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Is Disco Elysium a good implementation of branching narrative?

Tom Selleck

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"Carrie, why are you bad at writing?"
 
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Roguey

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j-soy has finally completely fucking lost it if he thinks disco is a benchmark for branching narratives

retire bitch

The talk was specifically about "choice architecture, player expression, and narrative design" in RPGs, particularly how in many RPGs going for the optimal response/outcome goes against being the kind of character you want to play as that's within supported range of expression. Appears to me that the commie/lib/fascist paths in DE are all valid, so it succeeded in that regard.
 

Butter

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j-soy has finally completely fucking lost it if he thinks disco is a benchmark for branching narratives

retire bitch

The talk was specifically about "choice architecture, player expression, and narrative design" in RPGs, particularly how in many RPGs going for the optimal response/outcome goes against being the kind of character you want to play as that's within supported range of expression. Appears to me that the commie/lib/fascist paths in DE are all valid, so it succeeded in that regard.
They're all valid in the sense that they have no effect on anything.
 

Roguey

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They're all valid in the sense that they have no effect on anything.

The idea is that you get to play the kind of character you want to play, even if you're all going through the same motions. Sawyer used to not be impressed by this Bioware-style cosmetic/narrative reactivity, but it turns out he just needed a game that let him play as a commie to get him thrilled with it. :M
 

Zed Duke of Banville

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They're all valid in the sense that they have no effect on anything.
Balderdash, each political path allows the player access to copious quantities of flavor text, as with many other decisions in Disco Elysium, such as skill allocation or certain Thought Cabinet ideas, and we're all aware that flavor text is the essential component of RPGs. :M
 

Harthwain

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The talk was specifically about "choice architecture, player expression, and narrative design" in RPGs, particularly how in many RPGs going for the optimal response/outcome goes against being the kind of character you want to play as that's within supported range of expression. Appears to me that the commie/lib/fascist paths in DE are all valid, so it succeeded in that regard.
They're all valid in the sense that they have no effect on anything.
Thoughts have extra effects, outside of being another dialogue option you can pick during conversation. Just saying.
 

Haba

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They're all valid in the sense that they have no effect on anything.
Balderdash, each political path allows the player access to copious quantities of flavor text, as with many other decisions in Disco Elysium, such as skill allocation or certain Thought Cabinet ideas, and we're all aware that flavor text is the essential component of RPGs. :M

DE is a good example of a realistic compromise. It maintains the illusion through the story, and frankly that is what matters.

Of course in an ideal world we'd all have branching content with massive reactivity and C&C. But how many games are like that?

A good game writer shouldn't just be measured by the amount of text he produces, but also how his contribution affects the scope of the game over all. Ultimately keeping the story on the "rails" but in a way that choices feel significant and "in-character" for the player.
 
Vatnik Wumao
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It maintains the illusion through the story

You find it fun to expect tangible choices and ultimately let down? "Best RPG of 2019" don't have combat and isn't even CYOA, lmao.
From a narrative standpoint, what matters is that you can shape your character through your different interactions in dialogue with your skills, other NPCs and the outside world. And in DE that develops your character to a much greater extent than the superficial branching storypaths and dialogue options of conventional RPGs.
 

Haba

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It maintains the illusion through the story

You find it fun to expect tangible choices and ultimately let down? "Best RPG of 2019" don't have combat and isn't even CYOA, lmao.

I'd say that after nearly 40 years of playing cRPGs, my expectations are realistic. DE was an enjoyable ride, that's what really matters. Driver might've swindled me a bit, but then again I wasn't really being honest about where I really wanted to go either.

It is silly to criticize the game for the same thing that every other game (that isn't a procedurally generated trite) is doing. At some point we just have to realize that it isn't realistic to hand craft the reactivity we expect. Not unless we have a team of super-autist Cleve clones.
 
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RPG stories shouldn't have rails

O.K., then list a few role-playing game games that do not have a linear main story path?
morrowind is a rather popular -- if a bit dated -- example

Modern RPGs suffer from procedural design. You must do A then B then C. Some of them even let you do A then B1 or B2 or B3 in any order then C! Some of this likely stems from video game writers largely having backgrounds in writing traditional books. There's also a feedback loop where designers learn to design games by playing other games -- I like to call this the Miyazaki effect. Many successful high budget AAA titles were designed very similar to movies(notice the theme of games -- an interactive medium capable of non-linearity -- being designed as if they had the constraints of other mediums), and it has spread throughout the entire genre now.
In this sort of design, you can't do part of C then go back and do some of A, which has now changed due to your actions you did in a non-linear manner. You must play the game in a very specific, sometimes branching, order. Rarely if ever do these sorts of games let you figure out how to accomplish a task on your own, instead telling or guiding you towards it.

Contrast this with goal-oriented design such that the only thing that matters is the goal and how you get to that goal is a separate matter. This is something you'd see primarily in older games. If you drop a random person with no formal background in writing(or designing) linear stories into gamedev they probably are more likely to come up with something similar to this as it's a more natural fit for video games. Indie devs -- who are often "untrained" -- are a perfect example of this. This isn't an issue just affecting video games, tabletop RPG modules also suffer heavily from the linearization(for lack of a better word.) Older modules tend to be much more freeform in design.
There is no A, B, or C in this design. You have to forget absolutely everything you know about procedural video games. In these games, the line between side-quests and main-quest often blurs heavily.
For a more modern example, I like to use Divinity: Original Sin 2. It suffers a good deal from linearity in the overall plot, but the chapters when viewed individually are much closer to this sort of design. You're given a goal to work towards and told to go figure it out yourself.

The former design is analogous to a straight line. If there is choice(e.g., later Bioware games, AoD is probably one of the most extreme examples), it's like a tree where the trunk is the main quest with branches for side quests. No matter what, these games are on rails. These games are designed linearly to be completed linearly.
The latter design is a graph -- a web. There are often many important stories woven together here that influence each other. These games are designed by creating a goal then designing the location with the goal(and others) in mind.

:happytrollboy:
 
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Harthwain

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It maintains the illusion through the story

You find it fun to expect tangible choices and ultimately let down? "Best RPG of 2019" don't have combat and isn't even CYOA, lmao.
How many RPGs have "tangible choices" though? How many games actually offer you a second playthrough that really, REALLY takes you somewhere else with another character/build? I could be wrong, but choices are an illusion in a vast majority of games. These "choices" are often just an alternate path to accomplish the same goal. Or it's a choice, but without any real long-term conseqences. And yet these games are still considered RPGs, some of them even are cult classics. That said, there are some "tangible choices", as you put it, in DE. If I correctly understood what you meant by that.

Where DE really shines is in offering you - the player - a different experience (and different opportunities) because of your stats. Not only it's very important from the narrative standpoint (some stats will butt heads, some can even take over your character, making choices FOR you), but also will have an impact on succeeding or failing any given action. Some you can re-attempt if you fail them, some you can't. Actions are done by rolling a dice, you can even increase or decrease your chances of success, if you do something before attempting a check. And you get a lot of really different options (some from stats, some from thoughts) to pick from. If you put this together, it's really easy to understand why majority of people, RPG Codex included, call Disco Elysium the best RPG of 2019 (if not since Planescape: Torment).

You say it doesn't have combat. I disagree. And I am going to tell you why. What is combat? It's a fight or contest between individuals or groups. DE has conflicts that can be resolved physically (with violence). Very few of them (2, if I am not mistaken. I don't really count punching Cuno), but they are there. The major difference between combat in DE and other RPGs is that it's on the same level as the rest of interactions. So when you say "it doesn't have combat" you're really saying "I don't like that combat is basically like any other interaction in the game" (which is similar criticism for Age of Decadence, if I am not mistaken). It is an understandable objection, but isn't that how "combat" is done in PnP? Or are PnP RPGs not RPGs, because they do not offer a separate combat layer? After all, all you do is declare an action and roll a dice...
 
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Quillon

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Branching Narratives vs DE, there is no branching narrative in DE. /thread. Even the ones who replayed it admit that they did it to experience the same thing again.

Imagine liking a game so much you start to see it as gold standard for some feature it doesn't even represent.

You say it doesn't have combat. I disagree. And I am going to tell you why. What is combat?

:popcorn:
 

Harthwain

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Branching Narratives vs DE, there is no branching narrative in DE. /thread. Even the ones who replayed it admit that they did it to experience the same thing again.
Narrative stays the same. The difference lies in how much are you going to get out of it and from what perspective. But it's pretty much the same thing when it comes do Planescape: Torment. If you play it as high Wisdom and high Intelligence mage you are going to be able to get the majority of the game's secrets in a single playthrough, without knowing it. And going through again as a dumb warrior won't make your story any different, because you've already discovered all that was there to discover. You will merely get the more limited selection of choices, leading to the same outcome. With such approach The Witcher 2 is better RPG, because it offers quite significant changes in the story, depending on your choices (despite your character being the same old Geralt and your skills only affecting combat).

Imagine liking a game so much you start to see it as gold standard for some feature it doesn't even represent.
Like all these PnP RPG aspects mentioned earlier, which you conviniently decided to ignore, because they didn't fit your story?
 

Quillon

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Like all these PnP RPG aspects mentioned earlier, which you conviniently decided to ignore, because they didn't fit your story?

Does DE's "PnP RPG aspects" change the fact that it doesn't have a branching narrative?
 

copebot

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The issue with this concept of a branching narrative is that it tries to create the illusion of a player-driven story, but it's really just allowing the player to chose among multiple prewritten narratives. The illusion of 'narrative choice' was more powerful in previous years when it was more novel and when graphical games were relatively new. It was supposed to emulate the tabletop experience of true player choice, in which the GM and players create a story together under the rules of the simulation. It was always a poor emulation. It's not a coincidence that some of the most popular games that aren't purely multiplayer competitions rely heavily on procedural generation (games like Minecraft, Valheim, any Roguelike, any campaign strategy game). If the game is more free form, player choice is a lot more meaningful. If you are just following narrative tracks like 'quests,' there isn't much meaningful player choice; you are just reading text / listening to VO and performing some ancillary gameplay tricks to unlock another paragraph of text. This kind of hybrid game often makes compromises that are unsatisfying. Combat is usually worse than a pure combat/tactics game, story is worse than novels, and visual presentation is worse than movies, TV shows, or short films.

I think that RPG developers should focus on what makes the tabletop experience exciting, which is how open the simulation can be, and not the story delivery. In many cases playing a single player CRPG is no more compelling in terms of story than just reading a tabletop module. Players can go through a module in entirely different ways because of the breadth of the simulation. One party that gets into a fight in a tavern will burn the tavern down, another one will talk their way out of combat, another one will get into a bitter fight that ends in the death of the party's wizard because he slips on some spilled beer and conks his head on a bench. The same paragraph of description in a module of an encounter can result in radically different experiences. The randomness in the simulation also makes every experience unique. The wizard only died because of a unique combination of dice rolls mixed with the player's unique choices -- he tried to clamber on the table despite that he was drunk due to his low constitution score to get an advantage on his spell rolls, but he slipped and died. When game developers take the narrative approach, every one of these possibilities has to be agonizingly precoded with prewritten dialogue. Often times the design does not allow for partial failure or total failure -- the wizard dies and the game prompts you to reload rather than just continuing the simulation. I think when people talk about cool experiences in games, it's usually about how they pulled one over the GM by burning down the tavern and not when they were railroaded into the encounter.
 

Major_Blackhart

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I think a real branching and nonlinear narrative can be done but the problem is twofold: game story isn't conceived in a non-linear fashion and devs either don't ask themselves that question of what happens to A if he goes to C first or are just too lazy. Additionally, even tho a story can be linear in origin, I feel like they never go back and try to re-write it in branching or non-linear manner.
 

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