Narrative Choice in Video Games
- Caitlin McDonough
- May 5, 2021
- 5 min read
Updated: May 10, 2021
SPOILER WARNING for multiple games including The Last of Us Part II, Mass Effect 3, and Life is Strange.
As new generations of video games become more lifelike, many games put complex decisions in the hands of the player, giving them the power to decide the fate of the story and characters. But not all games give players choice in the story, which leads to interesting emotional reactions.
In June 2020, the release of The Last of Us Part II brought a variety of controversy, much of it stemming from situations in which the player has no choice. Many players felt betrayed and hurt when a beloved character was brutally murdered in front of the player, and they were forced to play as the murderer, Abby, for 12 hours later on.
Many critics and lovers of the game say this pain is the purpose of the game. Naughty Dog’s developers want you to feel the grief that Ellie feels on her revenge quest, and then feel different emotions when Ellie decides to not complete her revenge. That is her choice, not the player’s, which left many players angry.
“The game wouldn’t work if you could opt out of [Ellie’s] decision to not kill Abby in the end," says a lifelong gamer and musician that I spoke with, Toby. “Despite some gamers feeling angry or frustrated at the game’s ending, it forced them to consider a different response to revenge.” The outrage that occurred because of shows how emotionally impactful video games can be as a form of storytelling. This also shows the power of choice in games, or lack of choice, as many wish they had a say in the ending.
Toby brings up another controversial ending of a game that did have choice, Mass Effect 3. The series relies on players’ decisions from past Mass Effect games – these decisions range from simple dialogue options to the eradication of entire races. However, Mass Effect 3’s ending disappointed players because they were confined to three distinct endings, no matter your other choices in the games.
“Players may not have realized that it was only the illusion of choice,” Toby says. “Choice is really limited inside the ‘box’ created by the game’s programmers.”
Graphics made with Canva.com.
User reviews for The Last of Us Part II and Mass Effect 3 are very mixed. The amount of negative reviews on each game is significantly more than the average game on Metacritic.com. Both games have high critic ratings, but the user/fan ratings bring their scores to 5.7/10 and 6/10.
Cheryl Campanella Bracken, Ph.D, professor of communication at Cleveland State University expands on this illusion of choice. “Essentially, all games have some choice, it’s about how much choice you have,” she says. “A game is a programmed environment, so if there’s a choice to be made or an interaction with an item or character, it has to be designed and programmed...No matter how many options there are, it is ultimately still a fixed set of options.” The perception of unlimited choices is the intent of some game designers, and many players are willing to “suspend disbelief to keep within that illusion,” as Bracken says.
Most gamers are well aware of the illusion of choice, like FIXER, a YouTuber and Twitch streamer. “I think I’ve played enough games to realize that no matter how much the game pretends to give you choice, you never really have it,” he says. “And there are actually games that get really meta about that fact. Undertale and The Stanley Parable come to mind.”
The Stanley Parable is described by NPR’s Steve Mullis as “an existential experience” and “an examination, albeit a humorous one, of choice and free will in video games.” A narrator tells you what to do or where to go and going against his direction of the story restarts the game from the beginning. Mullis says, “[The game’s] developers are taking a jab at modern games that, despite a glossy sheen of graphics, voice acting, and the illusion of choice, are basically still on rails.”
FIXER says that his favorite video game series, Half-Life, is very candid about this illusion too. He says, “The G-Man [(an enigmatic recurring character from Half-Life)] is, in a way, a metaphor for the lack of free will in gaming, especially in linear shooters.
[The G-Man] even says, Rather than offer you the illusion of free choice, I will take the liberty of choosing for you.”
This ideology can apply to games without narrative choice, like The Last of Us series, or ones that are driven by choice and consequence, like the Mass Effect series. No matter what choices you do or don’t have, the outcomes of the game are still determined by programmers long before you even touch the controller.
So, is there really a difference between a character in a game ‘choosing’ a path and the player choosing a path if they’re going to end up in the same situations regardless? Even if a choice leads you on one path, the other path still exists and can be chosen by the same player in another playthrough. When you look at it this way, all choices made by players almost seem insignificant.
But I and others still enjoy games with choices, even with the knowledge that our decisions aren’t truly original or significant. Sigrid King, Ph.D, professor of English at Carlow University says, “Choice can allow players to make decisions they would never make in real life because the consequences are ‘pretend.’ For example, choices that harm peripheral characters in the game may occur without feelings of guilt because it is a ‘safe space for bad choices.’”
Some choice-based games, like Telltale's The Walking Dead or Life is Strange, want you to make life and death choices for other characters. For example, you may have to sacrifice one character to save another, or choose to kill someone to keep a secret. Of course, you wouldn’t do this in real life, but the ability to make the decision in a virtual space gives the player an interesting and emotional experience without real life consequences.
Mashable's Tina Amini says, "The Walking Dead and Telltale’s other narrative games were more about role-playing a character, in a way that felt more like you and your moral compass, than they were about changing the course of the narrative.
"The conclusion of their games always made it clear that, though your path might vary, your outcomes would always end up mostly the same as everyone else’s. In other words: the illusion of meaningful choice, shattered by a final, shared destination, and a results screen to compare yourself against."
An example of those choice results menus, shown in my playthrough of Life Is Strange
While we can view choice-based games in this way and be disappointed by their stagnant endings, we still enjoy playing these games for the moral experience they give. We get a chance to become another person, make choices in a virtual environment, and see how the consequences of those decisions affect us and the rest of the story. A user named OrganisedDinosaur on GameSkinny argues that the destination isn't as important as the journey of the story. "The fact that a choice was an illusion does not change the fact that the effect it had on you was real. The entire game experience is an illusion anyway. You may end up in the same place as other players, but you got there in another way," he says.
Although it may never be possible to have full control in a virtual environment, the same is true of real life. With new advancements in gaming made every year, we will be able to make more interesting and difficult decisions that we wouldn't be able to make in the real world.
Related Stories:
For more discussion of choice in video games and other video essays, check out these creators!
Comments