So... Wrong.
I'm sure that many of you have played Telltale games right? Okay... Don't get mad. I'm not going to be talking about them today.
Don't think that this is anything personal against the common developing teams behind these kinds of projects, but almost everyone is doing it wrong. So wrong, in fact, that one team in particular (you may know what I'm talking about) designed a mechanic to let you go back in time and change your answer if it wasn't 100% the result you wanted, even if in the end it didn't really change much.
This, my friends, is NOT the way to correct this issue. And hell, maybe it wasn't, but I want to get to the bottom of this issue today with this Game Design Breakdown, and discuss how we can solve some of the common errors in branching narratives.
Don't think that this is anything personal against the common developing teams behind these kinds of projects, but almost everyone is doing it wrong. So wrong, in fact, that one team in particular (you may know what I'm talking about) designed a mechanic to let you go back in time and change your answer if it wasn't 100% the result you wanted, even if in the end it didn't really change much.
This, my friends, is NOT the way to correct this issue. And hell, maybe it wasn't, but I want to get to the bottom of this issue today with this Game Design Breakdown, and discuss how we can solve some of the common errors in branching narratives.
The Flat Tree
much of a reason to not actually make a branching story. My reason for saying that is simply that I personally would prefer a relatively short branching story game, than one that is long and just pretends to have a branching story.
A great example is the game Until Dawn, |
Many games suffer from the "Flat Branching" scenario, and is actually the main reason I get angry quick when playing these kinds of games.
you see, I'm not quite sure if this is the result of a publisher saying that less time needs to be put into development, so the team can't make that branching story like they'd originally planned, but even then, that's not
where your choices affect merely who ends up dying. And that's it. There deaths effect nothing. Even if they're all left alive, two character's (presumably unkillable) still stop at an area where they cower in fear from the now nonexistent dead bodies of their friends...
-.- Dude. |
Solution
Before going into the design of branching stories and finding that you don't know a good way to actualize that idea. Play Visual Novels. I don't care if you don't like them. That's what these games are all about. They're an important form of information you can use to construct your own branching stories.
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Choice and Consequence
I know that I've been talking more about the effects of bad implementation of "branching" storyline, but that's not all I have to talk about. Rather, that's just half of the problem with typical "choose your path" type of games that cause issues. The rest of the issues come from creators failing to realize the difference between choice and consequence.
Nobody says it better than Extra Creditz, so why don't you give this short 5 minute video a little looksee?
Nobody says it better than Extra Creditz, so why don't you give this short 5 minute video a little looksee?
As Extra Creditz illustrates in this video, one of the main problems with these games is their failure of delivering a real sense of player choice, and often just leaves them wondering "OH NO! What did I do?". I saw this experience first hand when I watched Markipliers let's play of Until Dawn (sorry to stick to that topic), but I also saw quite a bit of that whenever I watched JackSepticEye's let's play of Life is Strange.
as if you'd purposely chosen an outcome that you could have never predicted, regardless of how bad that outcome may become. This game suffers 100% from bad display of actual player choice. But this game, bless it's heart, makes up for that with it's time reversal mechanic. Though that sometimes feels more like a cop out (regardless of the games central
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Admittedly, I did find Life is Strange to be a very charming game. I loved the narrative and characters. The only thing I really didn't like was it's constant failure of letting you know what the consequences of your actions may be before you make them... And maybe that's not too big of a deal sometimes, but the problem is that the game treats your actions
themes of the game). Sometimes I've wondered if they had actually planned that all out from the beginning, so that they could save themselves some time in constructing ways for the player to know, and just let them walk blindly without consequence. Still, this kind of thing almost only works in this situation.
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Stuck...
Until more developers like Telltale come about that push the development standpoint of these kinds of games, it's unlikely the genre will be able to progress much further than it already has, and that'd be a shame. I'd say that it's time that publishers stop forcing teams to make certain kinds of games (as this is obviously a direct result of this) just to make money, but obviously that can't be done. They need something that will work, with little risk, regardless of whether it works to the total potential that it could. This is where the developers and producers need to step in, to try to make a more simplistic, yet much more beautiful branching story system in games.
Common guys, we can do it.
Common guys, we can do it.
Thank You!
I just wanted to give a big ol' thank you to anyone that's interested in taking the time to read any of my blog's content, or checking out the other stuff on the site. Seeing more people come around make me happy, and keeps me going on my stuff here at Kiira.
Just... Seriously, thank you! See you next time, when I break down what makes certain levelling systems in games super awesome! Until then, have a nice week! |