... and it doesn't end there. BioShock also uses audio superbly as well. Beyond the audio diaries, the monsters you're fighting often have conversations with each other before they realise you're there. Then when they attack, they're using phrases that relate to the game-world rather. As you walk passed the in-game vending machines, they kick into life and start playing a cheery song. Video screens will display short movies as you walk by on occassion and some rooms even have speakers with audio advertising. As you find and collect Plasmids (the game's "magic spells"), you're shown a short video. Again, it's simple stuff but it makes you want to listen to the world and think about what you're hearing for at least a while before you go ahead and blow the next monster's brains out.​

Quests will have many solutions, most of which will only be available to a player character with specific skills. Thanks to the plot bypasses you will often come upon completely alternative solutions, for example, to convince someone to help you, you will use acquaintance with some important characters. It is worth to mention that certain choices in performing a quest will bear various, sometimes long-term consequences. Some of the suggested paths may also prove to be dead-ends.
As for the endings, we have adapted for ourselves the brilliant, but for an unknown reason never repeated solution from Fallout – the modular epilogue. After finishing the game and watching the outro presenting the consequence of the path you have chosen, you will also be able to see the fate of the world and its individual locations which you have influenced by your actions or non-action.​

7) The game promises choices and "huge consequences." An actual example would go a long way to back up these claims and fill the hearts of unbelievers with faith.

Luke: I’m sure it would, but I wouldn’t want to spoil too much of the experience for players. Let’s just say that I know the depths of loathing loyal Codex readers reserve for developers that talk the talk but fail to meet expectations when it comes to choice and consequences. I’m not only walking but swaggering, and not just because I’m drunk.

Alan: I will echo Luke on this one, in that we definitely do provide some big choices with significant consequences to the player. We made a conscious decision when writing the core story during pre-production to allow for branches in the story instead of a single linear path. The challenge was to make the different branches as polished as if we had just made one route, since polishing a single linear path would take only half the time. Revealing what these choices are would ruin the story, so you’ll just have to keep the faith.​

5. What would you have done differently given a choice? Also, what are you best and worst DoP design decisions?

Looking back on the project, I would probably say something I would do differently is bringing in artists a bit earlier in the project. This turned out fine in the end, but finding artists and getting good progress on the artwork was pretty stressful for me during a lot of the project.

I think the best design decision of the project was including the covenant gameplay. Not only is this one of the biggest distinguishing features of Depths of Peril, but it is also the feature that led to other important unique things in the game like consequences to your actions and the very dynamic world. The covenants is one of those features that changes just about everything in the game. They adventure in the world, they can solve quests before you do, they start wars and raid other covenants including yours, they help out when the town is attacked, they can grab recruits before you do, guards, rumors, and crystals all are due to the covenant gameplay, they can destroy your covenant, and the list just goes on and on.​

Unlike physical stats, which can be fitted into the system through much more meaningful ways even if they can succumb to the same issues, social stats like Intelligence and Charisma cause more problems than those they set out to solve for a very simple reason. You can not force players to role-play their stats, and you can’t force those stats to help players role-play. This dredges up an earlier point – the absence of a direct mental link between player and character ends up rendering the adherence to social stats trite and ineffective. In the long run, the impact of mental and social stats that limit a character’s progress becomes either negligible or a hassle since you can not code personality traits the player does not have the ability to play nor can you give gamers a personality trait they have no idea of how to role-play. And in terms of how storylines are advanced, this causes a great rift as well considering many times players can see right through plot twists or narrative directions before the characters do.

With that said... Get rid of Intelligence and Charisma as a play mechanic that influences dialogue.​