Dr Jess Birch
"This game has X 'routes' & so, to get my 'value' out of the game, I must experience them all so I got everything I paid for."
How common is this view in the playerbase? How can we write meaningful narrative choices with consequences (ignoring the economics of doing so) if players are unable to accept that they have agency to choose paths & doing so does close off the path not taken? I hate the idea of people "farming" all paths because they feel like unseen content 'steals' from their value.
Jun 26, 2024 at 1:03amWeb
Show threadPaschalisJun 26, 2024
@shivoa I'd like to not feel the need to do this, but I went through all romancing options in the Mass Effect games. I don't see it in the name of value, though. There are games where you find notes lying around that tell side stories and it annoys me to no end missing some of those and having an incomplete telling of the story. It is similar with branching paths and it doesn't matter to my brain that I am supposed to miss things. It feels like an incomplete telling.
Show threadDr Jess BirchJun 26, 2024
@Pasculator I guess I want to be able to tell stories where what you do changes who people are & so the multiple paths are fundamentally incompatible with each other. The character you get new insights into in one path is not the same person as in another path & only through making a decision do you get your understanding of who they are for your specific playthrough. I fear that too many people wanting to see all paths makes such writing impossible (or players would not understand it).
Show threadPaschalisJun 26, 2024

@shivoa For me, it felt in the past that changing the world according to the player's actions is like pandering, and the story lacks an authoritative voice and therefore can't say anything worthwhile.

I think following Timothy Cain's YouTube channel managed to free me somewhat of that notion. My blind spot comes probably by not playing any of his games where the concept of branching storylines is much more fundamental than in Bioware games, for example.

I plan to play Outer Worlds though.

Show threadnoradoJun 26, 2024

@shivoa I think it's not necessarily about monetary value mostly just FOMO

More about having something you really liked, learning that there's more of it, but getting to the stuff you missed generally requires repeating things you already did.
I think this hurts story-based games more than action games, think about rewatching a 2h movie just to get like 2 scenes you hadn't seen before.

Games that just allow you to skip to certain places (Zero Escape etc) do seem to alleviate that a lot