a real story, so you can't change things or something. You're not forced into a specific situation, then made to arbitrarily write heavy-handed choices just so that that situation plays out how you wanted it to. You can just write the situation differently.

[RodWarrior]

I understand what you say, I just wanted to express that while I'm actually a fan of C&C above everything, (And actually agree with the non-meaningful choices in the Russel story), I think that there's actually ways to have a "forced" outcome, with meaningful choices.

 

You see, the 1-5 are actually VERY linear, and you have the same outcome, despite of your choices... But you actually feel like you made a choice.

 

All that because you said  "(...)but at the very least, you should be able to affect the general outcome of things."

 

What I really wanted to say, is that you actually CAN create the illusion of choice in a way that mean something, without affecting the general outcome. Like Lee's last words to his brother in Ep. 1, just to have an example.

 

Just because Russel is a poorly written wreck, doesn't mean that forcing something is always as bad... you can have choices that don't affect the outcome AT ALL, but are still choices.... Even if they're meaningless in the "Consequence" way, they can be very powerful in the narrative point of view.

 

I hope you can understand what I mean...

 

--

Sorry if I don't express myself very well, I'm not a native english speaker... And while I can easily understand everything I read or listen, it's somewhat hard to me to express, especially when writing  

[PrimeJunta]

Cool topic. And whoa, long post. I'll try not to make this a habit.

 

I like to look at this in terms of structure. There are a number of options, each of which has strengths and drawbacks.

 

Mostly linear. This is the "late BioWare" style. The story arc remains the same whatever you do. Choices are mostly illusionary; the least illusionary choices are related to the kind of role you're playing, e.g. hero vs. anti-hero. The advantage is that it's easier to write, which can lead to better pacing, fewer inconsistencies, a tighter narrative, and deeper interactions with NPC's, both party and non-party. This is also easy to sell to publishers as there's no "wasted" content -- every player gets most of it with every play-through. The downside is that you as the player have much less agency, and if taken too far you end up in adventure game territory. It also doesn't help replayability.

 

Branching. This is the "Witcher" style. There's a grand story arc, but the plot branches at some predetermined points, depending on your choices. It retains many of the advantages of the mostly linear style in that the writers still have overall control over what goes down and can write accordingly "deep" stories. The downside is that with more than a few branches, especially if they cross, this can get seriously hairy to keep together, which can lead to narrative and even technical problems like dead ends. It's also hard to keep all the branches fully fleshed-out. In The Witcher 2, for example, one of the branches left a great deal of the underlying story untold, which made the endgame highly confusing (I played that one first), and in The Witcher 1, playing the investigation sequence in the "wrong" order could get very confusing indeed.

 

Sandbox. Here we have a very loose grand story arc that's funneled through a few chokepoints. Most of the action happens in "sidequests" -- stuff that's just there for you to do whenever you happen on it. These sidequests may or may not branch and may or may not have different resolutions. They also may feed into mechanical subsystems that create reactivity, e.g. reputation or karma systems that open up content depending on how they develop. The grand story arc may require specific choices of its own to resolve, or it too may be affected by the subsystems.

 

The upside is can maximize player agency, and the subsystems may even create emergent gameplay -- stuff that wasn't really designed in but happened "by itself." These are also easier to design than branching plots with lots of intersections which need to be dealt with individually.

 

The downside is that it's hard to make it all hang together. Oblivion was a failure (IMO) because it didn't: you just had a ginormous sandbox with scads of stuff to do, but none of what you did changed anything in any meaningful way, beyond the resolution of the little thing you did (and those resolutions had precious little choice either). OTOH if you tie things up too tightly, you end up with a super-complicated and probably broken Witcher-esque thing. It's also difficult to write in as much narrative depth or as involving plotlines as in the first two -- although with the right chokepoints and right reveals, it can get pretty damn good. (I was wowed by several moments in FO:NV for example.)

 

I've enjoyed games with all of these structures greatly: my favorites from the first group include PS:Torment, Deus Ex, Knights of the Old Republic I and II, Mask of the Betrayer, and Jade Empire; from the second group, both Witchers and Baldur's Gate 2, and from the third, TES: Morrowind and Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas. Personally I can't really pick between the latter two; on the one hand I have a thing for deep plotting which you can't really get in a "sandbox," but I really like the freedom and feeling of agency you get in one. Before I played FO:NV I tilted towards "Witcher-style" but that was done so well I now honestly can't say which style I like more.

 

In summary, I don't really care about the number of endings. I do care about meaningful choice. With mostly linear games, it's possible to give meaningful choices in character development and the way you relate to the story and the world (Deus Ex did both); with branching ones you can have a smaller number of genuinely meaningful choices (like in both Witchers); with sandbox ones, the critical bit is making those disparate bits hang together through some underlying mechanics so you're feeling you're making a difference.

 

I'm hoping PoE is going to have a sandbox structure with perhaps a few more chokepoints than FO:NV, and similar reactivity to your choices. That would be rad.

[JFSOCC]

I would go about it differently when writing the plot.

 

I would first pose the problem: (i'll use the one for a mod idea I have)

A once powerful city is losing it's power and population as the lifeblood of the city, the artery of trade, the great river that sprang from the city has diminished and no longer reaches the coast. The city is now hard to reach and decaying.

 

Now you have something you can work a story around. You don't even have to hit them over the head with it.

The players are presented with the problem: a city in decay.

 

How they reinvigorate the city is up to them, whether they choose to reinvigorate the city is also up to them. Many factions will have their own different approaches to saving the city (or it's valuable knowledge, or its people, etc)

The player can choose to bolster trade relations, make the city worth visiting for unique goods or knowledge found nowhere else, or selfishly block the last food from coming in so you can sell it at a premium. The player can seek allies for the city to help with its survival, for a price of course...

during the time travelling to, finding and exploring the city the player will encounter the results of the drought, and begin to understand the magnitude of the problem.

 

Towns once along the trade river have fallen into ruins, the city on the coast where the player starts hasn't spoken to emissaries from the big city for months and is losing it's dominance to a more successful trading city further up the coast.

A fertile countryside has turned to desert, ships are found in the desert sands, sandblasted and broken. Enclave towns (for those who like to explore) still exist but have been cut off from the outside world. (each of these towns might have their own solution to dealing with the drought, and offer hints to possible solutions for the big city)

 

Once the significance of the issue becomes clear, players can investigate the problem. Is it a problem of access to the city? is the city's self-sufficiency at stake? Can the land be improved?  Are there drought resistant crops? Do people need to be evacuated? why doesn't the river flow as much any more? Where does it come from? something changed there? Can we route another river? build or break a dam? do we move the flow underground to ensure less loss to evaporation? Maybe hire weather mages? Build a road and have it patrolled by the Knights of the Open Road? Move the city to a better location?

 

Is the city worth saving? Maybe competitor cities will pay for the ransacking of the city?

 

Point is you create a problem that has many possible solutions, most wildly different from the next, some not so different. Then you create the paths to finding these solutions. You lock some away for certain factions or classes, others you open to everyone.

 

The benefit of this approach is that you can always add alternative solutions you hadn't thought of before.

I think this is the only way to truly having meaningful choice in your game. It also allows for player failure as there would be different avenues of approach.

 

1. Create the situation

2. Think of as many ways to deal with it as possible, they don't have to be equal in any measure.

3. Let the player pick their path.

 

You can have the same (or just a few) ending(s) and still have wildly different approaches in getting there. I'll repeat, this is the only way I think you could have meaningful choice.

[Emissary of Abion]

I'd say that the number of choices does matter, and more so that the impact that the choice has. With each one, no matter how seemingly small or even with the same outcome as other choices, it shapes who your character is for RP aspects. If you treat this as a dungeon grind for lewts, sure each of these choices seem inconsequential as they won't unlock content for you but if your character is a rogue that at least *tries* to talk his way out of danger, even if he doesn't succeed, you are shaping how your character reacts in a situation.

[Ffordesoon]

@JFSOCC:

 

That's my personal favorite approach, and it's the one Obsidian uses most often, in all three models of RPG narrative that PrimeJunta mentioned. They lay the Big Problem out for the player, and then the player decides how to solve all the Small Problems that compose the Big Problem, and how the player solves the Small Problems affects the world, and the world pushes back accordingly, and nothing works out as well as it could, which makes the resultant story - a work coauthored by player and designer - feel convincing as a narrative.

[Lephys]

I hope you can understand what I mean...

 

--

Sorry if I don't express myself very well, I'm not a native english speaker... And while I can easily understand everything I read or listen, it's somewhat hard to me to express, especially when writing

No no, no worries! I wouldn't have guessed you weren't a native English speaker, for what it's worth, based on how well you're using it. I understand there are still very specific disconnects, though, with certain words and phrasings. English is kinda weird anyway, a lot of the time.

 

I think I understand you, and I probably just wasn't specific/clear enough about exactly what it was I had a problem with. I used Russell's arc as an example, because I felt it went the furthest with outcome-forcing: basically, it offered the greatest quantity of choices (that I could think of) and the least quantity of actual immediate changes, even though the situation the writers put Russell in felt like it should've had plenty of versatility.

 

I'm not against any instance of "forced outcome" or anything. It's just... well, when you say "Are you hungry? You can have ANYTHING from the refrigerator!", then there's only one thing in the refrigerator... there're only so many times you can do that before it's just cheap, ya know? It's not a specific thing, like "You can only do that once," or anything like that. It's more of a general thing.

 

Most of the stuff in Episodes 1-5 may not have affected the ultimate outcome, but it still actually let you do things differently, and that's what I'm talking about. It's kind of bad form to offer 50 choices, and have everything be the same immediately after each of them, no matter what. No "You went left around this thing instead of right, even if you ended up at the same destination," or "you used this stick instead of the hammer as a weapon, even if you still hit the same person with it and gravely injure them, no matter what."

 

You're kind of self-defeating the feeling of narrative control you're giving when you make nothing change. It's one thing to have simulated choices. You know, "Oh, it turns out that didn't affect what happens next, but, no one really had any way of knowing that." I'd still rather actually get to have control over what my character decides to do, even if all options fail to change the inevitable, rather than just "I can say some different stuff, and have someone respond to specifically what I just said, then everything happens the same way."

 

And I get that some of those dialogue choices affect character development (I'm assuming you're going to at least be ABLE to run into Nate again at some point in Season 2, and they probably affect Russell a bit). But, yeah... I dunno, the best example I can think of is this:

 

I'd much rather have been able to have Russell decide "I won't let you hurt this old couple!" and tackle Nate, even if you just end up wrestling over the gun and the old guy (can't remember his name) gets shot anyway (old woman was already dying from a gunshot wound), so that they both end up dead either way. But, the fact is, all you can do is either TELL Nate he's a meanieface and leave, or stick with him (even though you don't even really get any options to say "Yeah Nate! You're the coolest!", so the game's basically forcing Russell to feel negatively about Nate no matter what).

 

I hope that makes sense. Like you said, there's a way to force the outcome, and a way not-to. I don't think having nothing you do affect anything at all is how to do it. Or, to put it another way, I think when you're offering an interactive narrative experience like that, you have a duty to support the dynamics of the gameplay experience, itself. You've got the narrative aspect of choice/consequence, and you've got the actual "what am I, the player, dealing with and doing with my controller to play through this situation" experience aspect of it, alongside one another. I think the more static one is, the more dynamic the other needs to be, in whatever mix of both.

 

That's another example. If I could've chosen various paths to get back to Nate behind the truck, that would've been cool, too. Even if I always end up back behind the truck, and unshot. Again, same outcome, but, I'd rather not just be railroaded the whole way, with just some flavor text along the way. I don't really care how many different ways I get to say "That wasn't cool" if all I can do is perform a linear sequence of tasks, followed by telling a person "that wasn't cool" through an entire arc.

 

And, for the record, I didn't hate Russell's arc. I just think it was the worst offender out of the Season 1 episodes and the 400 Days arcs, is all.

Edited March 1, 2014 by Lephys