Life is full of choices, from the everyday to the life-altering. They can be as mundane as, “What should I have for breakfast?” or as important as, “What do I do with my life?” But rest assured, they’re everywhere. What, then, is the role of choice in video games?
In the beginning, by which I mean we’re skipping gaming’s earliest manifestations and heading straight into Pong, the concept of choice in gaming was strictly binary: turn the game on or turn the game off. From there, we moved on to Mario’s interesting moral dynamic of “Continue to move right or be murdered by turtles.”
In all sincerity though, it would take a few more years for the player’s actions and decisions to have a larger impact on the game’s story and environment. One of the earliest games I know of to function in this way (and there may, in fact, be several PC games that predate it with this kind of functionality; my PC gaming experience is admittedly limited) was Square Enix’s, then Squaresoft’s, SNES role-playing game “Chrono Trigger.” The game’s plot was focused on time travel, and actions undertaken by the characters in the past could affect both the plot and environment found later in time.
Role-playing games have good reason to be pioneers in introducing choice to gaming. Modern RPGs owe their existence to the tabletop granddaddy of the genre: “Dungeons & Dragons.” “Dungeons & Dragons,” being a tabletop game where players created their own characters and stories and used the game’s rules as more supporting system than gospel, was naturally all about choices: should I be a human or an elf? Should I be a Paladin or a Barbarian? Save the town or burn it down? The game was nothing but choice.
This legacy of choice is readily apparent in the works of developer BioWare, now owned by Electronic Arts. The studio, founded by two doctors, achieved prominence through the creation of RPGs that, when they weren’t directly licensed D&D products, drew heavily from its systems and settings. They continue to draw on this legacy: the fantasy trappings of D&D are all over the choice-laden Dragon Age series.
However, BioWare has also stepped away from D&D thematically while maintaining their philosophy that players’ choices should always be important within the game. The fate of the titular kingdom was in the players’ hands in their Kung-Fu/Mythology action RPG “Jade Empire,” the galaxy far, far away hung on their decisions in “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic” and decisions made in one game can have far-reaching consequences in the next in their space opera, “Mass Effect.”
However, this design philosophy of “Player Choice above all else” is not always the optimal way to create a game. It doesn’t work for every kind of story. For comparison’s sake, consider Naughty Dog’s “Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.” The game is a third-person action-adventure in the vein of Indiana Jones that guides the protagonist, Nathan Drake, through set piece after set piece as he chases down the fabled city of Shangri La. Uncharted’s witty characterizations and excellent acting could certainly work in a less linear space, but its cinematic flare and breakneck pace would suffer for it.
Of course, it would be foolish to assume that choice only functions within the role-playing genre. Take “The Force Unleashed,” a Star Wars game set between Episodes III and IV. At the end of the game, players must choose if they will forsake the light or become a Jedi (adding “Like my father before me” is optional), and the game has an ending prepared for either choice.
This notion of choice peppered at key moments is nothing new: the original PlayStation’s “Metal Gear Solid” had an ending dependent upon how well you resolved a key sequence. Even shooters can put a twist on the notion of choice – one of the major points in BioShock was the illusion of choice, and how the context of “I need to finish this game” affects it (and yes, BioShock had multiple endings as well).
Interestingly, as choice becomes even more prevalent in other genres, one of console gaming’s earliest champions of it has been accused of shying away from it. Square Enix’s “Final Fantasy XIII,” the latest entry in the hugely popular series, has received some complaints of removing much of the earlier games’ freedom.
It becomes clear, then, that the role of choice in games is itself a choice. Some developers believe deeply in the immersive abilities of choice in games. Others see it as possibly being a distraction that can hurt a game’s pacing and narrative. Luckily, games following both philosophies continue to be published, meaning that, in the end, the real choice is yours.
