Interactive Storytelling - How we make choices in RPG gaming
Games have exponentially increased the ways we interact with their narratives. It has become so common to have choice-based mechanics as part of gameplay, in some cases it can be regarded as something of a joke. You are presented with “good blue option” and “bad red option”, and the outcome of the game is arbitrarily changed to fit this choice. In games which are based around this format it can make for wildly different styles of play, where it can be the difference between priest-like humility and being a condescending jerk who assaults reporters. In the special edition of Fable III, a blue and red sided coin was even included to save players the effort of making moral choices.
In my younger days I played Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy , an action game focused around lightsaber duels and force powers. All the characters were split by “Light Side” and “Dark Side” (as Star Wars is wont to do), and close to the climax of the game I was given the option of sparing a traitorous friend and remaining in the Light, or striking him down and joining the Dark Jedi. Despite not being presented with any other such choices until that point, upon choosing the Dark option, my character pulled a total one-eighty from his hopeful and optimistic tone to waxing lyrical about his power and wickedness in the space of a moment.
The lack of impact can also be felt in more classic RPG settings where there is less focus on a specific story. Take The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, for example, one of the most popular RPGs of the decade. Though many quests involve moral decision-making, the paths the player can take exist independently from one another. The player will always be the heroic Dragonborn, or the Arch-Mage of the magical college, but can simultaneously be the leader of a Thieves Guild and the master of all the nation’s assassins. The choices here do not matter in the outcome of the game because, being open world, there is no true outcome to reach.
While I’m perhaps being a bit unfair (Skyrim is about completing quests after all), the point of an RPG is, well, to play a role, even in decision-making. However, more games than ever have actively based their gameplay around decision-making and varying consequences. The work of David Cage is a great example of this; the recent Detroit: Become Human includes a detailed timeline of choices made, the paths leading to them, and even statistics of how other players chose to act.
The secondary effect of this focus on moral or physical decisions is a shift in games from complicated gameplay towards cinematic storytelling. There is perhaps no better example of this than Supermassive Entertainment’s development of “interactive drama” games like Until Dawn and their most recent title Man of Medan. Though there is active gameplay, it is more akin to a series of quicktime events than more strategy-heavy titles. These games are cinematic, even using well-known actors for both dialogue and character design.
Where’s next for decision-making? The variety of game genres and platforms available means that there is something for (almost) everyone. The only real limit to integrating consequential, interactive storytelling in games is scope and focus. Would Until Dawn be the same experience if its development team had to split their focus between the cinematic elements and making more intricate gameplay? Probably not. Either way, it’s encouraging to see how accessible this kind of interactive storytelling is making gaming to wider communities, and hopefully in the future I won’t need to make an in-game choice by flipping a coin.