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Choice!

At egscomics 

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Sam! (Applause)

Whether I care about choice, or the illusion of choice, will naturally depend on the circumances.

A little illusion of choice can be a good thing. It's not like every dialogue option can branch out on infinite paths, and it can help immersion to still have dialogue options anyway.

On the other hand, some games ask you "yes or no" a lot, but you can't proceed until you say yes, and that REALLY rubs me the wrong way. I'm not sure if that counts as illusion of choice, however, given how clearly you have to say yes.

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Comments

Windscion

Good girlfriend Sarah.

Michael Brewer

Those "But thou Must!" style of non-choices are annoying, yeah. If you're not gonna let me pick no, why bother asking? That said, on the other hand, I can understand that every additional "route" through the story and every additional ending costs money, possibly *lots* of money if you got in big name voice actors. So, if some ambiguous dialogue and other illusion of choice options can vastly increase player satisfaction without breaking the bank, that's not bad to include. But it's still a good idea to have more than one ending if you're going heavy on the story like that. Or do something like Shadow of Mordor and combine basic AI with a number of interaction options and other tricks to create an open world sandbox that dynamically generates new stories based entirely on player choice.

Crushogre

I played a game once where at the beginning the king asks you for your help and if you say no enough times it gives you a game over. I can't remember what game it was.

Thisguy

There are a lot of games nowadays, open map exploration games and the like, which do offer choices which can affect the outcome of the story. Some more than others. Though Often you still end up with the same result, just a different path, and only minor differences.

Sibyl Arnett

Trying to imagine Sam playing Disco Elysium in a way that doesn't lead to immense sadness.

Some Ed

I think I played a different game a lot like that, but the number of times was one, so it's almost certainly not the game you're thinking about. But I don't remember the name of it, either. If I'm recalling correctly, the introduction sequence to the game showed the king being a real asshole and the daughter he wanted me to save had learned the lessons her father taught her well, so I wasn't actually inclined to play that game straight. So I just ended the game there and didn't look back.

Anonymous

I like the 'illusion of choice' yes/no questions when they're played up for laughs. Like, you say no and they steamroll right over you and drag you along anyway. "Do you want to go on a long, painful adventure?" "No." "OF COURSE YOU DO Come along now." Or like "Will you execute the princess?" "Yes." And everyone is just so utterly APPALLED in that over the top way so they make you choose again. When it's there but played straight and doesn't add anything though it's really annoying. I guess like most things, it comes down to the writing.

Wildstag

Sounds like the Banner Saga kinda player.

Wild Card

Sam has been missing from the series for far too long!

Crissa Kentavr

Meaningful! Such as we locked you out of these npcs which means your game just got super-hard for no real reason.