Choose Your Own Adventure
Options: Choose Your Own Adventure
Some narrative games have one single storyline for you to follow. Sometimes, these games are referred to as ‘walking simulators’, where you wander the game world and experience the story. Maybe there are some light puzzles to solve to find your way through. These types of game are good for experiencing a narrative, and can be very effective like SOMA. Other games are like the old ‘choose your own adventure’ books, allowing you options.
RPGs however often have stories with branching paths, where the player makes decisions that send them down one of these paths and block off the other. This is what makes a game a roleplaying game, because you take the role of a character and make decisions based on what they would do. So you can choose to be a nice and kind person, or an evil person, or something in between. It means you can tell the story the way you want to. Many RPGs have multiple endings depending on the choices the player makes.
Options Galore
Having branching paths like this is good for games. The player can replay the game and make different choices, to experience all of the story points. For example, Fallout New Vegas has four endings, and each one has different consequences for the wasteland.
Dragon Age Origins has essentially one ending with two possible outcomes for the player character. But it has six different origin stories, with one having two different perspectives dependent on gender. The prologue you play at the beginning depends on the choice of race and class. Each one is different narratively, as well as having unique events during the game related to the chosen origin.
Many games with main and side quests have different options for resolving the quests. Usually a peaceful option, a violent option or a choice between who to save and who to let die. Some of them have unique options for certain skills or character aspects. This gives the player more agency and allows them to experience the story the way they want to. This is the unique thing video games bring to story telling, they don’t have to be told one way. I do like to reread my favourite books and rewatch movies and TV shows. But the story is the same every single time. It doesn’t change, unless you write fanfiction. With games, that’s not the case, I can play an RPG and have a different experience every time. That’s what I love about these types of games.
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