2015-05-03 - Branching Storylines

I am a big fan of stories in games. Some of my favourite games are so because of their stories. That’s why it bugs me that there’s a trend in games towards having very open stories. Games where the player is given a lot of control over what happens. They can choose to go here or to not go there. They can choose to save the village or to burn it down. The player is partially responsible for writing the story and that makes it difficult to have a really strong story.

The problem is that these choices make alternatives. A character could be dead in one version of the story but alive in another. The player could be evil in one story while they could be a saint another. It’s difficult to have a strong story when everything in it is so fluid. Now I do understand the reasoning for this. Players like to feel that their actions have impact. That they’re doing something and not just following along.

Personally I would prefer it if the choices where limited and fairly obvious. That way the player still had impact in the story but at the same time there aren’t too many alternatives. That way it’s easier to polish the story and make sure it’s solid while at the same time allowing the player to go through all the possible stories.

That still leaves the problem of endings though. It’s difficult to make a sequel to a game with multiple endings without picking one or just making up a new one that’s a combination of all of them. As I said it’s hard to have a strong story when everything is so fluid.