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Narrative choices in games

Jaedar

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I borrowed this post from another forum, but I(and the original author) thought it would be interesting to see what the Codex thought about it.

One thing that I really love, and I suspect most people on this board agree, is to be presented with interesting narrative choices during a game. At their best, these choices are real dilemmas, with no obvious right or wrong. Sometimes they have clear effects on the power balance of the game as well as simply determining which direction the narrative proceeds in. Sometimes they simply create a small side branch to the main plot, other times they actually change the entire resolution of the main plot.

So here's a question. What are the best narrative choices you remember in games that you've played? What made them great? And can you extrapolate that into some sort of general guideline for what kind of choices you enjoy?

I'll start off with a choice familiar to all of us: on my list, the Lebedev scene in Deus Ex ranks pretty high. It's a real dilemma in the classical sense of the word: UNATCO's mandate expressly forbids executing unarmed prisoners, yet you've been ordered by your superior to kill Lebedev, who is unarmed and has just surrendered to you. Compounding the situation is Anna Navarre, who will kill Lebedev if you don't (meaning the prisoner dies and you still get scolded), and the only way to prevent that is to murder her.

It's a great choice because it doesn't have a solution where you can get everything your way - you will always win some and lose some. If you want to be on your boss's good side, you have to kill the prisoner. If you want to save the prisoner, you have to kill your partner. If you refuse to kill anybody, you will be scolded by both your boss and your prisoner. Now, my traditional wisdom is that the effects of your choice have to last for a while, otherwise it won't be truly meaningful, but in this case, it's okay that only some of the effects are felt later. Juan Lebedev is never going to show up again if you save him from Navarre, but Navarre will show up later if you don't, and both Navarre, Manderley, Paul, and probably others at UNATCO that I forget will let you know what their feelings about your actions are no matter what you choose to do. That's cause and effect enough to make the choice seem significant.

Dragon Age is another example of a game that had some solid choices. At the end of every major quest arc, you had to decide how to resolve a precarious situation. (Spoiler warning!) A good one was whether to side with the werewolves or the elves in the forest arc. Both sides have clearly committed acts of poor morality, but they all had their reasons, and now you have to pick sides. There sort of is a good and a bad way to resolve it, which makes it slightly less powerful, but though you have all the necessary information to make your decision going into it, you won't really know the full outcome of either decision until you make it (you can't predict how the "losing" side takes it, basically). The decision is imbued with further significance by determining whether you get elves or werewolves on your side in the final battle of the game, which may not make much of a difference in terms of the effectiveness of your troops, but is nevertheless a considerable aesthetic and narrative change.

Unfortunately some of the other major choices in Dragon Age are less well executed. The Redcliffe choice was compelling, but relies on the fact that you have to make an uninformed decision - the setup hints that certain consequences exist which basically do not, which for example caused me to make a decision that was suboptimal because it was implied that the optimal solution had strong negative consequences which it didn't really. Of course the fact that there is a solution where everything turns out great makes the choice less interesting in and of itself, and concealing that fact was the easiest way to solve that. It just felt extremely cheap.

So, over to you guys. What do you like?
 

Big Nose George

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Author is a larper and tries too hard to sound intelligent.

"The decision is imbued with further significance by determining whether you get elves or werewolves on your side in the final battle of the game, which may not make much of a difference in terms of the effectiveness of your troops, but is nevertheless a considerable aesthetic and narrative change."

Lets see what he means by "narrative". His definition.

Exhibit A
Do stuff. Side with werewolves. Do stuff. Win with werewolves on your side. The End.

Exhibit B
Do stuff. Side with vampires. Do stuff. Win with vampires on your side. The End.

Conclusion
Considerable aesthetic and narrative change.

:roflcopter:
Good Sir, take your fluffy larper ass and GTFO!
:smug:

PS:
There is this thread about c&c but its actually about semantics and how/where to draw the line. My opinion is the rightest one!!1
Its not Consequences if not a significant amount of game content is "added" or cut.
Getting a super special gun as a reward or 100 xp or not being able to talk to someone is not a Consequence. Essentially it is the same as getting 200/300/100 gold for good/i want extra money/evil dialogue line.
Getting access to new areas/npcs/quests is, but rarely done for obvious reasons.
 

denizsi

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DA:O is an extremely poor example and it's funny how he brings it up as a good example in one paragraph, and debunks it in the next. To every multi-choice situation, there's a clearly uncontested win-win choice and when you are unaware that such a choice exists, it's because the game is designed and written extremely bad and often illogically too.
 

Jaedar

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denizsi said:
DA:O is an extremely poor example and it's funny how he brings it up as a good example in one paragraph, and debunks it in the next. To every multi-choice situation, there's a clearly uncontested win-win choice and when you are unaware that such a choice exists, it's because the game is designed and written extremely bad and often illogically too.
Yeah, he's obviously stupid because he recognizes that it does it well sometimes, but shit other times.

And DA:O mediocre as it is, does it well one or two times in the game (Loghain and Dwarfen place), and shit most of the time, like Redcliffe.
 

denizsi

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What does it do well with Loghain and in Orzammar, again?

And the example he gives for the game doing it well is absolute shit. The final dialogue in werewolves quest is pretty fucking retarded. You have to have prior knowledge of how the dialogue and the associated choices unfold to even be given the choice that you want to make, because the dialogue cuts off at illogical points to move onto the next and the last choice before concluding the quest line, before you can choose one seemingly insignificant but necessary line to get the relevant option in the next choice interval right after the fight, just so that the "unexpected twist" gimmick is forced on you without any semblance of reason. So it's more like narrative retardation than narration.
 

Jaedar

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Oh no, I agree, the werewolf thing is bad.

As for Orzammar:
The fact that the evil king is the better choice always tickled my fancy. And the choice about using the forge is sufficiently morally grey, to bad it wasn't foreshadowed nearly enough.
 

Sceptic

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Jaedar said:
Yeah, he's obviously stupid because he recognizes that it does it well sometimes, but shit other times.
No, but he is stupid for claiming that most of the choices are solid and "some" are retarted like Redcliffe, whereas it's the other way round: most of the choices are pure fluff and only one or two have any real consequence. Also stupid for picking a really retarded example. Which nicely brings me to:

denizsi said:
What does it do well with Loghain and in Orzammar, again?
Orzammar's was actually the best C&C in the entire game (maybe the only). There is even some nice shades of gray: Bhelen is a bloodthirsty tyrant but the "good" king is a liar and has no qualms about using underhanded means as long as his reputation is intact. Not my definition of "good". His ideas for Orzammar are also painfully outdated and it's obvious from the current state of the place that something must be done to change that. Based on all this I happily picked Bhelen and was pleasantly surprised when things turn out for the better with him. The game drops hints that the dwarves need exactly that kind of tyrant. The whole thing is well done. I was far less impressed with the Anvil though. If you have Shale (and why wouldn't you? she's awesome and asks to be brought along to Derp Roads) it's painfully obvious which choice is the right one (frankly, it's painfully obvious regardless).

Loghain was a weird one. I had Alistair fight him so I didn't even know the option was there until I read about it later on.

The final dialogue in werewolves quest is pretty fucking retarded. You have to have prior knowledge of how the dialogue and the associated choices unfold to even be given the choice that you want to make
Meh, I got it right first time through, thought it was pretty obvious. I agree the dialog was retarded though. List all Bioware twists you could see it coming from miles away.
 

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