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TIGSource ForumsCommunityTownhallForum IssuesArchived subforums (read only)CreativeWritingwhat is the most interesting long-term choice you've had to make in a game?
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Author Topic: what is the most interesting long-term choice you've had to make in a game?  (Read 3985 times)
Graham-
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« on: July 04, 2013, 02:39:33 PM »

So rules:
  1. The choice and the pay-off have to be separated by a long stretch of real or play time.
  2. It was to be awesome, at least for you.
 
That's it.

Here's mine. Killing shadow in FF6. For those who haven't played it.... You are near the end of the first world, which at the time is the only world you know of. Blows your mind when the world is destroyed, and the game begins again, but that's a whole other world ( Well, hello there! Well, hello there!) of awesome. you are playing, and playing well, and you kill the boss, and then the island is falling apart, WITHOUT A SAVE POINT, and you just killed that really fucking hard boss (that took weeks of trying, because you are kid, and you suck, and you play a few hours a week b/c parents). Now you fucking wIN!. And you are RUNNING FOR YOUR LIFE. THERE IS A TIMER ON THE SCREEN. AND YOU ARE FIGHTING MONSTERS. THEN THERE IS A BOSS. AND YOU BEAT IT.

"The Airship is below. Do you want to drop down to it?"
  *-> Yes
   -> No

.......................... why is this an option? (timer counts down, 30 seconds). YOUR WHOLE SHIT IS IN JEAPORDY. Now, if you don't know Shadow 'sacrficed' himself earlier to save you, like 6 minutes earlier, well he did. He told you to go on. You did. Now you can wait and save him. Or you can save yourselves. Everyone knows about saving shadow. It is the number 1 known secret about FF. You haven't even played FF6 and I bet you know about it. I bet you do. If you walk away from the choice and get it again it hints at you: "gotta wait for shadow." I didn't see that hint the first time. I jumped... to the airship... and was saved.

In the end credits I find out that shadow had died. A year later I learned I could save him.

HOLY FUCK.

Never again have I cared that much about a choice. I was a kid. Now I'm an adult. The only time I care about a failure is when super hot love-of-my-life tells me to go get one, because of one little slip. Hmm..... SmileySmiley.

Go.
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malicethedevil
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« Reply #1 on: July 10, 2013, 11:33:48 AM »

I never really invested into the game choices that I made, but as games progressed and time went on - Fable, KOTR (Knights of the Old Republic) and other games came out where your choices not only changed the character but influences the game entirely. We've stepped beyond that realm to even bigger changes and choices. I love games like that because I get the choice to be bad (though this usually ends up being the weaker character in the end) or to be good (which usually entails doing every little favor and being errand boy but the stronger character in the end) or my favorite and commonly first time run - Neutral, I get into the fight when I maybe shouldn't have, I get to be nice when I choose to be, or whatever but either way that's 3 different play-throughs of the same game.
   Look at DragonAge or others like that and how much those are played through cause of choices. Now, I know about FF's little moments - Shadow I, lucky for me, realized I could save before I left him. Smiley
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Graham-
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« Reply #2 on: July 10, 2013, 11:36:05 AM »

yes but death taught me important game lesson, about life....

what you say about good/evil is true. never realistic in games: fallout 3 etc.
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« Reply #3 on: July 10, 2013, 12:01:54 PM »

To be perfectly honest I really dislike 'small' choices in games that end up having ramifications much further in the game; there are a lot of JRPGs that do this. 

The first that comes to mind is in the DS game Infinite Space, there are several choices you can make that seem clear and small (frontal assault on the pirate base or sneak through the asteroid field?) that would appear to be solely strategic choices, but end up having huge effects on plot and characters you can get hours later in the game.

It's super frustrating to have your breakfast choice in one game cause someone to die in the sequel.
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Graham-
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« Reply #4 on: July 10, 2013, 12:08:52 PM »

well the shadow example wasn't like that. it felt critical. I didn't feel cheated.

yes. choice is poorly handled often.
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« Reply #5 on: July 10, 2013, 12:10:20 PM »

@capn - i kind of like that actually; it is reflective of real life. our tiny choices in everyday life have drastic consequences, we just can't always trace the connections

anyway, the most interesting choices to me are like: what nation to play in civilization / alpha centauri type games. that choice and those like it (character class, party make up, etc.) have pretty big consequences and are made at the beginning of a game and can't be changed
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« Reply #6 on: July 10, 2013, 12:16:33 PM »

@capn - i kind of like that actually; it is reflective of real life. our tiny choices in everyday life have drastic consequences, we just can't always trace the connections

It's still annoying when "Toast" is the right choice and "Eggs" is the wrong choice and if you choose the wrong choice then 20 hours of gameplay later a character dies.  It's practically a coin flip, and not a fun game mechanic to have things like that.

I guess Mass Effect has this sort of stuff but it's on more of a sliding scale based around how you treat your crew members, which is slightly more recognizable as something you can actually interact with and control with some degree of understanding, however vague.

But pointedly innocuous stuff that is actually a trigger for something 15 hours down the line is not fun since it turns "doing well" into "guessing luckily or using gamefaqs".  Arguably, one should just sit back and enjoy the story or whatever however it unfolds, but since JRPGs are lengthy as heck, and character progression is a non-trivial time investment, it's unreasonable to put up with that.

From what I recall, Riviera for GBA has all sorts of these things, on top of requiring you to have certain limited-use weapons in your inventory for lots of stuff.
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Graham-
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« Reply #7 on: July 10, 2013, 12:31:41 PM »

i like picking builds for my char up-front. i like that a lot, though it can be annoying when you know most of it is hogwash (fallout 3??), or that some builds are just straight better because the game is unbalanced (melee, *cough* in so many games).

basically choices need to be fair. having weight is a separate issue. if you give a choice weight you have the potential to delight the player. if the results are seen as unfair then the consequences are proportionately larger. I hope this is obvious.
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« Reply #8 on: July 10, 2013, 04:56:22 PM »

I did enjoy how seemingly inconsequential decisions in the first act of Katawa Shoujo determined the character's love interest for the rest of the story. I really don't like the way that most games, especially ones like Mass Effect, handle relationships, because most relationships in games are, well, gamified. You choose a goal (the object of your attraction), exploit the game's mechanics to achieve that goal (talk them to death), and get a reward (sex scene yay!). In KS, your choices matter, but not in a "game-y" way - if you aren't playing with the walkthrough, you have no idea what impact your choices will have. I think that this better reflects how you fall in love in real life, and it doesn't reduce romance to simply being rewarded for overcoming a self-selected "challenge."

In terms of other significant in-game choices that wield significant long-term consequences, the entire chain of events you need to complete to save Curly in Cave Story quickly comes to mind. 
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Graham-
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« Reply #9 on: July 10, 2013, 06:03:12 PM »

you can save curly!?
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malicethedevil
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« Reply #10 on: July 11, 2013, 09:08:04 AM »

Many games deal with choices, I personally enjoyed KOTR 2 where you could influence members of your party to become Jedi or Sith. Quite impressive - mind you I have yet to try a Mass Effect game but I keep hearing about it. But what I do like is through a series of choices things do change - for instance through getting to know Allister on Dragon Age you get the choice to let him rule as rightful king or not, as well as other various choices. Now if those choices could be reflected in a continued series now that would be incredible.
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« Reply #11 on: July 11, 2013, 10:16:38 AM »

that's a nice twist: make choices to drive and drive another character towards good or evil. then you fight against their "natural impulses"
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« Reply #12 on: August 07, 2013, 07:43:56 AM »

Super Mario World actually has a pretty significant choice right at the beginning. Hitting the big yellow switch which puts the yellow blocks everywhere makes a HUGE difference to the difficulty of the game. They use the yellow blocks consistently throughout the whole game, which reminds you constantly of your little exploration to the left at the start.

On the subject of Mass Effect, the coolest 'choice' type thing (which also uses the conversation mechanics in an interesting way) is how/whether to save Wrex on Virmire:

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Virmire:_Wrex_and_the_Genophage

There are multiple ways to save him and kill him. Then if Wrex survives, he is a clan leader on the Krogan home planet, rather than some random guy we don't know. In Mass Effect 3, he's stronger than the other Krogan (Wreav), but less gullible. That page is pretty detailed, check it out if you like Smiley
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« Reply #13 on: August 07, 2013, 09:33:06 AM »

Which pokemon should I pick knowing that basterd blue(gary) will mistreat and abuse the poor counter pokemon.

Actually in Mass Effect I when I had to pick between saving the queen or killing her. I put the control down and contemplated the entire existence of a species that did not exist. Could I trust them? What does this say about me? the power of video games.
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« Reply #14 on: August 07, 2013, 09:41:58 AM »

hitting the yellow power switch in smw is basically required tho. that's like a dum choice. who doesn't hit it? maybe I should have tried not hitting it once or twice, to see how it felt.

--

picking my pokemons in pokemon blue was like the biggest choice I ever made. maybe. character building used to be so much fun. and now it's like, "I wonder what the correct strategy is? or how broken X stat is (in lameness)?"
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« Reply #15 on: August 19, 2013, 01:59:39 PM »

anyway, the most interesting choices to me are like: what nation to play in civilization / alpha centauri type games. that choice and those like it (character class, party make up, etc.) have pretty big consequences and are made at the beginning of a game and can't be changed
Another example of something like this is what stats you choose at the beginning of Fallout/Fallout 2 or Planescape: Torment, since these things significantly affect the options that are open to you when you have to solve problems, which in turn can change the course of the storyline in places.
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« Reply #16 on: September 04, 2013, 07:36:40 PM »

The choice that affect the most my experience is usually the difficulty setting for a new game. It is also a very frustrating one, as I have no idea at that point how hard is hard compared to normal or easy.
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« Reply #17 on: September 05, 2013, 06:03:50 AM »

I always choose wrong, then get all ego-manly about it. the best games I play are the ones I have the insight to set the difficulty correctly for when I play.
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« Reply #18 on: September 25, 2013, 01:12:47 PM »

To be perfectly honest I really dislike 'small' choices in games that end up having ramifications much further in the game; there are a lot of JRPGs that do this. 

The first that comes to mind is in the DS game Infinite Space, there are several choices you can make that seem clear and small (frontal assault on the pirate base or sneak through the asteroid field?) that would appear to be solely strategic choices, but end up having huge effects on plot and characters you can get hours later in the game.

It's super frustrating to have your breakfast choice in one game cause someone to die in the sequel.

I have two fundamental problems with this. The first is the idea that there is a "wrong and a wrong choice," especially in that particular context. And second is the idea that "major" choices need to be telegraphed, as if the player should be informed which will be the most mechanically convenient later in the game. Both of these ideas undermine the viability of videogames as a storytelling medium as well as its ability to give your actions meaningful weight on a consistent basis (a problem that is also impacted by save abuse). If your every action could drastically impact the course of the story, the characters you interact with, and even the items you have access to, every choice matters. If every potentially influential decision is clearly marked by, for instance, binary Renegade and Paragon prompts, it turns these moments into a clinical process of selecting the choices you think will benefit you most (especially from the perspective of someone who is annoyed by small choices with major mechanical impacts). Frankly, I think "major choice prompts" are making modern game stories much worse than they could be.
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« Reply #19 on: September 25, 2013, 01:41:27 PM »

I will say that I hate having to meta-game choices. That was my biggest issue with Catherine. The choices were obviously red or blue, and you had to play in a way to manipulate the game, or let it manipulate you or whatever.

Mass Effect choices give you the illusion of choice. You "buy in" to the choice system with your imagination. Playing that game is like playing with toy ninja turtles. You know they aren't real. You just substitute reality with belief, and there you go. ... If you're not ready for the double-think then such choices lose their lustre, and power.
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