diedtodeath Posted January 8, 2015 Share Posted January 8, 2015 (edited) It annoys me.. it gives the illusion of choice and freedom, the ability to change everything, while actually giving you nothing. I'm sure you can think of other examples, But here's two that annoy me. 1: The walking dead season one.. There's a couple of times where you can choose who to save (I won't mention names because spoilers) But there's a couple of occasions where there's two people on the brink of death, you can only choose one to save; who do you choose? Turns out, it doesn't fucking matter.. jimmy long cock is gonna die anyway.. sure you wanted to save Jimmy and watch Jenny Hentai fan suffer the death by a thousand bites, but no.. Jimmy is dying anyway.. sorry mate. The walking dead season one has a good story.. but no real, story defining choice, yes I'll admit that occasionally you get a somewhat future changing choice sometimes, but most of the "choices" you get to make offer no real change at all. Which annoys me, if a game around choice is made, the endings should be fundamentally different, not just slightly. What to do with the choices you made -> 2: Fallout 3. This game does offer a lot of choice.. but not where it really mattered in my opinion; don't get me wrong, I'm a fan. But the main story is so linear.. if I'm playing an Evil character, I would like the option of siding with the Enclave and blowing up the brotherhood of steel. I wouldn't even need to commit mass genocide via the FEV virus to side with them either. Eden wanted you to use it sure, but Colonel Autumn didn't, so I could've formed a title winning tag team with Colonel Autumn and took down President Eden and The brotherhood of steel. Gate crashed the mutant party in the middle of DC via vertibird and wreaked havoc on the Capital wasteland with my new Enclave buddies. Destroying everything in my path. Perhaps I could've also got my own little squad of Enclave troops to command? The enclave are practically Nazi's, they capture wastelanders and did experiments on them. If I led the Enclave with Autumn, I could choose what tests I'd like the Enclave to carry out, (The enclave are responsible for super mutants) perhaps my testing choices could lead to a new type of super mutant.. I could've also had a deathclaw follower. Or perhaps you could've just persuaded your Dad to hand over the purifier to the Enclave.. what would've happened then? But no.. you have to side with the Brotherhood of steel regardless. No choice where it matters. I can't change the outcome of the damn storyline.. oh but you can blow up the citadel at the end of the broken steel DLC if you want.. Oh finally some choice!! Too little too late though. Such choice, many outcome! Anybody else frustrated by the illusion of choice? If so, which games "choices" or lack of, annoy you most? Edited January 8, 2015 by diedtodeath 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
funboy1246 Posted January 8, 2015 Share Posted January 8, 2015 i understand your point of view entirely. it does iritate me to read "The game changes based on your decisions" only to find out they mean that some dialouge or not if but HOW someone dies changes. it can be very disenchanting i guess you could say. i think the mass effect games (which i absolutely love) are some of the worst offenders cause all those "epic" decisions boil down to one of three endings with essentially the same results in them all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Masamune Posted January 8, 2015 Share Posted January 8, 2015 Yeah, if your choices don't make much of a change in the story or ending, I don't see much of a point to it. That's why I like inFAMOUS so much, the entire game changes based on your choices in those games. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain_Cutscene Posted January 8, 2015 Share Posted January 8, 2015 Absolute freedom of choice with all-together unique outcomes isn't a storytelling limitation, it is a technical one. To program a game which could feasibly reflect all of the possible choices all gamers would make when playing a game involves technology that doesn't exist yet. And even if by some miracle teams like the Bioware crew did manage to create something in the next couple of years, people would just shift their focus onto the numerous bugs that would be generated. We were meant to get hoverboards and Jaws 3-D this year but it hasn't happened either One day such storytelling wizardry will occur, but for now, we'll just have to enjoy the moderate power of nudging a story in a direction, rather than taking it over and changing it on a fundamental level. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShogunCroCop Posted January 8, 2015 Share Posted January 8, 2015 I like how you mention TWD Season 1. Walking Dead Season 2 has 7 different legitimate endings. So the choices made there are much better to getting far different endings, not just slight nuances of the same ending. But yeah, I was pretty peeved to know the person I saved earlier in Season 1 would just end up dead later. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diedtodeath Posted January 8, 2015 Author Share Posted January 8, 2015 Absolute freedom of choice with all-together unique outcomes isn't a storytelling limitation, it is a technical one. To program a game which could feasibly reflect all of the possible choices all gamers would make when playing a game involves technology that doesn't exist yet. And even if by some miracle teams like the Bioware crew did manage to create something in the next couple of years, people would just shift their focus onto the numerous bugs that would be generated. We were meant to get hoverboards and Jaws 3-D this year but it hasn't happened either One day such storytelling wizardry will occur, but for now, we'll just have to enjoy the moderate power of nudging a story in a direction, rather than taking it over and changing it on a fundamental level. I'm not asking for 19 different storylines.. just a couple. Fallout for example, why couldn't they do story lines for both factions? New vegas did 4. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Incredible Posted January 8, 2015 Share Posted January 8, 2015 (edited) I like how the only difference in Infamous karma choices is whether or not people throw crap at you or not. although the powers you get change based on Karma. Still bothers me the story is unchanging. Edited January 8, 2015 by Mr Incredible Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dragon-Archon Posted January 8, 2015 Share Posted January 8, 2015 It only annoys me when I spend some time thinking about what to do and it turns out the choice doesn't matter. I like how you mention TWD Season 1. Walking Dead Season 2 has 7 different legitimate endings. So the choices made there are much better to getting far different endings, not just slight nuances of the same ending. But yeah, I was pretty peeved to know the person I saved earlier in Season 1 would just end up dead later. 7??? I thought 5, looks like I missed 2 of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PLamb858 Posted January 8, 2015 Share Posted January 8, 2015 Yeah I agree with you on a lot of points. Fallout 3 is still one of my favorite games but you really couldn't be that evil. If I remember right, near the end of the game your dad gives you a little disappointed talking to for blowing up Megaton and that's it. Pretty weak. Fallout New Vegas definitely learned from that though and made improvements. Far Cry 4 was like that for me too (also a great game btw). *Spoilers* - you had the option to kill some main people or they simply disappeared from Kyrat which had essentially the same effect on the game. Sure, the story at the end was pretty different depending on what you did with Pagan Min which was cool but the story still played out the same. You just got a different cut scene. In the end, the illusion of choice doesn't ruin good games for me but it is a little annoying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShogunCroCop Posted January 8, 2015 Share Posted January 8, 2015 (edited) It only annoys me when I spend some time thinking about what to do and it turns out the choice doesn't matter. 7??? I thought 5, looks like I missed 2 of them. I miscounted. It is 7 different choices leading to 5 different endings. Some of the choices have the same ending. Edited January 8, 2015 by ShogunCroCop Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neputyunu Posted January 8, 2015 Share Posted January 8, 2015 Ubisoft said, the ending of WatchDogs depens on my choice. So, while the credits are rolling, I was able to decide to kill Maurice, or not. ... great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redgrave Posted January 8, 2015 Share Posted January 8, 2015 I get what you mean about The Walking Dead, but I feel like the ending made up for it. I felt the same way about The Wolf Among Us though when Mr. Toad and his son get shipped off to the Farm no matter what you do, even though I tried to keep him from going there, and even offered him money to take a cab ride home. But he had to be an ass and be like "No, it won't be enough!" Another one is The Force Unleashed. I remember one of the magazines I had about it say you would be able to make multiple decisions to either spare or kill the Jedi you hunted down, but you don't. Then when it came to the endings there were only two choices. Both of which wound up being disappointing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedEye420 Posted January 8, 2015 Share Posted January 8, 2015 The absolute worst is when the game gives you a choice, but one choice just leads to a loop of "you have to select the other choice in order to continue." There was one game where they asked you at the very beginning if you wanted to help or something and if you said no, they just informed that you were obligated to say yes in order to play the game. srsly?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr_Mayus Posted January 9, 2015 Share Posted January 9, 2015 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damon8r351 Posted January 9, 2015 Share Posted January 9, 2015 Telltale is notorious for giving you a hard choice to make, then having it turn out to not matter. I'm pretty sure you get stabbed in the neck at the end of Episode 1 of Game of Thrones no matter what you do, so I chose to act as hardcore as I felt; better to die like a Northerner with a sword in hand than on my knees like a pansy Southron bitch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doom Posted January 9, 2015 Share Posted January 9, 2015 Well if you want to keep this level of graphical quality it becomes quite difficult to have choices that impact the story so much to change it drastically. We have totally linear (and not even that long) games that are 50GB already. There is no space on the discs to satisfy this. Unless you tone back the graphics, but still, serious multiple paths require longer development time. And I even heard developers saying that they don't like doing it because then some people would miss out some of their work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diedtodeath Posted January 9, 2015 Author Share Posted January 9, 2015 Well if you want to keep this level of graphical quality it becomes quite difficult to have choices that impact the story so much to change it drastically. We have totally linear (and not even that long) games that are 50GB already. There is no space on the discs to satisfy this. Unless you tone back the graphics, but still, serious multiple paths require longer development time. And I even heard developers saying that they don't like doing it because then some people would miss out some of their work. Fallout 1,2 and 3 look like shit, but I still love them.. I'd rather the game looked like shit, but ran in 60fps, had great mechanics and a good storyline. I know it's hard work and time consuming.. which equals a lot of money being paid out. But still, you could just have say 3 fundamentally storyline changing moments and that's it. Also resident evil 6 had 4 completely different story lines, so there's no excuse really. For example.. In TWD S1, you could have lee not get bitten.. imagine how amazing that would be, if on your first play though; you decide not to investigate that body/box/noise and Lee doesn't get bitten. Lee survives in the end and now you're him in season 2. Then you replay through the story and you decide to investigate and now Lee's bitten and he dies at the end.. now you're Clementine in season 2. Maybe it's asking for too much, but who wouldn't agree that if a game pulled something like that off.. it would be absolutely incredible? I mean Lees fate, the whole ending and season 2 rested on a small choice like that? It's not saving someone, it's choosing whether or not to investigate that noise/box/body whatever it was (it's been ages since I've played it) Such a small thing can have such a huge immense impact on everything. Fallout 3, you could persuade your dad to hand over the purifier to the enclave.. he hands it over, everyone survives and then Elder Lyons says "you shouldn't have done that!" and then the main story goes on as normal, except your Dad is alive. Sometimes, the smallest choices can have the biggest impact. Saving your Dad would be fucking awesome and it also wouldn't require Bethesda to make two fundamentally different story lines. I think if games really want to be about choice.. they need to have real choices that fundamentally change the outcome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doom Posted January 9, 2015 Share Posted January 9, 2015 I don't think any resident evil game goes beyond 10gb. But anyway, you don't need to convince me. You need to persuade the 99% of the rest of the gamers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JetlAnd00 Posted January 9, 2015 Share Posted January 9, 2015 For a gamer, getting the game from a retail and want its multiplayer _ spy hunter on vita> i been playing it and the trophy list completion do not present mp ima racer fan so putting the mp trophies is a finishing good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doom Posted January 9, 2015 Share Posted January 9, 2015 For a gamer, getting the game from a retail and want its multiplayer _ spy hunter on vita> i been playing it and the trophy list completion do not present mp ima racer fan so putting the mp trophies is a finishing good. We are talking about the game being able to react to our choices and and propose different experiences to different approaches. Multiplayer has nothing to do with this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JaM Posted January 9, 2015 Share Posted January 9, 2015 What I actually think with TWD 1 "whatever-you-do-you'll-get-the-same-ending" it is open for Sequel, which happened... also makes me think that in that universe, destiny/fate is fixed, whatever decision you make will still result in same outcome... well... true it is kinda good to know if there is a paradox/what if endings... which I am glad they did in season 2... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Banxiee Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 (edited) I've never played a game where it bothers me, although I can definitely see how it does bother people. What annoys me more are games that are advertised as open world or just with a very large area to explore, beautifully rendered area, but you can't walk off the very narrow path it gives you. If I can clearly see that there's a beach down a very small hill (that would in no way be risky or deadly to walk down), so I try to run or jump down to see it and it's an automatic death, I think a lot less of the game. I get that's how games are designed now, but it genuinely miss PS1 games with terrible graphics and definite walls just so I don't waste time trying to go explore what will just end in my death. Edit: Doubley annoying when there are hidden collectibles and many are found by randomly dropping off areas, so it seems like it encourages it Edited January 12, 2015 by Banxiee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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