9 hours ago
The most dramatic choice in a game is the one that doesn't affect anything. "Clementine will remember that."Th
The most dramatic choice in a game is the one that doesn't affect anything.
"Clementine will remember that."The die is shown in the corner - and you really believe: Clementine remembers, your decision will resonate in a couple of episodes.But in fact, it will hardly respond.No matter what you choose in Telltale’s “The Walking,” Lee will still get to Savannah and will still die—the only question is when and with what face.And the feeling that you are shaping history is real.If you're playing for the first time, of course.
At GDC, this technique was once discussed as part of a separate report at a workshop on level design - they literally talked about the illusion of choice.We looked at how a player makes a decision that actually doesn’t exist, and why he still feels its consequences.The mechanics are obscenely cheap: after a couple of cues, a fork converges back into one corridor.But between the fork and the collapse, the game manages to show a reaction - the interlocutor grimaced, the partner “remembered”, the music changed its tone.This is enough for the brain.
Cassie Phillipps, designer of the writing platform Episode, took to the same stage with numbers: more real threads are not always better.The player gets confused, loses the thread, and quits in the middle.And several honest forks on top of one strong, generally linear plot hold on tighter than a bush with a hundred endings that no one will see in its entirety.
But there is also a problem with this system.Everything works exactly until that second until you notice.As soon as you realize that all the cues led to one point—Mass Effect 3 won’t let you lie—the immersion doesn’t just break.It turns into resentment: they didn’t just not listen to you, they convinced you that they were listening and then abandoned you.
A good screenwriter knows this and plays ahead: he hides the collapse so that you don’t catch the moment.The bad one leaves you a menu of three buttons, behind which there is one door.Choice in a game is rarely real.What matters is whether you managed to understand this before the credits rolled or not. #game
"Clementine will remember that."The die is shown in the corner - and you really believe: Clementine remembers, your decision will resonate in a couple of episodes.But in fact, it will hardly respond.No matter what you choose in Telltale’s “The Walking,” Lee will still get to Savannah and will still die—the only question is when and with what face.And the feeling that you are shaping history is real.If you're playing for the first time, of course.
At GDC, this technique was once discussed as part of a separate report at a workshop on level design - they literally talked about the illusion of choice.We looked at how a player makes a decision that actually doesn’t exist, and why he still feels its consequences.The mechanics are obscenely cheap: after a couple of cues, a fork converges back into one corridor.But between the fork and the collapse, the game manages to show a reaction - the interlocutor grimaced, the partner “remembered”, the music changed its tone.This is enough for the brain.
Cassie Phillipps, designer of the writing platform Episode, took to the same stage with numbers: more real threads are not always better.The player gets confused, loses the thread, and quits in the middle.And several honest forks on top of one strong, generally linear plot hold on tighter than a bush with a hundred endings that no one will see in its entirety.
But there is also a problem with this system.Everything works exactly until that second until you notice.As soon as you realize that all the cues led to one point—Mass Effect 3 won’t let you lie—the immersion doesn’t just break.It turns into resentment: they didn’t just not listen to you, they convinced you that they were listening and then abandoned you.
A good screenwriter knows this and plays ahead: he hides the collapse so that you don’t catch the moment.The bad one leaves you a menu of three buttons, behind which there is one door.Choice in a game is rarely real.What matters is whether you managed to understand this before the credits rolled or not. #game