Choices matter (they don't)

One of the main advantages of videogames as a medium of entertainment and storytelling is the level of interactivity it necessitates, forcing the player to have an impact on this digital world by the rules of its very existence. Every game has some level of choice for the player, whether that be the style of gameplay, their individual character or the role they play in the story. Or, in the case of visual novels, whether to keep playing it i suppose. Now you, the reader must make a choice - will you keep reading? Or will you succumb to the forces of darkness?

If you're reading this, you made the right choice.

It's not uncommon for games to have one big choice that splits the story down 2 separate paths, and a lot of the time this results in an explicit good and bad ending. The most recent Resident Evil game (Requiem), features one such choice. Spoiler free, btw. Towards the end of the game, Grace is faced with a certain choice. One results in everything working out fine, except Leon S Kennedy dying. The other choice results in Leon S Kennedy living (and is the canon ending), but requires defeating the game's final boss. This is representative of Grace's struggle throughout the game, it's easy for her to save herself but to get the best outcome she has to struggle just that little bit more. While this is an important moment, the time it has to unfold is very limited - Leon's death happens almost immediately afterwards and the canon ending is only about an extra 30 minutes of game time tops. Compare this to Resident Evil 7's Big Choice Moment, which happens rougly 4/5ths of the way through the game. This leaves the player with much more time to reflect on and doubt their choice, wondering whether they've done the right thing over the remaining runtime of the game. It's also not immediately apparent what the wider effects of this choice entail, only unfolding even later in the game.

Okay, so that's one big choice. What about multiple, smaller choices? A poster child example of this (even though i haven't played them, sorry) is Until Dawn and the other Dark Pictures games. These games present you with lots of pivotal choices throughout the game's runtime, with everything from how individual characters react to explicit who lives or dies choices. This is enabled by the player taking control of all the main characters at different points throughout the game, meaning they're essentially tasked with weaving all the narratives together and making the correct choices for the ending they want. Different choices can lead to having to make different choices in the future, meaning every one of these moments will have knock-on effects down the line. An example i've got personal experience with is Beacon Pines, which takes a more FAFO approach to these choices and their effects. To get the true ending, almost every single other ending and choice needs to be explored beforehand. This is because the game revolves around a branching story layout (the choice checkpoint map is literally a tree), where individual paths split off into others. The player goes down these paths by choosing one of several options at certain pivotal moments, the thing that sets Beacon Pines apart is that these options are gained by progressing through different paths. Exploring the game world and finding certain interactable elements gives the player a new charm, which can be used as a dialogue option in these scenes. For example, inspecting a closet gives the 'Hide' charm, which allows Luka to hide at certain moments later on in the game. i really love this system, it incentivises seeing everything a game has to offer because you literally can't just beeline the main story as quickly as you can. It also leads to lots of bad/non-canon endings, which i think does a great job at showing how unlikely the eventual victory of this handful of kids is. We've seen how many times they've failed over the course of the game, making that final true ending sweeter.

Related to the above chunkems, are games that feature lots of little choices - but the player doesn't know they're making them. Until Dawn and Beacon Pines explicitly signpost when a choice is being made, but what about games where the player is CONSTANTLY making choices. Undertale's internal workings track the player's attitude throughout the game - how aggressive they are to the monster inhabitants. This isn't any specific choice but rather a pattern of behaviour, with the game's dialogue and tone shifting depending on this behaviour. Aggression leads to a bleaker outcome, with killing every character in the game famously resulting in the player's game forever being corrupted no matter the choices made on future playthroughs. Playing the game without lifting a finger in violence instead leads the player to the True Pacifist route which, as i have said before, leads to my favourite bossfight of all time and is one of the best experiences with a piece of media i have ever had.

All of the games talked about above have one thing in common - that being their endings are changed based on the choices made (excluding a true canon ending deal). What about a game where you're presented with choices, lots of choices, but none of them have an impact on the wider narrative? There's a, uh, a um, a game i like that's uh, it's called, it's called Night in the Woods.

Night in the Woods has lots of choices, lots and lots of choices. All of them do basically nothing. The primary way that the player interacts with the world is through dialogue, dictating what Mae says to her fellow inhabitants of Possum Springs during her weird autumn. Despite some minor potential changes, outside of Mae's own dialogue, this does not affect the topic of most conversations. Even this, your one way of 'affecting' the world around you isn't concrete, there's a scene where the eloquent and sensitive dialogue choices the player makes are replaced with Mae's drunken ramblings. The story of Night in the Woods will not be changed based on Mae's actions. Possum Springs won't be restored to its former prosperity, Casey won't come home, and there will always be something in the woods. There is one very important decision that Mae can make however, and it happens at the end of every day. Who do you want to hang out with for the evening? Gregg or Bea? Gregg and Bea have their own respective activities for each evening, whether it's helping Bea 'repair' a faulty boiler or smashing fluorescent lightbulbs with Gregg. Depending on who you spend the most time with during the course of the game, a particular scene where Mae opens up about her mental health issues will be changed to reflect this - whether it's with Gregg or Bea. The meaning of this is that we can't change the world, no matter how hard we try some things are just out of our control. What we can control is who we spend that time with, the friends we weather this bastard world with. There is a quote from Night in the Woods i think about a lot.

"I get it. This won't stop until I die. But when I die, I want it to hurt. When my friends leave, when I have to let go, when this entire town is wiped off the map, I want it to hurt. Bad. I want to lose. I want to get beaten up. I want to hold on until I'm thrown off and everything ends. And you know what? Until that happens, I want to hope again. And I want it to hurt. Because that means it meant something. I means I am something, at least...pretty amazing to be something, at least..."

i tell no lies, i would kill for this game.